Jennifer opened the camera app and switched it to selfie mode. She grinned and threw up a peace sign near her eyes, but as she watched the screen, her face was distorted, and bright red blood dripped down her face. She rolled her eyes, which appeared to be full of blood, and tossed the phone across her bed.
The phone vibrated. A gif of a laughing witch took over the screen, and cackling came over the phone’s speakers at full volume. Jennifer groaned even louder than the phone. “Would you please cut that out?” she asked.
The screen froze, and the gif changed to one of a man shaking his head roguishly. Jennifer frowned and picked it up, ignoring the overheated metal and the way it vibrated in her hand as if trying to shake her off. “This is so silly,” she muttered, and the phone blared several ringtones at once.
“This is what I get for deleting the VPN, I guess,” Jennifer continued. She went over to her dresser and grabbed a scarf, which she wrapped around the edges of the phone to insulate her from the still increasing heat. “All my friends can use that site to watch stuff, but when I want to download a movie, I end up downloading a demon instead.” She shook her phone, and the apps on her home screen bounced against its edges. “You know full that I wanted the movie when I clicked on that link!”
The laughing witch gif popped up again, and Jennifer rolled her eyes again and held down the power button. The gif became distorted, becoming longer and sharper at the edges, and the witch’s eyes deepened into black voids. A clawed hand scraped against the screen, leaving a scratch on the inside before the screen went dark.
Jennifer pursed her lips together and stared at the blank phone in her hand. This looked like a problem that she wouldn’t be able to fix on her own, but it was worth a shot. She held down the power button and watched the black screen light up white. Then dark red appeared to seep from the top of the screen, running down its inside in steady, thin rivulets. Jennifer dragged one finger across the screen, and though it came away clean, the image on the other side of the screen smeared. If she looked closely, she could see some of her fingerprint in the virtual blood.
“Hey, Mom? Are you there?” Jennifer yelled.
Her mom shouted something in response, but it was muffled by distance. Jennifer sighed and opened her door, taking the phone with her. She went to the top of the stairs and shouted, “Mom!”
“I’m in the laundry room Jen!” her mom yelled back.
Jennifer walked down the stairs toward the laundry room, where her
mom was piling dry clothes into a laundry basket. “While you’re here, fold these socks,” Her mom tossed Jennifer a plain white crew sock. She caught it and put her phone down one the counter. She dug through the unfolded pile, looking for its mate.
“Did you need anything?” her mom asked. She lifted a pair of jeans to eye level and scrutinized it for a moment before turning it right-side out.
“My phone is all messed up,” Jennifer muttered, lining two black socks against each other and scowling at the two different shades of black.
Her mom raised an eyebrow. “Messed up how? What happened?”
Jennifer picked up the scarf-wrapped phone and turned its screen to face her mom. The phone had turned back on, and dark red liquid sloshed against the bottom of the screen. Behind that, the screen asking for her passcode was active.
Her mom’s other eyebrow went up. “What did you do?”
“Nothing! It’s not like it’s my fault!”
The phone vibrated, and someone unseen began typing in different passcodes, all of which were wrong.
“Hey! Cut that out!” Jennifer shook the phone, making the red liquid slosh around, and turned it off. It turned itself back on and started trying random passcodes again. “Ugh!” Jennifer held the power button down long enough to shut the phone down all the way. She huffed and looked back at her mom.
Her mom looked unimpressed. “Honey, how did this happen?”
“I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean to click on it! I thought it was harmless!”
“Click on what?”
Jennifer sighed. “I was trying to watch a Halloween movie online, and I clicked on a pop-up by mistake. And I couldn’t stop it in time, and now there’s a demon in my phone.”
Jennifer’s mom pursed her lips. “You downloaded a demon.”
“I didn’t mean to!”
“Jennifer, what were you thinking? You’re sixteen years old, you should know better than to download strange things on the internet! We need to get this fixed immediately!”
“I didn’t mean to!” Jennifer insisted again. “Honestly—”
“Let’s go,” her mom said, abandoning her laundry basket and going to the door. “Jennifer, I am really disappointed in you!”
Jennifer grabbed her phone and followed her mom to the car. She kept her head low and got into the backseat, slumping against the window and staring mournfully out at the road. Her mom continued her lecture as she started the car and began to drive.
“So irresponsible—these phones aren’t cheap, you know! Jennifer, I’m going to talk to your father about this when he gets home from work.”
Jennifer slouched further into her seat.
They arrived at the church and climbed out of the car in stiff silence, the slam of the closing doors echoing through the empty parking lot against red-brick buildings. Jennifer followed her mom past the church to its office, a smaller building with a flowerbed and empty birdbath outside. Her mom rang the doorbell, and they waited.
After a few moments, the door opened, and Miss Jane the church secretary greeted them with a smile. “Well, hi! What brings you two here today?”
“Hi, Jane. Sorry to bother you, but” Jennifer’s mom sighed. “We need an exorcism for Jennifer’s phone.”
Miss Jane raised her eyebrows, and her mouth formed a tiny “o” as she looked over at Jennifer. “Oh, I see.” She stepped aside to invite the pair in. “I’ll go get Father; he can see to your phone right away.” She smiled gently at Jennifer and walked away.
“If this happens again,” Jennifer’s mom said, “you’ll be going without a phone for at least a week before we come here.”
“Thanks, mom.”
“You need to be more careful, dear.”
“Well, what do we have here?” The parish priest came into the room and looked from Jennifer’s mom to Jennifer. “Jane said you got your phone possessed?”
Jennifer held down the power button and turned the phone on. The logo appeared rotted, and tiny digital flies buzzed around the activation screen. When the screen asking for her passcode came up, a figure appeared and slammed into the screen, unholy shrieks emanating from the phone’s speaker. It had long, straggly hair and an emaciated frame that repeatedly hit the glass with a loud crack.
The priest clicked his tongue. “That’s a nasty one all right.” He gently took the phone from Jennifer’s hand, scarf, and all. “If it hasn’t been in here long, though, it shouldn’t be too hard to get out.” He turned to Jane, who came forward holding a bowl. He nodded and unwrapped the heated phone, muttering words over it. Jennifer’s entire music library played from the phone at once. The priest switched hands and spoke some more. The figure in the phone pounded on the screen hard enough that the passcode buttons cracked and fell away, and the phone vibrated.
Finally, the priest pressed the phone into the bowl, which had been filled with holy water. The phone rang one last time and died. The priest held it under the water for a while longer before taking it back out and wiping it with the scarf. “That should have fixed your problem,” he said, handing the phone back to Jennifer.
She pressed the power button. Nothing happened. “I think it’s waterlogged.”
“When we get back home,” her mom said, “you can put it in rice.
Writer : Sonali Mungur
Editor : Khisha Callicharrun