Alf Sjöberg

For twenty-five years, Jessica Mackinnon Newman had lived with the traumatic memories of the night her father performed an exorcism, chasing out the demon that had possessed her mother. Jessica remembered well her mother’s screams and pleas for relief, and her own terror when her father left the room where the unearthly battle had taken place and informed her that her mother had gone on to Heaven.

The news that her father had passed away, and named her his sole heir, created mixed feelings in Jessica. She hadn’t seen or even spoken of her father in years, and being confronted with his ancestral home in Scotland, even with the support of her husband and son, was more than Jessica felt she was capable of handling. As Jessica learned more about the man who was her father, she was drawn more deeply into madness than she could ever have expected, with no assurances she could find her way out.

Jessica’s ability to bury the trauma of her mother’s death, and create a comfortable life for herself, was completely blown apart by the call from her father’s solicitor. I appreciated the way Jessica learned to protect herself and her family from the demonic presence that infected her father’s Scotland home. This short story was full of action and intrigue, and my attention was captured from the beginning.

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