“The ole haunted McClay house on Main, you know, the one on the corner of Osage…”

From the driver’s seat of her Honda Accord, Anja looked out the rear window at the street signs crossing atop the stop sign: Main and Osage. Outside the passenger window stood a single-story house with peeling white paint and an intact bay window off to the right above the dead bushes. The windows on the left side of the house had been busted out and boarded up, and the front door on the house was missing, like an open invitation—come one, come all.

“The last tenants said Anna comes out promptly at three fifteen p.m. Same time she died.”

The dash clock read three o’clock. Right on time.

Anja’s phone buzzed in her hand, signaling a new text. She looked down at Erick’s warning following her text of the McClay house’s address. That’s a reintegration neighborhood. Lots of convicted felons live there. Be CAREFUL. Anja reassured him she would, then turned on ‘do not disturb,’ locked the phone and slid it into the garter case strapped to her thigh by a sweat-resistant Velcro band.

Anja stepped out of her Accord. Watching her surroundings, she locked the car manually and tucked her car key and apartment key into the small, zippered pocket on the garter case. The street was quiet with no evening traffic or people in sight. Though she sensed she wasn’t alone, the only presence she felt seemed to be lurking within the house before her. Evil spirit or homeless person, there was only one way to find out.

The emerald chiffon of her floor-length dress flowed with her as she moved around the car. Accenting the petals of the white floral pattern on the dress, wide, emerald straps rolled over her fragile shoulders and left a V of exposed flesh down her back. A black fabric accent belt wrapped around her midsection with its round buckle resting at her diaphragm.

As she followed the sidewalk toward the house, her toned, pale legs slipped through disguised slits in the chiffon. The dress had been custom-made for tactical situations with the priority of having her legs accessible to either evade or fight depending on the adversary.

Slowing to a stop before the darkened doorway, Anja listened for sounds of movement from inside the abandoned house. There was no shuffling, no footsteps, no voices. Only the oppressive dread of something evil awaiting her company.

Breathe in faith; breathe out fear.

“Behold, I give you all the power over the Enemy,” Anja recited a paraphrased version of Luke 10:19 as she stepped into the house.

Light wood flooring met with once-white baseboards. Drab tan walls deserved a refreshing paint job. No furniture had been left behind in the living room from when the last tenant fled, though Anja could see a small brown table with one chair at each end in the dining room off the kitchen.

The hallway to the left of the front door led to the bedrooms. Two on the left at the end of the hall with some empty chip packages and a worn sleeping bag from a squatter who hopefully wouldn’t return anytime soon. The master bed was the first door on the right with a dirty mattress on the floor and vile graffiti on the peeling wallpaper.

The bathroom was the first door on the left. Anja chose not to linger there. Not to stare at the bathtub that took a woman’s life or to stand in the hallway where the murders happened. A tragedy too grim to be possible, let alone to meditate on.

Anja returned to the front room. From that vantage point, with her back to the front door, she would see every possible attack coming.

Three fourteen, she read on her watch.

Sixty seconds until the manifestation.

Holding the round, metal buckle of the belt wrapped around her ribcage, Anja unclipped the strap and let it fall away knowing it was secured to the buckle on the other side. She wrapped the dangling strap around her left forearm in a criss-cross pattern. When the strap reached her wrist, she wrapped it twice and secured the small carabiner clip in place. In case she released the buckle in battle, it would always remain attached to her—her way of never losing her weapon.

Anja held the buckle by the edge and shook it once. A collapsible handle dropped down and locked into place. She tossed the handle up and caught it, igniting at the center of the guard a smokey white light that swirled up and solidified, forging the Sword of the Spirit.

Gurgling and dripping sounded to Anja’s left.

It’s time, she thought.

The water had been shut off months ago when the last tenants abandoned the house, but splashing and spilling confirmed that something in the bathroom overflowed. Water trickled out into the hall.

Electricity—that had been shut off with the water—buzzed and flashed purple light from the bathroom. The room where the Tall Lady had killed herself in a bloody bath.

“Mommy, please!” came from Anja’s right. She heard tiny feet scampering away but saw no children.

Splashing footsteps in water approached.

Anja faced the hall again. Opposite of the bathroom, a shadow grew upon the hallway wall. Taller, closer, splash, splash. The shadow of the figure curved up onto the ceiling.

Six foot six, the file had read.

The Tall Lady.

Out from around the corner, the figure slowly strode into the hall in a long dress and high-laced boots. Anja’s eyes enlarged as she gaped at the woman.

