Demonophobia (updated)

She turned the light off to slip into her blue-flannel nightdress and switched it on again when she was done. Privacy was paramount. With her hair clipped back from her face for the night, she picked up her Bible and made a sign of the Cross. Her lips worked momentarily as she held her right hand flat on the leather-bound book.

Her nightly ritual didn't start here in her bedroom. Long before she turned in for the night, she would move silently from room to room downstairs, checking the window locks, ensuring the front door was chained and bolted. In the kitchen, she made sure the oven was off, the taps weren't dripping, and the back door was properly closed and locked—it had a knack of jamming instead of closing fully. She replenished the water in Judy's bowl if it needed it, and switched on the small table lamp on top of the fridge to allow the retriever some midnight visibility.

With all the other downstairs lights switched off and the TV unplugged from the socket, she touched each door and mouthed a silent prayer.

Now, upstairs, after invoking the Name of God upon her Bible, she slipped out of her bedroom, careful not to creak the door too much, clutching the Bible against her chest, and she made a sign of the Cross with her thumb on Jonathan's bedroom door. 'God be with you and protect you always,' she whispered. She held the Bible against the door handle, kissed her fingers and pressed the kiss upon the door. She made another Cross on the doorframe and turned to face Terri's bedroom.

'God be with you and protect you always.'

The ritual was ceaseless, night after night since Terri's birth almost thirteen years ago. She knew her fears were irrational but could do nothing to ward them off. When she gave birth for the first time, the midwife lay Theresa in her arms and she made a silent vow of protection for all eternity. Nothing and no one would ever harm her little girl.

When Jonathan was born three years later, her ritual doubled. And with her husband on night duty at the factory every other week, it was harder to stop, harder to say enough is enough. Derek would call her into bed when she had been on the landing any more than five minutes. Without him, she knew she could stand there all night. Tearing herself away, turning her back on her children for the night, wasn't an easy task.

She pressed a kiss against Terri's door.

'Love you, Mum,' Terri's sleepy voice penetrated the wood. 'Good night.'

'Good night, love,' her mother whispered back. The spoken words were enough to allow her to surrender to sleep for the night and she went back into her bedroom.

Before sliding in between the sheets, she knelt at the foot of the bed and laced her fingers together, staring up at the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus above the bed. 'Lord I trust in you,' she said, and she prayed for another twenty minutes.

In bed, she opened her Bible where the bookmark ribbon marked her place, and tonight she read from the Book of Psalms.

In sleep, when it finally came, she was plagued by mangled images of the day—Jonathan trying to get Judy to eat worms, only this time when she ate them, the dog immediately squatted and passed worm-guts and blood; Terri coming out of the bathroom with thick spirals of blood oozing down her thighs as, all too soon, puberty left it's mark—in this dream, she slapped her daughter for getting blood all over the bathroom walls.

In all of her dreams, there was a sense of being watched, of never quite being alone. And the watcher was always malevolent, always dark in intent, always planting seeds of hatred and doubt in her heart—hatred of herself, of life, and doubt in her Saviour, in her sanity.

When a particularly disturbing dream woke her some time in the night, she could not move. An overwhelming feeling of complete paralysis clutched her in its grip, dragging sharp nails down her sides and across her abdomen. She was not alone. She knew that.

Shackled tightly by the thick ropes of terror, the only thing she could move were her eyes, eyes that now roved from one corner of the room to another.

At the foot of her bed, she saw him: no more substantial than a shadow, but as malevolent as anything she had ever encountered. His face was featureless, yet she knew he stared at her, eyes she could not see that bored deep into her soul, trying to fill her with depravity.

She couldn't move, couldn't make a sign of the Cross on her forehead, couldn't reach for the bottle of Holy Water on her nightstand, couldn't cry for help, couldn't invoke the name of Christ Jesus to save her, couldn't look away from the spectre in front of her, couldn't…

In her mind, she was screaming a prayer for help. Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil, but still the figure towered at the foot of her bed, unmoving, unflinching.

She tried to summon the strength to do something, anything. The name Jesus caught in her throat and bubbled.

The shadow never spoke directly, but she knew its purpose. He was there for her. He was always watching, always waiting. He would tempt and he would taunt until she broke, until something inside her snapped.

And at last the shadow moved, raised one slender dark arm and pointed. A long and curved fingernail singled her out.

Her throat bubbled up again and finally her lips parted and a hoarse voice spit forth: 'Jesus.'

She blinked and felt a tear on her cheek and when she looked again, the shadow was gone. She breathed. She cried. She prayed.

And finally, when she stopped shaking, she got out of bed, lifted her Bible, and went across the landing to Terri's room. She didn't knock. She opened the door, crept in, pulled back the blankets and slid in beside her daughter, still clutching her Bible, unwilling to let go.

Terri stirred. 'Shhh,' her mother said. 'It's okay, love.'

Sleepily, only half awake, Terri said, 'Did you see him again?'

But her mother was crying too hard to speak.