Chapter 11 "Sanguis Clamat"
KELLY
Kelly's apartment was small and cluttered in the way of college students living alone for the first time textbooks piled on every surface, dishes in the sink, a basketball hoop attached to the back of his bedroom door.
He'd been in the middle of reading a case study on dissociative identity disorder when Maya called, and now he cleared space on his couch, anxiety building in his chest.
Something wrong with Ember.
The words had been echoing in his head since he hung up. Ember, who'd seemed off lately. Distant. Tired. Maya had mentioned the party last Friday, how Ember had gotten drunk and disoriented.
But this sounded worse than a hangover.
When Maya arrived, she looked terrible dark circles under her eyes, hair pulled into a messy bun, hands shaking as she accepted the water bottle Kelly offered.
"Okay," Kelly said, sitting across from her. "Tell me everything."
Maya took a breath. "Wednesday morning. I was getting ready for class, trying to wake Ember up. But she wouldn't wake up. She was... talking. But not in English. Or Spanish. Or any language I recognized."
Kelly leaned forward. "What did it sound like?"
"Old. Formal. Like something from a period drama, but darker. Angrier." Maya pulled out her phone. "I recorded part of it. Just a few seconds before I got too scared."
She played the audio.
Kelly listened to Ember's voice except it wasn't quite Ember's voice. The tone was similar, but there was something off about the cadence, the pronunciation. And the words themselves...
"Sanguis clamat e terra. Spinea corona pro sanguine regum. Nemo effugere potest..."
The recording ended.
"Latin?" Kelly said slowly. "Ember doesn't know Latin."
"I know. I Googled it. The first part means 'Blood cries from the earth.' The rest is something about thorns and kings and no one escaping." Maya's voice shook. "But Kelly, that's not even the worst part."
"What's the worst part?"
"I tried to wake her up. Shook her, called her name, nothing worked. And then" Maya wrapped her arms around herself. "She sat up. Just... straight up, like someone pulled her with strings. Her eyes were open, but they weren't her eyes. They were completely black. Not just the pupils everything. Like staring into empty holes."
Kelly felt ice slide down his spine. "Are you sure? It wasn't just the lighting, or"
"I'm sure. I was two feet away from her. Her eyes were black, Kelly. Completely black. And she kept talking in that language, and I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe, I just stood there frozen while my best friend looked like something out of a horror movie."
"What happened then?"
"She fell back down. Just collapsed onto her pillow. And then she woke up normal. Asked me what was wrong, why I looked scared. She had no memory of it. None."
Kelly sat back, his mind racing through everything he knew about psychology, about sleep disorders, about neurological conditions that could cause this kind of behavior.
Nothing fit.
"Has it happened again?" he asked.
"Not that I've seen. But she's been having blackouts. Losing time. And Kelly" Maya's eyes filled with tears. "I'm scared. I'm terrified. Because I don't think this is medical. I think something else is going on. Something we can't explain."
Kelly wanted to argue. Wanted to offer rational explanations. But he'd spent enough time with his father, Father David Thorne, exorcist and demonologist to know that sometimes the rational explanation wasn't the right one.
"Have you noticed anything else unusual?"
Maya thought for a moment. "She's been having weird dreams. Or at least, I think they're dreams. She talks in her sleep sometimes not in that language, but like she's having conversations with someone. And there was this one night she was crying, saying 'I didn't do it' over and over."
"Didn't do what?"
"I don't know. When I asked her about it in the morning, she said she didn't remember."
Kelly stood, pacing. "Okay. Okay. We need to approach this systematically. First, we need to rule out medical causes"
"I already researched that. Sleep disorders, seizures, dissociation none of it explains the language or the eyes, Kelly."
"Then we need to consider other possibilities." Kelly pulled out his laptop. "You said you Googled the Latin phrases. What else did you find?"
"A bunch of stuff about demonic possession, which sounds insane"
"My father is an exorcist."
Maya stared at him. "What?"
"My father. Father David Thorne. He's a Catholic priest, and his specialty is demonology and exorcism. I grew up hearing about this stuff." Kelly opened his browser. "I'm not saying Ember is possessed. But if something supernatural is happening, my dad would know how to identify it."
