"Her Very Own Demons"
Part 2
By S. Faxon
“How
did this all begin?” the sole person in whom she chose to share her curse asked
through the wooden bars.
The
tight dark space and the veiled separation between them made her feel safe
again, something she had not felt in some time. The ceaseless harassment from
the shadows had finally been abated when this man invited her inside the sacred
walls of his home.
Gwendolyn
hesitated before answering. She realized the extraordinary circumstances under
which she had been found. After wandering from building to building, trying to
escape the inescapable, this kind-faced middle aged man approached her and
asked, “Are you lost, my child? He had seen her sleep deprived eyes, the loss
in her expression, and the mark of death to her step. He thought her diseased
at first, though she looked relatively healthy. He guided her into the church
on the college campus and as soon as she passed through the doors, her entire
demeanor lightened. This struck but encouraged him. When they entered, her eyes
rose to the stain-glass window that shone a marvelous spectrum of colors and
light upon the central altar. She stared at it transfixed as many had before
her, but there was something different about her gaze. To him, it looked almost
as if she was staring at the very face of God.
He
took her into the Confessional, assuming that she would know what to do as he
could clearly see a Crucifix, the mark of their religion, dangling from her
neck. Instead, they sat in silence. The fear that consumed her tongue and muted
her speech was too great. The priest watched her clutch onto her crucifix as
though it was the crux between life and death. The facts began to add up for
this devout priest. What had initially caught his attention about this young
lady was that she looked as though she was cowering from a thousand voices
screaming at her, but there was not a soul aside from themselves walking the
green at that hour in the morning. As soon as he approached, it looked as
though the voices were silenced. Where she had not been aware of his presence
at first, the moment he spoke, she was alert, responsive, albeit quiet,
hauntingly quiet. It was an otherworldly experience she was having and he was
sage enough to recognize this. The fear that she demonstrated now gave strong
suggestion that the experience was not one of God, though she did smell
beautifully of flowers. In all of his experiences with the damned, they had wreaked of decay and human filth.
“Are
they inside you?” the priest asked, knowing the likelihood of this to be low as
she was comforted and not disgusted by the symbols of the Lord.
To
answer, she shook her head curtly. The young lady took several deep breaths
then looked at the priest through the divide. She was terrified that they would know that she was talking about them. The repercussion of this was beyond her imagining and that much more troubling. Her fear was scared upon her face.
“They
cannot hurt you in here,” the priest firmly assured.
His
resolution did encourage her to speak at last;“They started as whispers at first,
moments after that quake that happened a year ago…” She cringed to remember it.
One voice would begin to whisper her name, and then another, and another, and
another, all starting immediately after the first two letters of her name were
pronounced. It sounded like utter, maddening gibberish, but she could feel that
they were calling for her. Thousands, if not millions of harsh whispers calling
for her. And as her fear grew, so too did their
power. “It was like that for a long time. They followed me wherever I’d go.
Didn’t matter if it was day or night. They were…they are always there.” She
paused to wipe her eyes. “I think they’re getting stronger. I’m starting to
see them. Quickly, like, they’re trying to make me think I’m losing my mind. I’ll
see a horrible creature, looking down at me from trees, or from around corners.
I’ll feel a completely different one behind me…that one watches me all the
time.” She looked hard at the priest and said, “What do they want from me? Are
they really there? Father, please help me!”
The
priest had seen possessions, he had seen the horrendous curses that the king of
the fallen had wrought upon the children of God, but there was something
different about this. “Have they offered you temptations? They may not directly
offer them to you, but have opportunities arisen in your life that normally
would never be appealing or that would call you from the path of God?”
Gwendolyn
thought hard on this. Thus far, there was nothing. She was still just an impoverished
cleaning lady at the university. “Nothing that I can think of, Father.”
“And
it’s gone on for over a year, you say?” he asked to which she nodded. The fact
that this child was able to fight their onslaught for so long was very
intriguing. She was extremely strong, that much was evident even if she did not
perceive it in this way. “Be leery of any suggestion that may turn you against His
name, no matter how insignificant it may seem. They may be after you for a
reason that we may never be able to understand, but in my experiences, those
that are taken over by these fiends have invited them in.”
Gwendolyn
shook her head vehemently. “No, no, Father! I’ve never done anything to invite
them!”
“What
about those around you?” the priest quickly asked as he did believe her. “They
tend to target either those who refuse to believe in the king of the fallen,
those who invite them in via the occult or through similar dark practices, or
those who are devout.” The priest watched her reaction and he could see that
she could find nothing. This suggested to him something extremely significant.
