"Tick-tock."
The old clock's hands made a crisp sound as they ticked.
"Oh, thank you."
Maya, the woman who had first appeared at the door, looked exhausted. She forced a smile and accepted the coffee Zatanna offered.
She held the coffee, sinking into her chair, her hands tightly gripping the cup, hoping the warmth would dispel the fear in her heart.
"Tell me about it."
Zatanna sat back down behind her desk. As a magician, she naturally dealt with the mysterious side of the world: God, angels, Satan, demons, and so on. These higher-dimensional beings seemed to treat Earth like a battleground, a place where they constantly struggled against each other for millennia.
And around the conflict between demons and angels, the profession of exorcist naturally arose.
Zatanna wasn't exactly rolling in dough. Sure, she ran a circus, but the internet's rapid evolution had really cooled kids' interest in that kind of entertainment.
The exorcism business, on the other hand, was lucrative. If you didn't get any work, it was fine, but when you did, it could feed you for a month. The downside was the constant risk of getting offed by a demon and sent straight to heaven. High risk, high reward, as they say.
Not far away, Kino sat behind the girl on the sofa, eyes closed in a meditative pose.
The flight from Kansas to Metropolis had left him a bit weary; he planned to take a quick nap.
"It's like this," the woman began hesitantly. "My, my daughter…she's been acting strange for about a week now."
A flicker of fear crossed her face, her pupils shrinking slightly in alarm.
"It started a week ago…"
The woman began to recount her experiences from the previous week.
She and her husband owned a department store with considerable profits, and they had a very lovely daughter.
To give their daughter the best education, the couple spent a lot of money to send her to a top private high school in Metropolis.
Everything was normal for the first few years, until their daughter, Sarah, was in her senior year of high school (the fourth year in American high schools). A group of thrill-seeking boys and girls organized a party and planned to explore an abandoned monastery nearby, and Sarah was naturally among them.
These daring young men and women set off at dawn. The pitch-black night combined with the monastery's perpetually gloomy atmosphere was enough to make people's minds wander and constantly secrete feelings of fear.
"When Sarah returned, it was already the middle of the night. My husband, William, and I scolded her severely, and at the time, she seemed very tired."
"At first, we just thought it was a boring high school game."
"Until three days ago."
Fear flickered in the woman's eyes, and the hand holding her coffee cup trembled slightly.
Her thoughts drifted back to a night three days ago.
Most Americans believed in Jesus.
And the woman's family were typical Christians.
"Sarah, you don't look well?"
At the dinner table, the family, having finished their prayers, were enjoying the beef and pasta.
William pulled out some napkins and wiped the corners of his mouth, looking worriedly at the girl across the table.
Sarah, at a vibrant age, had golden hair inherited from her mother, but her pale complexion ruined the effect.
Sarah sat listlessly in her chair, her fork absentmindedly stirring the noodles on her plate before she finally set it down.
"I have no appetite."
Sarah slumped as she walked up the stairs to her room, her curved back appearing as if something were weighing heavily on her, making each step arduous.
William and his wife didn't think much of it, simply assuming their daughter was going through puberty and dealing with the usual teenage angst.
It wasn't until they were in bed, until the early hours of the morning.
Maya was awakened by a strange sound.
Scratch, scratch~ As if something was scraping at the door with claws.
The sharp sound made Maya feel uneasy.
"William, wake up!?"
She gently patted her husband's cheek, and the sleepy William slowly opened his eyes.
Maya's face was solemn: "Did you hear something?"
"Some, something?"
William perked up his ears.
Crunch, crunch~
"I heard it." William rubbed his eyes and yawned: "Maybe termites or something?"
"I'll call an exterminator to check the house tomorrow. Let's go back to sleep now."
William fell into a deep sleep, but his wife, Maya, couldn't sleep.
That sound echoed in her ears like a persistent maggot.
And, it was getting closer! Crunch, crunch...
"William, William!" Maya couldn't bear it any longer and decided to wake her husband to explain the situation.
"We have to go see!"
"Alright, alright, calm down, dear." William sighed. He put on his pajamas, got out of bed, and pulled a revolver from the nightstand.
The couple walked toward the door, one in front of the other.
The timid Maya hid behind her husband.
They pushed open the door.
Then.
"Father, Mother?"
Sarah's voice rang out from above. They instinctively looked up, and then...
The blonde girl was holding a wooden carving of Jesus, her white teeth gnawing at the statue's head. Splintered wood pierced the girl's mouth, but even with blood pouring out, she couldn't stop.
Her voice gradually became distorted and low, and then, a man's voice emerged from Sarah's throat: "This statue smells so good!"
"She's possessed."
The hot coffee on the woman's face woke her up.
She came to her senses. Zatanna, on the other side of the table, had a serious look on her face.
Since God created the world, and after Adam and Eve multiplied and humanity flourished, demons, creatures from Hell, have always coveted the human world. Under the leadership of Satan, they constantly attempted to occupy the mortal realm, turning the world of humans into their territory.
It is said that this is because God once had a wager with Lucifer, the King of Hell.
The stakes were the number of human souls ascending to Heaven versus those descending into Hell. Whichever side had more souls would control the human world.
Therefore, the demons, led by Lucifer, tirelessly roamed the human world, spreading the Seven Deadly Sins, and leading people astray.
Of course, Zatanna wasn't interested in these superstitious matters. She looked at the woman.
"What happened next?"
"After that... after that, she became increasingly strange. She hated the daytime and sunlight, preferring the night. She even, even started eating raw beef and cursing God."
Maya covered her face in despair: "And yesterday, she, she actually climbed onto the ceiling of the house like a gecko!"
If the strange behavior of the past few days could be explained by mental illness or epilepsy, then the act of climbing walls with bare hands and transforming into a little "Spider-Man" was completely against human nature.
Maya had considered going to a doctor, but science couldn't explain this bizarre phenomenon. The doctors could only classify it as a mental illness, prescribing some sedatives and sending the couple away.
------------------------
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