Emily Vance Brown

The last time I visited here, I was worshipped; the people birthed and married and fought and died in my honor; they donated the finest scraps from their tables, even when those tables neared empty; they built temples and destroyed monuments for the sake of my glory, and when I finally fled I did so knowing that my names, of which there were many, would not be forgotten. And they have not forgotten me, although the names that were once whispered in pleading prayers are now found more frequently in their square-bound scrolls and their talking pictures and the neon street signs of drinking establishments where they imbibe themselves with liquor for the sake of imbibement itself rather than for the spiritual worship of one such as I. But alas, this time I did not come to be worshipped. I am here only as a traveller, a sightseer. After so many centuries away from the humans, I hope I may have finally grown wise enough to understand them as they deserve to be understood. 

Such is how I came to find myself in the home of one Liliana Finch, a small being, only a few years past the point of standing alone on two legs. I was travelling along a great road (though not nearly as great as the roads of Rome, I should mention), when I sensed a cry from within one of a dozen identical white brick homes. Having nothing better to do, I thought to discover what the trouble was. This was my first mistake. 

Inside the structure, I found Liliana seated before a great fire, legs splayed, a small metal gadget in her hand, and a look of such awe and horror upon her tiny face that for a moment I grieved the worship of humans’ past and was jealous of the flames quickly crawling up the wall. The task was simple enough: I extinguished the fire and waited for her awe to move in my direction. 

It did not. 

When she turned and looked upon my supernatural form in all its glory, she burst into tears and howled: “Mama!” 

A much larger human, the “Mama,” I suppose, had been outside tending to plants and did not smell the smoke, though she could hear her daughter’s cry. She rushed inside and cried aloud at the blackened curtains and smoke-filled room. She scooped her daughter into her arms and fled the scene; not long after, the home was overrun with men in protective suits, their faces obscured by bug-eyed black masks that made them look even less human than me.

I outwaited the chaos, watching. I did not expect sonnets or sacrifices of lambs for my contributions, not anymore, but I would not allow this child to be so unappreciative of the act of mercy I had shown her. 

The smoke cleared, the bug-men filtered out, and the arguments began. Liliana, precocious child, insisted she had nothing to do with it. She chose instead to place the blame on me.

“What if there’s something to it, Ben?” The “mama” said to another tall, dark-haired human. “She’s never lied to us before.”

“We found her with the lighter in her hand,” the “Ben” replied. “I’m sure she’s seen you with it enough times to know how to use it. “

“That’s not fair—” the “mama” started to say, but Ben cut her off. “I’ve asked you over and over again–I have been asking you for years, Linda–if you’re seriously not going to quit, at least keep it away from our daughter. 

I do! I always do! The “mama,”—Linda, I assume—cried. “How dare you blame me for this? She could have just as easily seen you lighting a candle, or messing with that stupid broken burner. How am I responsible for this?”

There was more that the two said, I’m sure, but I admit I was growing weary of the petty fighting. While the mortals went on bickering, yelling, etc., I turned my attention back to Liliana, who was listening to her parents from around the corner. 

Liliana had only paused her morning crying to eavesdrop from behind the corner, and when it became apparent her parents were not eager to be fooled by her story, she began weeping once more. 

“I-I-I didn’t!” Liliana cried. “It was the demon!” Her lower lip trembled, and snot dripped from her already-red nose. She watched me as she said it, and her parents both turned to see what she was looking at. 

“It made me do it,” she said, pointing at me. They stared in my general direction, eyes unfocused. I knew from my former travels that the large ones cannot see me.

The “mama,” Linda, paled and glared at Ben. “I’m scheduling an appointment with Dr Martin,” she said.

Arguments continued, but I confess, the discussions of humans do bore me so. I left for some time to explore. I returned in the dark, after the family had retired for the night. Liliana was asleep, and I awoke her gently. I needed the time alone with her to make her understand the situation from my perspective. 

