Demonic possession, and other sugarplum dreams...

At 9pm the night before last, Kan let out a bloodcurdling yelp. I was running to her, calling out all the while, but all she would do was scream my name. Sim was upstairs and got to her sooner. She found Kan standing in the hallway, staring straight ahead-- crying, gasping, hiccupping. There was something weird about her hands.

When I got there, the kid was hysterical. Unable to articulate anything. The gasping and panting continued in the manner of fifty-five year old marathon runner. I thought dimly that she was having some sort of seizure. Frantically, I scanned her body for some sort of wound, thinking that this was what clearly happens when you don’t clean the child’s room properly. Anything could be on that floor.

Then she yelled at me, “OKAAAAAAY!!!!.” A very loud and deep yell. Sim and I sat back. I hesitated. See, her voice is usually a sort of high-pitched princessy chirp.

I said nervously, “Did you have a bad dream?” She was still staring unseeingly straight ahead, not at either one of us. And it occurred to me that she wasn’t blinking at all. A very bad sign, I thought to myself wishing I’d turned on the light.

“Was it a bad dream?” I repeated.
“I couldn’t do it to you,” she ground out.
“Hmm?” I made out Aaron wriggling anxiously in the background.
“There were three… They told me to.”
Oh shit, I thought, wishing the house were lit up like a Christmas tree and that there was 80s music playing to discredit the situation.

Then. She grabbed my shirt, twisting it and pulling me to her. She looked straight at me for the first time and in that same deep voice yelled, “I WANNA GO!!!!!”

I think I might have passed out had she not been practically holding me upright. “Go where, sweetheart?” I asked aiming for a merry, let’s go to the circus kind of voice.

“ANYWHERE!!!” my small sister bellowed. “We have to get OUT OF THIS HOUSE!!”

In a move that was more mature than I thought myself capable of, I did not in fact go tearing out of the house and into the street grasping a crucifix. Instead, I got her to sleep and Sim and I had the following exuberant dialogue: It’s fine! No, yeah, it’s FINE! It’s totally FINE! Sleep well!

Afterwards, I looked up night terrors instead of exorcisms. Turns out, she had all the right symptoms for it. Which I guess is slightly preferable to demonic possession. But this might be a reoccurring event? Awesome. And you’re not supposed to wake them out of the trance, which is counter to everything in me. I was close to commanding she stop being terrifying right this minute young lady.

Later, Sim told me about her hands. They were clawlike and twisted. Uh-huh. And the next day, when I asked her timidly about the bad dream, she smiled brightly up at me and said, “What dream?”

Aaron broke in: “Ehhhh, Hannah, what would happen if everything had alcohol in it? Like the banana, and the water, and everything? Would I feel good?”

I was unable to answer, having been transported by a blissful vision of a more magnificent world. Yes Aaron, you would feel good.