My Best Friend's Exorcism(82)

The back wall of the Langs’ beach house was all windows, looking out across a screened-in porch to the Atlantic Ocean. Barely visible beyond were the waves, gray and angry, capped with white chop. To the far left, a wound sliced across the horizon and orange light was bleeding through. It was just after five a.m.

“We’ve been here all night,” Abby said. “What if you can’t do it?”

“Listen, Abby,” he said. “When you came to me and said your friend had a demon from hell nesting in her soul, did I say you were crazy? Did I make fun of you? Nuh-uh. I believed you. Now you need to believe me.”

“But what if you can’t do it?” Abby repeated. “You barely even got it to tell you its name.”

Brother Lemon brought his chair over and set it down in front of her.

“An exorcism is a harrowing,” he said. “Do you know what that means? It’s a test of the exorcist, a trial for his soul. You know why we can’t just ask the demon to leave? After all, the Lord’s strong right arm is by our side, and through God all things are possible. Christ the Savior could blast that demon out of your friend like that,” he said, snapping his thick fingers in the cold air.

“But an exorcism tests us. It asks, ‘How strong is your faith? How deep is your belief?’ The exorcist must be willing to lose everything—all dignity, all safety, all illusions—everything is burned away in the fire of the exorcism, and what’s left is the core of who you are. It’s like lifting—when you’re deep in a set, your arms are shaking and you’re a melting candle of pain that’s burned down to zero; you got nothing left to give. And in that darkest moment you cry out, ‘Lord, I can’t!’ and a voice comes out of the darkness and says, ‘But I can.’ That’s the still, small voice that comes in the night. That’s the sound of something bigger than yourself. That’s God talking. And he says, ‘You are not alone,’ and enfolds you in wings of the eagle, and he carries you up. But first you have to burn away everything that doesn’t matter. You have to burn away leg warmers and New Age crystals, and Madonna, and aerobics, and New Kids on the Block, and the boy you’re sweet on in school. You burn away your parents, and your friends, and everything you ever cared about, and you burn away personal safety, conventional morality. And when all that is gone, when everything is swept away in the fire and everything around you is ash, what you have left is just a tiny nugget, a little kernel of something that is good, and pure, and true. And you pick that pebble up, and you throw it at the fortress this demon has built in your friend’s soul, this leviathan of hatred and fear and oppression, and you throw this tiny pebble and it hits that wall and it goes ping . . . and nothing happens. That’s when you’ll have the hardest doubts you ever had in your life. But never doubt the truth. Never underestimate it. Because a second later, if you’ve been through the fire, you’ll hear the cracks start to spread, and all those mighty walls and iron gates will collapse like a house of cards because you have harrowed yourself until all that’s left is truth. That’s what that pebble is, Abby. It’s our core. Few things are true in this life, and nothing can stand against them. The truth slices through the armies of the Enemy like the sword of righteousness. But to get there, to find the truth, we go through this trial, we submit ourselves to this exorcism. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He leaned back and regarded Abby.

“But,” she said, “what if we get arrested?”

Brother Lemon sighed.

“Think on what I said,” he told her, standing up. “And in the meantime, do what I do and say what I tell you to say. Can you do that? Just for a little while longer? We’ve come this far.”

Abby nodded. She was in too deep to quit now.

“Good,” Brother Lemon said. “Now let’s blast this demon back to hell.”



Gretchen watched them from the bed, grains of salt crusted around her eyes and mouth, salt in her hair, salt in her ears. Brother Lemon raised a glass of water that he’d prayed over in the living room.

“Thirsty?” he asked.

Gretchen’s tongue snaked out of her mouth and ran around her chapped lips. It was coated with a thick, white film. Brother Lemon knelt by the head of the bed, holding the glass so she could sip from it. At the first taste, she threw herself back, thrashing and howling. Brother Lemon dashed the water into her face.

“Blessed water!” he said triumphantly. “I drown you in God’s holy love!”

Foam spilled from Gretchen’s lips as her eyes rolled back into her head, leaving only the bloodshot whites exposed.

“Gut, head, heart, groin!” Brother Lemon shouted, pressing his Bible against each part of Gretchen’s body as he named them. “Face me, liar. Don’t you hide. Face me!”

A deep rumble emerged from Gretchen’s lips, a sound driven from the bottom of her stomach. The room filled with a dusty stench that Abby couldn’t place. “Get it out,” she gasped, her voice weak. “It’s going deeper. It hurts. It huuurts . . .”

Her voice disappeared in a hiss of pain. Brother Lemon sniffed the air.

“Cinnamon,” he said, smiling, and turned to Abby. “Smell that? Olfactory discernment. The unnatural odor of a supernatural presence.”

“There’s not much of me left,” Gretchen gasped, her throat spasming. “I’m drowning . . . he’s drowning me . . .”