last rites

by Sam Moe

The mirror in your grandmother’s apartment is attached to a large bureau atop which once sat bottles of perfume, ribbons, and a clock filled with sand. Nicknamed “the pink room” for its fuchsia floors, you and your sister slept on side-by-side twin beds tucked into the corner of the room. This left an L-shape around the beds through which you could run or walk. On the innermost wall is a door, so thick with paint you have to use your hip to smack it open. Your mother has bookshelves propped against the door, and a nightstand, preventing your cousin from entering. Across the room is another door to your late abuelita’s room. This door has been blocked on both sides since you were a child. To the left: a third door, covered in large golden hooks and plastic garment bags whose bodies billow like ghosts. Ahead of the bed are closets, stretching from floor to ceiling. When you were young, you climbed inside the closet to hide from your cousins. You sat atop wedges of satin fabrics, marveling at how clever you were. Other times, when sleep-deprived, you feared something was in the closet with you. You’ve developed a habit over the years, of ripping open doors and flicking on light switches. The green strip of hallway just outside the door is tough; the only way to turn on the light is if you walk at least halfway to the living room, where a rolling light switch exists.

There is one small window, covered with a dark green plastic curtain, next to which is a large metal pipe which shakes in the night. You imagined spirits of old men in the corner of the room, shaking change around their hands. There are many reasons humans are afraid of night; why are you afraid?

*

Nightmares persisted in the pink room. You were terrified of the room itself, as if the cube were a living, breathing entity. The plush carpet was soft beneath your feet, but carpet needles would poke into your toes and draw blood. The clock fell and concussed one of your cousins. You had nightmares about underworlds beneath the floor of the closet, liminal spaces spilling into the hallway where you would walk down dozens of black stairs. There was no end to the underworlds. When you thought you were reaching a bottom floor, you’d wake up.

In the corner of the room sat a small blue stool. In EMDR sessions, you imagined a monster sitting in the corner. It takes years to recall the stool and will take longer to recall who (or, what) was sitting in the corner. In memories, the lighting is dim, you can barely make out a face. You imagine the watcher is your grandmother, then your great grandmother, Wita (short for abuelitita). Other memories include falling asleep with your grandmother rubbing your back, having been in so much pain you booked an x-ray. One of the last memories is of your menstrual blood soaking through the bed. How many times had you told mother your period was abnormal? From blood clots to excess bleeding, she didn’t listen to you until the last minute. Your mind splinters. Was it because you couldn’t walk, because you bled through a mattress, or because she saw you leaking blood clots the size of fists? Either way, she is still responsible for your anxiety over whether others believe your trauma.

The doctor at the time said you’d lost so much blood, you could have died. At the time, your parents had told you nothing, and you spent days in the hospital, journaling in a holographic notebook, unaware.

*

In one of the opening scenes of The Conjuring: Last Rites, sisters Dawn and Heather are suspicious of a large mirror in their bedroom. The mirror is older than the house. Pictured in the 1960s during ghost hunter Lorraine Warren’s first case, the mirror bears history. Its glossy surface reveals ghosts which at first appear invisible in reality, such as the doll, Annabel, only to find these entities revealing themselves in the room later, hungrier. Ghosts play hide and seek in the shadows until they are ready to cross the physical line.

A horror film based on what is known as “The Smurl haunting,” The Conjuring: Last Rites is brimming with grief. The mirrors remind you of your childhood, playing Luigi’s Mansion. As Mario’s anxiety-ridden twin brother, you play as Luigi in a mansion haunted with candy-hued ghosts. You recall one room in particular scared you the most: a ballroom in which Luigi could spot ghosts in the mirror—but not in front of him. Through clever footwork and vacuuming, your sister and you were able to beat the level. But the game, and mirrors in general, had left a lasting impression on you. What good was a ghost you couldn’t see or touch? Who would believe Luigi without proof? Proof came, as it so often does, in the form of art. Ghosts, trapped in glossy paintings, forever frozen with their mouths agape.

*

Growing up with an Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican family, you were used to ghost stories. It wasn’t until you were much older your mother dipped into deep history. Late night phone calls, she revealed to you the mirror in the pink room needed to be covered during storms, so as to prevent the devil from entering.

