Adumbration

When her husband’s cancer began to cause him pain, she began to notice things, new thing, odd things around the apartment. At first it was just the sound of clawed pads tracing paths through the walls of their section-8 high-rise, but, as her husband’s illness progressed, the demons became bolder.

Soon the sight of a slit eye opening from within the tracery of the bedroom wallpaper became commonplace. With each day of her husband’s sickness they grew stronger. Soon snouts were visible. Sometimes late at night, when they were strongest, a hand like paw would emerge from the ceiling over their bed, groping through the air like a blind man searching for his cane.

When the priest came to the house he seemed more concerned with the way the doctors treated her husband, than with the demons that were now half revealed in the walls and ceiling of the apartment. He read through pill labels, and nursing notes, and then spoke with her husband. When she complained, her husband spoke in quick English words that she did not understand. Only then did the priest seem to notice the infestation that surrounded them.

He came again few days later. Again he looked at the doctor’s pills, and the read the chart left by the visiting nurses. Again he seemed reluctant to see the enemies in their house, but before he left, he went from room to room sprinkling the walls with holy water and chanting psalms and prayers.

All but one of the demons fled from the holy water and prayers. But the priest forgot to sprinkle her husband, and the demon that ate his bowels continued to feast through the night. Two days later, when her husband died, she saw the creature emerge, fat and happy, coated in his blood.

At the funeral mass she was angry. The priest did not seem at all embarrassed by his oversight.