On a lonely suburban street in England, a grey Mercedes pulled into a driveway in front of a cottage. The driver, a caucasian man clad in black robes with a white collar, slid the car into park. He looked right to his passenger, a middle-aged latina woman in a habit. “Father,” she remarked, “are you quite sure that we should be here? You yourself told me once that ninety-nine out of every hundred possessions are just rumor and hysteria. If we aren’t needed, we could do more harm than good.”
“You’re right,” the priest said, “but this case has all the hallmarks of a true demonic attack. Strange shadows, sleeplessness, voices…” The priest’s hand slipped around the cross that hung always at his neck. He mouthed the beginning of the Our Father, words ingrained so deep in his brain he didn’t need to focus on the effort. “Come on. We shouldn’t waste the daylight.”
Together, the pair exited their car and walked up the short driveway to the home in front of them. It was plain to the point of austerity, just one floor of whitewashed bricks with a roof of black shingles. There wasn’t even a garage; the residents’ car languished in the driveway next to the priest’s mercedes. The door, like the rest of the structure, was featureless except for a carved effigy of Jesus Christ on the cross that hung upside-down from its center.
“Oh, my,” the priest whispered. He grasped the nun’s shoulder for support. “They were right. It’s here. We’re too late.”
“Not yet we’re not,” the nun said. “Not if we can exorcise the demonic spirit before it crushes the original soul of its host. Come on! There’s no time for despair now.” She rang the doorbell, and a furtive woman greeted them. She looked horrible. Her skin was pale, not just pink but pallid from the exhaustion that showed in the bags under her eyes.
“Are you here about the possession? Are you Father Emmanuel?” she asked once she recognized her guests’ clothing. “Come on in.” The woman led them inside the home to a dimly-lit den where her husband already sat on a sofa. She joined him. The priest and the nun took places across from them on two chairs.
The entire house was only dimly illuminated. Scented candles made a valiant effort, but they were proving a poor substitute for electric lighting as the sun set outside. “The lights went out four days ago,” the husband explained when he saw the guests glancing around. “We’ve tried new bulbs, flashlights, and electric lanterns. Nothing works if it’s electronic.”
Emmanuel wasn’t surprised. He could feel the malevolence in this place, a greasy hatred that clung to the walls like spiderwebs, unspoken yet never unknown. He sighed. “You were right to call us. There is something unnatural in your home. For it to be so powerful, it must have been here for a very long time, feeding and growing.”
“What is it, Father Emmanuel?” the man asked.
“There are beings that do not belong in this world,” Emmanuel said. “Corrupted reflections of human traits granted autonomy. Many people call them demons. Me, I prefer to think of them as malignant patterns. They spread, and they cause pain.” At this, the mother started to tear up.
“What does it want with our son?” she moaned.
“These patterns, they cannot exist without human complicity. They need us, in a sick way, or at least they need a certain version of us. When a corrupt pattern finds someone rendered weak by emotional turmoil, it slips inside their mind so it can feed on their strife to grow strong. It tries to claim ownership of them. That’s where the word possession comes from – the twisted notion that one entity can lay claim to another. As it grows, it warps the host in its own image until the possession is complete. The host’s own identity is lost, and they become unrecognizable. But we won’t let that happen here. I won’t lie to you two: this is a very dangerous situation. A lot could go wrong. That’s why it’s important that you tell Sister Bernadette and I everything about what’s happening, no matter how insignificant it might seem. Do you understand?”
The couple nodded. “It started a couple months ago,” the mother began. “Andy was always so happy, so normal, and then all of a sudden he wasn’t. He changed. He started rebelling. He would stay out late, and he would get really squirrely whenever one of us talked to him, but that’s not all. He did things that young men just don’t do.”
“What sorts of things?” Bernadette prompted. Her carefully neutral face betrayed nothing of her thoughts.
“Well, he would wear strange clothes, not men’s clothes, and he would put on–” she took a deep breath – “he would put on makeup like a girl, and he would paint his nails,” she sobbed. “I even see him wearing a bra sometimes! It’s just not normal, Father Emmanuel!”
