After the exorcism, my eyes took on a vivid yellow color, a constant reminder to my family that there was still evil dwelling inside me—a demon that had murdered my brother. My mother, in particular, was unable to cope with my presence. She resented what I had done to Bennet, to the family, and to her. She claimed it was my fault for opening my soul to the powers of the devil during my goth phase. To this day, the knowledge that this might possibly be true sickens me.
While my mother wanted to hide me from the world, she also didn’t want me in her home. Her conflicting desires developed into hostility. She hated me and every day made it a point to let me know. My father, despite all his machismo, did nothing.
So I left. I bounced around the country, visiting different churches and priests in an attempt to research my demon’s name. I eventually made my home in Los Angeles.
I promised myself that I would learn this demon’s name and drive it out. I would rid my body of this evil. In the meantime, I decided to give it a temporary name, something I could call it whenever I looked in a mirror and stared into my yellow eyes.
So I named it Dudley.
Chapter 3
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I WAKE ON MY hardwood floor. My head pounds from either a migraine or a small hamster playing trance music in my skull. Fortunately, I’m still in my bedroom.
There’s a reason Paige and I moved into a loft converted from an old battery factory. Its high ceilings, oak flooring, and concrete walls are perfect for containing a demon. We installed a grid of iron bars in my windows, and the sliding bedroom door is secured from the outside with a T-shaped iron crossbar that locks into brackets.
I lift my wrist and cycle through the displays on my watch to check last night’s maximum heart-rate reading. Two hundred three beats per minute. That’s not good. If I have too many nights like last night, I’ll die of a heart attack before I’m thirty.
I slowly rise to find my room a complete mess. The bed is askew, with blankets and pillows in piles on the floor. Books are everywhere. My bedside lamp lies shattered on the floor, which sucks because I don’t have the cash flow for a Target run right now.
A broken photo frame of Bennet and me is at the foot of my metal dresser. I crawl over, carefully pick away the glass fragments, and pull out the photo. It’s the last photo I have of the both of us, from when I was sixteen and he was eighteen. His thick arms are wrapped around me as I struggle to get away. We are laughing. Even at that age, he looked like a man. But he would never become one.
Since this photo is the original print I took from home, I decide to put it away for safekeeping. I pull on the top drawer of my dresser, only to discover it’s jammed because of a large dent on the side. I say dresser, but it’s actually a filing cabinet. All my bedroom furniture is metal. I’ve broken too many pieces of cheap particleboard to keep buying that crap. Instead of an armoire, I have a series of lockers. My bedside table is steel. My bedframe is iron. Not exactly girly.
I retrieve the mallet I keep around for post-possession cleanup and use it to hammer the metal back into place, and I slip the photo into the drawer. Then the cleanup begins. Books are restacked according to genre. I shove the bed back against the wall. The broken glass gets swept up and dumped in an empty wastebasket.
I lift an old jean jacket from the floor to check if there is any more glass underneath. Instead, I find something else. A snake. A black viper, specifically.
It whirls its head in my direction, hissing, ready to strike. I throw the jacket back over the serpent and shuffle away. I’ve been in this situation before—too many times to count. It still grosses me out to think that thing came out of my mouth in the middle of the night.
I reach beside my dresser and grab a pair of snake tongs and a burlap bag I keep for just such occasions. I lift the jacket slowly and use the tongs to snatch the serpent. These guys can be venomous, so I’m careful, gentle, and quick. I deposit the offending creature in the bag, which I then cinch up.
Now I have to get rid of another stupid snake. I can feel myself getting anxious and realize the Xanax Paige fed me last night has worn off. It’s early, and I have a long day at work ahead of me, so I rifle through my bottles of benzos. I opt for Klonopin to calm me down for the day.
I’m not an addict, by the way. I don’t take these for recreation or to tranquilize myself against first-world problems. I do this to keep Dudley from getting the best of me. If I get too worked up or angry or generally lose control, I become more susceptible to one of my “Satan spells,” as Paige likes to call them. So I have to remain calm and totally Zen.
Half a milligram of Klonopin twice a day usually does the trick. If I need
