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The Possession of Nicholas Lobell

The awakening did not arrive well, or easily, for Nick. At first, his stirring was slow and restive—little hypnic jerks coupled with moans and mumbles that grew louder and louder with each utterance. But then, his eyes wrenched open, as if by invisible fingers, and he screamed an unholy sound. His head ratcheted back on his neck and through his upturned mouth, the words poured out of him in a raging river:

“ WhyamIherewhatwhatwhereizzitpleaseputmebacktherewhyWHYWHY. IneeditneeditneedityouliarliesMattyMattyIsawMattyfuckyouFUCKYOU. ”

Slurs erupted from him. Slurs punctuated by screams. Hideous profanities as his head whipped back and forth—screaming about how he wanted to fuck Lore in the ass, how he’d shove his cock in Owen’s mouth, how he’d slit open the bellies of Hamish’s children and piss and shit and ejaculate inside their chests.

Then his body seized up for a moment before unlocking itself in a thrashing wave of movement—his bound hands swinging left and right like a loose pulley, his heels kicking down on the ground, wham, wham, wham, his head hammering back into the wall then knocking into the drywall studs, back and left and right, back and left and right, his entire body caught in this earthquake of rage and panic.

They had to pounce on him and hold him still. His head spun on his neck far, too far, impossibly far, and he opened his mouth and sunk his teeth into the meat of Owen’s shoulder. Owen cried out, stumbling backward, blood already sliding down to his elbow, clinging to the underside of his forearm. Then Nick drove the top of his forehead forward into Hamish’s eye, and it rocked Hamish, though still he held on, using his shoulder to press into the side of Nick’s face, bolstering it against the wall so it couldn’t move. Lore, meanwhile, fumbled for the electrical tape, and clumsily, desperately managed to unwind some and start to get it around Nick’s mouth. Owen got back in there, and helped her hold his head up as she wound it around and around. It didn’t manage to cover his mouth—the tape was too thin for that. Nick bit at it, but that did little good—the tape was, for now, too thick, unyielding to his teeth. At the end of it, it wound around enough times, pressing into his mouth like a gag.

He hissed like a lizard and stared at them. Hate effulgent in his eyes. His nostrils flared. His cheeks puffed out with rapid, shallow breaths.

But he stopped thrashing.

Carefully, they each backed off. The crawlspace did not afford them much room, so they flanked him to the left and to the right. Lore and Owen on one side. Hamish on the other. They knew it would be easier to go out there, in the house—but the house was the house, and it’s where it got into Nick.

He needed to be here, they believed.

Was it possible to free him from the house? To evict it? None of them knew, but if it was going to happen anywhere, it was going to happen in here.

—

Something had crawled its way into Nick—the entity. The demon. The house. It was easy to see when you knew to look for it. His eyes, open and glassy, sometimes showed flashes of strange wallpaper, or cracked window glass, or tarnished spigots. In Lore’s peripheral vision, she could see his skin rippling like living wallpaper. His tongue, a staircase. She couldn’t see them when she looked head on. But looking just away…he was a human-shaped structure, crackling and crunching as it thrashed in its bonds.

They had only the loosest plan. They told him they loved him very much. They missed him. They begged him to push the house out. To remember who he was, who he really was. They reminded him of the Covenant.

Nick bellowed—a banshee’s wail that was both mournful and fed by rage, and he reached for Hamish with choking hands. But his hands were bound together and he could only lurch forward so far, even as he started to bite through the tape, spit springing from his mouth and hanging in strings from his lips, even as the whites of his eyes burst red from the fury of his effort. Lore and Hamish held him back, shushing him, trying not to hurt him or be hurt in the process—

And Owen, standing back, felt the pain coming off of him—bleeding like waves of heat. That pain came from something. From somewhere. The house had seized upon it, and it was the key that opened the lock that was Nick Lobell.

Pain that had been locked away, festering.

And never once reckoned with.

The house wouldn’t have reckoned with it, either. It didn’t heal that wound. It didn’t push the pain away. It just took it and used it against Nick.

As Owen watched Nick spasming violently, teeth snapping at the faces of Lore and Hamish, he felt the words coming up out of him—

A mistake, perhaps.

A reckoning, definitely.

A risk, 100 percent.

He said: “We know what your father did to you, Nick. And it wasn’t your fault.”

There. Nick froze in his attack. Frozen still, except for the trembling of his body, the gentle clacking of his teeth.

Lore and Hamish looked at him, half angry, half confused. Because they didn’t know. Owen knelt down in front of Nick and took his hands. Blinking back tears, Owen said, “It wasn’t your fault. It was his fault. We love you, and we’re sorry we didn’t see it. But we see it now. We see you now.” Owen hugged his friend and said in his ear: “We’re so fucking sorry, Nick.”

The fight went out of Nick. But so did everything else. He slumped forward, and then when the hug was done, backward. Instantly, he fell into a catatonic state. Rarely blinking. Just barely breathing. They tried talking to him some more but it didn’t even seem to register. Owen wondered if the house was gone from him. And further, he had to wonder:

Was the house the only thing propping him up?

If it was gone, did it take too much of Nick with it?

What was even left of their friend?