I tried to reason with her: I told her I was a traveller, a benevolent wanderer (having known the danger of frightened humans in the past, I determined it would be better she hear this than the entire truth). I told her that I would not hurt her, that, in fact, I was more inclined to help her, seeing as I had already saved her life once since I arrived in this place, but she did not wish to understand me. She started crying, again, loudly—do humans ever stop crying?—and her parents rushed into the room at the sound of her whining voice. 

I was at my wits’ end with these hovering, snivelling parents, but I did not wish to leave the house again until Liliana accepted the truth and acknowledged my mercy. I came here to understand humans, and what better place to reach that understanding than in one of their own homes?

I searched the home for a suitable display of my power. They had a pet cat I could possess, easily–but, no, I reminded myself with extraordinary empathy–the humans do not like it anymore when their animals are tampered with. Something non-living then. I decided on the moving-picture light box. It was a new contraption, different from anything I remember seeing on my previous journeys here. I was not impressed by it, exactly; I had seen far more impressive technology in other corners of the universe, but I was intrigued by the object. 

I turned on the moving-picture light box and filtered through the frequencies: men fighting on this one; women fighting on this one; sex on the next; footage of an earthquake or landslide or some other ubiquitous disaster; more men fighting; a heavily made-up woman reciting death tolls in a monotone voice. 

The parents entered the room and watched as I flicked through the frequencies.

“I’m calling Pastor Jim,” Linda said. 

Pastor Jim, or so I assumed he must be, arrived within the hour.

Let me interrupt myself here to say: I pride myself on my tolerance, on my mercy, on my ability to be, at the very least, amused by even the most detestable, the most irritating, the most disgusting beings. 

I was not in the least bit amused by Pastor Jim. 

He was a large man, red-faced, and he arrived in a robe of a kind that I have not seen anything akin to in this century or those previous. He strode through the home wielding in front of his face a cheap plywood cross painted black. 

“One of these fools again,” I said to myself. I had had encounters with a similar zealot in the humans’ 12th-century, and another sometime shortly after the originator, the famous one who died and caused all the commotion with the tomb. I can’t seem to recall his name at the moment. 

Anyway, this moron, “Pastor Jim,” continued in this manner for far too long. I was growing impatient. He fixed his eyes on some spot on the ceiling where I clearly was not. (Why would I be on the ceiling? I am not a spider.) He pointed and yelled: “You! In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, I rebuke! I rebuke! I banish thee! Back from whence you came!” 

Linda gasped. Ben rolled his eyes. 

Me too, Ben, me too. 

Pastor Jim released a dramatic sigh. “It is done. He is banished,” he proclaimed. He nodded towards the door. “Let’s go outside.”

He led the couple outside and started pouring a white substance around the perimeter. They circled the house with him, watching and whispering. I watched the scene from inside. When he was done, he chanted something loudly in a mispronounced, incomprehensible version of Latin not even I could attempt to understand. 

“I have here today a jar of authentic salt from the Dead Sea itself. This circle marks a shield of protection around your home,” he told Linda and Ben. He made a sweeping circle gesture with his arms. “If anything tries to enter, or re-enter, it won’t be able to. Nothing demonic can cross.” He brandished the glass jar, which appeared to contain ordinary table salt. 

Enough of this, I told myself. Leave the humans to their gibberish. I made to leave, but I could not. I could not cross the perimeter of the building. I tried my usual means of movement, then, when that failed, I tried the conventional doorways with no success. Every means of exiting felt like what I imagined walking into a wall would feel like for a mortal being. I was trapped.

At night, I begged the little one for help: “Liliana, you must tell your parents to release me. You must translate for me.” She screamed and wept when I spoke to her, and turned her face away from me. “Please, Liliana,” I begged her. “I want to go home.”

I tried the moving picture box strategy again. The couple argued—Linda wanted to call Pastor Jim again, Ben rolled his eyes, Linda yelled, they both fought. In the end, they decided the machine must be broken. They unplugged it. I was shocked by how weak their technology must be, that it only functions attached to the wall with a flimsy cord.

At night, every night, I continued to beg. “Liliana, please. You must ask them to release me.” Liliana was growing quieter, more reserved, with each passing day. First, she stopped acknowledging me, then she stopped responding to her parents as well. I gave up on the possibility of her helping me. 