"You're serious."
"Unfortunately, yes. I wish I wasn't." Kelly started typing. "Tell me exactly what she said again. Every word you remember."
For the next hour, they worked together Maya recounting every detail of that morning, Kelly researching phrases, symptoms, historical cases. His father's books were in storage, but Kelly had digital copies of some of the texts.
"Here," Kelly said finally, pulling up a scanned page from a 19th-century manuscript on possession. "Listen to this: 'The possessed may speak in tongues unknown to them, demonstrate knowledge of hidden things, and exhibit eyes devoid of light windows to the void within.'"
"That's exactly what I saw," Maya whispered.
"And there's more. It says possession can be partial the entity only takes control during specific times, usually when the host is sleeping or in an altered state. The host often has no memory of what occurs during these episodes."
Maya's face went pale. "So something is inside her? Using her body?"
"Maybe. Or it could be spiritual attachment, or" Kelly stopped, frowning at his screen. "Wait. What did you say about last Friday? About Ember at the party?"
"She got drunk. I found her upstairs, really out of it. We went home."
"And that's when all this started? After the party?"
Maya thought back. "Yeah. I mean, she was fine before Friday. Normal. And then Saturday she slept most of the day, and Sunday she seemed okay but tired. The episode happened Wednesday morning."
Kelly's fingers flew across the keyboard. "Tyler Brett died Saturday morning. After that party."
"I know. Everyone knows. It's all anyone talks about." Maya paused. "Why?"
"I'm not sure. But" Kelly pulled up another search. "There was another death. I saw it on the news this morning. A 28 year old guy named Rayan Walsh. Same mysterious circumstances. The article doesn't give details, but my roommate's girlfriend works at the hospital, and she said both bodies had weird marks on them."
"What kind of marks?"
"Like a burn or a brand. On their foreheads. Shaped like a rose."
The room went very quiet.
"Kelly," Maya said slowly. "What if it's not a coincidence? What if, what if Ember"
"Don't," Kelly said sharply. "Don't go there. Ember wouldn't hurt anyone."
"Not Ember. But whatever's inside her"
"We don't know anything for sure. We're just speculating." But Kelly's heart was racing. Because if Maya was right, if something had possessed Ember at that party, and if that something was connected to these deaths...
"We need help," Maya said. "Professional help. Your dad can we talk to him?"
"He's out of town until next week. Retreat at the diocese." Kelly ran his hands through his hair. "But I can look into this more. There are resources, people who study this stuff."
"How long will that take?"
"I don't know. But in the meantime, you need to watch her. Document everything. Times, behaviors, anything unusual."
"I've been doing that." Maya pulled out her phone again. "I started a note. Look Tuesday night she was talking in her sleep again. Wednesday afternoon she zoned out in the middle of a conversation, just stared at nothing for like thirty seconds. This morning I found her standing at the window at 3 AM, just staring outside. When I asked what she was doing, she said she didn't remember getting out of bed."
Kelly read through the list, his stomach sinking with each entry. "This is escalating."
"I know. That's why I called you. Because I'm scared, Kelly. And I don't know how much longer I can pretend everything's fine."
"You're not alone anymore," Kelly said firmly. "We'll figure this out. Together."
Maya nodded, wiping her eyes. "Thank you. I know this is insane"
"It's not insane. Or maybe it is, but that doesn't make it less real." Kelly saved all their research to a shared folder. "I'll start digging deeper tonight. See what I can find. And in the meantime"
His phone buzzed. A text from Ember: Study session went great! Adrian is really nice. I might actually understand sociology now lol
Kelly stared at the text, emotions warring in his chest. Relief that she was okay. Jealousy that she'd spent the afternoon with Adrian Crane.
"That's Ember," Maya said, reading his expression. "She texted me too. Sounds happy."
"We can't tell her," Kelly said. "Not yet. Not until we know more."
"Agreed. She'd just freak out. Or think we're crazy."
"Then we keep researching. Quietly. And we watch her."
"And if something happens? If she has another episode?"
Kelly met Maya's eyes. "Then we do whatever it takes to save her."