Declan Hyde
Ashlynn wiped down the counters post-surgery. Only minutes ago, a dog had nearly died here on the operating table as the vet attempted to remove a cancerous tumor. But things had come out okay in the end, and the dog was able to be stabilized. That left Ashlynn with the grimy task of cleaning up the blood and other substances now smeared all over the room and surgical instruments.
“The doc said the dog’s heart stopped beating for a few minutes,” Ashlynn remarked to Briton, the other veterinary assistant who was helping her with clean up. “She died and came back. Crazy.”
Briton grunted as he hefted the trash bag up and tied it off. “Crazy how that can happen. You know Hadley died and came back.”
Hadley was the vet receptionist. She had only been with their clinic a few weeks and had managed to diffuse all of Ashlynn’s attempts to get to know her. “No. I didn’t know that. You got her to talk to you?”
“Basically had to pry her mouth open but yeah. She said she sees spirits and stuff.”
Ashlynn didn’t know whether to laugh or shiver. “What? No way.”
“Dude, ask her. She was telling me all about it the other day.”
Ashlynn finished her task of wiping down the room, tossed the dirty rags into a hamper, stripped her gloves, and went to check the lobby and call the next patient in. After she got them situated, she found herself moving toward the front desk. Death had never really bothered Ashlynn, and she had seen her fair share of animal fatalities during her tenure at the clinic. Despite a few questions, she considered herself fairly devout, but she’d always been curious about the afterlife. Who wasn’t? So Briton’s insight into Hadley provided an interesting opportunity to potentially glean a glimpse into the workings of the next life.
Ashlynn leaned against the wall near the front desk and smiled down at Hadley.
Hadley met her gaze for a moment, then looked down at the floor. Ashlynn decided the best way to approach this was to just be upfront about it. “Hey, so I was just talking to Briton and he was telling me that you had a near-death experience and now you can see spirits or something like that. I’m being serious when I say that is so cool. I would love to hear more about that if you’re open to talking about it.”
Hadley was happy to talk about it.
She told Ashlynn about how when she was growing up they lived on a farm with a pond and one day while she was out sliding around on the ice, the ice beneath her broke, sending her down into the icy depths. By the time her dad managed to fish her out she was basically a corpsicle and they had to use the paddles to revive her. She’d been dead for six minutes.
“That’s crazy,” Ashlynn said, folding her arms. “And what about the spirits? Are they spirits of people that have died?”
“Oh yeah. I don’t talk about it that often because it freaks people out.”
“Do you see any right now?”
Hadley nodded.
Ashlynn didn’t know if she believed Hadley, but it was fun to at least consider the possibilities. “What do you see?”
“There’s a dark spirit a few feet behind you.”
Ashlynn turned. There was nothing there. “Really?”
“I see him a lot. He follows you around. He likes to hold your hand.”
Now Ashlynn really did shiver and couldn’t help taking another look behind her. “You’re messing with me.” Perhaps this had been a mistake. She had hoped to learn about the afterlife, not hear a ghost story.
“No. I see him all the time. Almost everyone has one.”
“Everyone has a spirit that follows them around? Great, now I’m never going to be able to sleep again.”
Hadley laughed, spinning idly in her chair. “That’s another reason I don’t talk about it. I think most people prefer not to know.”
“What do they do? The spirits, I mean.”
Hadley shrugged. “I don’t know, but I hear them whispering to people.”
Ashlynn decided it was time to end the conversation. She didn’t want to know anymore. The phrase ignorance is bliss no longer applied, but she figured any degree of ignorance was better than none.
Ashlynn arrived home around five thirty that evening. She lived alone in the upstairs apartment of a subdivided house that desperately needed a remodel. But Ashlynn adored her quaint and quirky space despite the building’s age. There were sloping ceilings in both bedrooms, and small doors in some of the walls only high enough for midgets to squeeze through. Ashlynn had no idea what they were for; she’d never been able to get them open.
As she went about her evening routine—working out with free weights, doing laundry, prepping dinner—she realized at one point that she was carrying an anxious weight around in her chest and constantly looking over her shoulder. It’s Hadley’s stupid gift of sight! ‘The spirit likes to hold your hand?’ Ashlynn hadn’t been creeped out earlier, but now that she was alone, that proclamation was really affecting her. And what kind of spirits were they? Were they nice ones or evil ones?
Was it possible that the spirit was here? Now? Was it watching her?
She scanned her eyes around the living room but saw nothing except empty space and cluttered shelves.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled up, and Ashlynn decided to say a prayer. She knelt right there in the middle of the room and whispered the words.
Heavenly Father. . . I’m worried. I pray that no spirits can do me harm and that I can get over these feelings of fear and dread which have made their way into my heart. Bless me with your Spirit to comfort me. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
She felt mildly better after that and was able to distract herself by watching videos on her phone and making dinner. But her mind drifted back to the possibility that something was in here with her, invading the sanctuary of her home. Was she ever truly alone? Had she ever been? The thought needled at her.
