Chapter One
BLOOD SWEATEDout of the freshly applied magnolia paint in slow resiny drops. It dribbled down the wall in thickening lines and splattered over the polished herringbone-patterned wood flooring.
Mr. Stevens made a choked noise in his throat and covered his mouth with one hand. “It’s reclaimed,” he said accusingly through his fingers.
Something dipped into the blood and started to smear it in clumsy, rough lines. Cash backed up a few steps and adjusted the angle of the camera to make sure he got Winslow and the wall in the shot. The exorcist was a rail-thin ginger man with dust-bowl bones and a cheap black suit, fresh from a church in Utah. Well, five years down now, but dust behind the ears was his brand.
He was popular in the Midwest. California preferred a more granola approach, bare feet and compromise, while the demographics in the South were split—but you could never go wrong with a snake handler. Catholics, of course, were popular across the board. Priests just gave good exorcism.
CASH PUSHEDin close on Winslow’s face to capture the way the veins in his temples bulged as he stepped forward. Then he tracked down his arms to show knuckly hands reddened, the skin scalded and cracked, as Winslow thrust the bible toward the wall.
“Begone!” Winslow roared. “In the name of Christ and all the holy angels! I tell you. Begone!”
He slapped the bible against the wall, and Cash pulled back hard to capture the moment—the black book pinned to the wall, framed by the spirit’s bluntly unpoetic message.
FUCK YOU.
That was the money shot, which reminded him….
Cash checked his watch and cursed under his breath. It was past 2:00 a.m. already, and despite the number of times he said he’d gotten the kid’s stuff sorted out for camp, he hadn’t. At all.
He glanced up at the angry rag of a thing that writhed against the wall, squashed out of shape like a bug on a windscreen by the bible. It faltered when he caught its eye—or eye-like thing—and tilted his wrist toward it. He pointedly tapped his finger on the glass face and mouthed, “Camp.”
A horrible maw dropped open, misshapen and lined with barbed hook teeth, and a thick, rudely pink tongue flopped out.
“Already?” it said. Well,saidwasn’t exactly right. Spirits didn’t have a voice or lungs to fill, but the words dropped into Cash’s soul and rattled it with their force. It sounded a bit like someone making fart sounds with a tuba full of loose teeth. And British. “I’ve been stuck here for months. The two of them are so miserable they didn’t even notice for ages. Lost track of time. I’ll wrap up.”
It winked companionably at Cash and squirmed its way out from under Winslow’s bible. Ectoplasmic sweat dripped down its flanks as it reformed itself. Cash swallowed the stingy urge to retch and looked back down into his camera, which placidly recorded the noncreepy side of the world.
Well, less creepy, Cash corrected himself as the blood peeled off the wall and stuck to a sketchy outline of the spirit’s horrific shape.
Winslow made the sign of the cross, brandished his bible again, and prayed some more. The spirit thrashed, wailed in a thin drizzle of sound, and put on a quick show of breaking things and pulling hair as Winslow roared scripture. They all had a job to do, after all, and Cash’s organizational issues were not its problems. Finally, it exploded in a splatter of blood and wet shreds of something like bloated chicken skin.
Winslow wiped his face on his sleeve and looked around.
“Another evil spirit banished back to hell,” he said raggedly. “Good job, everyone. Anyone want Chinese?”
MR. STEVENSwrung Winslow’s hand as though he thought he could squeeze the holy out like lotion. Next to him his wife smiled and crossed herself gratefully, probably thinking no one there could see the crispy edges her deal with the infernal had left on her aura. Not the spirit that Winslow had just banished. It had just followed the stench of her soul and gotten stuck like a bug in a spiritual pitcher plant.
No, Mrs. Stevens had traded a pound of her flesh for immediate gratification. Based on how much she seemed to loathe her husband and the fact he hadn’t died tragically and weirdly yet, Cash would bet she’d bought stakes in fidelity. Somewhere there was a dirty mistress who was either freshly dead or very confused.
Cash saved their address in his phone. They’d be back before the year was out. Like recognized like, and evil didn’t have many friends. The Stevens’s would keep having bad spiritual luck until the missus either repented or gave in to the creeping temptation to do more evil. Either way would be good for ratings. Viewers loved a good catch-up show.
He slung his kit into the back of the car—piled on top of Ellie’s hockey gear and a pile of discarded sweats and T-shirts that reeked worse than Mrs. Stevens’s soul—and slammed the door shut. His phone started to ring as he got into the car.
Ellie.
“I’ve got everything,” Cash lied smoothly as he hunted through the papers discarded on the passenger seat for the equipment list the camp had sent out last month. “I just have to finish up at work and bring it home. Then pack it. It’s all under control.”
Ellie sighed heavily. “Great,” she said. “Dad, c’mon, can’t I go to the same camp I did last year? We had horses at Camp Tranquility. There was an Israeli guy who taught us Krav Maga….”
“You might have horses at our camp too,” Cash said defensively. “Just… don’t get on their backs. Or touch them. They’ll want to drown you. It’s not personal.”
“All my friends are going to Camp Tranquility.” The whine intensified.
“Well, they’re human,” Cash said. He found the warranty for his battery pack, which was useful but not what he was after. “They get to go where they want, and you get to do what you want. As long as the Prodigium doesn’t say you can’t.”
“Urgh.”
