Free Unclean Spirits by M. L. N. Hanover

fireplace cradling a crushed pillow slicked with white and brown dog hair.
    “It started maybe a week ago,” Candace Dorn said. “Charlie—that’s my dog—woke up acting really strange. He was biting himself and barking at my fiancé, who he always just loved before. He wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t let me go out of the house. He’s never been like that before.”
    “What did the vet say?” I asked.
    Candace paced the length of her living room without answering me. Aubrey sat on the arm of an overstuffed chair.
    “I don’t believe in…voodoo or whatever,” Candace said at last.
    “What makes you think this is voodoo,” I asked. “Or, you know, whatever?”
    Candace opened her mouth, closed it, then walked back toward the rear of the house. Aubrey met my eyes with an unspoken question. I followed her.
    The kitchen showed some signs of disarray. One of the cabinet doors was resting against the wall, its hinges broken. The wooden table had a long, fresh gouge white as a scar against the dark varnish. Candace walked to the back door, and I realized what about her stance bothered me. My first semester at college, I’d agreed to play tackle football with some friends even though they’d been drinking. I’d broken one rib and cracked another. For a month afterward, I’d walked just like Candace did now.
    When she opened the door, a German shepherd was waiting. He froze when he saw us, his gaze shifting from Aubrey to me and back again. This was Charlie.
    “These are the people I called,” Candace said. Her voice was unsteady. “They’re the ones who can help.”
    I had never watched an animal’s expression change before. Charlie’s unease became something else. He nodded to me and then to Aubrey. If he’d been human, it would have been a perfect gesture of masculine greeting.
    “Charlie,” I said, acting on a hunch, “could you go to Aubrey’s right hand and touch it with your left forepaw?”
    Charlie barked once, and then did exactly as I’d asked. Aubrey’s brows rose. Candace Dorn touched her hand to her mouth. There were tears in her eyes.
    “That isn’t Charlie in there, is it?” I asked.
    She shook her head. The dog looked up at me with an intelligence that I could only think of as human. You wanted proof, I told myself. You wanted to be sure.
    “Before this happened,” Aubrey asked, “had anything else changed? A new piece of art or some new person coming into your home? Was anything different?”
    “No,” she said. “Nothing happened. It was just one day…”
    “And when did your fiancé start beating you up?” I asked.
    The silence was total. When Candace spoke again, she sounded defeated.
    “After I called you,” she said. “After he found out that I’d called.”
    Aubrey let out his breath like someone had punched him. Charlie the dog looked up at me, brown eyes fearful and resolute. When I knelt and put my hand on his ruff, he whimpered once.
    “There are some things that can displace people,” Aubrey said. “Move into a body and cast the former owner out.”
    “Like into an animal,” I said. “Unclean spirits. So when you said that you could handle the easy ones, this wasn’t what you had in mind, was it?”
    “Not so much, no,” Aubrey said. “I think we’ll need Ex. If any of us can fix this, it’ll be him. He used to be a Jesuit. Casting out spirits was one part of the coursework.”
    Candace Dorn stepped forward, her hand out as if she was stopping us. The unease in her expression made perfect sense to me. We’d just come into this sudden surreal hellthat her life had become and started talking like we understood it.
    “What are you saying?” she demanded. “What’s going on here?”
    “There are things called riders,” I said, surprised by how informed and competent I sounded given that I only knew what I’d been told in the last day or so. “They’re spirits. Our best guess is that one of them took over your fiancé’s body and pushed his