Georgetown, Washington D.C.
It was a crisp autumn day; the Johannsen family had recently moved into a charming, vine-covered house on a hill that stood on a hill facing the Potomac River. It was a little family, consisting of a famous novelist Margaret Johannsen; her eleven-year-old daughter, Amy; and their live-in housekeeper, Martina, who had helped raise Amy since birth. To them, life was simple and quite ideal as well, until the peace around them began to shatter.
It started innocently enough, almost like the opening pages of a novel with an unassuming premise. While Amy played in her room upstairs, Margaret was busy working on her latest book, a crime thriller. The house, a little more than a century old, often creaked and sighed with age, and everyone was used to the odd sounds every now and then. But one evening, Amy rushed into her mother’s office with wide, frightened eyes.
“Mom, there’s a noise under my bed,” she whispered, clutching her teddy bear. Margaret looked at her, puzzled.
“Sweetheart, it’s probably just the house settling,” Margaret said, her voice soft. Still, she put down her manuscript and followed Amy to her room to help her daughter calm down. The air felt unnaturally still, and a chill crept through the hall as she approached. Bending down, Margaret lifted the bed skirt and peeked beneath. There was nothing there—just a forgotten sock and a stray LEGO piece.
“See? Nothing to worry about here,” she reassured her daughter, tucking a stray strand of hair behind the girl’s ear and kissing her on her forehead. But as she helped her settle into her bed, Margaret couldn’t shake off the unsettling sensation that something was indeed wrong.
That very night, Margaret was startled in her sleep by a by a rough, scraping noise echoing from Amy’s room: she jumped out of bed at once and rushed out the hallway. And when she pushed open Amy’s door, she was shocked to see the furniture rearranged, rather scattered, across the room. Her heart skipped a beat in sheer panic as she observed the small dresser tipped over and the bed shifted several feet as though dragged by some unseen force.
Meanwhile, Amy sat in the middle of her bed, staring blankly in terror, her body trembling. Margaret knelt beside her, gently shaking her daughter, “Amy, honey, are you okay? Wake up!” She was in tears.
Amy’s breath caught as she broke free from her trance, her eyes wide and blank. “Mom?” she whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks. “There’s something in my room. It… it talks to me.”
Margaret tried to give her daughter a logical explanation even she didn’t believe: “My dear, it must be a bad dream, or you might be sleepwalking.”
But the following days had nothing rational in store for the family. Amy, the once sweet, happy-go-lucky girl, began to withdraw: her behaviour changed; her shining eyes became pale; and her fresh complexion faded with exhaustion. To her mom’s worry, she also refused to eat or talk, and all Margaret would ever hear her daughter say was “the whispers” that plagued the girl at night. Thus, Margaret took her to the family physician, who assured her that children sometimes acted out after a major move, but that wasn’t the case; Margaret was sure of that.
Soon, the whispers Amy spoke of grew louder and more threatening. She even started copying Margaret’s voice with a chilling accuracy – imitating her mother and mocking her. When the housekeeper Martina tried to comfort the child, she hissed at her in a language none could understand.
Next, Margaret began to lose sleep, haunted by the same scratching sounds in the house, footsteps where no one walked, and that coarse, unsettling laugh that made one’s skin crawl.
A few days later, Margaret woke up at night to find Amy standing at the foot of her bed, smiling creepily. “He says he likes it here, Mommy,” Amy murmured in a layered voice as if two people were speaking simultaneously. Margaret let out a shriek, and Amy collapsed into a heap on the floor like a lifeless puppet whose strings had been cut. The next morning, she remembered nothing of the encounter.
Margaret was fighting the sense of hopelessness with forced determination to find a solution. She began to consult experts—psychiatrists, therapists, even sleep specialists—but nothing explained Amy’s erratic behaviour, let alone the strange happenings around the house. And with each failed attempt, Margaret’s already weak hope dwindled, and an overwhelming sense of dread took over her. Amy’s condition continued to worsen: she developed violent outbursts; her body would convulse as if she were having a seizure; blue and black bruises appeared on her skin; and her voice, it was the most inhuman thing a human being could possess.
One day, Martina approached Margaret with a look of concern and fear. “Miss Johannsen,” she said, clutching a rosary in her hands, “I’ve seen things like this before… back in my village in Colombia. It’s not medical; it’s spiritual.” She hesitated, looking around the house, feeling something was keeping an eye on them.
“You need a priest.”
Margaret, though sceptical, was willing to try anything. Thus, she reached out to Father Daniel Carrigan, who was a local Catholic priest known for his compassionate nature and, unbeknownst to Margaret, work in exorcisms. Father Carrigan was a man burdened with faith and doubt in equal measure; his hands were calloused from decades of wrestling with the unseen dark forces.
Father Carrigan arrived at the house carrying a leather-bound Bible and a simple wooden crucifix. Just as he entered, he was greeted by an uneasy feeling. Amy was in her room, restrained to the bed for her own safety. But when he entered, the girl let out a low, animalistic growl, and her eyes rolled back.
“It’s not Amy anymore,” Father Carrigan whispered to Margaret, his voice as serious as could be.
Amy thrashed against her bindings, her small body contorting in ways that seemed to defy the limitations of human anatomy. She growled, hissed, and threatened and mocked Father Carrigan’s faith.
“Your God cannot save her. She belongs to us now.”
The intense exorcism began: Father Carrigan sprinkled holy water, reciting prayers with a steady, authoritative voice while Amy screamed as her skin sizzled wherever the water touched her. The room started getting colder; the lights flickered; and a smell of rotting flesh and blood filled the air.
Margaret clutched her hands together, silently praying, as tears rolled down her cheeks. Martina also knelt beside her, whispering prayers in Spanish. Amy’s body arched, and her mouth opened in a wide, unnatural grin: “He’s here. He’s watching you, Margaret.”
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