Free The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren by Gerald Brittle

it tumbled in the air and fell on the floor. None of us were near the statue—it was on the other side of the room. That incident frightened us totally.”
    “Let me ask you something else,” Ed went on. “Didn’t you think that maybe you shouldn’t have given the doll so much recognition?”
    “It wasn’t a doll!” Deirdre corrected him. “It was the spirit of Annabelle we cared about!”
    “That’s right!” said Lara.
    “I mean, before you knew anything about Annabelle?”
    “How were we to know anything?” Deirdre asked. “But looking back on it now, maybe we shouldn’t have given the doll so much credence. But really, we saw the thing as being no more than a harmless mascot. It never hurt anything…at least until the other day.”
    “Do you still think what’s moving the doll is the spirit of a little girl?” Lorraine queried.
    “What else could it be?” Lara said in reply.
    “It’s a damn voodoo doll, that’s what it is,” Cal blurted out “I told them about that thing a long time ago. The doll was just taking advantage of them.…”
    “Okay, Cal, I think it’s time you told your side of things,” Ed remarked to the young man.
    “Let me put it this way: I didn’t like the doll, and the doll didn’t like me right back,” he said. “The thing’s got a mind, and dolls don’t have minds, right? So, from the beginning, I didn’t think this thing moving around their apartment was cute.”
    “Beyond that, tell me about what’s happened to you,” said Ed.
    “Tell them about the dreams,” coaxed Lara.
    “Well,” Cal picked up, “the thing gives me bad dreams. Recurrent ones. But yet what I’m going to tell you is not a dream as far as I’m concerned, because I somehow saw this happen to me. The last time it happened I fell asleep at home, a really deep sleep. While I was lying there, I saw myself wake up. Something seemed wrong to me. I looked around the room, but nothing was out of place. But then when I looked down toward my feet, I saw the rag doll, Annabelle. It was slowly gliding up my body. It moved over my chest and stopped. Then it put its two arms out. One arm touched one side of my neck, the other touched the other side like it was making an electrical connection. Then I saw myself being strangled. I was writhing and trying to push the doll off my chest, but I might as well have been pushing on a wall, because it wouldn’t move. I was literally strangling to death, but I couldn’t help myself, no matter how hard I tried.”
    "Yes, but the priest I spoke with said you’d been physically attacked. Is this what you consider to be a physical attack?" Ed pressed him.
    "No," Cal asserted, "That happened here in this apartment when Lara and I were alone together. It was about ten or eleven o’clock at night, and we were reading over maps because I was going off on a trip the next day. Everything was quiet at the time. Suddenly, we both heard sounds in Deirdre’s bedroom that made us think that someone had broken into the apartment. I quietly got up and tip-toed to the bedroom door, which was closed. I waited until the noises stopped, then I carefully opened the door and reached in and switched on the light. Nobody was in there! Except, the Annabelle doll was tossed on the floor in a corner. I went in alone and walked over to the thing to see if anything unusual had happened. But as I got close to the doll, I got the distinct impression that somebody was behind me. I swung around instantly and, well..."
    "He won’t talk about that part," Lara said. "When Cal turned around there wasn’t anybody there, but he suddenly yelled and grabbed for his chest. He was doubled over, cut and bleeding when I got to him. Blood was all over his shirt. Cal was shaking and scared and we went back out into the living room. We then opened up his shirt and there on his chest was what looked to be a sort of claw mark!"
    "Can I see the mark?" Ed asked.
    "It’s gone now," the young man told