The year is almost 2022. Cleo Virginia Mariniere, middle school science teacher extraordinaire was, on this particular weekend evening, browsing the wine selection at the new supermarket mini mall, with her infamous significant other, Bonum Vir. He enchanted her with his dazzling smile, as his arm extended conspiratorially toward a flagon of De Grave on the well lit shelf.
Across the street, an extra large brown fisher agitatedly ran along the perimeter of the former Pound Pediatric Hospital & Research Center. A chilling howl emanated from the fisher, shattering the miasmatic mist characteristic of an early winter night at Croatoan Cemetery.
Bonum had just secured the trunk of his late model automobile when he turned slightly to behold Cleo, as she earnestly regarded the approaching female pedestrian in the parking lot.
Not wishing to impose, neither wishing to appear inattentive by boarding his vehicle, Bonum Vir hovered between the back of the car and Cleo. As the brief conversation concluded, the woman who had approached Cleo began to walk away from her. Recessing, she peered over her shoulder and shot Bonum Vir a meaning glance. Her words, however, were for Cleo: “You should stay away from the former Pound Pediatric Hospital & Research Center, Dr. Mariniere, there’s nothing there for you.”
The year was 1753. Several of the children at the Pound Pediatric Hospital & Research Center had been rolled and wheeled to the big room in the back of the stone and brick Pennsylvania Colonial. Pound had originally been a private residence, with an infirmary, bequeathed; to be used as a hospital. Later, to accommodate the research center, a gothic revival addition was erected.
Visible from the windows in the big room in the back, a long, wide hill sloped gently, and one could survey the surrounding countryside expansively, due to the structure’s place on the hill. Tall trees and sturdy homes dotted the billowing countryside. Wearing paper party hats, the pediatric patients in the big room sang in unison to their fellow patient, Emily Ann Pound, a descendant of the benefactor who had made Pound Pediatric Hospital & Research Center possible.
Emily Ann clasped her hands in shy but excited expectation as they were served carefully considered refreshments in the late afternoon. Emily Ann regretted being sick and missed being home. It was all forgotten for a few moments as she clasped her hands excitedly, also in a party hat, as well as in a tiara, smiling shyly.
As they were enjoying their refreshments, one of the girls approached the dais.
“Let’s meet back here after The Nanti puts us to bed,” she whispered to Emily Ann. “Who wants to stay inside those stuffy rooms all night, anyway?”
Two floors below, a horse drawn coach came to a jangling stop on the trail in front of Pound Pediatric Hospital & Research Center. Slowly, assiduously, his wide white collar visible beneath his autumnal cloak, Father Renwick stepped out of the carriage and thoughtfully, carefully, set his feet on the gravelly trail, and set his sights, for the first time, upon the Pound Pediatric Hospital & Research Center. This would be work, and home, for the immediate and perhaps continuing future, he thought.
A woman dressed in Nurse’s garb approached the trail to meet Father Renwick.
“Thank you for finding your way here, Father Renwick, it’s a shame Father Inchfeal took so ill and had to be taken for treatment.”
“Thank you, Nurse. Your name, what is it?”
“Please call me The Nanti, Father Renwick, that’s what the children call me. How auspicious to have a man of your experience here, we have heard of your long history of ministering to the sick, and especially to children.”
“Thank you, Nurse. The procedures at Pound are now officially under review, that’s why the Order sent me. I come bearing a letter of introduction as well as a Ministerial Letter. The latter indicates the minor patients are being restrained, and several have died during exorcisms. Thus, it is especially unfortunate that Father Inchfeal has taken ill and departed.
“Oh yes, Father. Very ill. T’was the stress of performing the rites, if you want to know what I would say. The children wore him down. Evil, dirty, creatures of perdition, most of them.”
“The patients will be treated with compassion, Nurse. And I will conduct my review.”
“Well, go along now, Father, 'tis a shame Father Renwick, that your predecessor took quite so ill. Father Inchfeal won’t be able to help you now…”
As the night descended, The Nanti hurried back towards the third floor infirmary. Most of the little beasts were poor, the benefactor had seen to that when he provided for Pound, insisting that it be used to treat the local indigent as well as his own issue. Sometimes, when their gashed little bodies stopped responding to the beatings, The Nanti rewarded herself with the valuable trinkets the patients’ families had entrusted to Pound. However, in most cases, she had to content her sadistic Nanti heart with the satisfaction of their little contorted faces, at times dumped in the infirmary as often as back in their soiled beds. Little demons, she thought, diabolically, a burden to us all.
Naturally, The Nanti was not actually a nurse. The Nanti was a shape shifting demon. She often took the form of a fisher, sometimes also taking the form of several small animals at once. Humans, The Nanti had observed, unthinkingly, trustingly, reacted to the authority of the uniform of a nurse. The Nanti, who had taken form in this world to harness and deploy evil, had learned to exploit this human tendency to further her own nonhuman ends.
The Nanti had a natural ease traveling between eras and forms and had disposed of Father Inchfeal, summoning the wickedness her hard won years of afflicting the less powerful and the more easily provoked had bestowed. Now The Nanti had Father Renwick poking around her demesne, the Pound Pediatric Hospital & Research Center. This would not end well, she sensed.
Upstairs, in a private hospital room, the little girl lay dejectedly. Emily Ann Pound was gaunt beneath her now soiled dress and she felt so very afraid. Momma had left her here days ago and had not returned. Emily Ann just wanted to see her fluffy pink bedroom again, and her beloved kitten, Saffron, and play dolls with her friends. Yesterday had been her 14th birthday. A birthday in a hospital, she thought glumly, fighting back tears and dread. At least this afternoon had been fun.
***
Several weeks after Bonum Vir witnessed the warning Dr. Mariniere was issued in the parking lot of the new supermarket mini mall, Dr. Mariniere once again found herself taking a leisurely walk with her friendly goldendoodle.
