Annabelle sat at her sister’s bedside as she did every day for nearly nine months. She felt drawn to her like a magnet, stronger than ever before. She had begged her parents to let her stay, to be the comfort Miranda needed, and they had agreed to allow her to do her schoolwork from home. Her father owned the school; Annabelle would get whatever she needed without question.
Multiple times a day, Miranda would begin to wail in agony, wrapping her arms around her growing abdomen. Annabelle would drop everything each time, jump out of bed during the night, all to lay a healing hand on her sister. It was the only thing that could ease the pain. Doctors were hesitant to give pain medication to a pregnant woman, and what she could receive did nothing. Her parents desperately prayed for Miranda, begging God to free their daughter from the powers of what they were certain was a demon growing inside her. They begged for His forgiveness for Miranda’s sins, to give her another chance at redemption after getting involved with a demon worshipper. But Miranda lay in bed, day after day, thin and frail and speechless. Her body and mind had withered so much while the creature inside her thrived.
Annabelle prayed too, but with Miranda, not over her. Though she rarely said more than a few words, Annabelle saw the faith in her sister’s eyes. She knew her sister would never willingly participate in summoning a demon. “Not me,” Miranda had squeaked out. “Tried to stop.”
“I know you didn’t do it,” Annabelle had said. “No matter what Mom and Daddy think, no matter what you’ve ever done, you have Jesus in your heart.”
“Yes.”
Miranda had been asked about the men that had attacked her, who they were, but it made her violently shake with terror. “Buriel,” was all she would say.
“Burial? Whose burial? They buried someone?”
“Buriel.” And that was all.
As Miranda’s pain worsened and came more often, it became harder for Annabelle to hide her powers. She had never needed to use her healing more than once in a great while, but now it was every few hours. It needed to be a secret, this she’d known since discovering it as a child by mending Miranda’s broken arm to keep her from getting in trouble for climbing a fence. That guide voice had been so insistent, Secret secret secret, and Miranda had promised to keep it too. If her parents ever found out, she would be on a pedestal beside her preacher father before millions of people around the country. And if he caught her saving his daughter from a demon’s violation, the televangelist would have even more power over his followers. Power that Annabelle had struggled to reel in her entire life.
So she sent her parents away anytime Miranda needed her, begged them and everyone to leave them in peace. She’d cover her hand in a blanket to block out the glow as her healing powers entered Miranda’s stomach, cooling the heat that radiated from there, easing the pain. The heat was so strange, so worrying, but no doctor could find anything wrong with the baby. It was perfect and healthy. The only explanation that the Colmyres would accept was the Evangelical doctor claiming it was because she was a vessel for a demon. Miranda’s womb held a creature with fire in its blood, and no amount of prayer was defeating it.
And now suddenly Miranda screamed in pure, violent agony, worse than what she’d shown on the night she was desecrated by evil. Annabelle could not stop it. Her sister’s stomach was so hot to the touch that it burned her hand. She begged God to give her some of those mystery powers that He’d given her that night, something to allow her to touch her, but she got nothing. No guide voice. No surges. Miranda began to bleed profusely, and Annabelle felt as if her own blood was draining too. As if her purpose in life was slipping away. Her heart was emptying.
As her parents prayed loudly with their hands over the in-home doctor and the EMTs that had arrived, begging for God to give them the strength to save their daughter, Annabelle sat in a corner, silent, staring. She did not pray. God had stopped listening to her. He was taking Miranda in the most vicious way, torturing her with unfathomable pain, spilling her blood until her bed was soaked red and the hands and clothes of the medical workers matched it, all of them recoiling in pain at the boiling substance. Annabelle could barely breathe as the minutes passed. She barely heard anyone’s voices other than someone saying the baby was coming fast, that they would have to deliver there. Then the screaming stopped and Annabelle collapsed on the floor.
Your purpose.
It was the guide voice. Annabelle lay in darkness, void of energy or emotion.
Your purpose continues.
A tiny blast of anger flared. You let my purpose die, she said in her mind. Let me die to be with her.
Your purpose continues. You are not done.
“Annabelle! Please, God, not both of my babies!”
Her mother’s voice was in her ear, shaking and sobbing. Annabelle opened her eyes but saw nothing but blurriness.
“Baby girl, talk to me! Say something.”
A baby’s cry filled the room. Annabelle heard the doctor yell, “No! Get that thing away. Take it away.”
“We’ll be taking him to the hospital,” one of the EMTs said, taken aback. “Who’s coming to meet us there?”
Sandra Colmyre stood. “No one! Take that vile creature out of this house of God. Lord, please cast away this evil thing, send him to hell where he belongs and bring back my daughter!”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Annabelle’s vision cleared instantly. She saw the EMTs staring at each other, one of them holding a blood-soaked, crying baby in thick towels. “No,” she said, getting to her hands and knees. “Don’t cast him away.” The words spilled out of her before she could comprehend that she was defending a supposed demon spawn.
“Annie, don’t you understand?” her mother said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “This thing killed your sister. I knew it should have been destroyed from the beginning. Your wisdom failed you this time, Annabelle. We shouldn’t have listened to you when you said we should allow it to be born.”
Annabelle was on her feet, energy returning. “Go,” she said to the EMTs. “We will be there.” To Sandra she said, “You and Daddy preach against abortion, yet now you wish you’d forced it on Miranda? You say abortion is murder but now it’s okay?”
“That thing is not a child! It was a parasite of evil that has taken an innocent life while beginning its own.”
“And what if Miranda had died then instead?”
