Exorcize This, Julie Steimle [best books to read in life txt] 📗

for me at the school’s main entrance so we could go to her home together.

“Ok, I’m going to tell my dad you followed me home. So if he shouts at you and tries to come at you with crosses and stuff, I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s seen his fair share of freaky stuff, including demons, and I don’t think he wants me to have anything to do with you. But I have no choice. You are the answer to my problem.”

I nodded. It sounded fair. Mr. McDillan had once shot wooden stakes at me. It was part of the package of being me. It wasn’t like I couldn’t defend myself from such silliness anyway.

I noticed as we went along that our classmates, once they got home, started to set out cardboard boxes on their front porches. Apparently another rumor had spread around the school—Jane’s doing probably—about what they needed. She could motivate people to do anything. Sarah and her friends did not need to go dumpster diving after all. They were going to gather these and bring them to the park. It was brilliant.

Deidre went on ahead of me. It wasn’t like I didn’t know where the Bale’s house was for pity’s sake. I waved to the missionaries as they rode past on their bikes toward their church, feeling jealous that their mission had nothing to do with ghosts. And when I got to the front stoop and knocked on the door, I was easily prepared for what happened next.

Mr. Johnson opened the door, a gust of cold flowing out, nearly washing over me, and he stared at me with wide eyes. He was wearing a parka jacket and a scarf, along with cut-off finger gloves.

“Is Deidre home?” I asked, putting my hands in my pockets and rocking on my feet.

He stared more, wordlessly at first, but then calling out, “Didi! Get over here! Someone is at the door for you.”

Deidre came cautiously out from a back room. Her scarf was wrapped tight around her neck. She opened her mouth to say something—but I heard an imp shout from next door at the Pickle’s house, screaming, “Just jump and end it!”

My mind panicked. I knew what was going on instantly. My wings immediately ripped out of my back and I soared over to the source of the imp voice next door, slipping straight through the molecules in the wall in to the Pickles’s garage. Melissa was standing on a chair with a belt tied to the garage door track above. The other part was looped around her neck. Her imps looked ready to push her off as she stood tiptoe on the edge.

I sprang right over, catching her as she stepped off. “No!”

Melissa screamed when she saw me, swatting at my head as I held her up. I used all my strength to keep her from falling, but honestly… Melissa was so heavy. Not that she was fat, but man… she was taller than me and more fit. And despite being half imp, I could not change the weight of another soul. Only immaterial things.

“Somebody help me!” I screamed, feeling my grip on her slip.

As I struggled to keep Melissa up, someone barged into the garage. It was Melissa’s mother.

Her eyes took in I-don’t-know-what. Half of her screamed for me to get away from her daughter, the other half could see I was keeping her daughter from strangling.

Then more feet stormed in. Mr. Johnson and Deidre pushed up the garage door—which consequently affected the belt around Melissa’s neck.

“Stop it!” I screamed at them. “You’ll kill her!”

“Oh my gosh!” Melissa’s mother ran at up, grabbing with me to help lift Melissa higher also.

Deidre pulled down the garage door, pushing under to get to me also. She ran to the stool Melissa had just jumped off of and climbed up to undo the belt from the rail.

Mr. Johnson rushed over next. But he went to the tool wall and got the shears. Marching to us, in one snip, the belt was cut and we all fell down with Melissa who was sobbing.

I slapped Melissa’s shoulder. “Don’t do that!”

She stared at me, wiping her eyes. “Why did you stop me? You hate me.”

I leaned back with a stare at her. “What?” I didn’t hate her.

But Melissa shook her head, realizing now whom she was talking to. She looked to her mother.

Her mother was crying, holding her. “No. Why would you think that?”

That made more sense. It matched what her imps were saying lately. I let go, allowing her mother to console her daughter alone. They didn’t need me anyway. They needed to talk. Rising up, dusting off my jeans, I glanced to Deidre who was breathless and shaking her head at me while also getting off the ground.

“What are you?” Deidre asked me again. “You can’t be a demon.”

Tears came to my eyes, I was so surprised.

But her father said, “She can be. Not all demons seek death.”

I shot a look at him. I could tell he still hated me on sight. However, I also knew that he would be more likely to go along with Deidre’s scheme now.

Despite all that, I glanced back to Melissa who was crying in her mother’s arms. I asked Mrs. Pickles, “Will she be ok?”

She nodded, staring up at me and mouthing, “Thank you.”

I smiled, nodding.

