Roberta’s Monday afternoon exorcism
Date: 2025-06-30 12:29
(Roberta’s Monday afternoon exorcism)
[Mon Jun 30 2025]
Longfellow Family Chapel/span>/spannoon, about 81F(27C) degrees, and there are clear skies. The mist is heaviest At Maple and Lake/span>/spanThe afternoon sun streams through the stained glass windows of Longfellow Family Chapel, painting rainbow patterns across the worn wooden pews. Roberta stands near the altar where a silver chalice sits prominently on the dark stone surface, its Celtic knotwork gleaming despite the chapel’s age. The chalice radiates an odd warmth even from several feet away, and something about its ornate design seems to shift when glimpsed from the corner of one’s eye.
A young woman in her twenties sits hunched in the front pew, clutching a baby blanket to her chest and rocking slightly. Her eyes are red-rimmed and darting constantly toward the chapel’s entrance. “They’re coming for him,” she whispers to no one in particular, her voice carrying clearly in the quiet space. “I can hear him crying… my baby’s crying somewhere and they won’t let me find him.”
The chalice bears a Latin inscription that catches the colored light: “In memoriam Brigid Longfellow – Mater Dolorosa.” One of the small garnets embedded in its base appears to be missing, leaving a dark hollow that seems unnaturally deep. The scent of beeswax and old wood mingles with something else – the faint smell of milk gone sour.
The woman looks up at Roberta with desperate eyes. “You have to help me find my baby. I used the cup for communion yesterday and now… now I can hear him crying but he’s not here. They’ve hidden him from me.”
Stepping into the chapple, Roberta sniffs distastefully; It’s mid day. Roberta hates mid day, but the scouts made their demands, the report came through, and a curse was identified in the Allfellows chapple. What else could Roberta do but respond to the disturbance.
Stepping up to the altar, Roberta looks the chalice over with pursed lips, cloak fluttering dramatically as Roberta leans on her opera cane. There is an obstical though. Roberta doesn’t speak latin, and therefore the inscription means nothing. The missing gem does, however. It’s indicative of the issue, the curse, as it were.
“Of course I’ll help.” Roberta tells the woman. Sniffing the air, the albino vampire notes the differing scents, notes the blanket, and asks, “You lost your child?” Roberta’s tone is low, confidential, and as she speaks, Roberta nears the woman, sitting beside her to converse. “Tell me exactly what happened. I’ll help you.” It’s a promice, but one that will likely not go how the woman planned.
The young woman’s grip tightens on the blanket as Roberta sits beside her, and she turns with a mixture of relief and suspicion. “I… I don’t have a baby,” she admits, her voice cracking. “I’ve never had a baby. But yesterday I came here to pray – my name’s Sarah, Sarah Chen – and Father McKenna wasn’t here so I… I used the chalice for communion myself.”
Her eyes dart back to the altar where the silver cup gleams. “The moment I drank from it, I felt… full. Complete. Like I’d been empty my whole life and suddenly I wasn’t.” She presses the blanket against her chest. “I found this in the lost and found box by the door. It smells like powder and milk and I can’t put it down.”
Sarah’s breathing becomes more rapid. “But now I hear crying everywhere. In my apartment, on the street, here in the chapel. Babies crying and I know – I KNOW – they need me. There’s supposed to be a baby here, MY baby, and someone’s taken him.” She looks at Roberta with wild eyes. “You believe me, don’t you? You can help me find him?”
The chalice seems to pulse slightly in the colored light, and the hollow where the missing garnet should be appears to deepen. From somewhere in the chapel comes the faint sound of stone settling, or perhaps something much smaller rolling across the floor near the back pews.
The sour milk scent grows stronger, and Sarah suddenly doubles over slightly, one hand pressed to her abdomen. “It hurts,” she whispers. “Like contractions, but I’ve never… I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”
“I know dear.” Roberta’s voice is comforting, and the albino lays a hand over someone’ “I will help you, but I need you to close your eyes for me- Can you do that?”