While Sandra sobbed, her husband held her. “God gave up on her,” Robert said. “He knows she brought this upon herself with her sins.”
“She didn’t do it!” Annabelle shouted.
“God did not answer our prayers. Miranda was too deep in terrible sin, and he unleashed his wrath on her to punish her in life as he will in death, and to punish us for our failure to guide her to the light. And now a creature of evil is born. A son of Satan for all we know. We cannot have the devil in our house.”
Words poured through her head as if someone was emptying a pitcher into it. “But maybe that’s exactly what we need. Even if he truly is a demon, he’s a baby. He can’t hurt anyone like this. We can shelter him, raise him in our home with God’s love, smother whatever demonic powers are within him, if that’s even what he really is. We don’t know. But if he is, imagine if he were to be in a family that didn’t believe in God, one that might even follow the path of the devil. It will make him more powerful, right? We can counter that. Teach him to be a follower of Jesus, to have love in his heart. Who are we to turn our backs on someone who could truly benefit from our faith? Isn’t that your whole purpose, Daddy? To spread God’s love? Let’s shower this baby in God’s love. We have to try. And besides, he has to have at least a little of Miranda in him, right? So he’s all that’s left of her.”
Annabelle let out a deep breath as her parents stared at her. Their eyes were still wet from crying, and her mother still trembled. She waited patiently for them to argue. Though they rarely did argue the wisdom that spilled into her brain at the perfect moments without warning, this time she expected a full fight. She knew most parents would rarely take such advice from a fourteen-year-old, but she vowed to not back down.
“I think…” Robert began, holding his only daughter’s gaze, “we’ll need to think about this.”
* * *
The hospital required that Annabelle be accompanied by an adult in order to see the baby, but her parents refused to enter the small room in the pediatric wing, choosing instead to wait outside. A nurse led Annabelle to the boy’s bed and placed him in her arms.
“I’m very sorry about your sister,” the nurse said. “I know this must be very hard for your family. But this little one can be a bit of sunshine on this very cloudy day.”
Annabelle nodded and sat in a nearby chair. She looked at the baby, bundled comfortably in a blanket, cooing very peacefully. His skin was not hot to the touch like she expected. In fact, he looked and felt completely normal. The doctor had been shocked that such a perfectly healthy baby had come from such a terrible pregnancy and delivery. He was nothing like whatever anyone could imagine a demon spawn might look like: no horns, no red or burning skin, no black snake eyes, no sharp fangs. He was human in every visible way.
The baby met her eyes with his soft brown ones and something locked. For a brief moment Annabelle wondered if it was indeed some sort of demon power, but as she continued to look into the newborn’s eyes she did not fight the lock on them. They were peaceful. There was a calmness that swept her. It felt familiar but she couldn’t think of why or where she had experienced this before.
Your purpose.
“You’re my purpose, aren’t you,” she whispered to the baby. “I guess I’m your angel now. I just hope you don’t go evil and kill everyone, okay? I think you can be a really nice boy. You’re going to learn about love and true happiness and everything will be fine. You’re not a demon. Please don’t be a demon.”
As she sat with him, she prayed. She was only a teenager; she had no say in whether they would keep the baby. Her parents could ignore her every word and give him up for adoption, and there would be nothing she could do about it. How would she serve her purpose then?
“Dear God, if this baby is my purpose, I pray that you will help my parents see the light, to give him a chance, to give me a chance to make sure he is good and pure. Even if they don’t love him, they need to decide to keep him so I can love him. If he’s a demon, I want to fix him. If he’s a normal baby, he deserves love. Well, he deserves love no matter what, right? Love thy enemy, right? I don’t want to believe that you gave up on my sister. You were always in her heart, I know it, and if you really gave me these powers then you should know it too. Unless you think I failed. Maybe I did. God, I’m sorry if I failed. I really tried. And I want to try again. Maybe this baby is my second chance. Is he? Can he be? I know you always have a purpose, and I don’t always understand it—like, did my sister really have to die? Especially like that?—I’m sorry to question your ways, Lord. I always try to see the positive and it’s really hard to see positive in this unless it’s this baby here. I promise I’ll never question your purpose again if you convince my parents to keep him. I’m bartering you, I’m sorry, that’s wrong of me. But my prayer is that you will give this baby a chance at a good life, and I hope you will answer my prayer as you have in the past. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
The baby closed his eyes, fading into sleep. After a few minutes of silence, Annabelle heard tentative footsteps entering the room. Robert and Sandra were huddled together, warily looking toward the sleeping bundle.
“Look,” Annabelle whispered. “He’s so peaceful. There’s no evil in him. He needs our love to stay that way.”
While Sandra stared at the baby, Robert spoke. “We’ve decided to give him a chance. To see if we can raise him to be good. Maybe there is enough of the good things about Miranda in him that it could work. So we’ll try.”
“Thank you, Daddy.”
Sandra appeared to be attempting to hide some residual disgust as she continued to stare. “I suppose it needs a name,” she said.
“He’s not an it, Mom.”
“You name it, Annabelle.”
Accepting that there was going to be a long battle ahead to get her mother to admit the baby was human, Annabelle sighed. She wanted the name to be meaningful, something that connected him to his mother. Then she remembered Miranda’s middle name, Josephine. “Let’s name him Joseph,” she said. “And I’m gonna call him Joey. Miranda always called me by a nickname, so I want to do the same for him.” She looked at the sleeping baby. “And you’ll call me Annie, too, okay? Just like your mommy did.”