Hoping to avoid another lost evening, Cleo Virginia Mariniere had taken the utmost precautions when she had arrived at the perimeter of the former Pound Pediatric Hospital & Research Center. Rather than take Renwick off his leash, she had let him lead the way; he had seemed so intent on doing so. Nevertheless, Cleo had, after crossing into the area near where earlier in the year she had somehow fallen into a tunnel, again found herself, as if in mid air, descending, with, again an unfamiliar breeze nipping at her neck and back. Feeling herself land, she sprang to her feet and almost reflexively grabbed for her phone. It was not in her waist pack. Cleo spun toward where there seemed to be some light, and as she did so her mind registered several anomalies.
Perhaps the phone had fallen out of her waist pack before she fell into this dimly lit space of as yet undefined proportions? Perhaps, although she did not remember doing so, she had relinquished her hold on Renwick’s leash? Perhaps the large room in front of her, which she could now see into clearly, was in her imagination? Perhaps she had hit her head when she had fallen, and was now only experiencing some kind of dream as she lay at the foot of the ruin.
As the space in which she found herself came further into focus, the big room now behind her, and several smaller rooms before her, Cleo Virginia Mariniere stood in a corridor. Cleo Virginia struggled to steady herself and her powers of detection. In one of the smaller rooms she now faced, the spectral birthday girl she had previously observed clasping her hands on a dais, now lay on a bed. Emily Ann Pound was whimpering. A woman dressed in old fashioned nurse’s clothes hunched over her.
“Evil child, you were told to stay in your room! Now you shall heed my words without exception!” And the long arm belonging to the body in the old fashioned clothes and nurse’s hat reached over and struck the whimpering child’s face, hard, and with determination.
Cleo Virginia, upon seeing this, immediately started to move toward Emily Ann Pound’s bed, in defense of the helpless child. The room it seemed, from Cleo’s vantage point in the long corridor, was only a few short feet away. However, Cleo Virginia Mariniere Ph.D. was dispiritedly shocked to realize, she could not move. Her body was frozen, in that standing position in the corridor, with the big room with the windows facing the countryside to her left, and several small rooms, like the one into which she now peered, before her. Thinking quickly, and realizing she was somehow unable to approach closer into the child patient’s room, Cleo Virginia instead decided to take a mental note of the details of the room, so she could diligently describe them later to the proper authorities. The child Cleo recognized bore restraints across her little elbows, as well as along her shins. The child’s waving flaxen hair encircled her shoulders as she whimpered. Adjacent to the bed was a night stand, upon which a lit candle glowed.
Just at that moment, Emily Ann Pound’s fear became anger. Who was this poisonous woman, to strike her? Emily Ann Pound thought she had seen the odious nurse pocketing one of the other children’s earrings but had told herself she must be mistaken. Now, Emily Ann was certain of it. As Emily Ann’s hands desperately and frustratedly grasped at the mattress, her mind’s simple but profound fury had come to focus on the lit candle at her bedside. It twinkled a few inches from the folds of one of the sleeves of the nurse’s uniform. Emily Ann Pound indexed the stinging pain to her face and continued to stare at the narrowing expanse of space between the lit candle on her nightstand and the folds of the Nurse’s gown’s sleeve, her fury emboldened. Where was Momma? A birthday in a hospital. And now tied to a bed as this iniquitous beast struck her. One more beseeching glance at the candle, and Emily Ann Pound, a bashful child more used to being surrounded by the fluffy pink of her bedroom, and delicate porcelain dolls, the likes of which she had now not seen in days, this small child’s giant fury knocked that lit candle on the night stand over. The flame of the candle quickly leaped the few inches to the dress sleeve of the insidious demon disguised as a nurse and now, that nurse’s arm was on fire.
Cleo Virginia had watched in disbelief as the candle knocked over, seemingly on its own, and had set the nurse on fire. As the Nurse turned to run out of the room, Cleo Virginia saw her face for the first time and finally realized it was The Nanti.
The Nanti, antique clothes in flames, ran past Cleo Mariniere, in the long corridor, as if she had not even seen Cleo. Cleo could still not move, and had further realized that she could not scream either. Cleo was trapped and suffocating in a pre colonial nightmare.
A man with kindly eyes and a priest’s frock, complete with its wide white collar, ran frantically down the corridor, from some unknown room beyond where Cleo’s gaze could identify, towards the little girl’s room, which was quickly filling with flames and smoke. As he crossed the threshold into the room, in what seemed to Cleo a desperate attempt to rescue the child, burning debris from overhead struck the kindly eyed priest and slapped him to the ground. Cleo could no longer see into Emily Ann Pound’s room, it was too smoky. The entire structure creaked and threatened to splinter into pieces, as stone smoked and brick released sparks. The Priest on the floor was completely immobile and was now also consumed by flames and cinder. The fire had taken form so quickly from that moment, which only seemed a few seconds ago, when the candle caught The Nanti’s dress, to this hellscape now before Cleo Virginia.
Cleo Virginia Mariniere felt her throat burning and her eyes stinging, as the corridor continued to fill with astringent smoke, yet she could not move.
(Editor's note: Renwick The Exorcist is a fictional ghost story.)
Renwick The Exorcist” A Halloween Tale in Three Parts:
“Renwick The Exorcist” Part I: https://stanza28.blogspot.com/2021/08/renwick-exorcist-i.html (Released August 28, 2021)
"Renwick The Exorcist” Part II: https://stanza28.blogspot.com/2021/09/renwick-exorcist-ii.html (Released September 28, 2021)
"Renwick The Exorcist” Part III: Available October 28, 2021
🎃🎃🎃 Happy Halloween 🎃🎃🎃
