Chiara Marino, Excerpt #4: Un-Boo-Lievable
“So
get this,” Zeke interrupted. “Did you guys know that the Catholic Church still
appoints exorcists? Isn’t that weird? I mean, you’d think if people were
getting possessed, it’d be all over the news or something.”
Chiara
stole a glance at Peter, watching for his reaction.
“In
this day and age?” Mac mocked. Then she smiled. “I think anyone who believes in
ghosts and demons is just ghoul-able.”
“That’s
the spirit!” Cosmo agreed. “It’s un-boo-lievable.”
“Those
beliefs are dangerous and can lead to pan-demon-ium.”
“Really?
Pandemonium?” Cosmo shook his head. “I ex-spector-ed
more from you.”
“I
believe in demons,” Chiara told Zeke. She couldn’t contain herself any longer. If
Peter wasn’t going to give her any hints, maybe she would give him some. “And I
think they can possess people.”
Cosmo
shook his head. “I cite Ockham’s Razor. The simplest explanation is most often
the truest.”
“Yeah,”
Mac agreed. “Whenever I hear ‘exorcism’, I only think of someone senselessly beating
a poor schizophrenic sap in the name of spiritual deliverance.”
“Pfft.
That doesn’t even work,” Peter mumbled.
The
group turned his way and he looked like he had been caught in the middle of
something embarrassing.
“Uh,
you know, hypothetically,” he stumbled, “the demons would be pure spirits who wouldn’t
be able to feel bodily pain. So beating the body would only harm the person. You
know, in theory.”
Chiara’s
heartbeat grew faster and she studied him without blinking. She knew now that she
wasn’t crazy. And obviously, he didn’t forget fighting the demons.
“You
really think possession happens as often as it did in the Bible?” Zeke asked. “I
could see it happening like once every twenty years or something, but not all
the time.”
“I
really don’t know too much about actual possession,” Chiara shook her head
regretfully. “There haven’t been too many scientific studies done on the
patients for the sake of anonymity.”
Cosmo
mumbled to himself.
“What
was that?” Zeke called him out.
“I
said ‘how convenient,’” he blinked.
Chiara
tried to ignore his criticism. “I’ve only come across maybe fifty well-documented
cases in my research.”
Chiara
noticed that Peter was still studying her. His face was calm and his eyes were
slightly squinted. She had no idea what he was thinking and it made her
nervous.
“You’ve
really researched this topic?” Mac eyed her suspiciously. “Dude, for Chiara’s
sake! Who sits there and thinks, ‘Here I am all alone in a dark, quiet library.
I should study demonic possession!’?”
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