The Roads That We Explore - 3. Leaving the House

“Alex, are you sure about this?” Brinda bounced on the balls of her feet, staring up at the house. “Isn’t this that one…”

“Yeah.” Alex tucked his hands into his pockets as he looked over to Brian, finding him sitting on the roof of their truck as he smoked a cigarette and stared up at the house. “Once we clear it out, I’m sure that it’ll be fine and it’ll make a good home, not to mention headquarters for our work. Especially if we clear it out and find the portal to close it, we’ll end up with a massive price break on it.” Brinda sighed as she crossed her arms, crucifix jingling around her neck.

“You’re so damn lucky that this gig pays me so damn well,” she muttered, giving him a side eye. Alex snorted as he dropped a duffle bag onto the ground, kneeling to dig around in it. He pulled out a large bottle of holy water, a metal stick with a metal ball attached to it, small holes covering the top half, and a small incense burner that hung on a chain. He handed them over and then a bundle of sage, matches and a shell.

Brinda sighed and squatted down with her aspergillum in hand, laying the rest of the items out. She took the three items and placed the bundle of sage into the shell. Striking the match, she lit the sage, taking the offered feather, brushing the smoke over each item, saying the words of blessing while Alex laid out his own set, doing the same blessing. Watching as the sage went up in one last puff, she smiled at the blessing that had been approved.

She took the smaller bundle of safe and opened the burner, placing it onto the porcelain disk, lighting it before putting the top back on. Making sure that it was secure and was only lightly smoking for the moment, she turned to the rest.

Opening the aspergillum, she sighed at the sight of the Galeic cross that was resting within it, attached to little hooks that held it in place. She groaned, finding that her bad feeling was getting worse. “Really? This is the one that you’re going to have me wield?” she asked.

Alex smirked as he held up his slightly larger aspergillum. While hers was just a ball that she filled and flicked, one of the special creations that her mother had created due to magic induced need, Alex’s was the form of a brush. Both came with a matching asperisporium.

Brinda called them both the “Holy Water Bucket of Blessing and Demon’s Bane”.

All of the items they had were created in certain ways so that it was hard for any of the holy water that they held to tip out. Mostly the asperisporiums’ with weighted bottoms. “Yep. I need you to come in after me. You’ll be dealing with the leftovers of whatever I shove out,” he said. He shook his head and made sure that the holy water within his own asperisporium was ready.

Brinda grumbled as she did the same, arranging it so that she had the pole that came from the bottom of the bucket in her hand, keeping it steady. The burner chain was wrapped around her arm and sliding down the rest of the pole, swinging just under the inch of pole under her hand. She picked up her aspergillum and nodded at him. “Alright, you asshole, let’s go get us a damn house. We starting from the front and moving our way back then up and finally down?” she asked.

“We’ll be leaving a very narrow way of getting the entity out of the house. It’s a U-Shape with the foray a straight shot from the basement and stairs. We’ll need to chase it upstairs and then out from the basement if it doesn’t actually just leave out of the front door,” Alex said, holding his items, swirling the brush in the holy water. The water within went milky before clearing up again, showing them both that it was ready.

Brinda sighed, nodding and doing the same with her own, following him. The first thing that she noticed was the absolute stench that flooded the house, settling deep. It was like sulphur that had been laid on rotten eggs with a cloying underlayer of decaying flesh. She wrinkled her nose and tried not to gag as Alex turned into the living room first, sleeves pushed back and Galiec crosses present above the Greek crosses on his arms.

The various bits of fabric that covered furniture and windows moved in a wind that wasn’t there as he started to bless the living room in a language that he couldn’t pinpoint.

To her, it always sounded as if there were many different languages that were overlaying themselves, creating a soothing melody in her ears. But to anything with no good in them, demons and creatures that wished to harm instead of care, it was as if they had been tied down and tortured to hear it.

And this time was no different. A wailing went up as the living room cleared of the scent, leaving only a faint trace of it, the oppressive feeling living and letting her breath. The doors that connected the living room and the next room slammed shut behind the creature.

Alex rolled his eyes, complained about having to deal with such melodramatic demons, painted a cross made of holy water on each entry way into the living room, and opened the door to the next room. As he went to work on that room, Brinda did her own, smaller, blessings, calling on the Gods and Goddesses of the Old to bless and cleanse the house from the Evil that had lingered in the house for so long.

She smiled and giggled when the scent of cinnamon and vanilla filled the air, telling her that her favorite Goddess had answered her call. She was just glad that the Old Beings didn’t hate the way that the Catholic Church had turned so many of their symbols into symbols of the New Religions. they rarely cared as long as at the end you provided them their proper dues after calling them for a blessing.

Brinda mentally went over what she had packed into the cooler and was rather glad that she had grabbed a good bottle of red wine and the better chocolate that she had packed with the fresh fruit and handy crafts.

Shaking her head, Brinda walked into the next room, doing the same blessing as the last one, following in Alex’s footsteps, listening to the ever-increasing screams of anger as the demon was forced to remove itself from the house. They worked their way through the first floor, up to the second and all the rooms there, up into the attic, and then down into the basement, making sure that every little nook and cranny was cleared.

As the creature was forced out of the front door and into a mystical trap that Brian had laid outside of the door, it screeched out that it would be back as the mirror folded back into itself. Brian just sighed and placed it into an intricately carved box, shutting the lid.

“There’s a room that was sealed all up,” he said as Alex sat down on the front lawn, breathing out. They watched as his incense burner stopped smoking just as Brinda stepped out to do the last of the blessing.

“Yeah?” Alex asked him. Brian nodded and handed over the printout. Alex looked around him to see that Brian had hooked up his computer to an outside power outlet before looking down. He hummed and pulled out his phone to call the retailer while looking over the printout. “Hey, yeah. It’s Alex. I’m done with the cleansing, but I’m going to have to pull a wall down to get to a sealed room. I’m also going to have to destroy a bit of floor and pull up about ten feet of foundation and dirt,” he told the woman. Brian raised an eyebrow when the woman asked why. “Cause the body that is holding the portal open. And I need to submerge it into salt and holy water for the next ten years. I’ll also need to call a priest friend.”

Brian snorted as Alex took a pen and wrote down the information that she gave him. The people accepted the smaller bid for the house right then, nearly two grand under what they were asking for, and under five grand than their budget. Alex sighed, stood, and brushed off his pants. “Got a house?” he asked finally.

“Got a house. Call our friend, would ya?” Alex drawled.

Brian rolled his eyes with a smirk. “Yes, sir,” he drawled, ignoring the muttered ‘brat’ from his boyfriend.