Exorcize This - Julie Steimle (read e book txt) 📗

getting less on the collection plate. He’d say anything to slander them.”

“Take that back.” Dawn halted on the walk, staring gape-mouthed at me.

“That’s the truth.” I replied, blinking back at her.

Dawn stared at me, taking in my orange eyes as if she had just remembered that I could hear all the wicked things everyone was tempted with—including those naughty thoughts everyone in our church entertained. She knew I could see and hear imps. I used to catch them and show her they were real. I only stopped doing that because the tiny little devils freaked her out.

Putting my sunglasses back on, all cleaned, I continued on walking, leaving Dawn on the sidewalk as she had not moved from shock. I said, “Don’t you ever find it weird that a man gets paid to talk about God? But the Bible says the word of God is supposed to be without money and without price?” I shook my head, walking backward. “Honestly, I think he should get a real job if he really is sincere about being God’s servant. He should be preaching for free.”

“You just don’t like him because he called you the devil’s spawn when we were kids,” Dawn snapped, marching after me.

Which was true. I didn’t like him. But that wasn’t the only reason. Something tightened in my chest whenever I thought of that man. Indignation swelled within me now, as back then Pastor MacDougal had been generally impatient with me. He had never liked me, and I never really thought he was particularly ‘Christian’ for a pastor. He had too much pride and spite. He was often smug. Arrogant. He was too proud of his college degrees, and he always assumed he knew spiritual things better than anyone who did not have a divinity degree—even some of those sweet elderly ladies who studied the Bible daily in the church’s scripture group… and they practically had the Bible memorized, as well as all the church hymns. And hearing the imps of those old ladies, I trusted them more than the pastor. They at least tried to live their religion.

And they gave me cookies.

Lifting my chin, I said, “I wasn’t doing anything naughty, and he was picking on me. Besides, it’s inaccurate.”

Dawn snorted, nodding. She knew I was right. I was technically the spawn of a vampire and imp—not that Pastor MacDougal knew that. He was merely prejudiced over how I looked. He could not get over how pale I was along with the combination of my straight black hair. My orange eyes freaked him out. And it freaked him out more when my eyes turned red whenever I got hungry. And when my sharp canines kept growing back in… well, he had secretly tried to exorcize my father and mother—to no avail of course as I wasn’t that kind of demon and they were not possessed. And to top it off, he called my peculiar bat-wing shaped birthmark, which was in the middle of my back between my shoulder blades, sinful—as if a birthmark could be sinful. So yeah, I looked like something that could have been spawned in hell—but a true Christian would have looked for the good in me. You know, the way my parents did. The way my family did.

But honestly, though, I was glad our pastor did not know the complete truth. The truth would have freaked him out more, and he probably would never allow me thought the doors of the church ever again if he found out about it. I am, after all, the result of an ancient witch curse. Long story.

I’ve got a lot of those, apparently.

When we reached Jane’s house, I knocked on the door while Dawn stood back. After a few minutes, my best friend Jane Bennetti opened the door with a grin, grabbed her jacket and her house keys, and went out to join us. As she locked the door, Jane said to me, “I’ve got an activity to go to this evening at the church…” Dawn rolled her eyes with another moan about the ‘Mormons’ since Jane was attending that church with her mother now, “…which you can come to if you want—”

“I think Sarah McDonald would freak if she saw me show up with you,” I cut her off with a wry smirk to prevent her from putting herself out on their behalf.

Coloring a little, Jane said while tucking in her keys, “Sarah is not going to freak.”

But I knew I made Sarah nervous. I always had. Sarah had been our lone ‘Mormon’ in school for years. Only recently other people from our town had joined her. But most people who went that church building were from neighboring towns. It was like a central location, apparently.

I had watched them one Sunday. Big families. SUVs. Clean cut almost out of the 1950’s kind of folk. And hardly a swear word out of them. It was like the exact opposite of high school, which was nearly pornographic in the level of trash talk that went on daily. Not that those in that church were perfect. Their imps tempted them with all kinds of things—the same exact things that temped the parishioners of my church. All the seven deadly sins. And when I had pointed it out to Jane, she just shrugged and a said a church was not a museum for perfect people, but a hospital for the sick and the wounded.

I had never heard Jane say stuff like that before. But it left me with a lot to think about since.

“Another hiker went missing again,” Jane said as we started down the walk. “It was on the news this morning.”

I groaned inwardly. “Why do people ignore the signs at the trail heads? The town obliterated the campgrounds in those mountains for a reason.”

Dawn glanced at me as Jane flinched. As they knew me, they also knew about the vampires and believed in them.

“Everyone seems to think rules are for dummies,” Jane finally replied with a shrug.