Perhaps they sensed that she would one day be a soldier of sorts for God and
his grace. Perhaps they feared her. “Hear me, child. Know that they can enter
you if you open for them a window. I understand that it is terrifying, but know
that you are not alone. God is with you always. There may be times when they
may attempt to come to you as forms of salvation, but ‘do not believe every
spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false
prophets have gone out into the world’. You are always welcome in this church, you
are safe in the house of God. He will not abandon you.”
The rest of the memory was lost
to the sudden need to wake.
Though it was still dark in the world,
at half past four in the morning, Gwendolyn rolled her exhausted body out of
bed. After only barely two hours of sleep it was already time for her to rise
and prepare for work. The memory of going to the priest whom she saw many times
after was a great comfort. The man, her greatest ally on earth, had been alas
transferred to a different parish in the north. The new priest was not so
welcoming to an employee of the university’s janitorial staff. No sooner had
she emerged from the church upon learning that her ally had left, the shadows
materialized.
As she tied herself into the long
black outfit she was required to wear as she worked, she shivered from the
frozen embrace that met her when she left the bed. The morning was very cold
and the chill of the outer fall world crept into Miss Queen’s room as though
there was no wall or shut window to keep out the climate’s cruel winds. Gwendolyn
did not let this disturb her, at least, she pretended that it did not. Within a
year of the start when her direct torture from her two demons began she decided
that the best way to counteract their terrorism on her body and soul was to
pretend as though she was unabashed and unmoved by their wickedness. She knew
that the cold was because of them.
From the side of the bed, a dark
shadow loomed. She knew it was Malacoda,
though he did not fully take form. It was eerie to know that she was being
watched, but she longer feared that he would harm her, for she knew that so
long as she stayed true to the priest’s words she was safe. Actually it was Luci
who she feared would molest her in some form, but, for whatever reason at the
moment Luci was absent. It did happen this way frequently, where one of them would
disappear from time to time. Gwendolyn was hardly about to question or to
complain about one less demon following her around.
Without a word of acknowledgment
to the demon, she left the fetid smelling flat where she stayed, leaving for
that moment Malacoda in darkness, even though she knew that he and the smell
would not stay far behind. At the moment of Miss Queen’s departure from her
place, a coworker who too resided in the residence building provided to them
from the university came bustling down the hall.
“C’mon, Gwen, we’re bloody late!”
Melanie Gates said as she grabbed Miss Queen by the elbow and dragged her down
from the second story of the building and out into the crisp morning air. In
the back of her mind, Miss Gates noted that as she passed the room of Miss
Queen, the horrible smell was still there. No matter how many times the pair of
them cleaned it, the smell remained, and yet Miss Queen always had the almost
overwhelming scent of roses. The enigma was one that Miss Gates had given up
questioning ages ago. “You’re never late, Gwen, is summat up? Are you getting
the snuffles that are going around?” Miss Gates asked Gwendolyn as they
practically ran across the great lawn of grass that preceded the main
collections of archaic yet beautiful stone buildings of the prestigious
university.
The pair ran down a narrow flight
of brick stairs that lead in the general direction of the building toward which
they were expected everyday to check in for their duties.
Gwendolyn shook her head to wake
herself a little more before answering her peer, “No, I’m not sick. I stayed late
last night to clean the lou in the west wing and, well, most of the north
wing.”
“But you work the in the eastern
one with me,” Melanie argued as they neared their intended destination. They
slowed down at the sight of a couple of the men they knew still loitering
outside the door with their cigarettes and pipes lit. The need to rush was
obviously no longer needed. “Oh no, don’t tell me you’re still covering for
that Daniss-girl, are you?” Melanie asked as the pair walked over the last
stretch of cobblestone path that lead to where they were expected.
Gwendolyn stopped walking for a
second to pull back and shove her long light brown hair into the black cap that
was required as a part of the uniform. She sighed lightly then answered already
knowing what would come back in response, “Yes, I am.”
“You’re mad, girl!” Melanie
harshly whispered. “That’s a whole other soul’s workload that you’re
shouldering by yourself! She didn’t even ask you to do it, did she?”
The pair resumed their walk into
the stuffy building, passing through the thick and potent cloud of smoke from
those who sucked on the butts of death sticks. Melanie and Gwendolyn entered
the barely lit interior of the building into the long line of fellow janitors,
landscapers, and cleaning ladies.
In a hushed tone Gwendolyn
answered so as not to be heard over the droll hum of all the other voices in
the room, “No, she did not ask me to, but think about it, Mel, these times for
people like us who can barely read or write are hard enough as it is; Miss
Daniss’s still got a cold and it won’t let her even out of bed, and, like you
and me, she’s got no one to support her. If she loses this job, they’ll take
her flat and throw her out into the cold without a second thought. Winter is
coming; I couldn’t live with m’ self if I knew that she was out there alone and
without a home.”
