You sip your Milo, feel anger tense your neck. For the first time, you’re not afraid, not subsumed by guilt. You’re furious. How was this fair?

“How do I stop this?”

“You could try calling a Taoist priest, or a Catholic priest, or whichever religious person fits your purpose.” Your mother twitches an indifferent shoulder. “They might be able to get rid of him.”

A thrum of hope, but it is only a murmuration, a twinge of hurt, subtle as the first signs of cardiac arrest. “What happens to him after that?”

There is no kindness in your mother’s eyes, not even judgment, only that cool practicality that’s become synonymous with her person, almost indistinguishable from cruelty. “What you do care? You’ve only ever wanted him gone.”

The words die in your lungs.

She hires you someone, anyway. She is your mother and she loves you even if she never tells you that.

You find this out in the morning after you awaken and startle at the knowledge you had slept, deeply and peacefully, unaccosted for the first time in recent memory.

“How much—”

“Doesn’t matter,” your mother waves your concern away. You look over the cliff of her shoulder, see your father standing in her bedroom, slightly more human than you recall. Guilt impales your gut: you wonder what bargain she struck for your silence, what price she paid again. “He’ll fix it.”

“Mom—”

“Go,” a whisper, fierce, feral, full of fire.

The exorcist is a pudgy man with tortoise-shell glasses and a kind mouth, thinning hair that keeps unnecessarily long. He doesn’t ask stupid questions or supply worse platitudes, simply gets on with business, every question phrased calmly, efficiently.

“How long has your father been haunting you?”

“A little over two weeks.”

“Has his appearance changed in this time?”

“Yes.”

“Less human?”

You don’t look. You’ve learned better. He’s grown savage in the last night or so, a thing of corners, screaming into your face when you least expect it. “Yes.”

In the corner, you hear the drip, drip, drip of pooling gore.

“How much less?”

You don’t miss a beat. “A lot.”

The exorcist nods. “You were his favorite child?

You consider this for a minute, evaluate the jumble of memories, fading watercolors puddling through your fingers. There are no specifics, no moments you can point to and declare yes, this was when he loved me. All you have are apparitions.

“I guess.”

“Mm.” The exorcist nods to himself, reads off a bestiary of causes, an armament of solutions, all completely, unmistakably final.  “So, which would you prefer?”

You run a tongue over your upper lip. “I’ll—I’ll call you back tomorrow.”

You don’t.

Your aunt was right. He is your ghost, always has been, since the day he walked out of the house so many years ago, already a spectre, a ghost of an idea.