Chapter Text
”When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest”.
The first day, it was just a feeling of hunger that disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. The demon dismissed it as a mere oddity that came with being trapped in that human container. Even so, over time, the need to eat or drink seemed to increase, hammering his skull with humiliating insistence.
The following days were worse. Fatigue seemed to have spread throughout his physical body, accompanied by a shameful need to lie down anywhere reasonably comfortable, like the dusty, rusty ducts of the hotel.
The demon had been mentally reviewing the possible causes of these pathetic ailments, none of which made sense. He had subsisted in that container for hundreds of years and nothing like this had ever happened to him, not even when he had mutilated a limb. A curse was his second theory, but no one was stupid enough to curse him: Abaddon the Destroyer, the King of the Locusts, the Apollyon.
None of it made sense, at least not to the demon. Over time, something had changed in him, almost imperceptible at first but painfully obvious as the decades passed. The problem was that he had no idea what it was.
“You alright, buddy?” Nathan asked, his voice, as friendly as it was ghostly, only seemed to stoke his foul mood.
Abaddon snapped his head around with a jerky, undignified movement, his blue eyes changing to a hellish red in a matter of seconds.
“Of course I'm fine! Do you dare to question a being of my magnitude, you domestic specter? Withdraw that stupid question before I use your ectoplasm to clean the dust from my favorite skull.”
The ghost floated closer, ignoring his threat with exasperating calm, already accustomed to it after sharing space with the demon for a while.
I was just wondering. I've seen you staring at the same dark corner for six hours. And for the record, do you have a rag doll in your lap?"
The demon's eyes rolled down in horror. An old, unstitched wool doll had materialized in his arms, and he was holding it with a strong and inexplicably comforting grip.
“So what if I do?” Abaddon retorted, throwing the doll at him, which of course passed right through the ghost. However, his chest felt inexplicably empty... Had they opened a hole in his chest because of a measly toy?
Nathan blinked his bright, kind eyes. “Whatever, mate. It’s just that you’ve been looking a lot more tired than usual lately. I know you don’t need sleep, but a nap wouldn’t hurt.”
Abaddon growled and turned away, the shadows in the corridor twisting momentarily as if his irritation had weight and form.
“Sleep is for the weak and the mortal flesh. I rest with the eternal suffering of souls.”
With that, he slipped into the first duct he found, a comfort that only the rusty, cramped walls of the hotel’s ventilation system could provide.
“Father!”
That shrill voice filled the space. An old-looking house appeared in his field of vision along with a face he would never forget: the bastard who had locked him up in that human. Even now, the man seemed to maintain that same expression of disapproval and absolute confidence with which he had condemned him.
The smell of damp wood and unlit candles filled the hallway. His container—not much larger than Abaddon was now—knelt on a handful of dry peas, his hands clasped in forced prayer. His knees were already burning, yet he did not dare to move.
His father, whom he could now see more clearly, stood in the doorway with a gaze as cold as ice.
“I have told you that a good man memorizes the word of God before the light goes out. How many times must we go over this? Will you recite Verse 14 from the Book of Isaiah? Or should I leave you here until dawn?” His father’s voice was more effective than any shout, more terrifying.
He tried to remember, but fear and cold had made him forget. He could only murmur, “...And I will punish the world for their evil...”
The sound of a cane hitting the ground forced him to be quiet. “That’s not the correct verse. Is your mind so focused on worldly trifles that you cannot remember the quote? Or has evil finally caught up with you?”
The boy, feeling a sharp pain in his knees, just wanted to cry, but something inside him knew that would only result in greater punishment.
“I’m not just talking about tonight,” the man began, approaching the boy from behind. “I’m talking about your soul. It is restless, I can feel it, and that restlessness will only open the doors to evil. You will stay here and pray until I determine that you feel true repentance, and not just fear of punishment.”