There’s a comforting smile there, the touch of a loved one. Roberta looks, if only briefly behind her to the back of the church, though then back to someone, to the chalice on the altar, and back to someone. “I know you’re scared, but we’ll make it through this together. You believe me, right? I’m here to help.”
Roberta hums a gentle song, little more than a half-forgotten lullaby, a siren song to soothe Sara’s nerves with a psychic persuasion to calm.
“I know dear.” Roberta’s voice is comforting, and the albino lays a hand over Sarah’s. “I will help you, but I need you to close your eyes for me- Can you do that?”
There’s a comforting smile there, the touch of a loved one. Roberta looks, if only briefly behind her to the back of the church, though then back to Sarah, to the chalice on the altar, and back to Sarah. “I know you’re scared, but we’ll make it through this together. You believe me, right? I’m here to help.”
Roberta hums a gentle song, little more than a half-forgotten lullaby, a siren song to soothe Sara’s nerves with a psychic persuasion to calm.
Sarah’s breathing begins to slow as Roberta’s humming fills the chapel, the melody seeming to resonate with the stone walls themselves. Her grip on the blanket loosens slightly, though she doesn’t release it entirely. “Yes,” she whispers, her eyelids fluttering closed. “I trust you. You understand… you know about babies, don’t you? About what it means to lose them?”
The soothing effect of Roberta’s voice creates a momentary calm, but the chalice on the altar seems to respond to the supernatural influence. The silver grows brighter, almost luminous, and the missing garnet’s hollow begins to emit a soft, pulsing light like a heartbeat made visible.
From the back of the chapel comes a distinct sound – the soft ping of something small and hard rolling across stone. A tiny red gleam catches the stained glass light as it moves between the pews, heading toward the altar.
Sarah’s eyes remain closed, but tears begin to slip down her cheeks. “I can still hear him crying,” she murmurs, though her voice is calmer now. “But it’s… it’s not just one baby, is it? There are two voices. Twins, maybe? And they’re so far away… like they’re calling from across water.”
The temperature in the chapel drops noticeably despite the warm afternoon, and the candle flames along the walls begin to flicker more intensely. The scent of sour milk mingles with something else now – salt water and the musty smell of a ship’s hold.
“There’s a woman here too,” Sarah continues, her voice dreamy under Roberta’s influence. “She’s looking for them. She’s been looking for so long…”
Though Sarah cant see it with her eyes closed, Roberta nods with each point. Roberta’s gaze looks back, noting that glint, likely a missing stone from the chalice. But Roberta is a problem solver.
Clearing Roberta’s throat, Roberta confesses to Sarah, “I do know what it’s like to lose a child.” A childer– A vampire spawn, but loss all the same. “I understand the loss, the pain, how upsetting it truly is– The love of a mother for her child.”
As she speaks, Roberta continues speaking gently to Sarah, A 22 revolver is produced, cocked and raised, all in the space of a second.
Revolvers– 22Ms specifically are quiet. Fired close to something, they are as loud as a popping balloon or the snap of fingers, and it’s raised and fired directly under Sarah’s chin, the gun angled to go directly through her brain. “Peace, honey. Peace.” she coos.
Roberta catches the body as it slumps, the revolver slipped away as soon as it materialised, holding Sarah as though she herself were a child.
The ill deed done, Roberta hisses, barely above a whisper to the chapple at large, “Show yourself. I will not have your kind ruining my stomping ground.” Roberta has apparently claimed the chapple as her own, and dislikes the spiritual activity here.
The red gleam continues its journey across the chapel floor, and as it draws closer, it becomes clear that it’s the missing garnet – a deep red stone about the size of a large pearl. It rolls with purpose rather than random momentum, as if guided by an unseen hand.
Sarah remains calm under Roberta’s influence, her breathing steady though tears continue to fall. “She’s so sad,” Sarah whispers, her voice taking on an almost trance-like quality. “Brigid… her name is Brigid. She had everything sewn into her dress – all the silver, all their hope for America. But the babies… they never made it to shore.”
The chalice’s glow intensifies as the garnet approaches, and the hollow where it belongs begins to pulse in rhythm with Sarah’s heartbeat. The temperature continues to drop, and now a faint mist begins to form near the altar, swirling around the base of the chalice.
