Lucky

Jackie Williams started buying lottery tickets when she was eighteen, and bought 13,682 of them before she won even a single nickel. The 13,683rd cashed out for twenty grand.

She took her husband out to the best steakhouse in town to celebrate. They even sprung for dessert. The one at the restaurant tasted delightful, and for once, the one at home wasn’t bad either.

The next day, Jackie bought another lottery ticket. It was a habit, and habits, Jackie had found, were mighty hard to break. The bodega on the corner sold her ticket 13,684.

She was on the platform at the Brook Avenue subway stop when she looked up the winning numbers. The train was arriving, a screech that set most New Yorkers’ teeth on edge, but she barely heard it. All she could do was stare down at the numbers on her screen. Numbers that told her she had just won another twenty thousand dollars.

“It’s gotta be a mistake,” Bradford said that evening, the ticket between them on the kitchen table. “The odds alone…”

She raised an eyebrow. “And all these years, you’ve been saying it’s a waste of money.”

“It was. It is. But…” Bradford rubbed his chin, which Jackie always thought make him look professorial. “No. It’s definitely a mistake.”

Which didn’t stop them from doing a second celebratory dinner, this time at a three-star place upstate. Toasting their luck with the finest champagne on the wine list.

“Barbados,” Jackie said on the drive home. “I want beaches. I think I’ve earned it.”

“I know you’ve earned something,” Bradford said, grinning.

She swatted his shoulder. “That’s quite enough of that, Mr Williams.”

But this time, dessert was even better.

Jackie didn’t check ticket 13,685 for a good week. She told herself there was no point. But when she eventually ran the numbers, her shriek brought Bradford thundering in from the back yard.

—

$60,000 became $80,000, which became $100,000, which became $120,000. At that point, the New York State Gaming Commission banned Jackie from buying tickets.

The Commission launched a full investigation. The investigators found nothing, but when they departed, they left behind a scar of journalists. Before long, Jackie and Bradford couldn’t leave their house. They could no longer use email. Changing their phone numbers didn’t help. The media discussed them as if they were British royalty, the Luckiest Couple on Earth, burying them in barrages of hot takes and opinion pieces and listicles.

Worse than the journalists were the thousands of people who wanted to hire Jackie to buy them tickets. They too camped out on the sidewalk outside the Williams’ trim home in the Bronx. More than once, they tried to break in, or pushed hastily scrawled numbers through the mail slot. When Jackie wouldn’t help them, the pleas turned to threats. The Police Commissioner assigned officers to protect the house, but he grimly told Jackie and Bradford that he could only spare them for so long. Their friends stopped calling.

There were no more steakhouse visits. No trip to Barbados. Bradford would sit for hours at the kitchen table, shades drawn, staring down at the tickets lined up before him on the scratched surface, like a miniature firing squad. Eventually, he stopped talking to Jackie. It wasn’t contempt, just despair. There was nothing more to say.

Thirteen days after the journalists arrived, Jackie stood in the kitchen doorway, staring at her husband with her arms folded. Then she turned, went to her little study off the living room, and sat down at her computer.

For days, she got nowhere. Maths professors could offer no answers. Experts in game theory and probability and economics came up empty. As a last-ditch effort, she tried her old parish priest, a man she hadn’t spoken to in ten years. By then, she wasn’t even interested in unravelling the mystery. She just wanted someone to talk to.

Father O’Malley was pleased to hear from her, despite the passage of time. He listened gravely as she described the impossible situation. Jackie expected him to offer bromides about the mysterious ways of the Lord, but instead, he said, “Give me a few days. I think I may have something.”

He hung up before she could ask any questions.

—

“It’s called a Clauneck,” the exorcist said.

She didn’t look like an exorcist. She wore a pink Ralph Lauren polo shirt, and had the face of a moderately successful model. She carried a black Moleskine notebook, neat handwriting end to end on the unlined pages. Jackie and Bradford sat opposite her in the living room, not holding hands. Father O’Malley sat in an armchair nearby, head bowed.

“And what is…” Bradford cleared his throat.

The exorcist, whose name was Alison Reyes, chewed the inside of her cheek. “People first thought it was a demon of wealth, an entity you could summon to gain your fortune. But it’s not quite as simple. It’s more like…” She cupped her hands in front of her, as if cradling an imaginary basketball. “It’s more like a demon of luck. It uses good luck as a weapon to destroy its victims.”

