Chiara Marino, Excerpt #4: Un-Boo-Lievable
Excerpt #4: Un-Boo-lievable
“So get this,” Zeke said. “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. Yet again, she was disappointed.
“In this day and age?” Mac said.
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.”
“Bah. That’s totally bunk,” Cosmo
disagreed. “Most cases are just strange syndromes. For example, there’s a
condition called Anti-NMDA Encephalitis that my dad was telling me about. It
causes swelling in the brain. Patients have hallucinations, violent outbursts,
and animal-like growling. Onlookers think it’s an evil spirit, but it’s just
water on the brain.”
“I agree there are a lot of conditions
that people misunderstand,” Chiara said. “However, there have been some strange
cases that psychology and neurology can’t explain.”
“Oh?” Cosmo blinked repeatedly.
“Enlighten me, by all means.”
“Well, every exorcist I’ve read up
on says that there are clear indicators when someone is possessed. They have
super strength—”
“Probably just adrenaline,” Cosmo
interrupted.
“Maybe. But they often show pain at
seeing religious items or hearing prayers. And they have supernatural
knowledge. Like, maybe they can speak fluently in languages they’ve never even
heard before, or they know how a stranger’s loved ones died, or they know
something that’s happening halfway across town.”
She could sense Peter watching her
and felt a blush come to her cheeks.
“In many cases,” she continued, “the
people present reported hearing inexplicable sounds, fires starting out of
nowhere, and seeing things or people levitate. The witnesses were not diagnosed
with any disorders and some of them were even skeptical scientists. I think
there’s definitely something that science has yet to explain.”
Riya shivered. “Okay, this discussion
is kind of freaking me out.”
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 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. 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 though?” Zeke asked. “I could see it happening
like once every twenty years or something, but not all the time.”
Chiara shook her head regretfully. “I
really don’t know too much. I will say that exorcists report that their cases
are on the rise, but 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.”
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, but his eyes were slightly squinted.
Mac eyed her suspiciously. “You’ve
really researched this topic? 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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