She was splayed out on the couch when she decided to try and test a developing new theory. “Hello?” she called out.
There was no response.
Suddenly she felt very childish. There was nothing here and she was imagining things for nothing.
A faint thump sounded from the other room—the spare bedroom.
Ashlynn’s heart skipped a beat.
Had she really heard that? Or was it just her overactive imagination?
“Is someone there?” She sat up, ears peeled now for any faint flutters.
She stood and moved to the doorway, looking down the hall into the darkness of the unused bedroom. The door was ajar. Had she left it open? She couldn’t remember and couldn’t conceive of any reason why she would. She inched down the corridor and reaching one hand into the unknowable darkness, yanked the door shut.
Her heartbeat elevated, Ashlynn shuffled back to the front door and turned the lock. She instantly felt better. Then she turned and looked out the dark window.
A face in the glass looked back at her. Smiling.
A demon’s face.
Ashlynn whirled away, eyes scanning the apartment, but there was no one there with her. Just a face in the glass. A devilish white smile that was too wide set against coal black flesh.
Still, that did not stop her from running to her bedroom, throwing herself on her bed, and hiding beneath the covers.
Nothing could get her here. That was the unspoken rule: beneath the covers you were safe. Ashlynn stayed there, trying to talk herself down from her paranoia. Had she really seen that face in the glass? She was on the second floor, so it couldn’t have been a face on the outside. It had to have been a reflection. But there was no one in here with her! How could she have seen anything?
Her mind turned in circles until she grew weary. She watched videos of cute animals on her phone until eventually she calmed down and fell asleep.
With the morning light came reason, and things did not seem as strange as they had the night before. She had probably just imagined the face in the window. There had to be some kind of explanation for what she had experienced.
Once she was at work and around animals and people, the face was nothing but a distant dream. She lost herself in her work, but when she looked up at the clock, she was surprised to see that the day was halfway over. However, when Hadley arrived for her afternoon shift she couldn’t forget her experience. She waited until they were alone, until the lobby had cleared out, to bring it up.
“I think I may have seen something last night.”
“Seen what?”
“My spirit.”
Hadley turned to her. “What do you mean?”
“I was thinking about our conversation, and I tried to talk to it, just as an experiment, and I thought I saw a face in the glass. It might have just been my imagination, I don’t know.”
Hadley’s expression grew taut. “Don’t talk to it. Ever! Don’t acknowledge it, don’t talk to it.”
“Why not?” Hadley’s insistence caused Ashlynn’s heart to quicken.
“Because. It will gain power. It wants to be seen . . . and heard.”
Hadley had refused to elaborate further, telling Ashlynn that the less she knew the better off she would be. Of course this answer was less than satisfactory, and Ashlynn spent the rest of the day wondering what Hadley could have meant.
It will gain power.
What kind of power? Such an idea seemed so silly. How did Hadley know? How much did Ashlynn trust Hadley’s opinion anyway? For all she knew, Hadley could be making it all up. Ashlynn believed in spirits, but she didn’t know if she believed in all this.
It wants to be seen . . .
Ashlynn left work without saying goodbye to Hadley. She was determined to enjoy her evening, and made plans with friends to go out to dinner. But just after five-thirty, she got a text from her friend saying she would have to cancel, and once again Ashlynn was left facing an evening by herself in an empty apartment.
Suddenly, the place seemed eerie. The sun was beginning to set, taking with it the safety of the day. She turned her TV on for background noise and began chopping vegetables for dinner in her puny excuse for a kitchen.
As the knife came down to slice the head off of a carrot, Ashlynn caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye. It had come from the living room.
Ashlynn had no pets, despite her love for animals. Her landlord had forbidden them. She was entirely alone.
So what could have moved?
Logic told her it was probably just a shadow from a passing car on the road outside. She hesitantly edged into the living room.
There was a figure sitting on the couch. A living shadow, in the form of a man. Its skin was coal black, its eyes burned like fire. And it was smiling.
Ashlynn screamed.
Instinctively she backed away from the figure on her couch, her back ramming into the door knob of her front door. The pain caused her to momentarily look away, and when her eyes found her couch again, it was vacant.
As soon as she had calmed down enough to think, Ashlynn called her bishop.
Bishop Hatch arrived twenty minutes later. He had said he was playing basketball, but he came dressed in a suit and tie. How he had time to change at superhero speed and drive over to her place in that time was a mystery.
As soon as he stepped through the door, Ashlynn instantly felt better.
“Hello Ashlynn,” he said, taking a seat on the couch. “Tell me what’s been going on.”
She told him all about her conversations with Hadley, her trying to talk to this spirit that was supposedly following her, and the thing she had found sitting on her couch. Right where he was currently sitting, in fact.
When she was finished, the bishop sat in silence for a moment, fingers meshing.
