The Haunted by Robert Curran

Author:Robert Curran
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: http://www.archive.org/details/hauntedonefamily00curr

Robert Curran

identify themselves. (Bishop McKenna, for example, has talked with many demons in the course of performing his exorcisms.) Finally, there are the instruments the priest uses: holy water, a crucifix, and a relic of a saint, which is applied to the body in the same fashion—touched to the head or breast, for example—in the course of the exorcism. Despite the portrayals seen in recent movies, there is no chanting or singing at exorcisms. The priest prays in a loud, strong voice and, in the instance of Bishop McKenna, does so in Latin. Dominus vobiscum (the Lord be with you). The ritual begins.

“Now,” Father McKenna said, ‘Til go into every room on both sides of the duplex and recite the prayers of exorcism. Then I’ll sprinkle the rooms with holy water.” He explained that he’d like Janet and Jack to accompany him on his rounds and that he would also exorcise the basement, the attic, the long backyard, and the small front yard.

The first stop was Janet and Jack’s bedroom.

“Ecce crucem Domini, fugite partes adversae, ” the priest said in Latin. In English this meant, “Behold the cross of the Lord, flee adverse enemies.”

As they listened to the long address the priest made to God and Satan alike—“Seize the dragon, the ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and cast him bound into the abyss that he may no more seduce the nations”—Jack and Janet feared that the demon might choose this time to set the room afire or something equally drastic.

But there was no sign of the demon as they went room to room, and finally they were back downstairs where Jack, who had been an altar boy, assisted Father McKenna in saying a traditional Latin mass.

Then their fears were confirmed.

As Janet and Jack knelt at the makeshift altar, they heard, coming from upstairs, the sounds of a child throwing a tantrum. A very young child. One who did not belong in the Smurl household. Then from the kitchen they heard cupboard doors beginning

to bang shut. In front of them, just beyond Father McKenna, knickknacks and plants began to vibrate.

Father McKenna only said the mass prayers all the louder, as if to spite Satan. Janet and Jack squeezed hands together and prayed as they never had before.

The child’s rage upstairs grew louder.

The priest raised the chalice, celebrating the Son of Man and the Son of God.

And then finally the aberrations ceased.

The child’s irate voice could be heard no longer. The house ceased its trembling. And the scent of roses could once more be smelled.

For now, anyway, the power of prayer seemed to be more powerful than the power of darkness.

After he had completed the mass, Father McKenna asked the Smurls to fill up a bucket of water. He blessed the water and told them to sprinkle it if any supernatural disturbances broke out after he left.

In preparation for the exorcism, Father Mckenna had been on a partial fast for three days, eating just one full meal daily. Janet offered to make him dinner, but the priest had only a cup of hot chocolate and a piece of cake.

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