The spirit possessed the young woman for about two weeks before they called Sam. She left her office and arrived at their rowhome about an hour later. Sam appeared disheveled. She was partly drunk. Her suit jacket had ash stains from cigarettes. Sam's hat sat crumpled in a pile on her head, the black wool of the fedora too old to hold its original crisp shape.

  Sam rang the doorbell to the home. A soft chime echoed behind the door. A woman opened the door within moments. She was plain looking with shoulder length brown hair and bangs above her eyes. Sam thought she might be in her early forties but she wasn't a good judge. She wore a green sweater over an ivory blouse, a gray wool skirt, and dark brown flats. Her face held a strained but sympathetic expression.

  "Ms. Fontaine? Oh, thank you for coming so quickly. I'm Sarah Everson, we spoke on the telephone. I'm sorry we didn't call you sooner. My husband thought he could deal with the problem himself. But his idea didn't work out and now we think we can use a professional." said Mrs. Everson. The woman didn't remark on her appearance but Sam could tell she noticed.

  "It's no problem Mrs. Everson. I'm happy to be out of my office." replied Sam. "Where's the victim?" She tried to sound professional, or at least not drunk.

  "She's just upstairs. We've been trying to keep the mess in her room but she's started leaking into the dining room. That's when we decided it was time to call you. Her father's up there with her now. He said he wanted to try one last thing before you got here."

  Sam walked up the narrow stairs behind Mrs. Everson. The smell of stale urine grew stronger as they approached the second floor. "Please excuse the mess. We've been trying to keep it clean but she won't walk to the bathroom." said Mrs. Everson.

  "It's fine," said Sam. "It's all part of the job."

  "She's right in here," said Mrs. Everson as she reached the top of the stairs. "Joe, the exorcist is here!"

  The door opened to a young woman's bedroom. There was still evidence of childhood hanging on the walls. There were notes from friends, pictures of characters, pink borders, ponies, and ribbons. The room below eye height wallowed in squalor. Brown stains marked the walls. The smell told Sam the stains were fresh. She saw a yellow puddle underneath the young woman, and a man crouched by her trying to mop it up. The young woman was sitting in a wooden dining chair in the center of the room. All other furniture, save a clothing dresser too heavy to lift, was gone.

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  The floors were hardwood. If there were ever carpets they were too soiled to keep. The girl sitting on the chair looked like her mother, but both younger and older. Her skin was pallid. The veins under the skin were too visible. Her eyes were dark and bloodshot, darting from her father to Sam and back again. Her expression changed from amused to afraid, then angry to something unrecognizable. She regarded her father and the new presence, Sam.

  Joe was an overweight bald man wearing a stained shirt. He wore tan slacks. They fit him like a garbage bag around the waist and hung from overworked brown suspenders.

  As he noticed Sam's entrance, he stood up without looking and said, "Oh, Mr. Fontaine, thank you for coming."

  The man's face dropped when he saw Sam. "Sorry, Miss. Missus Fontaine. I assumed you was a man from what we heard about you."

  "Sure. Is this your daughter?" Sam said after a long pause.

  Mr. Everson sighed and said, "Yeah, this is her. You can see now, we've tried to handle this situation on our own. I've read a thing or two about the exorcisms, so we thought we would try some of that before hiring a professional."

  "Oh," said Sam. She looked forward to hearing this. "And what sort of things have you tried?"

  "Well," said Mr. Everson, "I had read about holy water, but we couldn't get any holy people to bless our water. So we thought the next best thing would be laundry water. We tried it but it didn't work. We sprinkled it on her, you see. Then we tried dumping it on her. That didn't work. So we thought we would try bathwater on account of the soap. We sprinkled that on her. Didn't work. We dumped that on her. Still nothing. Then I had read that demons don't like the sound of music, so I started playing albums for her on the gramophone. She told me some horrible things about my mother while Vernon Dalhart played."

  "We started getting desperate. That's when she started smearing the shit on the walls and we had to strap her to the chair."

  "From there we resorted to, and I'm sorry to say this, I would never strike my daughter in anger. But we thought maybe beating the devil out would work. So I took my belt strap to her. Unfortunately, that didn't take, although it did cause the devil inside her to howl and curse at us. So we thought that was working. So we took a switch to her. The switch left some marks but the demon didn't leave. Now, I'm sorry to say we couldn't take the sounds at night, so we wrapped a pillow around her mouth. It didn't exorcize the demon, but it did allow me and the Mrs. to sleep."

  "Then, as I said, we couldn't get a holy man. But there was a vacuum salesman, what come by, and we asked him if he would give a blessing. He said no. So I gave a blessing. But the demon just laughed at me. I said prayers to her, what of them I could remember."

  "I'd be thrilled if you could manage to fix her for us but you can see I've tried everything."