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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/scarymaxx on 2024-07-01 21:52:58+00:00.
I squirmed uncomfortably in the ancient stool, its uneven padding forcing me to sit at a slant. In retrospect, I’m sure Cardinal Robles chose it on purpose.
He wanted to see me as uncomfortable as possible. All part of the test.
Of course, I was nervous already. As intended, the grand chapel’s ceiling soaring above us made me feel small. Sixty-six feet above us, God reached out to Adam, granting him life. The metaphor was obvious: I was Adam, waiting for my prize. But what was the Cardinal about to give me?
The old man fixed me in his gaze.
“What do you know about Hell?” he asked after a few moment.
I thought back to my training.
“Hell is the absence of God,” I answered carefully.
He smirked.
“Good. Cautious answer. We like caution here. Sometimes. Other times, we prefer cojones.” He started laughing, as if he’d just made some kind of outrageous joke.
The Cardinal had grown up on the streets of Montevideo in Uruguay. He had a reputation for crude jokes. Some people called him ‘direct.’ Others called him an asshole. I suppose he was both.
“Let me rephrase,” he said. “Suppose I were to ask you the geography of Hell. Could you draw me a map? Could you describe its mountains? Its swamps?”
I shook my head.
“I have never thought of it as a physical place,” I answered, still careful.
“Of course not,” he said. “But you’re not so stupid as to deny the connection between the physical and spiritual, correct? Take your little altercation in Los Angeles. You sewed the girl’s lips shut, correct? But if that’s all you did, there would have been no effect. You were able to quell the demon’s hunger because the sewing of the mouth had a metaphorical, spiritual equivalent. Same with the demon’s eyes on the plane. Think of Matthew 18:9: And if thine eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is good for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into the hell of fire”
“Now I’m a bit lost,” I confessed.
The cardinal rubbed at his temples, clearly disappointed.
“Let’s try this one more time. Stop being so goddamned careful, or I’m sending you back to the states to study under Father David.”
I shuddered at the thought. Father David was a notorious coward, a priest only fit to deal with minor exorcisms. He had called the Vatican for assistance so many times on major ones that he’d earned the name “Father Backup” amongst his peers.
“Those things you sealed. Where do you think they live? Think back to Maya Knowles’s house.”
I closed my eyes and thought back to the house where I’d sewn Maya Knowles’s lips shut. I had spent every hour since then trying to block out the smell of blood and colon, the thickness of the air. Suddenly, I found I was speaking, almost without trying:
“A swamp,” I said. “Thick mud. Shit raining from the sky.”
The Cardinal’s eyes lit up.
“Yes. Yes. More.”
“Someone’a always screaming. Animal sounds. The air is freezing. There’s a constant hail pelting the burning mud.”
“Yes!” He shouted. And then he began to recite:
In the third circle I arrive, of show’rs
Ceaseless, accursed, heavy, and cold, unchang’d
For ever, both in kind and in degree.
Large hail, discolour’d water, sleety flaw
Through the dun midnight air stream’d down amain:
Stank all the land whereon that tempest fell.
I struggled to remember where he was quoting from. Certainly not the Bible this time.
“Inferno,” he said after a moment, looking disappointed. “You’re not a literary man?”
“I studied engineering in college,” I said. “More of a math brain. I do remember something about Dante being non-canonical…”
He rubbed his temples again. There was something exaggerated about his movements, like Donald Duck losing his cool in an old cartoon.
“There are truths in this world that are better kept secret,” he said. “The church must act as a shield sometimes. You know? Guarding the flock from the fiery darts of the wicked? And so it is with us exorcists.”
I looked up at him, slightly confused.
“I wasn’t aware that you are… were? An exorcist yourself? I mean, you’re a Cardinal–”
He started laughing.
“There’s a lot you don’t know.”
He stood, stretching slightly. Then he began to lift the hem of his robe. I looked down to see a deep scar running from his ankle to his knee.
“Got that one from a demon of violence named Tauru. Everyone was sure I’d lose the leg below the knee. Doctors are idiots, of course.”
He raised the robe further and turned from me, exposing four parallel scars across his back.