Jackie’s instinct was to ask how that was even possible: how something like good luck could be used to harm. But of course, she knew. She knew all too well. “And this…Clauneck is inside me? How?”

“Hard to say. There’s still so much we don’t know about these entities. My guess is, it was just bad luck.” Alison winced. “Sorry. Poor choice of words.”

“I don’t believe any of this,” said Bradford.

“I had a member of my flock once,” O’Malley said, without raising his head. “A soldier. Every one of his friends died around him in Afghanistan, one after the other. He never got a scratch on him. Didn’t even get sunburned. I tried to counsel him, but. Well. He took his own life.”

Bradford stood up, hands laced behind his head. “Sweetie, come on, this is nonsense.”

“I think we should listen to them,” Jackie said. She was surprised at how determined she felt. As if she had been lost in a dark cave, and had finally seen a chink of light high above her.

“If it makes you feel any better, Mr Williams, I’m not looking for money,” Alison said. “The exorcism thing is more of a…side gig. I actually work for IBM at my day job. I’m a systems analyst.”

Jackie and Bradford stared at her.

The woman forced a smile. “If I’m wrong, we do the ritual, and nothing happens. I’ll leave you be. But if I’m right…” She shrugged.

“So you’re just doing this out of the goodness of your heart?” Bradford muttered.

Alison met his eyes. “The soldier the Father here mentioned? He was my brother.”

The room fell silent.

“I didn’t know enough to save him then, but that was a long time ago.” She looked over Jackie. “This thing inside you? It can be beaten. It’ll hurt like hell and you might never be the same, but at least you’ll be free. Please: let me try.”

—

“Hold her!” Alison yelled.

On the table, Jackie bucked and writhed and screamed, body contorting in ways that a body should never be able to. Bradford Williams and Father O’Malley held her down on either side, foreheads and forearms soaked in sweat.

“Adjure te.” Alison spoke through gritted teeth, trembling hand held above Jackie’s midsection. In her other hand, she held her black Moleskine. “Spiritus nequissime, per Deum omnipotentem!”

Jackie’s howl was one of the worst sounds Bradford had ever heard. He almost let go then and there; this wasn’t worth it. It couldn’t be worth it, not this. Not seeing his wife like this.

“Hold her, I said! Adjure te, spiritus nequissime…”

Light began to come from between Jackie’s stretched lips. It was the color of a searchlight seen through murky water. Dim at first, but growing in strength. It flooded the room, marking out the shadows of the furniture on the walls. There was a sound, a tortured groan that made Bradford think of an old, obese man trying to raise himself to his feet.

“Out, spirit! Leave us!”

With a noise like the universe being torn in two, the light vanished. The release of energy tore a gigantic hole in the ceiling, showering the four of them with plaster. It threw Bradford and O’Malley and Alison backwards. For a moment, everything was a tangle of limbs and agonised shouts. Then, nothing but silence and drifting plaster dust.

Finally, Jackie lay still. Eyes closed. After a moment, her chest began to rise and fall, very slowly.

“Alison?” Father O’Malley called, His voice quavering.

“I’m all right.” The exorcist picked herself up from the other side of the couch, which had tipped over backwards. “Mr Williams?”

Silence.

“Mr—“

“Here.”

The Bradford who stepped out of the dusty darkness seemed to have aged twenty years. Slowly, he stumbled across to his wife. “Jackie? Honey? Talk to me.”

“She…” Alison coughed, bending double. “Coma. I’ve seen it before. If she comes out of it, she’ll be fine.”

“Is it gone?”

“I—"

At that moment, the ceiling above Bradford gave way. With a clattering crunch, a gigantic section tore loose, a chunk of plaster and mortar and pipes. “Watch out!” Father O’Malley screamed, lunging towards Bradford. Not quite fast enough.

Alison reached out a hand, knowing she wasn’t going to get there in time, but trying anyway. And then: she stopped.

Bradford stood, unharmed, in a semicircle of debris. The floor around him was littered with heavy chunks of masonry. A steel rebar stuck up from one like an empty flagpole.

“Christ,” Alison said, ignoring the automatic look of reproach from the priest. “That was…”

She bit the word off before it made it out of her mouth, but it didn’t matter. Her eyes met Bradford’s. She took in his body, dusty, but unmarked. Not even his clothes were torn.

Bradford began to shake.