Abaddon sat up abruptly. What the hell had that been? A vision? A bloody curse? The memory evaporated as quickly as it had arrived, yet it left a foul taste in his mouth. Now it was official: he needed Esther. Perhaps she would know what had happened, or better yet, why it had happened and how to stop it.
He left the ducts in search of the witch. It was no longer night; the sun had risen, as if that memory had possessed him for hours. The sun was already shining brightly in the sky, and the hotel seemed much quieter than usual, with no ghosts wandering around.
He passed through the common room where, fortunately, he found Esther. She seemed to be surrounded by books from that mundane place called 'school'. Noticing his presence, the girl looked up, and her eyes lit up with a mixture of curiosity and cheerful mischief.
"Abaddon! I haven't seen you in days! Where have you been hiding? Are you plotting something? Tell me everything!"
“There is something... something wrong with me. This prison is failing.”
Esther tilted her head, her usual curiosity immediately piqued. “Failing? How?”
“Hunger,” the demon growled, “not the kind of hunger I used to have for chaos, but a physical void—a yearning for food.”
“Wait, you don’t need to eat? I’ve seen you eat plenty of times. You even finished Ben’s s’mores last month in a single day. Uncle Nathan tells stories about how you used to eat squirrels along with the acorns they left.”
“The demonic energy I used to possess this body made needs like eating and sleeping unnecessary for me,” Abaddon retorted. “I choose to eat when gluttony amuses me. This feeling is different from that.”
“I have a book,” Esther shrugged, feigning disinterest, and pointed towards the stairs. “It’s about exorcisms. Maybe it’ll help you.”
“Read? Me? I am the personification of destruction, a being whose knowledge spans eons and who existed long before the ashes of that pathetic language. I will not lower my infinite intellect by learning to read those ephemeral tongues that change every two centuries. I call it a monumental waste of time that I could use to spread my word, gain followers just to massacre them, and wipe out neighboring religions.”
“Right…” Esther merely closed her school book, already familiar with the illiterate demon. “I can help you anyway! It’s better than doing my math homework, come on!”
They both went up to Esther's room, a sanctuary with runes engraved on the doors, each bearing various meanings. She went straight to a crowded bookshelf where she searched for one of the many black magic books she owned. She pulled one out with faded lettering on the cover, presumably the title, which was too blurred to read easily.
Although the demon seriously doubted that anything useful would come of it—based on his experience, humans tended to misinterpret demonic behavior—he knew the book was probably pure verbiage. Still, perhaps something useful could be gleaned from it.
“Here it is! I always knew this book would be useful to me, you know? I found it in the hotel attic, hidden among several passages. I’m sure one of the former owners of the hotel tried to banish you.”
Abaddon frowned with utter disdain.
“Banish me? No one banishes the great Abaddon. Perhaps one or two pathetic priests tried, but now hurry up and open it. It was a faded paper relic. Whatever is disturbing my horrific existence must be eradicated before I am forced to take another stupid nap.”
Esther, unfazed, continued her research, opening the massive volume titled “Compendium Vinculorum Diabolicorum et Captivitatis Animarum” (Compendium of Demonic Chains and Captivity of Souls).
“Let’s see first... you haven’t had horns or wings growing on you recently, right? Okay, no…”
The girl continued leafing through the pages in search of something useful. Most of them dealt with cases of partial possession—or, in simpler terms, demons that decomposed their hosts before abandoning them—but that was not Abaddon’s situation. After a few minutes, her enthusiasm waned. Perhaps the book had been useless after all, but then something caught her attention. In the last few pages, there was mention of one final case, the rarest one, in small print.
“Aha! I think I found something,” Esther said, resting her finger on a specific section of a page.
Abaddon, who had been distracting himself by trying to melt the door handle with a lighter he found nearby, came back over.
Esther read aloud, in a moderately dramatic tone:
“In the extremely rare case that the original soul of the host has not been completely consumed or appeased, a phenomenon called ‘Reversio Carceris’ may occur.”
Esther glanced quickly at Abaddon, who was standing stiff as a board beside her.
