Chapter 8

Hong Kong – Leon
Canada – Matthew
USA – Alfred
Seychelles – Shelly
Australia – Kyle
England – Arthur /Artie
France – Fran / Francis
Denmark –Mathias Norman
Norway – Lukas Norman

Leon wakes up to the sound of something bumping against wood. He reacts quickly and as he sits up, he reaches for the lamp on his bed table and switches it on. In front of his bed, only three meters away from him he sees once again is little brother Kyle standing in front of his closet and bumping his head against the door.
"Kyle?"
Leon stands up and walks to him, slowly as if in fear that there is something not right.
"Okay…"
He gently puts his hand on Kyle's forehead and gently prevents him from further knocking his head. He lays then a hand on his shoulder and gently turns him around and guides him slowly back to the bed, taking one step after another.
"Okay, you can uh..." he bites his lip softly and thinks about what to do with him. He does not want to wake anybody up:
"You can just sleep with me tonight, alright?" They arrive at the big bed and he carefully pushes him down on it. Leon then proceeds in pulling the blanket over his brother. Just as he tucks the blanket around Kyle he hears again a knock on the closet.
Knock
Leon freezes.
Knock
He gently straightens up again.
Knock
He turns around and starts slowly walking towards the closet again, his face showing only little signs of distress despite the fast beating heart. As he reaches the closet it rustles in the bed behind him. Kyle sits up in one steady motion and straight back, eyes opened and staring at his older brother.

Leon takes a deep breath, not having noticed the sitting up of Kyle. Instead he grips on both door handles and with determination in his eyes, he opens both doors and lets them swing open. The clothes rustle from the quick movements from the doors but besides that, Leon cannot spot anything out of place. Suddenly though he hears his brother taking a sharp breath and he turns around with his brows lightly furrowed, having thought his brother was deeply asleep.

Kyle's face is plastered with horror and he tightly grips on the blanket on his lap. His eyes widened in fear are locked on something on the closet. Leon, all sleepiness whipped away by the creepiness of the situation he is in, slowly turns around with his heart pounding in his chest. He lifts his gaze and got only a second to take it what frightened his normally so courageous brother who could play with tarantulas and call them cute.

There, crouching on top of the closet is the ugliest woman Leon has ever seen. Even though her face seemed to belong to an old woman drowned in water, she possesses still a fair amount of greasy, dark brown hair framing her wrinkled face. The appearance hisses, showing yellow and black teeth and her whole position resembles a predator, ready to lunge out at its prey. The clothes are mere lumps and all at once the whole figure blurs as it jumps onto the screaming Leon.

Arthur just locked his car and walks now towards the house as he hears several muffled screams from inside. Quickly he runs to the front door and fumbling with trembling keys to open it. Finally the door opens and he runs in, noticing first the door, leading to the cellar. Someone is screaming and banging against it. It takes not even a second for Arthur to realize that it is his husband Francis, trapped in there. He rushes to the door and is quick in freeing his loved one.

Francis, who has been kneeling in front of the door and banging with his fist against the wood, gets surprised by the sudden light shining in his face from the hallway lamps and loses his balance as the door completely gets opened. He falls hard on his hands with a huff but frightened to death and deeply worried for the health of his children he quickly gets up. He looks Arthur in the eyes for a fraction of a second, sending a thank you and his worries in one quick glance. As Leon's screams are taking them back to the here and now, both are bolting towards the stairs and up to the bedrooms from where screams resound through the whole house.
"Leon!" Arthur calls over and over again as they make their way to his bedroom as fast as humanly possible. Now not only Leon is screaming but also Kyle gives a high pitched scream of pure horror.

