Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |

- Chapter 69 -

Stop fighting.

I was drifting; weak, directionless. There was no sight, no sensation beyond the heaviness of my  bones in my flesh. I felt weighed down, trapped, as if I had been stuffed into my own body unwilling and was close to bursting out. My tongue would not obey me, my muscles would not respond. I was desperate to move. My tension built and built until I wanted to scream; even then, I was trapped in silence.

Stop fighting.

I tried desperately to remember where I was. There was something I wanted to do - something I had to do. It made my stomach knot in on itself and my heart pound painfully, but I knew I had no choice. But what...why? I imagined the feeling of smooth wood in my hands, a weight with it. My cleaver - of course, my cleaver. I had raised it to strike. I had to kill that woman before she killed Abraham, I had to help Damian! But...

Let go.

I had a flash of Damian still clinging to the woman he had tried to save, laying down her limp body beside Abraham's. Merely a flash - and it was gone, I was plunged into darkness again. I wanted to call out to him, to warn him. Something was not right. I wasn't there with him anymore. It was something else in my body, crushing me out of conscious. But who was it? Which of those vile demons had me?

Shh, shh, hush now. Such fighting, such struggling, but soon all will be as it should be. You're with us now, you see? Here...safe...with all of us...

Welcome home.

Gravity, or something like it, returned to me. But my body did not feel right. I was lying on something firm, wet - it gave beneath me as I struggled to move, sucked around my fingers and crept coldly over my hand. Mud. It felt as if I were lying in mud. More of it pressed close on either side, wet earth. The smell of it filled my nostrils, accompanied by the clinging, heady smells of rot and decay. Claustrophobia began to set in. With every movement I encountered something, I was encompassed on all sides - close walls, a low ceiling. I dragged myself forehead on my belly, grasping out for something, anything, in the dark.

"Damian!" I called out, but my voice felt close and weak. "Damian can you hear me! Please!" I could still see nothing. I was crawling my way forward but seemed to be going nowhere. Where was I? Where was me, the body, the flesh and blood that had always been mine?

It is ours now, dear Samara. Ours and their's, to do with as they must.

The voices were numerous, and seemed to carry in whispers from far ahead of me. I kept crawling, and struggled to keep breathing as panic set in. I could not shake the terrified feeling that I was not crawling in mud, but in something far more sinister. The more I thought about it, the worse it became: the mud became thicker, wetter, deeper. I raised my head as high as I could lest I drown in it. The scent of old, deep earth soon became sharply metallic, rich, flesh-like - bloody. I stifled a sob. It wasn't blood, it wasn't blood. It was just an illusion...illusions can't hurt me...

Don't drown, don't drown. Come play. We're waiting.

The mud moved slickly under me. It was warm, strangely warm and growing warmer. Surely I was getting close to its source...close to a way out. Giggles echoed around me, sometimes just in my ear, so close I wanted to scream.

The Legion was waiting.

Then, just ahead, the darkness turned to gray. Meager light shone down from above. I crawled faster, and the earth beneath me grew firmer, until I was able to drag myself out of the tunnel in which I'd been trapped. I stood, trembling, trying not to heed the dark red color of the mud that clung to my clothes. I was barefoot, and wearing only a loose white shift - the kind of thing I'd worn to bed as a little girl. Looking about, I realized I was standing in a deep, narrow hole. The dim light shone down from between slats, creating a striped circle above me. I had to get out, somehow.