“Those little bastards. Always calling me, always crying, always making sound.” The Tall Lady stared at her shadow on the wall, mumbling to herself. “Always calling me, always crying, always…making…sound.”

A shiver down Anja’s spine pricked her skin with goosebumps.

The Tall Lady slowly turned until she saw Anja. Anja gasped, thinking maybe if she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, the Tall Lady would resume her residual chanting. But the Tall Lady cocked her head as she side-stepped to acknowledge Anja.

In the flashing light of the bathroom, Anja made out black sockets for the Tall Lady’s eyes, pale white skin, and dark hair pulled up into a bun. She wore a handmaid’s dress that was white from the shoulders to the waist. From the waist, tiny bloody handprints smeared down into a pool of blood at the dress’s end.

“You’re not a child. But you can see me.”

Anja held fast to the Sword.

The Tall Lady revealed a steak knife.

“She screamed because of the blood, you know?”

The echo of that night replayed for Anja. She heard choking and whimpering and a child’s body thudding to the floor.

“Mommy, please, no!”

A little girl’s blood-curdling scream continued until a squelch silenced her. More grunting and wet gagging followed by another thud.

“She was silent after that.”

The Tall Lady flashed a jagged smile, proud of her sin.

Anja’s eyes stung with tears.

Splash.

Here she comes, Anja thought.

Splash.

Anja retreated two steps for every step of the Tall Lady’s approach. Each step lured the evil spirit out of the narrow hallway into a better battlefield: the spacious living room.

“All I wanted was peace and quiet, but those wretched children kept it chaotic and noisy. Until I killed them. And you know what?”

At the end of the hall, too far from the bathroom light and blocked from what little sunlight remained of the evening, darkness veiled the Tall Lady’s features. As a black shadow, she towered over Anja. The top of Anja’s head reached the Tall Lady’s bosom. Anja calculated that all her punctures would have to be below the breasts. Any higher and the Tall Lady would see the Sword coming.

“They deserved it,”the Tall Lady whispered from the dark.

Anja held her breath. Fight response triggered. Blood pumped to her limbs.

The Tall Lady lunged out at Anja, slashing with the steak knife. Anja reflexively ducked, then stood as she retreated two steps.

The Tall Lady advanced and swiped to the right. Anja reeled back to dodge the serrated blade. She retreated two steps again, readying the Sword to take the plunge when the Tall Lady vanished mid-step.

Gasping, Anja spun to check her six. The living room behind her was empty. The Tall Lady manifested near her original position, planning to catch Anja off guard with her back turned. Anja sensed the spirit and whirled around, leaning away from another attempted throat slice. The Tall Lady slashed left, right, gaining ground against Anja who retreated a step for every slash, waiting for the Sword’s opportunity.

Slash right, slash left, right-left.

Evade, evade, retreat.

“Stay still and DIE!”

The Tall Lady rotated the knife from slice to stab. She drilled it down, aiming for Anja’s jugular. Anja swept the tip of the Sword across the floor, lifted it up into the air, and went full circle back to the floor.

The Tall Lady wailed in agony.As Anja’s sword fell, so did the Tall Lady’s severed hand still clutching the knife.

“What have you done!”

Flames spewed from below the floorboards, encircling the Tall Lady’s hand, welcoming the appendage back home to Hell.

Anja watched the flames be swallowed back beneath the floorboards, leaving behind a black ring on the wood. A fire scar, the only evidence there had been a demonic hand and knife.

The Tall Lady clutched her amputated wrist to her chest as she cowered from Anja. “Stay away! It’s the Spirit… the Spirit of Him, the Holy One! Keep away!” She snarled like a cornered beast and swiped her remaining claw at Anja. “GET BACK!”

Anja took another step. “You’re not the spirit of Anna McClay.”

The Tall Lady growled something inhumanly feral that was meant to scare the exorcist, but Anja would not be shaken. Rather, she took another step, closing in on her adversary.

“Human spirits are bound to Heaven or Hell after death. But demons roam this earth seeking those whom they may devour,” Anja said with another step.

The Tall Lady charged at Anja who reared the Sword back for the exorcism. Again, the Tall Lady’s apparition vanished before Anja’s eyes. This time, Anja felt the oppressive energy of the demon pass over her like a dense cloud. Anja tracked the energy across the room where the Tall Lady reassembled her apparition near the only intact window in the living room and then punched it. Glass shattered and spilled into the bush outside and onto the floor inside. The Tall Lady gripped a large shard with a wicked sneer.

Anja fearlessly took off toward the Tall Lady. The Tall Lady’s boots boomed against the wood as she raged toward Anja, shard raised.