The parents appeared to have abandoned the television permanently. I refused to tamper with the cat, still suspecting that would play out worse for me in the end. I had no ideas I was willing to pursue—that is, until an evening of music introduced me to another contraption created by the humans in the years of my absence. A different machine, for sounds only. It did not prove difficult to turn the direction of the spinning music so that the song played backwards. 

Linda and Ben froze when it happened, and Liliana screamed, looking at me while she shrieked. “Help me!” I said to her. She fled the room. 

“We have to do something,” Linda said. Her face had paled. 

“Do you want me to call Kayla?” Ben asked. 

Linda snorted. “That nut?”

“Linda–”

 “Sorry, that was mean. I know.” She sighed. “Yeah, let’s call your sister. It can’t hurt.”

This “Kayla,” this “sister,” this “nut,” they said, arrived in a fur coat with dark sunglasses on a warm spring day. She was muttering to herself as she approached. She passed Linda and Ben without greeting them and walked into the home. 

“Oh, yeah. Yep. I’d say so. For sure,” she mumbled to herself. She lifted her arms above her head and rang a small silver bell. “Yep, right there. That sounds right.” She chuckled. “Well, wrong, I guess.”

“Seeing anything?” Linda asked. 

Kayla nodded. “The exorcist wasn’t completely off. You have a presence, for sure. I wouldn’t say it’s a demon, though, which is probably why the whole ‘exorcism’ thing didn’t take. I think it’s a lot more likely you’ve got a poltergeist.”

“A poltergeist?” Ben asked. 

“What can we do?” Linda asked. 

“Remove the barrier!” I yelled. “Release me!” They couldn’t hear me, obviously. Kayla, the “nut” swept through the home brandishing a burning stick of herbs and chanting in yet another gibberish language. She left; I remained trapped. 

Weeks passed of begging Liliana without result. I was growing insane with desperation. I was so desperate, in fact, I resorted to yet another technological strategy: I tampered with the lights. How boring, how unoriginal, how uncreative. I was thoroughly disappointed in myself. I recalled a small hunter-gatherer group for whom I once constructed massive blazes out of small fires, the awe and wonder they held for me. They gave me a name in their own language, which I won’t attempt repeating here.

Upon discovering that their little wall switches no longer controlled the lighting in the home, and seeing that I was the one behind it, Liliana spoke again, finally, for the first time in weeks. 

“It wants to talk to you,” she said. The couple asked her for more information. 

“Yes, Liliana,” I encouraged. “More, tell them more.” But Liliana retreated again and was silent. 

The family left for days, taking the cat with them. Days, I spent alone in that home with nothing to do. I read every book, I read every label of every strangely marked item in the cabinets. What was food, or medicine, or something else entirely I could not tell. This century was a strange one. The largest moving picture box was still unplugged, but there was a small one that acted independently. I browsed the insides of every little square button on the screen. I read, I watched, I interpreted. I mused. I felt that I should have been bored, but I was not. There was so much of everything here on this little device. Innovation, indeed. For the first time, I was impressed. 

They will destroy themselves with this kind of power, I thought. Time has proven me correct. 

On the third day, Ben and Linda returned, alone, with a box. They assembled a board from this box on the floor, covered with letters and marked by a small, strangely-shaped tool.

I understood at once what they were doing. It was a cheap imitation of the ritual ceremonies I remembered from centuries past. But it would do. 

“What is your name?” Ben asked. I was leaning over the board with them, observing the creases between their eyes. They looked older than they had when I arrived. 

“I-H-A-V-E-M-A-N-Y” I spelled out.

Linda was shaking and crying. Ben was pale as well, but he rolled his eyes at my response. 

Does he think I cannot see him? I thought to myself. 

“Well, okay, sure. What can we call you, then?” He asked, gesturing at himself and Linda. 

I considered. I hesitated. I did not wish to give them one of my human names, sacred to their worshippers, reminiscent of times long forgotten by the current generations of humans. I had hoped on my journey here I might receive another name, a new name indicative of a new era of reverence, but, alas. I determined the most appropriate term for my kind based on my recent study of their books and culture. 