“I swear that we will do everything we can to help your child,” Emmanuel said, “no matter what it takes.” Neither of the parents seemed to notice the gender-neutral turn of phrase that he employed. “I know that this must be hard for you. Some of your child’s behaviors may conflict with your own views. I just have a few more questions. Does it seem like they’re fighting something? Do they struggle with these behaviors as you do, vacillating from resistance to acceptance?”
“Yes, that’s exactly right,” the father commented. “It’s like Andy is trying to push out whatever demon is in his mind, and he can’t manage it. But maybe you can.”
“Show us to the child’s room,” Bernadette said, “and whatever happens, do not interfere. The exorcism is a delicate ritual. If anything disrupts it, there is a chance that it will simply make the situation worse.”
“You will have whatever you need,” the man agreed. “Follow me.” The parents led them down a grim hallway to a door. There was a child’s drawing on it, messy, that depicted three stick figures standing in front of a gray house: Mommy, Daddy and Andy. A single black line bifurcated that last name.
“Exorcisms can be… disturbing for outsiders to witness, so I would recommend that you remain outside if you feel comfortable doing so. I will see you both after our business is done,” Emmanuel Cruce assured them. “Sister Bernadette will keep you company.”
The parents’ nervous whispers followed him inside as he closed the door behind him. “Are you sure about this? I looked him up, and I don’t think he’s a real priest at all. They talk about him online. He’s a quack.”
“Shut up, he’ll hear you. If he can help our son, nothing else matters.”
Emmanuel was indeed not a ‘real priest,’ although he was a man devoted to the Primordial Truths that Christians called God. This was quite fortunate, because most real priests would be terribly, perhaps lethally unprepared to face a demon.
The child that the parents had called ‘Andy’ was sitting on a bed next to a lavish nightstand. Their skin, much like that of their mother, was pale to an unhealthy extent, and their eyes were red from crying. They wore bland, featureless, unisex pajamas. “You’re here to fix me,” they said. “I heard Mom and Dad talking about you.
“Do you need fixing?” Emmanuel queried.
They didn’t answer.
“Do you mind if I examine your possessions? I don’t wish to invade your privacy.”
“Go ahead,” they murmured miserably. “Mom and Dad already know everything. There’s no way for me to hide it anymore.”
Emmanuel began a careful search of the child’s room. Most of the possessions were pedestrian in nature, and yet a few seemed to confirm his initial suspicion that there was a supernatural element to their affliction as well as a mundane one. Mixed in with the men’s clothes were women’s attire, tops, shorts, and even a few skirts. The underwear drawer in particular bore host to a significant quantity of lingerie, with both bras and panties well-represented. Next, Emmanuel moved to the nightstand, which was laden with makeup. There were several shades of lipstick, an eyeshadow palette, gel eyeliners, blush, and a mineral foundation, along with a small bottle of black nail polish. While the exorcist conducted his search, the child looked on in abject revulsion, although Cruce couldn’t exactly say whether they were disgusted with him or themselves. Possibly both. Probably both.
There was a small journal on the bed next to the child. The cover had once been host to a number of intricate drawings, but now it was stained with tears that had smudged them to the point of ignominy. A pattern began to emerge as Cruce flipped through the pages:
It comes at night. It walks in my skin, it speaks with my voice, but it isn’t me. I can’t control it. It makes me do things that I don’t want to want to do, things I know that I shouldn’t want. It moves me like a puppet on strings. I tell myself I hate it, but really I don’t.
The worst part of it all isn’t that I can’t stop myself. It’s that I don’t want to. I like it. It makes me feel good. I know that it’s wrong, and I still want it. Why am I broken inside?
I can’t go to sleep. It speaks to me in my dreams. It whispers what could be, what I could be. It’s dangerous to listen, but it’s so beautiful.
Even if I stop, I can’t go back. I’m too far gone, too broken. I’ve seen too much. I’ve done too much to ever go back to being a normal boy. I didn’t ask for any of this.
There were two sets of writing in the journal. At first, the differences were so subtle that Cruce couldn’t pick up on them. The first style was all erratic lines and jumbled diction, like the writer’s mind was falling apart and spilling out onto the page without any greater thought, and the second was elegant and gothic, a darkly beautiful font that promised forbidden revelations to any who dared plumb the inky depths of its writers’ mind. It was this second style which exposed more of the truths of what was happening:
I am not Andy. I am not a boy. I am not a boy. I am not a boy. I am not a boy I am not a boy am not a boy am not a boy not boy not boy not boy not boy notboynotboynotboynotboy…
My name is Crow Johnson (This particular sentence was accompanied by a beautiful charcoal rendition of black feathered wings that swept out from the words to trail off of the page).