Arthur is the first to enter the room, seeing Kyle standing on the bed and crying and as he looks frantically for his eldest son, he finds him writhing on the ground, hands fighting something invisible for him. Through all the screams, Francis runs first to Kyle who stretches his arms out to his "Fran" and gets picked up. He buries his face in the crook of Francis' neck and cries. Arthur, not sure of what to do, stands at Leon's side and gets down on his knees. But as the other children, Shelly, Alfred and Matthew appear at the door to see what the commotion is all about, Arthur gets back on his feet.
"Can somebody please tell me what the bloody hell is going on here?!" He looks at his children and back at Francis who in the meantime got both Kyle and Leon at his side, crying and gripping on his t-shirt. The spectating sibling just stand there in the door, not sure what to make of all of this. One single question running through Matthew's mind:
"What can be so horrible to frighten the two less fearful kids?"

A projector is rolling and the soft noise is quickly overheard when Mathias starts to speak again:
"Fear is defined as a feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by the presence or eminence of danger. Whether it's a ghost, a spirit or an entity, they all feed on it."
He points at the large screen in front of the audience. A man in a white shirt is shown trembling and spit is running down his mouth. His eyes look haunted and his short hair is soaking wet from all the sweat running down his face and neck. Someone in the back is whipping away some of the spit and sweat from the man's face.

"Take Maurice here. He's a French-Canadian farmer, had nothing more than third-grade education, yet after he was possessed, spoke some of the best Latin I'd ever heard. Sometime backwards. He'd been molested by his father, who had also tortured him repeatedly. A dark spirit made its home in this man." Mathias continues and points at the man who is rocking now back and forth on the chair. Now as the audience gets a close up on his face, they see that his eyes are completely white and some people shift uncomfortably their position, not wanting to miss what happens next but also clearly uncomfortable with what they see. The footage cuts to a priest who is reciting something in Latin from a book and then cuts back again to the man's face, almost looking lost on the chair, with his irises back but unfocused.

A deeper voice, belonging to the slimmer figure of Lukas picks up where Mathias stopped his explanation:
"Now, if you look into his eyes, you can see him tearing blood."
And really, as the audience gets once again a close up, they witness how the woman, who is dressed in white, wipes something off the man's face and as she takes the towel away, blood stains are clear to see. The man continues to bleed and two trails of blood are starting to run down his face as this man tries to stand up but swaying without any sense of balance. A pair of strong arms gets wrapped around his torso and holds him back from falling over, and as he gets slumped back on the chair, he drools out a massive amount of spit. In the background, the old priest continues to preach in Latin. Suddenly the film ends.

"Alright Ber, hit the lights."
As Mathias commanded, the lights get turned on again and the projector gets turned off by the large man in the back of the room. Mathias and Lukas, standing each on one side of the large screen get greeted by the sight of many hands raised to ask them questions, burning on the lips of the mostly young students. One girl just goes ahead and asks a question without waiting to get picked by either man.
"Did you personally perform the exorcism?" The question was directed at both, but it is Mathias who answers it.
"No, I'm not authorized." He gives a confident grin. "But I've assisted on many." He adds with a slightly more serious voice so it gets clear that this is no joking matter:
"See an exorcism can be very dangerous, not only for the victim, but for anyone in the room." He gives a glance at his husband and receives only a light nod of his partner. The young woman with short blonde hair and a ribbon holding back her wild locks tilts her head.
"So, what happened to Maurice?"
Mathias nods, having expected this question and has to disappoint his listeners that hoped for an happy end:
"Well, he tried to kill his wife. But instead he shot her in the arm and then he turned the gun on himself." He gives a soft smile and looks around the audience and lets his gaze linger on a man with shoulder long blond hair because he thinks that the man, needs a smile as he tells the story.
"Maurice had a very troubled life with little to live for, and not even an exorcist could bring him back."
Mathias turns around and gives a quick pull on the white screen and lets it disappear upwards to reveal the three words written on the black board behind. Lukas steps forward at the side of Mathias but still lets him do the work of explaining which Mathias is totally fine with as he loves this work and does it still with a smile that seems sometimes rather unfitting. But with such stories, they give some reassurance and uplifting security.

