The.conjuring.2

The battle lasted three more nights. Janet wrote backward in Latin on the walls. A chair folded itself into a perfect origami of splinters. Ed’s tape recorder captured a voice that said, “My name is Legion,” before melting the internal wires.

Ed raised the crucifix. He did not shout. He did not rebuke. He simply whispered, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to tell me your name.”

Outside, the first light of dawn touched the crooked roof of 284 Green Street. The police took down their barricades. The reporters packed up their cameras. And deep inside the walls, a voice too deep for any throat to make whispered one final word: The.conjuring.2

Ed ran downstairs. He saw Janet suspended, her nightgown floating in still air. He grabbed her legs and pulled her down, praying the entire time. She collapsed into his arms, sobbing, human again. For a moment, the house was silent.

That night, the children slept in the living room while the Warrens investigated upstairs. Janet lay rigid on the couch, her eyes open but unseeing. Then her spine arched. Her feet lifted two feet off the mattress. Her body hung in the air, limp as a doll on a nail, and the deep voice came again—but this time it was laughing. The battle lasted three more nights

Lorraine rushed in and held Janet’s head in her lap. The girl’s eyes fluttered open—blue, clear, human. “Is he gone?” she whispered.

“I will break you first. Then I will take the girl.” Ed’s tape recorder captured a voice that said,

For one endless second, nothing happened.