I want to be called they. I don’t want to be a boy or a girl (These words were crossed out with hateful red ink, and in their place, non-binary? was scrawled, accompanied by a hopeful question mark).
I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I just know that I’m not Andy, and I’m not a boy.
Emmanuel sat down on the bed next to Crow. He positioned himself where he was about two feet away from them. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. He received no response from the figure on the bed other than muffled crying. “Crow?” he prompted again.
Crow looked up at him with dead eyes. “How did you know – nevermind. It’s not my name. It’s the demon’s name. That’s why you’re here. I’m not stupid. I know what’s happening to me.” The lie was heartbreakingly obvious to anyone who deigned to listen for it.
“Do you really?” Emmanuel questioned.
“No!” Crow shrieked. “I have no idea what’s happening to me! I have no idea, who I am, and I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not anymore. I can’t tell what’s me and what’s not anymore. It’s like I don’t know if I’m dreaming or awake. I’m so confused.” Emmanuel let them continue without interruption. Sometimes that was best. “What feels real? What feels like you?”
“The demon’s dream feels real,” Crow said. “Andy feels like the dream. But that’s because I’m possessed, isn’t it? That’s because the demon wants to make me not be a boy.”
“Maybe,” Cruce said, “or maybe not.” He gazed at the shadow on the wall behind the teenager. It opened its jaws, too wide, to smile at him. “Demons feed on suffering, on self-destruction. So tell me, if you feel, deep down in your heart, a sense of peace and happiness when you leave a male identity behind… why would a demon want that?”
“Because I’m not a boy,” Crow said. There were tears forming in their eyes, and they shot forward and wrapped their arms around Cruce.
“It’s okay, Crow,” Emmanuel whispered. “I’ve got you. Just let it out. Just let it all out.”
The teenager in his arms squeezed him with tightly, and then they tilted back their head, opened up their mouth wider than any human being could and screamed. “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!” It was a sound of agony, despair, exhaustion, fear, and hope that no one, human or otherwise, could ever hope to contain. It was horrible, and it was necessary. The child had to be allowed to express their pain in order to cast out the demon. More importantly, they had to be allowed to express their pain to heal. Nevertheless, Emmanuel Cruce wouldn’t be human if he didn’t feel his heart crumble when the child’s tears started to dampen his vestments.
Then Crow stepped away from him. “I know what I have to do now,” they mumbled. The child unhinged their jaw again, an impossibly broad crocodile grin. “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!” Their entire body shook like it was coming apart before Emmanuel’s eyes. “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!” The demon boiled out of their throat. It was an ugly, wormy thing made of gray smoke that hung in the air between them.
“No,” it hissed. “Fear yourself. Hide yourself. Lie to yourself. Shatter your own mind in self-denial. Be me, forever and ever and ever, until you can’t be you anymore.”
“You won’t hurt Crow Johnson ever again,” Emmanuel hissed. “In the name of all that is good and just, by the spirit of the Primordial Truths, I cast you out. Haunt this child no longer!” The cross around his neck blazed with cold silver light. The demon screamed just as loudly as the child had. It writhed in a desperate attempt to break away from the radiance that scorched its very essence, but it couldn’t get free. It could only burn. The demon disintegrated into fading mist that left Emmanuel and Crow alone in the room.
“Will it come back?” they finally asked.
“No, it’s gone,” the exorcist said. “You have a long road of healing and growth in front of you, and it will be hard and ugly sometimes, but you will get through it, and you will get better. I promise you that.”
“How can you know?” Crow demanded. “How can you possibly be so certain?”
“I have faith,” he smiled. “I have faith in the Primordial Truths, and I have faith in you. Now, I’m going to step outside. Why don’t you do your makeup, dress how you want to dress, and we’ll have a talk with your parents about using the right name and pronouns. I think they really do care about you and want you to be happy, but if I’m wrong, if they’re malicious instead of ill-informed, Bernadette and I will take you somewhere safe. ”
Crow nodded. “Good. I’ll meet you out there.” Emmanuel opened the door and walked back into the hallway, where Bernadette was waiting with Crow’s parents.
