Deliver Us from Evil by Ralph Sarchie

Sure enough, it was Angelo, sounding really spooked.
    â€œCan you come right away?” Much as I wanted to help, I had to disappoint him, at least temporarily, because I never go off on a case without getting all the facts first, then praying on the matter. I did a quick interview over the phone to get a feel for the problem, if there was one.
    Angelo said it had all begun very subtly: “The night I moved in, I was woken up by scratching noises. It sounded like it was coming from the ceiling over my bed. I figured it was mice, maybe even rats. I didn’t think it was a big deal until I saw how my kitten, Snowball, was reacting. All the hair on her back and tail stood straight on end, and she started hissing,” he explained. “Next, she began to move sideways, in an eerie-looking, unnatural dance. It was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve owned cats all my life, and none of them ever did anything like that before!”
    He grabbed his baseball bat and went upstairs to check for rodents, but found nothing out of the ordinary. This went on for several nights, always at the same time: 3:00 A.M. When I heard that, the hairs on the back of my neck also began to prickle, since that’s the “witching hour,” a prime time for demonic activity. Not only do satanic powers often do things in threes, to show contempt for the Holy Trinity, but their terrorist strikes frequently occur at 3:00 A.M. This is another insult to God, whose son Jesus Christ died on the cross at 3:00 P.M. The demonic will do the opposite of anything holy, so they like to attack at exactly the opposite hour—with supernatural phenomena you might call miracles in reverse.
    I was also intrigued by the kitten’s behavior, since I’ve found that pets have a sixth sense for demonic activity, just as they do for impending earthquakes and other natural disasters. I’ve seen cases where diabolical phenomena will get all the dogs in the neighborhood howling. Evil spirits can also attack pets—animals are God’s creatures—so I always make sure to put a St. Benedict medal around the neck of each pet in the house before an exorcism begins, to keep them safe from evil forces.
    While Angelo’s story sounded suspiciously satanic, I wasn’t ready to call in the troops yet, and urged him to continue. In a gravelly baritone he added, “A few nights later I heard the scratching again. That wasn’t all—this time I also heard footsteps, heavy steps like a man’s. First they were in the driveway, crunching on the ice. Then I heard them coming closer and closer, until it sounded like somebody was right outside. Then they stopped right outside my window,” which was level with the ground, since his apartment was in the basement. Again he grabbed his bat, ready to do battle with whatever was out there, but he found no one. His deep voice broke a little as he added, “There were no tracks in the fresh snow! Absolutely none!”
    Perplexed, he went back inside—and heard the noise again. “That’s when I really got nervous. Now the footsteps were inside the house, like somebody was walking upstairs. But those apartments were empty, and I was the only one living here! The ghost—or whatever it was—paced slowly from the rear of the apartment overhead to the front of the house, then it started running back and forth.”
    â€œHow many times?” I asked, although I was already pretty sure I knew the answer.
    â€œThree times, faster and faster,” he said. “My heart was really pounding, I’ll tell you.” Double-locking every door and window, the deli owner finally went back to sleep. The eerie events didn’t end there—the next night he heard a loud tapping coming from the hallway in his own apartment. He lay in bed listening to the sound but didn’t bother to get his Louisville Slugger, knowing that even if he did get up,