“S-P-I-R-I-T” I wrote. 

“Okay, Spirit. What do you want from us?” Ben asked. 

I moved to respond, but I was greeted with a heavy silence. The electric lights in the home turned off. I felt the presence before I recognized it. 

“This bitch,” I said aloud, in the human language, the new terminology I had learned from my studies leaving my mouth with familiar ease. 

“Hello, ———” the demon said. (I have redacted my given name here, of course, as it wields too much power for the human tongue and is not well-suited for translation anyway). 

“B-E-C-A-R-E-” I began to write to the humans—

The demon threw me from the board and bound my power. (To accommodate your restricted human imagination, you may picture this as if my hands and feet were tied and my eyes and mouth were covered.) I could not see or act, I could not speak, in any language. I could not warn them.

I heard the shuffling of the board, and a faint whispering.  

“Re-enact?” Linda asked. “Re-enact what?”

“I think it wants us to re-enact the fire,” Ben said.

Whispering.

“Do you want us to re-eanct how the fire happened?” Ben asked. 

“But why?” Linda asked. Ben shushed her.  

Shuffling. More whispering.

Silence.

“If we re-enact how the fire happened, will you leave us alone? and never return?” Linda asked. 

Shuffling. 

“Give me your lighter,” Ben said. 

“I don’t have a lighter,” Linda said.

“Don’t start this right now. I know you have a lighter, you always have a lighter.” 

“I don’t always have a lighter,” she said. 

“But yeah, I might have one. This time.”

I could hear her shuffling through her bag. No, I tried to communicate with my thoughts. How could you be so stupid? I wanted to shout. 

I heard the distant click of the lighter, then a massive burst of heat. 

The screaming was immediate. I was helpless to do anything but listen. My physical form is not susceptible to fire; I was in no danger. The sounds of the humans fled out the door, of this I was almost certain, and all the while the demon laughed. I wondered if they could hear his laughter. If they thought it was mine. 

The demon released my bonds before he left so I could witness his wreckage. 

An ancient truce between my kind and his restricted the harm we could do to each other. I knew he would not risk a new war by hurting me; still, he wanted me to see the extent of his destructive power. I would have done the same had our positions been switched. 

Alone again, I sifted through the ashes. The fire had damaged the salt protective circle enough that I could finally leave to do as I pleased, but I was not ready. 

I watched from the burnt-out shells of the former windows as Ben and Linda approached. They fell upon their knees, weeping. It was all very melodramatic. Linda’s hair was burned off in clumps, and Ben had wrappings on his hands that suggested treatment for burns. 

I followed the pair back to another house where they reunited with Liliana. 

Liliana, the one whom the fire should have claimed. I followed her for years, watching from the shadows, never letting her see me. I was still waiting for recognition, if not worship, though by this time I had begun to realize it may never come. In my absence, her eyes regained the wonder I had seen the first time I found her in the midst of the flames. 

I let her see me only once more, on her sixteenth birthday. This was an important date for this genre of humans, I had discovered. Liliana was reaching the end of her supernatural abilities, and I suspected she would see me as more of an amorphous void than as my true form.

I appeared before her in the bathroom mirror, a strategy I had determined would present as relatively subtle and unthreatening based on my study of human media. Her eyes filled with horror when she saw me, and she screamed a shrill, blood-curdling (if I had blood, of course) screech that I will remember for the rest of eternity.

I understood at once: they will never love me again. The humans, they have changed too much. They will never again yearn to understand me. They will never again worship me. They may fear me, this is true, but what use is fear in the absence of respect? I am not a demon. 

I fled from Liliana’s birthday party and sought refuge on one of the more peaceful uninhabited planets where my presence is neither praised nor feared. I am one with the natural life again, as it was when I was young. I will consider this phase of my existence, to translate it to your simple human terms, as my retirement.

I think of Liliana often, and I wonder whom she has found in her grown ages to worship, if not me. 

Upon reflection, I believe I am further now from understanding the humans than I was when I first discovered them. I shall not return there again.