“This is estimated to happen only after an extremely long period of time, allowing the fragments of the soul to attempt to resurface. The symptoms vary depending on the power of the demon and the persistence of the soul, but generally, the demon will begin to experience basic human needs such as hunger and thirst or unusual feelings of attachment to mundane objects or people.”
Abaddon recalled for a few seconds the vague image of that rag doll he had taken from somewhere he couldn't remember—the one that left a void in his chest that he didn't understand.
Esther remained oblivious to the demon’s internal conflict.
“In even rarer cases, if coexistence continues, the soul of the host and the demon may begin to merge, creating a new entity.”
Abaddon said nothing, yet he felt a burst of rage. His still-tiny hand crashed into the wooden floor, leaving a black mark of dubious origin.
“Blasphemous rubbish!” he shouted, his voice trembling slightly. This couldn’t be happening. “I destroyed that piece of rubbish centuries ago!”
Esther blinked, not particularly surprised by the demon's sudden outburst.
“I haven’t finished reading yet,” she said, using her finger as a bookmark, skipping over the illegible part that had been worn away by time. “Surely there must be a solution, some ritual or something similar, you know, to destroy the soul again.”
The demon, still hunched over, watched intently as the human read what were, to him, illegible symbols.
“Here it is! The book is very worn, but you can still make something out. It must be a spell to appease the original soul or something similar.”
“Will that reverse the contamination?” hissed the demon. He was willing to do anything. He was a shrewd demon and would not give up so easily, especially not to the soul of a weak human whom he should have suppressed many years ago.
I suppose so,” Esther began, reviewing the text. “We need virgin squid ink, virgin blood, hair from the container, and a human skull.”
Abaddon frowned, puzzled by the ingredients.
“That sounds ridiculously fake,” Abaddon said, crossing his arms skeptically. “Do you even have all that?”
“Squid ink? I’ve got it.” Esther opened a leaky jar with the word ‘Tempera’ written on it in permanent marker. The ink inside was suspiciously thick and black. “I convinced Mom to buy it online for art class, but I actually use it to make art on the school bathroom walls. Virgin blood... that shouldn’t be hard to get, right? After all, we have Ben, don’t we? And blood has no gender.”
“There are hundreds of corpses scattered around here; we just need to dig until we find something,” replied Abaddon, vaguely remembering places where he had found corpses and stolen bones.
“Good! I’ll go get Ben’s blood. Meet me here as soon as you have what we need.”
With that, they went their separate ways, the demon heading for the forest and the human to Ben's room.
———————-
A few hours later, they had both reconvened in Esther’s room. They had obtained what they needed, though some collateral damage had been incurred, such as Ben's nose, which now sported a band-aid, and the body of some specter was about to be desecrated. Not to mention Abaddon, who was now covered in mud.
The demon now had a visibly yellowed human skull with some cracks here and there. He tossed the bone onto the side table.
Esther had already prepared the squid ink in a metal bowl (which she stole from the kitchen) and placed the skull inside. “Now, you will place your hand on the eye socket.”
Abaddon, without disobeying orders, put his hand in the eye socket, and at the same time, Esther poured Ben’s blood into it. Though there wasn't much liquid, it immediately began to bubble, leaving an unpleasant combination of metal, ozone, and sea air.
“And while that’s happening, I’ll recite some words in what may be Latin—nothing I haven’t done before. You’re in good hands.”
Esther placed her hands on the bubbling bowl and began to recite some words that at first had no effect, until her head throbbed so much it felt like it was going to explode.
“Clamamus ad caelum, voce sincera,
Ut anima surgat, pura et vera.
Daemon recedat, vincula cadant,
Lux Dei vincat, tenebrae vadant.”
(We cry out to heaven, with sincere voice, That the soul may rise, pure and true. May the demon retreat, may the chains fall, May the light of God prevail, may the darkness depart.)
A blinding glow spread throughout the room. When the demon opened his eyes, a figure identical to his container was lying on the floor.