Days passed, and the house fell into a tense quiet. Amy, though pale, seemed better, yet she would still flinch at the slightest movements. On the other hand, Margaret tried to keep things normal, making Amy’s favourite meals and reading her bedtime stories. But the darkness never truly lifted.
One night, the calm shattered.
Margaret awoke to the sound of heavy, deliberate footsteps in the hall. Her heart stopped for a moment with a feeling of impending doom. She grabbed what she could —a glass paperweight—as she crept out of bed and, following the footsteps, reached the living room, welcomed by the same smell of rotting flesh.
Again, it was Amy, standing in the middle of the room – unnatural angle, hollow eyes, and a creepy grin. “Mommy,” the thing inside Amy crooned, “why do you fight us?”
Margaret clutched the paperweight so tight her knuckles became white. “Let – my – daughter – GO,” she demanded, her voice shaking.
The entity laughed, “You don’t understand. We’re not here for her. We’re here for you.”
It’s as if terror slammed into Margaret; she took a few steps back and stumbled into a table; Martina rushed in with her rosary in her hands and prayers on her lips, but the shadows only laughed…
Moments later, Father Carrigan and Father Miguel arrived, their faces etched with horror. And the exorcism began again – only this time, the entity’s strength was greater. Amy’s body twisted and thrashed; the house groaned under the weight of the darkness; random objects flew from one side of the room and smashed into the opposite walls, and in that heavy air, the temperature dropped to a bone-chilling level.
“We will NEVER leave,” the entity roared as Amy’s mouth started foaming.
Father Miguel raised his voice louder than the surrounding chaos: “By the power of Christ, we cast you out!” The priests’ voices were a chorus of faith and defiance; the darkness screamed as if to tear the house apart. Amy’s rigid body twisted and turned as the spirits inside her were being attacked by the prayers, and in a flash of light, the shadows in the room burst apart.
Then, silence. A heavy, suffocating silence.
Margaret saw her daughter collapse helplessly for the umpteenth time. But as she neared her daughter, heartbroken at her state, Amy’s eyes fluttered open, blue and clear. The shadows were gone, and although the house was broken and everything was misplaced, it was finally still.
Father Carrigan and Father Miguel sank to their knees: they were drained, but they had won. Margaret held Amy close. The nightmare was over, but the scars it left would never fully heal.
In the following weeks, the Johannsen house slowly returned to normal, with Amy’s laughter echoing through the halls where once-dark entities screamed and shadows lingered. Margaret started writing again, penning down the experience in her journals, a story too terrifying to ever be published but too real to ever be forgotten.
Father Carrigan still visited now and then, praying for continued protection, and Martina hung blessed crosses in every room. Everything was changed, but at least they were all together.
With peace prevailing everywhere, days turned into nights and nights into days, months passed, and Autumn melted into the bone-chilling grip of winter. The warm and welcoming dwelling fell silent as if the walls were listening. Though the exorcism had seemingly driven out the darkness, an unease lingered. It was like the walls refused to forget the curse that once lingered.
Margaret tried her best to mask fear for the sake of her daughter. The three celebrated Christmas wholeheartedly, hanging garlands of evergreen and lighting a cheerful fire in the hearth. Margaret clung to every moment of happiness, desperate to convince herself that the nightmare was truly over.
But as the days crept into January, Margaret began to notice small, unsettling things: moving shadows here and there, soft footsteps, and, sometimes, unexplained scratches on Emilly’s arms and legs when she woke up.
“Did you hurt yourself in your sleep?” Margaret asked gently one morning while examining a set of fresh scratches on her daughter’s wrist.
Amy smiled a very familiar smile, and no, it wasn’t hers: it didn’t belong on her face.
“No, Mommy,” she said in a sing-song voice. “He did it.”
Margaret’s heart nearly stopped: “Who?” but Amy had already turned back to her breakfast, humming a cheerful tune, the moment of strangeness vanishing like a mirage.
Margaret tried to brush it off. Maybe she was being paranoid, or Amy was kidding, though she knew her daughter would never do that. Or maybe the trauma of what they’d gone through had made Amy hallucinate. But Margaret also felt the whispers at night growing louder. She kept the lights on in every room yet failed to banish the darkness.
One night, insomniac Margaret sat in her office, trying to write a script for her new novel or just to get her mind off of things. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, but no words would come. And the lamps started flickering. The temperature dropped so suddenly that her breath puffed out in white clouds.
“You can’t protect her,” a voice taunted. Margaret’s eyes darted around, panic seizing her.
But it all faded away just as fast as it occurred.
With eyes full of tears, she forced herself to her feet. She wouldn’t let this thing break her; she just could not, even if the entity were to come back.
“Mommy… please… no…” Margaret woke up to Amy’s voice.
She shot out of bed and raced to her daughter’s room to find Amy lay tangled in her bedsheets weeping, and clutching at the air fighting off invisible attackers. Margaret grabbed her, shaking her gently. “Amy, wake up!”
Amy’s eyes opened, but they were dark, pupil-less voids. And then came the smile, the ugly twisted grin, “It’s too late! We’ve already claimed her.”
Margaret screamed, and Amy—or whatever had taken hold of her—sat up in bed. The little girl’s head tilted at an unnatural angle, and her neck made a sickening crack, yet she didn’t flinch. However, her grin widened, exposing sharp pointy teeth.
“You thought you could banish us?” the voice taunted, crawling under Margaret’s skin. “Foolish woman. We never truly left. We were just waiting… for you.”
Amy’s small hands shot out faster than any human child could move, and the lamps in the room exploded, sending shards flying Margaret’s way, slicing into her skin as she covered her face.
Margaret tried to run, but the door slammed shut; she banged her fists against it, something weighing down on her chest, making her suffocate.
“Mommy?” The voice was small and sweet again: Margaret turned to see her daughter’s familiar blue and innocent eyes. “Help me… please…”
But before Margaret could make a move, the transition occurred again, “She’s ours now,” the demonic voice growled. And then Margaret’s darkest fears came alive: the shadows swallowed her little girl, and the room erupted into a whirlwind of darkness.
Margaret never remembered how she escaped that night, or even survived, for that matter. She opened her eyes in a hospital where a nurse was dressing her wounds and putting ointment on her scratches. Martina sat by her bedside, anxious, praying as always. The police had found no trace of Amy.
Father Carrigan visited her, his face lined with grief and defeat. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Some evils are just stronger than we are.”
Margaret returned to the empty house, now a hollow shell of the mother she had once been. Though Amy’s laughter no longer echoed through the halls, she could feel her daughter’s presence sometimes.
“Mommy… come play with me…”
At first, it was just voices in her head, or so she had told herself. But with time, the whispers grew louder. Margaret knew she could never escape, and the house would never let her. What had claimed Amy was not yet done; the evil’s thirst wasn’t quenched.
As she alone in the darkness, she could feel it now—the presence lurking behind her, Tears slipped down her cheeks as she whispered a desperate prayer, but deep down, she knew.
The house had always belonged to the darkness, and now, so did she. They should never have stayed and fought.
From the shadows, the thing that had taken Amy whispered its final promise, its voice dripping with malice.
“You’ll join us soon, Mommy. We’re waiting for you.”