“She doesn’t understand they’re gone,” Sarah continues, her psychically influenced state allowing her to perceive more clearly. “She keeps looking, keeps calling them back through anyone who drinks from her cup. The silver holds her love, but it’s… it’s twisted now. Desperate.”
The garnet reaches the altar steps and begins to roll up them, defying gravity. As it moves, the sound of distant crying grows clearer – not one voice, but two, high and thin like newborns.
The mist around the altar begins to take shape, forming the vague outline of a woman in 19th-century dress, her arms outstretched as if reaching for something just beyond her grasp.
“She needs to know it’s not her fault,” Sarah says softly. “She needs to let them go.”
The gunshot echoes through the chapel like a thunderclap, shattering the supernatural calm. Sarah’s body goes limp in Roberta’s arms, blood pooling on the worn stone floor, but something unexpected happens – the chalice on the altar begins to ring like a struck bell, its silver surface blazing with sudden, brilliant light.
The temperature plummets further, and the stained glass windows rattle in their frames. The small red garnet that had been rolling between the pews suddenly shoots forward, propelled by an unseen force, and embeds itself back into the chalice’s base with a sharp chime.
But instead of ending the supernatural activity, Roberta’s violent act seems to have amplified it. The air fills with the sound of weeping – not the phantom cries of infants, but the deep, soul-wrenching sobs of a woman in profound grief. The candles along the walls flare so brightly they threaten to catch the chapel on fire.
A translucent figure begins to materialize near the altar – a woman in a tattered dress from the 1840s, her face gaunt with starvation and loss. She looks at Sarah’s lifeless form with horror, then at Roberta with eyes that burn with otherworldly fury.
“MURDERER!” The voice seems to come from everywhere at once, shaking dust from the Gothic arches. “She was innocent! She was trying to help my children, and you… you…”
The spirit of Brigid Longfellow fully manifests, her form crackling with maternal rage. The chalice rises from the altar, floating in the air as silver light pours from it like liquid starlight. “You will pay for what you’ve done to that poor girl!”
The chapel doors slam shut with a resounding boom.
The chapel fills with supernatural fury as Brigid’s spirit grows more solid, her translucent form now casting actual shadows in the blazing candlelight. The floating chalice spins slowly above the altar, drops of what looks like silver blood falling from its rim to hiss and smoke on the stone below.
“One hundred and seventy-five years,” Brigid’s voice carries the weight of centuries, each word dripping with anguish. “One hundred and seventy-five years I have searched for my babies, and when someone finally hears their cries, you silence her forever!”
The spirit’s eyes fix on Sarah’s still form, and her expression shifts from rage to heartbreak. “She felt what I feel… the emptiness, the need. She could have helped me find them.” Brigid’s form wavers, becoming more ethereal as grief overtakes anger.
The chalice begins to glow brighter, and suddenly the chapel fills with the phantom sounds of a ship at sea – creaking wood, crashing waves, and underneath it all, the weak cries of newborn infants. The scent of salt water mingles with the sour milk smell, growing stronger.
“They were so small,” Brigid whispers, her voice now barely audible over the spectral ocean sounds. “Born too early, in the ship’s hold. I held them for such a short time before…” Her form flickers, becoming more transparent. “Before the fever took us all.”
The temperature continues to drop, and frost begins forming on the windows despite the summer heat outside. The chalice’s light pulses in rhythm with a heartbeat that seems to come from the very walls of the chapel.
“You don’t understand,” Brigid says, turning back to Roberta. “None of you understand. A mother’s love doesn’t die. It can’t die.”
“Well.” Roberta quips. “That was unexpected.”
Laying Sarah’s lifeless body beside her with a twisted form of maternal love of her own, Roberta squares her shoulders. “In my defense,” Roberta tells the spirit, “It wasn’t the first murder I’ve ever perpitrated. It also wont be the last.” Roberta has no filter, apparently. This can only go well.
