The Devil Dances by K.H. Koehler

Sarah?” I asked as calmly as I could. I knew if the house were wired with electricity every appliance would be overloading about now. Power and rage poured off Sarah like heat off a desert deadpan, more than any single little girl could possibly have. I thought it was possible that there was more than one of the fallen inside her. There might be a legion, for all I knew… or cared, really. One demon or a million, they were all going the way of Elvis. “Why go into Sarah? What do you want from her?”
    The thing inside Sarah glared at me like a snake. It smiled with bestial lust. “She welcomed it. She spread her pussy for him like the good little slut she was. She welcomed him into her body!”
    The creature’s answer confused me. I didn’t understand who “he” was. I didn’t understand what it was talking about, but I was sure it was linked to Sarah’s possession somehow. Usually, when you open one door, many things come through. That was the reason the demonic host could not usually affect the young and the innocent. All I could figure was that Sarah was not as innocent as she had first seemed… yet she was not yet old enough for her own Rumspringa…
    “Who are you and how did you get into Sarah?” I demanded to know.
    A new sound came out of Sarah’s throat, a tiny mewling noise I recognized as belonging to a young girl. Sarah. Finally, Sarah was in distress. A wave seemed to pass over her face, and for a moment all the tension and worldliness left it and I was looking down into the sweating, terrified face of a young girl trapped in her own version of hell.
“Mama…”
she said, and then the wave passed and the demon was back again.
    I realized this couldn’t go on. I couldn’t keep interrogating the demon without hurting little Sarah. I squeezed my fist and the demon screamed in agony, over and over like a siren, and thrashed its head back and forth while Sarah’s body bowed like there was a rope tied around her middle, arching her slender frame up at an almost unnatural angle.
    Time to end this circus—even if I couldn’t get answers. I took a deep breath. “I, the World’s Inheritor, drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies and sects. In the name of Ha-Satan, and by the power of my father’s house, I command thee to leave this servant of Christ and to dwell in the darkness of the everlasting pit. As I will it, so mote it be.”
    I drew the symbol of my father’s house over her face, not the pentacle or pentagram that was so popular in horror fiction and occult movies—that sign was actually pagan, not satanic—but the older symbol, the Morning Star, the real one that only some of the most dedicated scholars and priests on earth knew.
    Sarah erupted into new screams and her hands flashed out, catching me at the sides of my face, scratching my cheeks with her fingernails as the unclean spirits were wrenched from her and flung into darkness. The scratches hurt, but I didn’t mind so much if it meant I was freeing little Sarah from her tormentors. I’d had worse done to me, much, much worse. It lasted only a few seconds, then her eyes cleared and she slowly and peacefully fell back onto her pillows as the room filled with the perfume of roses and hyacinth.
    She let out a kitten-like cry and covered her face. She had dislodged the handmade quilt in her struggles, and it was only then that I spotted her small, but still very noticeable baby bump. Seconds later, her mother and father were there, comforting her and speaking lowly in Pennsylvania Dutch.
    I stood up, stood back, even as Sarah’s mother drew the quilt up over her daughter in modesty. I realized my work here was done. I stepped outside the room, and old Mrs. Knapp escorted me down the stairs. We walked in silence with the unanswered question hanging between us
    Eventually, Mrs. Knapp, sensing my unease, said, “She is not the first. There are