“Those are from Mammon himself. Demon of greed. He got away from me, but not before he left me this little souvenir.”
He paused, looking up at the ceiling, up at God.
“There demons, you understand, they’re different than the minor entities responsible for most possessions. Even what the church calls a “Major Exorcism” is really just the minor leagues compared to what we handle. These demons I’m talking about, they are the lords and lieutenants of hell. Professional soldiers for the other side. More exorcists will never encounter one over the course of a whole career.”
“The thing that was inside Maya Knowles–” I started to say.
“–was Lady of Hell. A demon of gluttony. Quite powerful. Really, you shouldn’t be here today. If things had gone according to the demon’s plan she would have eaten you too, and then consumed her own host body like an ouroboros, breaking her own arms and legs and swallowing them whole.”
I was beginning to feel sick. And if I’m going to be honest, I was afraid. Everything I’d known about demons up to that point was suddenly invalid. I thought I’d been a soldier for the church, but now I realized I was playing parlor games with Hell’s second-stringers. Were the things that had taken Maya and Anselmo the worst things out there… or were there even worse horrors to be discovered?
“Why are you telling me all this?”
He smacked his head, and muttered “Dios mio.” Then he looked up at me. “Isn’t it obvious?” he finally asked. “I want to know if you want in! If you want to play in the major leagues, mijo! Do you want to fight some real demons with us, or do you want to go back to sprinkling holy water on little shits pretending to be possessed so that they can get more attention from mama!”
I thought of the demon slurping Father Anthony’s guys through the tiny hole at the side of its mouth. I thought of the baby head sprouting from Father Anselmo’s neck, its deep, guttural laugh. I thought of the foul air, the smell of shit.
Cardinal Robles held up a hand.
“Don’t answer yet,” he said. “It’s enough to know you’re considering it. Before your answer, you need to see the reality of what we’re up against.” He swept his arm out with a flourish. “Follow me.”
*
“Do you believe in god? Any kind of god?”
I looked up at Sofia. It was a bold question for a second date, but she was asking it anyway. Even before I’d asked her out, I’d known Sofia was religious. Not that she was a fanatic or anything, but she went to church most Sundays, which was unusual in our social group.
I shrugged, hoping we could deal with the question quickly and move on to another topic.
“I think at some point, I decided it was one of those big questions that you could never answer. So I stopped asking. I try to spend my time on problems that have solutions.”
She silently ate a few forkfuls of her salad.
“I’m assuming you do?” I said, trying to break the awkward silence. “Believe, I mean?”
“Well, I don’t believe in god,” she said after a bit. “Believe implies there’d be a possibility of doubt. I know there’s a god. Because I know there are demons. I’ve seen them at work.”
I topped off my wine and took a drink. This was getting interesting.
“What do you mean, seen them?”
“This is going to sound crazy, so I’ll understand if you get up from the table after a bit and walk out on me. I won’t be offended at all. We can still be friends after.”
I met her eyes. They were deadly serious.
“I’m not going to do that,” I said. “You can tell me.”
Now it was her turn to take a long drink.
“When I was younger, fourth grade, I was possessed for a few months,” she said.
I almost spit out my wine.
“I know how it sounds,” she continued. “I used to be embarrassed to tell people. But… it’s part of who I am. There was a demon living inside me. It pushed me to a dark little bubble that I didn’t know existed. It was terrifying, watching her through a black haze, saying the most vile things to my parents, my sister. I’d always been a good kid. At least, that’s what I thought. But I must have let her in somehow.”
She was crying now. For a second, I wondered if I was on a date with an insane person. But when I looked at her, she didn’t seem even the least bit crazy. I reached out and took her hand.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay,” she said. “The church–they sent people. Exorcists. It turned out to be something minor, they said. It didn’t feel minor to me. But their prayers made it go away.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. What else could I say?
“Don’t be,” she said. “It was a gift. After that, I didn’t have to believe anymore. I knew there was something out there. A bad thing. And a good thing. I’ve gotten to carry that with me every day of my life.”
*
I followed Cardinal Robles through a series of rooms and doors, each less grand than the last. Gone …
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