Sparrow & Crowe: From the Journal of Dr. Xander Crowe

Our Sparrow & Crowe series contains stories about Dr. Xander Crowe and his faithful assistant Sparrow before, around, and after our main tale. These stories may contain clues as to our central mystery. Or they may not. We’ll never tell.

We hope you enjoy.

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From the Journal of Dr. Xander Crowe
by Jeremiah Allan

The Marino Estate is a vast maze of galleried hallways and other assorted, winding passageways, and it was through this muddled stretch of architecture that I was herded by Marino’s men. Tall Sicilians, the lot of them but one, all dark shades and earpieces; suits, too, with matching black ties. It was as if they might have to drop everything at any given moment and attend a funeral, which I doubt is anything but likely given their particular line of work. The odd one out was Armando Aparo, on loan to Marino from the Latin Exchange. They swapped help from time to time as a show of solidarity, the brothers from the North and their drug-smuggling sibling from the South, and neither fought as much as television would lead you to believe. The underworld had changed since the forties, when everybody fought everybody else in a mindless turf war that only depleted the resources of both sides. The mob learned to keep quiet, to work with instead of against each other, and they threw enormous galas where people sipped ten thousand dollar-a-bottle vineyard wine while congratulating each other on their newfound licenses to print money.

Aparo wore punk-chains and a wife-beater. He was their leader in the absence of Marino himself, despite being young. What Aparo lacked in age and experience, he more than made up for with his brains and loyalty. Marino knew the value of a star struck mook, even if he was an ambassador and not truly one of Sicily’s finest. Marino knew who to trust, and this guy was squeaky clean—or as squeaky clean as the mob gets. Sparrow couldn’t find a blotch anywhere near Aparo’s record; just like Marino, all covered and safe behind the Almighty dollar, a few of which they had conveniently shoved into my back pocket for traveling expenses.

It was Aparo who first approached me. “Piss off!” I’d told him. I was on a tear from the pub and didn’t need some sodding wanker trying to sell me on trip-hop and acid. I’d already seen The Lord of the Rings.

But “Stop!” he said. “This is important business!”

“The only important business,” I said, “is finding someplace where I can outrun Last Call.”

He knew better than to flash a gun. Marino had done his homework, knew about the Hand. One of the big selling points for my particular services, he’d confided in me later. Didn’t tell anyone else, knew my secret but he said it was safe. Aparo only knew not to draw, and pulled a flask of high end vodka from his holster instead.

“That’s a start,” I crooned, unscrewing the cap for a long, professional swig. Stout stuff, even for a vet like me—imported from Russia probably, where the liquor is made by the people, for the people. You can taste the difference, and the kick is like a total stranger discussing the intricacies of yeast infections with you on a thirteen hour flight to Nottingham. Bloody shocking. A bit of a guilty pleasure once you fully understand what you’re getting yourself into, but the first cut is always the deepest.

“I need urgently to speak with you, Doctor Crowe,” Aparo replied.

I held the flask up to my ear and sloshed the juice, gauging its depth.

“Well, Sunshine, you’ve just bought about ten more ounces of my time,” and then I paused. “What kind of important business gets you pissed before a debrief?”

“I was told you could perform… Special ceremonies.”

“Is this about gay marriage, because if it is…?”

“Exorcisms, Doctor Crowe. Can you help?”

“Ha!” I smiled. “You should’ve brought a bigger bottle.”

Was it Pete Townsend with the kiddie porn? I tend to forget; I’m a bit addled when it comes to names, which is why I hired Sparrow on as my best man. Without the knob, mind you. She gets a might testy when I tell the cattle she’s a bloke. Anyway, it was Townsend, I’m sure of it, and Baba O’Reilly will haunt me for years to come. What I saw there at Marino’s mansion was… Dirty. There aren’t words for it. Sodding shame, too, because I really liked the Who.