"That brings us to the three stages of demonic activity: Infestation, oppression and possession." Mathias points at exactly those three key words at the black board when he names them.
"Now infestation, that's..." Mathias tilts his head some and looks at a point in the air whilst thinking how to describe this in a way that the audience understands.
"That's the whispering, the footsteps, the feeling of another presence, which ultimately grows into oppression, the second stage." He once again lifts his hand and points at the second word written in big letters.
"Now this is where the victim, and it's usually the one who's the most psychologically vulnerable, is targeted specifically by an external force. Breaks the victim down, crushes their will. And once in a weakened state, leads into the third and final stage, possession." He got his gaze again locked on the middle aged man in the middle of the audience who seems to even more hang on Mathias' lips than any other person in this room.

Only half an hour later, Mathias and Lukas are standing beside their car, getting ready to finally drive back home after a tiresome day. Lukas turns around and just wants to sit down into the car, as he notices Berwald, their technician, walking towards them, a man at his side who is roughly a head smaller than the large Swedish man. Lukas does not show any shift of emotion on his face, seeing that it is a complete stranger. Finally Mathias gets his head out of the back row of the car and smiles as he sees the arrivals

Berwald stops in front of them and quickly nods as a greeting.
"There's someone here that wants t' talk to ya." Berwald explains in his thick Swedish accent. He glances at the man at his side through his glasses who slightly flinches when he looks back at the seemingly stern face. Mathias however is unfazed by the stares.
"Thanks Ber." He smiles at the smaller man and recognizes him as the man he spotted in the audience. Not only that, but from up close, he also notices the almost violet circles around his eyes, the tired posture and haunted blue eyes that look at him with a new glimpse of hope. His clothes are clean but untidy. The stranger has his hands in his pocket and Mathias could swear he has them balled up in a fist.
"Sure. See ya lat'r" Berwald shrugs and turns around to finish packing all their video material.

Francis watches the tall Swede walk away and exhales.
"What can we do for you?" Lukas asks, not wanting to waste too much time on the parking lot. Francis faces them and smiles apologetic. But the smile only lasts a second before his face turns dark in worry.
"There's something horrible happening in my house. Could you come take a look?" His voice got a pleading tone and his eyes switch hastily between the two very different men. His spirit is sinking some, as he sees the rather critical faces and how they look at each other a bit uncertain.
Mathias, for once tired from talking and answering seemingly never ending questions, tries to make an excuse to avoid having to work longer, actually having looked forward to another kind of action this evening:
"You know, uh...it's getting kind of late." It is now his turn to smile apologetically at the man.
"We really need to be heading home." He looks at Lukas who got his stern blue eyes fixed on the desperate man, trying to understand him.
„No, you don't understand," tries Francis again and shakes his head, making his blonde locks sway with the movement. Mathias exhales slowly and looks at the man sympathetically:
"We do actually understand," comforts Mathias with a calming voice, seeing that the man in front of him got this desperate look in his eyes. "Usually there is a rational explanation like-"
He gets cut off by the shorter man in front of him stepping forward and even if he did not think it could have been possible with even more pleading eyes directed only at him, not daring to look into the cold and seemingly not caring eyes of his partner.
"I have five children who are scared to death. I'm so afraid this thing wants to hurt us." This time he looks directly into the cold man's eyes:
"I mean, you have a brother, won't you do anything you could to protect him?" But before he can catch the slight softening in the eyes of the cold man, the slight tilting of his head as the image of the man's dear brother flashes before him, he turns to try for a last time:
"Please! Please can you come and take a look?" He breaths faster, eyes almost teary as if he would get rejected he will not know anymore what to do, desperate because he cannot help his own family.

His rescue comes unexpected from the man on the right, the cold man, the man without expressions. Lukas leans slightly forward and looks at him with soft eyes and a surprisingly deep and calm voice:
"Of course we will."