Craigslist Exorcist

“Are you sure about this guy?” I whispered to my brother.

“His site had good reviews. Besides, who else would’ve come to our house this late at night?”

I couldn’t argue with Dion there. Mikel was in need of serious help and we couldn’t be picky about where it came from. How this came to be is a story in itself. Long story short, we went on vacation in Egypt, stumbled across a lost tomb, yadda yadda, and although we narrowly managed to escape a horde of vengeful pharaoh spirits, one apparently put a curse on our younger brother. In hindsight, we probably should’ve suspected something was up when he began staring blankly at the wall and throwing up black liquid after we got home.

Then when we found him crawling on the ceiling, we knew we were in some deep shit. Speaking of, I nearly did that to myself when we saw him and he lunged at me. Although we managed to restrain him with rope, exorcising him was another matter entirely. We thought all we needed to do was show him a Bible and yell scripture at him. We were wrong.

About an hour into our fruitless attempt, stuff started swirling around the room. Mikel’s chest of drawers flew at us. It knocked us through his doorway and into the hall. It was then that we decided we needed professional help or at least as professional as you can get at four in the morning. Not to mention, it was kind of hard to concentrate on finding it when we were hearing ungodly terrifying laughter from upstairs. So far our only silver lining was that our parents were gone for the weekend.

Fortunately, we did come across Herbert on Craiglist. After shooting him a message, he was out within the hour. When a rusty pickup truck pulled up, spewing exhaust, I wasn’t exactly feeling confident. Nor was upon seeing that our exorcist in question was a fat balding man in his late thirties to early forties. You know that comic book guy from The Simpsons?

He basically looked like him except if he was wearing a priest robe and thick-rimmed glasses. His arms were full of supplies, religious items, and such. He tripped over his robe, sending them sprawling across the yard. We went over, offering to help.

“Thank you,” he said after we’d found everything. “I sense an evil presence here that must be vanquished.

We led him inside and that brings this post to where it began. Dion was helping him carry his things.

“Where is the evil?” Herbert asked. “Is it in here?”

He leaped into our living room. I coughed and cocked a thumb to the stairs.

“Oh.”

Quickly, he raced up them and we followed. He was out of breath by the time he reached the top. When he got to Mikel’s door, he straightened his robe and opened it. Nothing could’ve prepared us for the scene waiting for us. Mikel’s bed was now hovering vertically in midair. His eyes were closed.

They opened and he gave us a sickening smile that sent chills down my spine. His eyes were black all the way through and spidery veins were all over his face.

“You can handle this, right?” I asked Herbert.

Some sweat trickled down his forehead which worried me a bit.

“Of course,” he replied somewhat shakily.

I gave a sideways glance to Dion who shrugged in response. Herbert approached our brother.

“Cross,” he ordered, holding out his hand.

I grabbed it from Dion’s arms and handed it to him.

“Evil force controlling this young man’s body, I command you to depart,” he yelled, holding the cross out to it.

There was a pause and then the demon cackled.

“Is that all you can do?” It asked in a voice akin to foil being crumbled. “Once I’m free, I’ll be able to rule once more.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Herbert shot back. “Holy water.”

I gave it to him.

“So you’re the spirit of a pharaoh, huh? Well, what is a pharaoh to God?”

He splashed him with the holy water. There was a sizzle as he howled in pain with steam coming off him and for the first time during that incident, I was getting hopeful. Filled with newfound pride, Herbert continued.

“That’s right,” he declared triumphantly. “You stand no chance so I suggest you leave. Otherwise, I might have to get serious.”

Once again, the room was quiet and I felt tension creeping up. The Pharaoh possessing our brother replied.

“Serious? You do not know the meaning of the word. Your god has no control over me.”

The house started shaking.

“What’s going on?” Dion asked.

“Behold my power,” the Pharaoh declared. “The strength of the old gods runs through me.”

He broke free of his ropes. My heart dropped into my stomach.

“Shit,” I said. “What do we do now?”

We looked at Herbert.

“Run,” he replied and darted out of the room.

While we were shocked by his reaction, there was also the matter of our possessed brother floating toward us. We dropped the supplies and ran out of the room as well. Herbert was already downstairs. For a man of his size, he was pretty fast. We caught up to him as he was fumbling with the door chain.

“What the hell are you doing?” Dion hissed at him.

Gasping, Herbert spun around, face now glossy with sweat. Before he could reply, something flew down the stairs. It was Mikel’s mattress. We got out of the way in time and it hit the front door. At the top of the stairs, the Pharaoh grinned down at us.

Shadows swirled around him and I could see faces within them that wore that same malicious smile.

“Oh, fuck no,” I said.

He flew down the stairs. Then we ran. The best place we could think to hide was the basement. We could only hope he wouldn’t search there first. In that regard, we got lucky. We turned to Herbert who was now shaking.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Dion asked him.

“Well, you saw how my ad said I was an experienced exorcist, right?”

“What about it?”

“That may have been a bit of an…Exaggeration.”

“What?”

We said that at the same time. The color in my face drained.

“How many times have you actually done this?” I asked, trying to keep from yelling.

“I saw another priest do it once, but as for me…This is my first time.”

Dion got a certain look in his eyes and he moved forward, cocking his arm back to punch Herbert. I managed to get in front of him in time. While that would be cathartic, it wouldn’t solve our problem. After convincing Dion not to hit Herbert, I turned back to him.

“Do you have anything on you that can help us?”