It was his daughter; Marino’s youngest, a touch on the tiny side with a petite figure and black doe eyes. They’d strapped her to a canopy bed the size of a small continent, and used silk. I was impressed with their attention to detail until I realized exactly how they knew that silk rope didn’t leave bruises.

Amanda Marino was eighteen, in the full flush of her bloom, and possessed by… If not the Devil, then someone very close to him. I’d never seen anything like it before. There was blood—there’s always blood—but it’s not always menstrual blood and it usually doesn’t leave the body in black, coagulated masses. Marino thought at first that she had been poisoned, but when initial toxicology reports found no traces of any narcotics, diseases or even birth control, the mafia had quite a frightening conundrum on their hands. Private physicians, practicing folks with degrees and God complexes, spun in and out of that place like a revolving door with turrets. Couldn’t figure it out, they said. I took one look at the girl’s blood work and told them that they were checking for the wrong thing. Aspartame, I told them. The stuff that’s in sugar substitutes and breath mints and causes cancer in lab rats… Right. “Check for that,” I said, knowing full well what they’d find. Aspartame ferments into formaldehyde, and it’s the dark equivalent of a calling card. Over ninety percent of genuine possessions report finding high dosages of the stuff in the victims. The victims’ bodies, mostly, since few survive the actual process of, well, survival. I didn’t need a lab report to tell me what was wrong with Marino’s girl, though… That fancy little truth was nothing but self-evident.

Real possessions look as much like a Linda Blair movie as a paper airplane hitting a house of cards looks like 9/11—the similarities are there but comparing the magnitude of the former to match even the smallest iota of weight carried by the latter is fundamentally, excruciatingly impossible. Cloning Jesus impossible. Real possessions carry a multitude of different symptoms, each more devastating than the last, and trying to rope Hollywood into portraying something beyond a William Peter Blatty stereotype is a waste of time and effort. (Cloning Jesus time and effort.) A real possession, one like Amanda Marino’s, starts slowly, almost like a cold, and resembles the early stages of HIV. The body loses all ability to fight infection, and the possessed becomes a plague haven, a veritable walking pestilence. Well, walking for as long as they’re able. The Diablo Codexa describes the loss of limb mobility as a cerebral illusion; the possessed succumbs to, and should be killed by, these infections, but the additional spiritual presence in their bodies unlocks a special portion of their brain that normally goes unused. This part of the brain supplants physical ability with telekinetic motion supplied entirely by the invading presence. Long story short, while emaciated by the demon, the possessed will be able to move and function as normal (and often, in ways defined in paranormal journals as hyper-normal). That’s where the head-spinning comes from, and a plethora of different crab walks, usually up and down creaky old staircases. Scriptwriters have a hard-on for those.

(I make a mental note, in between imagining Pete Townsend stocking up on discount post-holiday candy, not to bring the Codex with me to the bathroom anymore on nights when my bowels are thoroughly stuffed-up with slow-moving cheeses.)

Marino was desperate. His precious baby girl, eighteen and still a princess in his castle, was fading fast and if I didn’t act soon, there wouldn’t be enough of her soul left for me to salvage. They had waited far too long to collect my services and the demon had already devoured a good deal of her essence before my arrival. What may have happened, and what generally happens in cases where a priest or a non-denominational exorcist (such as myself) is summoned too late to the scene of a possession is disastrous. The soul is so far gone that, though physical ailments are reversed and bodily health is restored, the mind doesn’t always return to its previous state of existence. “Experts,” all three of us, call this the “Thrilla in Manilla” Effect—one fight takes so much out of a person that they’re never the same again. Survivors are often left comatose for months, and in worse case scenarios, find themselves clinically brain dead. Going in, I had no idea what was going to happen… All I could do was hope that the procedure went well and Amanda was luckier than statistics said she should be.

In retrospect, I probably should have told Marino before I began the cleansing ritual that his daughter had very little chance for a full post-op recovery. She was dead before I got to her, I think. And if I would’ve told him this then, he might not be sending every hitman in this and every other country of the world to kill me now.

It’s such bollocks.

…

I think I need a drink.