Finish the Story Contest - WEEK #22 | Sins of the father

Astral Echoes

Rain bounces off the frying pan streets, dowsing the city’s mid-morning swelter. Bangkok on a Monday screams its frenetic cadence into my sleep-stained head as I leave my apartment for the breakfast of kings. A hastily wolfed helping of Khao Neow Moo Ping and I’m on my way. This meeting is important for my continued livelihood. A prominent business man is convinced he’s beset by demons. 'Fung shui gone wrong', the words of his PA echo in my memory as I hail a tuk tuk and jump in.

“Sa wat dee”. I greet the driver as I scramble into the cramped cabin.

It is advisable to enter your tuk tuk promptly as the never ending stream of scooters can sweep you out and away at a moment’s notice. I’ve seen a tuk tuk's door taken off by one of these suicidal bikers before now.

“Sathon Nuea road please.” Pulling off into traffic, I find myself staring into the frantic smog choked kaleidoscope that is Bangkok. Five lanes of traffic jostle for position as scooters whiz between them, reckless of traffic lights, wobbling with giggling teenage passengers stacked three apiece. The salt-singed smell of frying shrimp and coconut oil mingles with diesel fumes as I sit back into the sticky red foe leather and consider what I know about this particular clients Astral footprint!

A room bathed in a dull indigo with a bed by the wall pulsing with ethereal light. A book sits half open on the bedside cabinet, pages twitching in the gentle flow of my aura. Light envelops this scene, green through to red as my aura shifts with the pulse of the indigo ether. I drift over the open book, a single word jumps out of the page like a lightning bolt ‘FATHER’. It seems to echo in my mind like a scream. I glance to my left and my adversary is still moving through the treacle I’ve set in front of him. I still can’t tell whether he’s human! The impossibly wide smile, desperate and hollow speaks to me of one possessed. A soul lost in the astral, then found by one of Them.

BANG, I spin as the wardrobe door slams open and closed over and over. The noise echoes through me as an icy wind spills from the flapping doors. The indigo glow subsides to a dull shimmer as the room darkens and I turn back to my advisory.

He is there right before me. Mouth impossibly wide the teeth icicles and his breath covers me in the stagnant smell of the swamp as my bones numb and my knees give way. I choke as my breath sticks in my throat and the scene fades to night.

“What are the symptoms Mr Xioin?" His pallid face twitches as I stare into sunken eyes, unblinking, pupils wide. "How do these daemons manifest?”

“The night is where they reside. Between dream and waking. Sometimes I wake from a dream only to be enveloped by a strange light. After, I walk in the wakening world, around my apartment and... everything is enlivened." He breathes in short gasps as he talks. "It’s as if everything has a soul, the lamp, my leather chair even the books call out there stories, words that wash through me like fire." His head dips and rests in the palm of his hands. "There is no rest”

“Go on...” I lower my voice as I watch his body shivering in the pain of memory.

“Then there are the dreams that seem to be reflections of my life. I'm working at the company, except it’s like I’m looking over my own shoulder as someone else performs my daily routine. I’m convinced I’m awake until I actually wake and it feels as if I’ve never slept at all." He stares into my eyes, pupils contracting back to a normal size for the first time since I’ve been here. "Can you help me?”

My heart strains against my chest as I struggle to close my third eye, a dull ache in the center of my forehead. He smiles like a clown, an open wound across his face, mocking me. White mists swirl around us as a landscape forms in the astral firmament, his mind superimposing a tapestry in the space between dimensions. I look around searching for any clue to his nature. Any clue that will help me to defeat him.

This is the first part of the Finish the Story weekly contest done by @bananafish Finish the Story Contest - WEEK #22

Banner by @f3nix

This is my part at 493 words!! I drew some inspiration from Constantine, The Exorcist, and my own exorcism story (if you are interested to read that you can go to this link The Haunting of Mary Rose | A SWC Entry

I light a cigarette, its ember a physical manifestation of the spark in my mind. It's ashes I sprinkle all around me the first part of creating a barrier. I take a flask of consecrated wine from my breast pocket, took a swig and let the rest soak down the carpet. How the priests would be aghast at what I am doing to their wine but I will need every edge I can have against the entity.

"Oh I can help you only if you get out of that body first" I said to the man who was not a man. The thing with exorcisms painted by Hollywood shows us the victim tied up, screaming obscenities and puking vile vomit all around, talking in an ancient tongue.

Yet demons are more subtle and skinwalkers like these appear almost normal. Too normal at times as they hatch schemes and make little nudges to perpetuate their plan. Heinrich Himmler was one of the most infamous skinwalkers as taught in the secret Exorcismus school in the Vatican which at one point of my life I was a part off.

The 250 priests shown by the Vatican is a mere facade for a more deeply rooted organization it employs to fight demons.

"You are sharp to have noticed it earlier as I see you have already erected a barrier." the demon said losing all its human characteristics in its voice. "Some of the foolish novice priests underestimated me and now part of my legion, fouling their churches and followers and slowly converting them to be heathens as part of Morningstar's glorious army!"

I am dealing with a recruiter for the legion then. Lower in physical strength and magic but has charisma boosted up as it uses persuasion and triggers instead of brute strength. They are tricky to handle.

A bit more confident, I enter my astral form leaving my body to be protected by my the barriers. In this plane I see clearly his form and set out to scry his true name. We enter a contest of will as he attempts to overwhelm and weaken my mind, he whispers suggestions, he probes my mind for sins, he sees the word FATHER and latches on to it.

A dozen demons used it before and it always proves to be their undoing. An unintentional trap set by my mind but I use whatever methods make me win. He realizes too late and I have him. He is open and vulnerable and I get his true name.

"Mylnaris, begone!" I said solemnly and his form begins to mist and get sucked down to hell where he will be tormented for his failure. He will be back and another name placed on my list of demons out to get me.

The sins of the father are laid upon the children and this is my atonement. To be part of the fight against the demons who will start the Revelations.