The candles flare, the doors slam and the sound resounds around the chapple. Roberta shrinks back, though she doesn’t appear chasened by the accusation. Instead, Roberta’s pulls at a thread. Something Sarah said. “You didn’t cause the loss of your children. You’re innocent, too.” It’s a poor argument. Roberta is very much a murderer, but as a deflection it’s what Roberta uses, the vampire confessing like a Sherlock Holmes villain.
“Maybe she’s just a little bit dead.” Roberta suggests to the spirit. “She wanted me to help her find the babies.” Again half-assed as an excuse, but seemingly, Roberta has a twisted point to make. “I did it so you could have someone to help you protect your children. Like for like, two mothering spirits.”
The chapel fills with an otherworldly howling as Brigid’s spirit expands, her form growing larger and more terrible. Her dress billows like storm clouds, and her eyes burn with the fury of a mother whose children have been threatened. The floating chalice spins faster, casting wild patterns of silver light across the walls.
“One hundred and seventy-five years I have searched!” Brigid’s voice reverberates through the stone. “One hundred and seventy-five years of calling to them, and when finally someone hears their cries, you silence her forever!”
The pews begin to shake and splinter as her rage intensifies. Sarah’s blood on the floor starts to steam and hiss, as if the very stone rejects the violence that occurred here. The stained glass windows crack, sending colored shards tinkling to the floor.
But something else happens – Sarah’s body begins to glow with the same silver light as the chalice. Her wounds seal themselves, and she draws a shuddering breath, her eyes snapping open. However, they’re no longer her own brown eyes, but a brilliant silver that matches the chalice’s radiance.
“My children,” Sarah’s voice says, but it carries Brigid’s Irish accent. “Where are my children? They were crying… I heard them crying…” She sits up in Roberta’s arms, looking around the chapel with confusion and growing panic.
The spirit of Brigid wavers, her attention torn between her rage at Roberta and the sight of Sarah apparently possessed by her own desperate maternal instincts. The chalice’s spinning slows slightly, its light pulsing like a heartbeat.
“Who… who are you?” Brigid’s ghost demands of Roberta, her voice still thunderous but tinged now with uncertainty.
The spirit of Brigid Longfellow advances on Roberta, her ethereal form growing more solid with each step. The floating chalice spins faster, casting wild patterns of silver light across the chapel walls. “You think violence solves everything!” she shrieks, her voice echoing from the stone arches. “That girl was suffering because of MY pain, and you… you just ended her!”
The temperature drops so severely that Roberta’s breath begins to mist. Ice crystals start forming on the stained glass windows, and the candle flames turn an unnatural blue-white. Sarah’s blood on the floor begins to freeze, creating dark red patterns across the stone.
Brigid’s form wavers between solid and translucent as her emotions rage. “I’ve been trapped here for over a century, searching for my babies, and everyone who tries to help pays the price. But you… you’re different, aren’t you?” Her eyes narrow as she studies Roberta more closely. “You’re not alive. You’re something else entirely.”
The chalice suddenly stops spinning and hovers directly between them. “You speak of loss, of understanding a mother’s pain. Prove it.” Brigid’s voice becomes deadly quiet. “Drink from the cup. Experience what I’ve experienced. Feel what that poor girl felt. If you truly understand maternal love, then you’ll survive what comes next.”
The chapel doors rattle violently but remain sealed. The spirit’s eyes burn with challenge and desperate hope. “Unless you’re just another killer who speaks pretty words while dealing in death.”
Brigid’s spectral form recoils as if struck, her translucent features contorting with a mixture of horror and disbelief. The chalice’s spinning slows, its silver light flickering uncertainly as the spirit processes Roberta’s twisted logic.
“You think… you think death is a gift?” Brigid’s voice wavers between rage and confusion. “You murdered an innocent girl and call it mercy?” The phantom sounds of the ship at sea grow louder, as if the very memory of her own death is being stirred by Roberta’s callous words.
But something else happens – Sarah’s body, still warm with recent life, begins to emit a faint, pearl-like glow. The blood pooling beneath her head starts to move, not flowing away but seeming to draw back toward the wound. Her chest, which had been still, gives the faintest rise.