“No, all my things are upstairs and the only thing that was working on him was the holy water.”

“How do you get some?”

“A priest has to bless some water.”

“That’s it? We keep water bottles down here.”

“Really?”

Herbert’s confidence was rearing its head.

“What are you waiting for then? Bring them to me.”

We did so and after a short prayer, we were armed with bottles of Aquafina holy water.

“Alright, let’s do this,” Herbert said.

We went back upstairs to confront the Pharaoh. To our dismay, everything was a mess. Clothes were everywhere. Dishes were broken and furniture was overturned. I groaned, hoping to Christ he hadn’t damaged the living room tv. He must’ve heard me because he turned around.

“There you are,” he said in his serpent-like voice.

“I thought you wanted to escape?” Dion replied to him.

“I do, but first I need some meals, and since you’re all here…”

With a roar, he charged forward. Quickly, we unscrewed the caps of our water bottles and splashed him. There was more sizzling as it screamed in agony.

“We’re winning,” I said, heart pounding.

“Let’s keep it up,” Herbert said.

We continued our assault with more water bottles. The Pharoah fell to the floor and he could only raise his hands to shield himself as we were driving him back. We managed to corner him by the basement door. Unfortunately for Herbert, it was still open. He raised an arm and then spoke loudly.

“Evil one, I smite you and cast you…”

The Pharaoh made our mom’s brass vase fly through the air. Dion and I were quick enough to duck it. Herbert wasn’t so lucky. It hit him square in the temple. He staggered to the side and fell down the stairs. My hammering heartbeat came to an abrupt stop.

I glanced at Herbert who’d come to a stop on our basement floor. Judging by the fact that unconscious people don’t ordinarily have their eyes open and that his neck was bent at a weird angle, I made the reasonable assumption he wasn’t alive anymore. Laughing, the Pharaoh rose again.

“Now, you two are next,” he declared.

We tried using more holy water on him only to find out we were out. Therefore, we fled, looking for somewhere else to hide. We picked the garage and Dion placed a door under the knob.

“What are we supposed to do now?” I whispered.

“I don’t know. I say we leave and see if we can find help.”

“Then why the hell didn’t we just use the backdoor?”

We both realized then that we were idiots.

“Too late for that now,” Dion said. “Let’s leave through here.”

“Oh yeah, because he definitely won’t hear the garage door opening.”

“Got any better ideas?”

“No, I guess not.”

As we were about to hit the button to lift the garage door, there was scraping coming from the one leading back into the rest of the house. We didn’t even breathe. Dion looked at me and raised a finger to his lips. The following silence was gut-wrenching. Then the knob turned as something tugged to get the door open.

The chair held strong, though which gave us some relief. That was until something struck the door and caused it to slide to the floor. The door flew open and in came the Pharaoh. I thought we were royally fucked. Things certainly seemed that way.

“So you thought you could escape me?” The Pharaoh said. “I will not be denied my nourishment.”

He raised his hands and things in the garage started levitating. They spun around us, leaving no room for escape as he bellowed his harrowing laugh. Something among all the objects caught my eye. It was a bag. In it were some brownies.

However, they weren’t ordinary. The bag came open and the brownies fell out. As the Pharoah was laughing and getting ready to slaughter us, one of them fell into its mouth. It swallowed on reflex and suddenly everything stopped with the things spinning around suspended in midair. A funny look came over The Pharoah.

“This stuff is strong,” he said.

Then something left Mikel’s body in a black cloud that was presumably the Pharoh’s spirit. Mikel dropped unconscious to the floor and we stared dumbfounded as everything fell around us.

“Dion, what exactly are in those brownies?” I asked.

“I made them using weed.”

“From where?”

“Some Jamaican guy outside of work. He told me it was special. I guess he wasn’t joking.”

“No kidding. Now, we still have some problems.”

“Like that the house is a complete mess now?”

“Actually, I was going to say the fact we have a dead body in our basement, but that too.”

We checked on Mikel who aside from some minor scratches along his arms and face seemed alright. He opened his eyes.

“That was a weird…”

He glanced around.

“Oh, shit so it was real. Fuck that was scary.”

“Wait, you mean you knew what was going on?” I asked him.

“Yeah, I was basically in the passenger seat of my own body. It was not fun I can tell you that. Anyway, thanks for helping me out, guys.”

“No problem.”

“Right, now we have until tomorrow night to get this all straightened up, or else no demon or Pharaoh spirit or whatever is going to compare to what mom’ll do to us,” Dion said.

Could she be scarier than what we encountered? Logically, I didn’t think so. Then again, I wasn’t curious enough to find out. We thought getting rid of Herbert’s body would be the hard part. Honestly, it turned out to be the easiest compared to the rest of the work we needed to do.

We got him up the stairs and then wrapped him in sheets. We put him n his truck. Dion drove to a nearby lake and pushed the truck in it with him inside. Was that fucked up beyond belief? Absolutely.

However, we didn’t have much of a choice. While Dion was walking back, we got to cleaning. Despite how grueling it was, we managed to get the house back into shape before our parents returned. We even managed to replace the broken dishes which luckily were generic enough to be found at our local Walmart. Although, it cost us a good bit. I guess the moral of the story is don’t go exploring ancient shit because you never know what might come back with you.

Author’s Note: I hope you found this story both funny and scary. If you did, a follow is appreciated, and if you want to support me financially you can donate to my account on BuyMeACoffee or my Kofi.