“You know,” he began, “I remember hearing someone quote a general authority once who said that there are enough evil spirits roaming the earth for each of us to have seven. Or something like that. These spirits tempt us, but as far as I’m aware, they can’t harm us.”
Ashlynn wrung her fingers. She sat in a chair a few feet away from Bishop Hatch. “But what about possession? That’s a thing, right?”
Bishop Hatch nodded. “Yes, we know that from the Bible. But I’ve never encountered an actual possession, and I don’t know anyone who has. That kind of thing doesn’t seem to happen too often, at least not as often as the movies suggest.”
“Is it true? That there are spirits following each of us?”
Bishop frowned, glancing briefly down at his feet. “We know that one third of the hosts of heaven were cast down to Earth. They’re here. They share the same fallen world. That’s doctrine. But I don’t know about spirits following us or being assigned to certain people—that’s out of my realm of expertise. What I do know is that the power of Christ is stronger than any devil. With one wave of his hand, he cast out a whole legion. Whatever their goals are, we have the power to send them away.”
“Can you do that? Can you send my demon away?”
Bishop Hatch smiled. “Ashlynn, that’s why I’m here. Will you kneel with me?”
Together they kneeled. Bishop bowed his head and began to speak. “Father in Heaven, by the power of the Melchizedek Priesthood, I dedicate this home. I ask that you will bless those who reside here with the influence and power of thy spirit. I ask you to help this be a place of spiritual learning and edification. I also ask that you if there are any malicious presences here that they be expelled, so that your love can fill these walls and the hearts of those who dwell here. This I ask in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”
Ashlynn opened her eyes. The room felt different, as if a filter had been removed from her eyes. The space was brighter, holier somehow. She smiled, relief filling her chest. She took a deep breath and relaxed as the anxiety ebbed from her body.
“And how about a blessing for good measure?” asked Bishop Hatch.
“Don’t you need a second person for that?”
“It always helps to have a second person,” said Bishop, “But it’s not mandatory.”
Ashlynn accepted the offer. Bishop Hatch laid his hands on her head and Ashlynn felt the Spirit rest upon her, dispelling any remaining influence of the adversary. Ashlynn didn’t know if she had ever had a clearer witness of the Spirit than in that moment.
But even if the evil entity was gone, it wasn’t really gone gone.
She shook Bishop’s hand and thanked him profusely.
“Anything else I can do for you?” he asked.
“I do have a question,” Ashlynn mumbled, forcing herself to look him in the eye. “We can drive them out of a building . . . but those spirits are always going to be around. Right? I mean, there are thousands of them, maybe billions, all around us, all the time. How do we live, knowing that we’re surrounded by evil spirits all the time? I’ll never be able to not think about that!”
Bishop Hatch chuckled to himself as he put one hand on the frame of the open door. “Yes, they’re always here. My advice to you, Ashlynn, is not to worry about them. They’re there, they’ll always be there. Just as dangerous humans will always be out there. We can never get away from that completely.”
“Gee, thanks, Bishop. Now I have to worry about that too.”
“My point is,” he said, plowing on, “that all you need to do is focus on other things. Good things. Read your scriptures. Go to the temple. Build relationships with those around you. Don’t be idle. Fill your time with good stuff, and you won’t have time to dwell on . . . well, all that other stuff. And if dark thoughts do come, say a prayer. The Lord is always ready to assist in our times of need. And perfect light casteth out all fear.”
“Thanks Bishop,” Ashlynn said, and as he left, she closed the door behind him.
It was too late to go to the temple, but Ashlynn went to the library and checked out several books on spiritual topics she’d been meaning to study further but had never found the time. Even after reading over an hour of commentary of Isaiah she still wasn’t sure she understood the guy any better, but it helped to distract her and that’s what mattered most right now. She read there for the next few hours. Being around other people helped. And when she returned home, she spent the night in peace, unmolested by malevolent spirits.
Ashlynn went to work the next day with renewed pep in her step. Her chat with the bishop had really helped her to see things clearly. She had been thinking of new ways to keep herself occupied too. She could bake cookies for the sisters she ministered to, or do some family history work online later.
It seemed that things were finally returning to normal. Better than normal, even.
The morning passed like a dream, and already it was time for her lunch break. But as she moved for the kitchen, Hadley stormed through the doorway. Her face changed when she saw Ashlynn. Her eyes widened, and she stopped in her tracks.
“What?” Ashlynn asked.
“What did you do?”
“What do you mean?” She intuited that Hadley was referring to her spirit vision. “I called my Bishop.”
“You made him angry,” Hadley whispered, a single tear running down her cheek. Her eyes were not on Ashlynn but on the empty space around her. “He invited his friends.”
Declan Hyde is a lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He lives somewhere in the Rocky Mountains with his black cat, Kokaubeam. When he is not exploring abandoned ghost towns or decoding ancient poems in an effort to find buried treasure, he can be found in his home consuming horror in all its forms. His debut novella, The Resurrection Box: A Tale of Mormon Horror is available on Amazon.