Brigid notices immediately, her maternal instincts overriding her anger. “What… what have you done?” She moves closer to Sarah’s form, her ghostly hands hovering over the girl’s face. “She’s not crossing over. She’s… trapped between.”
The chalice suddenly drops from its floating position, clattering onto the altar with a sound like breaking glass. The moment it touches the stone, Sarah’s eyes snap open – but they’re no longer brown. They’re the pale, milky white of the recently dead, yet filled with an otherworldly awareness.
Sarah sits up slowly, mechanically, her head wound still visible but no longer bleeding. When she speaks, her voice carries an echo, as if coming from a great distance. “The babies,” she says, turning those ghostly eyes toward Brigid. “I can hear them more clearly now. They’re… they’re not lost. They’re waiting.”
Brigid’s form trembles. “Waiting? Waiting where?”
The frost on the windows begins to form patterns – not random crystals, but shapes that look almost like tiny handprints.
Sarah’s reanimated form stands with unnatural grace, her movements fluid despite the fatal wound still visible at her temple. The pearl-like glow around her intensifies, and when she speaks again, her voice carries harmonics that seem to resonate with the chapel’s stone walls.
“They’re not in pain,” Sarah says, her dead eyes fixed on something beyond the physical world. “Your children… they’ve been waiting for you to stop searching the living world and join them in the next.” She turns toward Brigid’s spirit, and for the first time since materializing, the ghost’s rage begins to ebb.
The chalice on the altar begins to vibrate, its restored garnet pulsing with deep red light. The phantom ship sounds fade, replaced by something gentler – the soft lullaby of waves against a distant shore, and underneath it, the contented sighs of sleeping infants.
“I can see them,” Sarah continues, her voice growing stronger. “A boy and a girl. They have your eyes, Brigid. They’re not crying anymore because they know you love them. They’ve always known.” The temperature in the chapel begins to rise slightly, the oppressive cold lifting.
Brigid’s spectral form wavers, her anger dissolving into centuries of suppressed grief. “But I failed them. I couldn’t keep them safe. I couldn’t even give them names before…”
“You gave them love,” Sarah interrupts, stepping closer to the spirit. “That’s all they needed. That’s all they ever needed.”
The frost patterns on the windows shift, and for a moment, they clearly form two small handprints side by side. Then, slowly, they begin to fade as warm afternoon sunlight streams through the glass once more.
The chalice’s glow dims to a gentle warmth, no longer the blazing beacon of desperate maternal hunger, but something softer – the quiet contentment of a lullaby sung to sleeping children.
Sarah’s reanimated form turns toward the stained glass windows where the frost handprints are appearing. Her movements are stilted, unnatural, like a marionette guided by invisible strings. “They’re not in pain,” she says, her voice carrying that distant echo. “They never were. They’re just… waiting for you to stop searching in the wrong place.”
Brigid’s spectral form wavers, hope and confusion warring across her translucent features. “Wrong place? But I’ve looked everywhere. The ship, the harbor, every chapel and cemetery…”
Sarah’s dead eyes fix on the chalice, and she reaches for it with jerky, mechanical movements. The moment her fingers touch the silver, the entire chapel fills with a sound like wind through sails, and the phantom crying of infants grows clearer – but it’s not distressed crying. It’s the soft, sleepy sounds babies make when they’re content.
“They crossed over the moment they died,” Sarah continues, her voice now carrying a strange wisdom. “They were never lost. You were looking for them in the world of the living, but they’ve been waiting in the place where all children go when they die too soon.”
The chalice begins to warm in Sarah’s grasp, and the missing garnet – now restored to its place – pulses with gentle red light. “You have to let go of the searching, Brigid. You have to join them instead of trying to bring them back.”
Brigid’s form begins to solidify more, but instead of growing more terrible, she appears more human, more vulnerable. “But if I let go… if I stop searching… what if they forget me?”
The frost handprints on the windows multiply, dozens of tiny prints appearing as if invisible children are pressing their palms against the glass from outside. The chapel fills with the sound of gentle laughter – not adult laughter, but the pure joy of children at play.
“They never forgot you,” Sarah says, her reanimated voice growing softer. “They’ve been waiting for you to come home.”