Closing the gap, Anja slammed to a stop as the Tall Lady disappeared again. Anja had anticipated it and pivoted to face the Tall Lady in mid-manifestation. Anja extended the Sword, and the demon walked right into the ethereal blade.

The Tall Lady dropped the shard and looked down at the Sword sticking through her midsection. White light crept from the entry point to every dark crevice of the Tall Lady’s spirit, searing her from the inside out and crumbling her to a tornado of dust. Flames from Hell collapsed the floor beneath the spirit and a fiery pit swallowed the remains of the Tall Lady.

The house cleansing was successful.

Anja unwrapped the strap from her forearm, tapped the hilt of the Sword to compact the handle, pressed the handle to her diaphragm, and wrapped the strap around her ribs. She clipped the dangling strap back to the side of the handle, firmly securing the Sword of the Spirit around her torso.

Lenny’s voice completed the story in Anja’s memory. “The first family to live there since the murders up and left in the middle of the night. The daughter kept seeing the ghost of Anna McClay. Called her ‘the Tall Lady,’ said she had a knife. The mom saw it too one night. She said Anna tried to hand her the knife. Instead of taking it, she took her daughter and ran and never looked back. The house has been empty ever since.”

The demon had impersonated Anna McClay with the intent to coerce another mother to kill for it. How many other families would have suffered the manifestations? How many other parents would have taken the knife? How many more children would have had their blood spilled within these walls?

Teary-eyed, Anja blinked away from the hallway and stared at the fire scars on the floor. No more now.

“Victory is the Lord’s,” she said, then nodded a salutation to the house and took her leave.

Once outside, Anja closed her eyes and crumbled to the steps leading off the porch where she wept for the McClays. Their tiny, bloody handprints flashed before her eyes as the grim sounds of their deaths echoed in her mind. Three and four years old was too young to die.

And Anna… Reports online claimed she had been suffering from untreated postpartum depression. Her husband had left her shortly after the birth of young Porter McClay. Anna had reached out to family and friends for help with the children, only for her needs to fall on deaf ears. The demon isolated her and capitalized on her weakness, convincing her the only way out of her sickness was through the elimination of its source.

After realizing what she’d done, Anna had made a call to her mother confessing she regretted killing them. Grief-stricken, she ran herself a bath, plugged in the toaster, and took the plunge to her own death. Never had she experienced freedom from her torment, for from depression came another sickness, and she saw no way out except the eternal end.

“Damn the Devil,” Anja whispered as she hugged her knees, tears streaming down her pinked cheeks.

A car door closed somewhere nearby. Sniffling, Anja looked up to see a car two houses to her right that hadn’t been there when she arrived. Two men climbed out of it to meet a third man who’d stepped out of the house they’d parked at. When the white guy in the tank top, sagging shorts, and sandals noticed her sitting there, Anja knew it was time to go.

She parted her dress to retrieve her keys and rushed to her car, locking the door and immediately starting the engine once she was safely inside. She pulled her phone out and text Erick her next destination: Headed to church.

“Hello, bave.”

Anja gasped so hard her chest tightened and her back went ramrod straight.

“Miss me?” a voice growled from the backseat.

Anja’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror where she met a set of familiar brown eyes. Fear surged from her soul and exploded from her mouth in a vocal rejection of his presence. “No!”

A tan arm shot forward and wrapped around Anja’s throat, crushing her windpipe. Anja gasped for air, but scratching at the arm proved useless. She abandoned getting her windpipe free to reach for the door lock.

“C…c…c..” Can’t breathe…

Anja banged her hand on the door, desperate to get the latch open, to get out, to get air. She felt darkness nearing. Her sight narrowed as if the curtain on her existence began to close.

“We miss you, Anja,” David said, his voice wickedly warped.

As if in her final moment of life, Anja saw her entire relationship with her ex-boyfriend David from start to end. All the good, the scary, and the forgotten. All of it resurfaced in a flash before her mind’s eye and punched her healed heart.

“And now I’ve found you.”

Anja squeaked out a ‘no’ as her fingers tucked behind the door handle. She ripped it toward herself and threw her knee into the door, thrusting it open. Rotating to the right so her legs would hang out of the car, she managed to twist out of the choke hold and slide from the seat. She landed hard on the pavement, first on her knees then catching herself with her hands. Coughing, she dropped to a seated position and turned to face the threat in her car. But he was gone. Her backseat was empty.

Anja let her head fall back, tears streaming from the corners of her eyes as she caught her breath. It knows where I am, and if the demon knows, so does David.

Which meant he would be coming.