Deidre, her father and I went out through the partially opened garage door, ducking low to quickly get outside again. They didn’t need a crowd. On the driveway, Mr. Johnson turned to me with a glare, “So what did you really come here for?”

Turning around, I said to him, “Deidre proposed I help find the bones of the deceased in the forest. I’m going to do it. And I am going to leave the bones in the park. That way your ghosts will pass over or whatever. But we have to stop before nightfall. If I am in the mountains at night, those vampires are going to get angry. They’re going to be angry anyway. Nobody treads in their territory without ending up as dinner. So for your sake, eat a big spaghetti dinner tonight. Mr. McDillan—”

“The resident vampire hunter,” Deidre explained to her father.

“—will be patrolling the streets if any of them come to town. I already negotiated with him.” I then looked to Deidre. “If I don’t get out of the mountains before nightfall, you have to go back into your house, close all the windows, and lock the door. Open the door for no one. Not even me. I can go through the walls anyway, but the vampires cannot enter your house without permission and they will figure out you’re involved. They’ll try to trick you. They have a kind of magic that I don’t know enough about, which I do believe includes shape-shifting. Bram Stoker wasn’t entirely wrong. Also, an open window is seen as permission, so seriously check all of them and make sure they are locked.”

Deidre nodded, swallowing. Clearly she believed everything I had said. And looking to Mr. Johnson, I could tell he did also, though he seemed to hate me more for it. His imps were screeching at him to call me all sorts of foul names. They were also calling for him to find a wooden stake and stab me. There was a lot of hate in his imps. A good number of them were calling for him to hit Deidre for going over his head and defying his orders, but to do it once I was gone. I halted, staring hard at him.

He glared back.

So I said, “If Deidre has a bruise on her when I get back—you’ll be sorry.”

He blinked, recoiling as he realized I could hear those thoughts. His breath went shallow.

But I had no more time to press the issue, no matter how much I decided that I did not like him. I only have three hours of daylight left. Pulling out my wings from my back, I launched into the sky, quickly going invisible.

“Oh crap….” He stared up in horror, his voice going faint as I went up higher than the houses.

“I told you,” Deidre said to him.

 

In the Mountains

Ok, so I flew over the rooftops and into the near forest, flying up over the forest into the mountains. I asked myself: where would the vampires leave the bodies of their victims? Would they kill and eat them where they stood? Or would they take them into their caves and make furniture out of their bones afterward? I really didn’t know how diabolical those vampires were. I only knew that my father might be among them, and I would be in trouble if I entered those caves.

But then a thought occurred to me, and I glanced to my imps who were flying beside me with glee. They enjoyed our flights. They usually made naughty suggestions to me during our night flights, but sometimes they got silent, just enjoying the wind and the air. I said to the one on my right, “If you were a vampire, where would you leave the bones of the dead?”

The imp cackled, shaking his head. “Don’t know! Don’t care!”

I moaned. Of course. Why would they care? If it did not cause trouble, it was not an issue.

But then down below I heard some imps screaming from the woods. They were shouting for someone to eat some berries, telling that person they were probably not poisonous.

The idiot! Who in their right mind would go into the woods after someone had gone missing? I dived down to grab the idiot to pull him or her out of there.

Landing on the forest floor among the fallen logs and trees, I saw the imps, but not the man. There was a trio of them, ordinary imps, who were screaming at someone to just try one berry, but there was no man or woman that I could see.

That is, I did not see him until I really focused on the forest floor where there was a man who was crawling toward the town, but was not making much headway. He stank of… I wasn’t sure, fresh bear or cougar droppings? I could also smell clotting blood. I was invisible, so he could not see me, but I could finally see him. In his hand was a bloody stick, carved to stab undoubtedly vampires.

The guy was alive. But after more than a week, how was that possible?

I materialized, jogging up to him.

“Stay back!” he screamed, jabbing out with the stick.

I held off, lifting my hands. “Whoa! Dude! It’s daylight. I’m not a vampire.”

“You have sharp teeth! And wings!” he shouted.

Closing my eyes, I sighed. “Vampires don’t actually have wings. Clearly you got bit by one—”

“Five!” he shouted almost triumphantly. “And I killed two.”

“Shhh!” I hissed at him, finger across my mouth. “They are going to wake up soon! And I need to get you out of here.”

“Stay back!” He jabbed at me.

I dodged and grabbed the stick, my claws growing as I wrenched it out of his hands. “Stop that! I’m here to help you.”

He froze. “What?”

Moaning, I hung my shoulders, leaning on the pronged stick like a staff now. “Look. I’ve only got a little bit of daylight. I didn’t even think you