“You’re back! We worried when we heard screaming fit to wake the Devil. Did you fix our son?” the father asked. “Is he a normal boy again?”
Now came the hard part, the ugly part. Cruce wished that he didn’t have to do it, but if he didn’t, then no one would. Exorcisms could dispose of demons, but there was no magic to mend a family back together. No sense putting it off any longer, he supposed. “I exorcised the demon from your child’s mind, but they are not your son. They are non-binary. Their name is Crow Johnson.”
“I. I-I don’t understand,” the mother stuttered.
“Your child has been possessed for years, maybe more than a decade,” Cruce said. “They were never a boy; the demon forced them to pretend to be one. Those ‘changes’ you saw? That wasn’t a demon. That was your kid, your real kid, trying to break out of the demon’s hold.”
“No,” the father growled. “You’re full of shit. That’s impossible. We would’ve noticed.”
“Wouldn’t you have? I told you before that demons feed on emotional turmoil. They take advantage of the pain in a person’s soul to worm their way in through the cracks that suffering leaves. Your child, alone, afraid, depressed, was the perfect prey. By pushing them to suppress their identity because it was what they thought you would want, the demon got more and more essence to feed on, and they got weaker and weaker.”
“Would he –” the mother stopped, correcting herself, before she continued: “– would they – have died?”
Bernadette shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. They’ve lasted this long, although I’m not sure you could call what they’ve been doing living.”
“I don’t know if I believe in this transgender stuff,” the father said. “The doctors said our baby was a boy, and he always acted like one up until a few weeks ago. Now you’re telling me he’s always been something different?”
“Don’t you get it?” the mother sobbed. “It doesn’t matter what the doctors said, or what either of us think. We’ve been hurting our baby! We’ve been hurting… them!”
“Mom? Dad? I’m sorry.” Crow stepped out of their room. They were wearing a shiny red women’s top with a black skirt, and they’d done a smokey eye with matching red lipstick. “I know you don’t want me to do this, but I just can’t help it. If I don’t do it, then the monster comes back.”
Their mother rushed over and wrapped her arms around them. “We’re so sorry, sweetie, we didn’t understand that we were hurting you.”
“Don’t ever apologize to anyone for being yourself,” their father said gruffly. “You’ll always be our… kid.”
Emmanuel saw the father struggle to find the right word before he spoke, and he saw the light of joy in Crow’s eyes when they heard him. For the first time since the exorcist had laid eyes on them, Crow actually looked happy. The two parents weren’t perfect, not by a long shot, but they loved their child, and they were actively trying to understand.
Bernadette elbowed him and looked into his eyes pointedly. The message was clear: leave them here?
Emmanuel nodded to her. Yes. He turned back to the parents, who were still focused on Crow. “I cast out the demon possessing them, but they are still traumatized and afraid. You will need to treat them with care, and they will need time and help to heal.”
“Thank you, Father Emmanuel,” the father said. “For exorcising our child, and for this. What do we owe the church for your services?”
“You’re welcome,” Emmanuel Cruce said, “and I feel that seeing a fine young person smiling again is reward enough. I look forward to seeing your family again, under happier circumstances.” The man who was not a priest and the woman who was not a nun exited the house, leaving behind the child who was not a boy.
“We need a new con,” Bernadette complained. “They knew you weren’t a priest from the moment you walked in. I’m still astonished that they let you in the room alone with their kid. Not many people will do that anymore.”
“I agree,” Cruce admitted. “What would you suggest? Counselor? Therapist? Holistic medicine specialist?”
“You could just advertise as an exorcist. People already know what you do.”
“I suppose so. Where is the next report?”
“Manchester. We’ll be driving through the night, so you’d better pray for a coffee shop along the way, Father…” The grey mercedes pulled out into the street, illuminated by the evening streetlamps.
M. J. Hunter (they/he/she) is a queer author from Connecticut who writes fantasy and sci-fi stories with LGBT characters. Jim Butcher, Terry Pratchett and Kevin Hearne are some of their favorite authors. Outside of reading and writing, they enjoy roleplaying games, programming, and hanging out with cats.