That was something my oldest brother, Will, sometimes said. I peeked at Jane with a furtive look. She and Will had been dating since February of our freshman year, less than two years ago. Since he had gone off to college a year ago, they had stayed in contact with a more long-distance sort of relationship. And whenever he was in town, they were inseparable. Though my mother did not approve, considering their relative ages and the risk involved with them possibly doing something really stupid together when they were alone, there was also very little our mom could do about it. The only thing she was grateful for was that Ms. Bennetti’s new religion promoted chastity before marriage. She just hoped Jane was adopting the same belief. My mom was not quite ready to become a grandmother just yet.

We reached the school grounds well before the first bell and separated off to our classes. I had PE first hour with Dawn for drill team and flags while Jane rushed off to Spanish. I did not see Jane again until the third hour when we had English together, and we separated once more until lunch. We had Chemistry together in the afternoon.

The entire day my classmates talked about those hikers who had gone missing (their numbers varied depending on who was talking). Their families (who were out-of-towners) were calling for a federal investigation as apparently they had done some research and learned of the disappearance rate in those mountains. I overheard they wanted our town investigated, as if we were the ones making the hikers disappear. People cast me secretly terrified looks in the hallways, shifting away from me.

While in my final class hour, American History with Mr. McDillan who was currently regaling us on the Aztec practice of ripping people’s hearts out and all their human sacrifice (he loved gory history and was our resident ‘monster hunter’) justifying what Cortez did to their king, I overheard Laura Sheehan whispering to Melissa Pickles.

“…rented out that house? Who are they?”

“I haven’t met them yet,” Melissa hissed back, watching Mr. McDillan who didn’t like it when people talked while he was lecturing. “But I saw only two people. A man and a girl.”

Their imps were shouting for them to pass notes rather than whisper, which Mrs. McDillan hated more. Apparently this conversation was urgent for some reason.

One of them saw me listening in, and Laura said to me, nudging my arm, “It looks like you’ll have to find a new future home. Your haunted house has been taken.”

Grimacing, I rolled my eyes at her, though she could not see due to my sunglasses. Every jerk I knew who dared still pick on me, teased me with that house, saying it was my future home as it was rumored to be haunted—the perfect place for ‘creepy Eve McAllister’.

Melissa averted her eyes from me, not joining in the personal jab. I heard her imps shout something peculiar at her. “Your life if worthless. You are worth less that that monster.”

I blinked, shocked that an imp would say such a thing; not calling me a monster—that was typical, but the mean thing to Melissa. It wasn’t a temptation—was it? How could they feed off of that? I knew imps fed off of the mischief they caused in people’s lives when they gave into their temptations. This was why fat imps were around naughty and wicked people, and thin imps were around people who had more self-control and honor. I had learned to gauge how much I could trust a person by the fatness or thinness of their imps. Most people had average imps—Melissa among them. Most people listened sometimes to the naughty thoughts in their head and had trouble because of it. Laura’s imps were a little plumper than Melissa’s, but Laura also had a ‘reputation’. She liked being ‘naughty’.

“Her mother loves her. You should kill yourself,” one of the imps said to Melissa.

I could see tears form in Melissa’s eyes. Damn. She was listening to them.

I jumped out of my seat and grabbed that imp, shaking it. “Shut up!”

Everybody in the room screamed, lurching away from me. Their eyes then stared up at the wriggling thing in my hand.

Mr. McDillan stopped his lecture, hanging his shoulders. “Miss McAllister, if you would cease interrupting my lesson—”

“I’m sorry Mr. McDillan,” I said, holding aloft the squirming and now visible imp who was screaming dirty epithets at me for exposing him. “I just need to take care of a small pest problem.”

He rolled his eyes and gestured for me to take my ‘pest problem’ out the door.

I quickly rushed from my desk and went into the hall to the nearest trash can. Snarling, I said to the imp in my hand, “Don’t you say stuff like that to Melissa!” and I chucked it into the trash.

Not that it would stay there. I knew it. Imps were only solid and visible whenever I had a hold of one. Otherwise they could go through solid objects and be invisible to everyone. I had two imps who hovered around me all the time, trying to tempt me as well. Their shouts were for me to bite people, as the smell of blood was still a huge temptation due to my vampire lineage. I had thought that temptation had been cured when I had finally met the Holy Seven whom I was born to kill—and who consequently had rescued me from those witches. But I was wrong. It came back. But the desire to hunt the Seven down had been cured.

I remained in the hall for the rest of the lesson. My heart was pounding and I wasn’t feeling all that good. Melissa’s imp had disturbed me. I had never heard a suicide-tempting imp up close before. In the large crowds, I had overheard a few of them. But I had never been able to pinpoint whom they belonged to. It was only their shouts I had detected, and imp voices were not that