As the line they stood in slowly
crept forward toward the desk where they signed the ledger to prove that they
were present, the dark haired Melanie shrugged her shoulder and admitted,
“Well, as long as you can handle it, I s’pose it is the right thing to do.” The
woman was quiet for a minute before adding dryly, “Do you ever think tha’ it’s
ironic that most o’ us we can’t read or write, but we work for the big bad
Northern University, the best the world’s
got t’ offa?”
Gwendolyn only nodded an answer
because the man in front of her in line finished making his mark so it was her
turn. As she stepped up to the table she looked at the huge, thick bound
collection of lined leaves before her that had all of the names of the workers
in this division of the school, meaning the staff that kept the place looking
smashing. There were so many blokes and gals who could only make illegible
scribbles of marks that sort of looked like names, but really were just scribbles
and a whole load of Xs, beside the place where they knew they had to sign.
Luckily today there was no one overseeing this process, so that Miss Queen
could not only write her name next to “Wash Lady Number 36,” but so that she
could also scribble another one of those illegible lines beside “Wash Lady
Number 59” for the sake of Miss Daniss without fear of being punished.
On the side of the ledger was the
list of duties for the day assigned to the numbers of the workers. The duties written
on these lists were simply phrased so that nearly everyone could understand
them and those who could not typically relied on people like Miss Queen. She
would quietly do her best to read to them what they needed to do for the day so
that they would not have to be too embarrassed.
“So what’re we doing today?”
Melanie asked Gwendolyn as they left the table’s side and weaved through the
other countless bodies of exhausted workers. (Miss Gates was one of those
people who only knew how to recognize their number on the sign-in sheet and
thus relied heavily on Miss Queen for aid in the mornings.)
The pair gently pushed their way between
many unwashed and lightless bodies over toward the maintenance storage room
where they would receive their stained aprons and buckets full of the supplies
they needed for the day. The university’s goal for the multitude of these
workers going to work so early was so that the students would not see them
working. What student at the Northern would want to see the lower class
cleaning up after them anyway? Gwendolyn thought of this grimly as she waited
to tell Melanie what they had to do today until they were outside; she wished
desperately that they could work during the day instead of in the mornings and
evenings when there were no students around. The key, she found, to keeping the
demons abroad was to keep large groups of people around. When she was with at
least two or more of her peers, Luci and Malacoda did not dare to torment her
for it was not worth the risk of being detected. Gwendolyn Queen and the priest
determined that she was amongst those who can see the souls who either in life
had warranted eternal salvation or eternal damnation. It was one of the reasons
why they targeted her so fiercely. There were several like her that attended
and worked at this university who too would see Luci or Malacoda if they dared
to show themselves during the day, and being seen was not something that either
of the demons were willing to endure. So, on a normal day to day basis, they
would follow her steps in the shadow realm where no one but members of their
plane could see them. However, Luci could, at times, linger beside Gwendolyn
all day as she had yesterday, without being looked at as anything other than an
incredibly intimidating and hauntingly beautiful woman. When Miss Queen went to
work, she was temporarily free. She worked hard, but at least she was without
those who made her life on earth hell.
As they walked past the blokes
who were still smoking, one of them muttered as Gwendolyn passed by, “God save
the Queen,” in reference to Gwen’s surname which, her whole life, had produced
fodder for fools to snicker at in front of her or behind her back. Ignoring the
comment completely, Gwendolyn and her companion strode on, still choosing to
wait to answer her comrade.
Returning into the dark morning’s
cold embrace Melanie and Gwendolyn left the sight of the hot and crowded room
of people who wanted to be there even half as much as they. “Right, well, here’s
what we have to do,” Gwendolyn explained as she kept her eyes up and moving,
looking out to see if Luci or Malacoda were visibly present on her trail yet. She
thought she saw a tall shadow dart among the darkness. Swallowing hard and
lightly swinging the heavy bucket full of cleaning products by her side, Gwendolyn
continued, “We’re back in the second, third, and fourth landings of the East
hall. We’re supposed to cover stairwells and the hall floors today. How ‘bout I
take the second and fourth landings, is that alright?”
“Why do you always want the
second? That’s a terrible place to be; it’s always so bloody hot there,” Miss
Gates asked, though hardly expecting an answer to a question she had asked many
times before. “Alright, well, anyways, let’s get going ‘fore the wardens come
out and start hounding at us.”
The hardly at all exaggerated
verbal blow toward the people who oversaw their work would have at least evoked
a smile from most others, save Gwendolyn. The wardens and their awful attitudes
were the least of her worries.
~*~*~
Be sure to check back next week for the continuation of the story!
Your humble writer,
S. Faxon
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