In the apartment, mirrors are large enough they cover whole walls. The hallway is filled with statues of Mary, photographs of your mother as a child in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and paintings you made which have since been removed. Atop most of the doorways are last supper carvings. In the kitchen are clay sculptures of Ecuador. Right as you walk in, a faux-gilded mirror hangs so it faces the door to the living room, catching the edge to your cousin’s room, the “blue room.” The front door was once cherry tomato red but has since been replaced with deep gray metal.

In the living hangs a large horizontal mirror, its body stretching the length of the room. Near that couch are memories. Your body, pressed into the faded gold couch, sobbing throughout middle school and high school. A rip in the very back of the couch where your mother admits she used to hide and abreact with a bust of Abraham Lincoln until your grandmother found her and screamed until she stopped.

Stand with your body in the center of the room and you will face two French Doors, a thin wall with your childhood portrait still hanging there, and a door feeding into the rest of the apartment. These doors are important. You can run from the living room through three bedrooms and into the bathroom. You must exit the second bathroom door to reach the dining room. Through the dining room is a small kitchen and a miniature bedroom, big enough for a twin-sized bed and a large wooden cross filled with knit flowers and images of the family. Your older cousin has removed this photograph.

You do not enter into the final bedroom at night, but once, when strapped for cash, you waited until your family was asleep to creep inside. Upon lifting the mattress, rumored to store money and jewelry, you found nothing but a large poster of the current pope waving his hands, and script in all Spanish translating to it is better to seek faith than currency.

*

You can’t imagine what the real Smurls went through. Jack and Janet, both in The Conjuring and in real life, dealt with dozens of reporters lurking around their house. Halfway through the movie, we see a closeup of Janet Smurl televised: “Eight people live in this house. Eight people have experienced this. Eight people are not crazy. We’re asking for help. Someone, anyone, help us.” These last four words are a hammer to your heart. Someone, anyone, help us. Had you not whispered the same words when alone in your childhood bedroom, wrapping your arms in gauze. When you were laying in the backseat of cars. Or in beds. There are accounts of Jack Smurl, detailing multiple sexual assaults on him by a female ghost. In the movie, you can see the spirit in the mirror, briefly. Is this the “representation” of sexual assault? You can only find ruminations by fans online.

You empathize with Jack Smurl and the stories he is telling. In most of your visual flashbacks, the people assaulting you take on demonic forms. They are monstrous, with long hair spooling onto the floor. There are witchy fingers, gnarled, with sharp red nails. You have yet to experience a flashback or EMDR memory of a human.

“Is this normal?” you asked your EMDR specialist once. She has since paused treatment since you relapsed sixty-two days ago.

“My patients picture their abusers as monsters, yes,” she replied.

After researching Ed and Lorraine Warren, you start to uncover deeper narratives about the couple. Judith Penney, who began living in their house when she was a child, accused Ed Warren of sexual abuse; his wife knew but did nothing to stop it. In other accounts, you read about Ed abusing Lorraine. You watch hours of interviews with the paranormal investigators, noting Ed rarely allows his wife to speak.

When you were fifteen, you were abused by a group of strangers. The memories are vague, stressful, and had lasting consequences on your physical and mental health. Rather than telling anyone about what happened, your brain proceeded to swallow the memories until you were in your thirties. Did Penney do the same? You learn she was in a relationship with Ed for forty years; she was forced to have an abortion. The Conjuring franchise always reminded you of your own abuse narratives, even though you were never tossed across the room by a ghost—but by a living person. To find the allegations of the “demonologists” is triggering, but altogether unsurprising.

While attempting to process your own traumas, realize you’re dissociating at the edge of the living room. Are you experiencing déjà vu? In your memory, a figure dances into the living room, shouting obscenities and snapping at you. The figure is your partner, and the memory turns out to be a flashback of one of his meltdowns from a few months ago. The flashbacks return to you at the most mundane moments; gripping the bathroom sink, brushing your teeth, making a meal in the kitchen. All you can see in your memory are his raised hands: slamming the table, tossing something into the sink, into the wall, against the floor. You find out Lorraine was also abused by her husband and remain frustrated but unsurprised; there is death behind his eyes.

*

When you were younger, still in your abuelita’s apartment, her pink room and blue room terrified you. You were convinced of a demonic presence lurking, though you never spoke of these experiences to your mother. Would she believe you? Or make things worse.

Later, she will reveal haunted stories to you, unwrapping each like beautiful, vicious huevos mollos in crimson crepe paper: there persisted a smell in some rooms, of rotting flesh, followed by the scent of flowers. Televisions turned on by themselves. Your family was robbed when your mother was a child. The old red door swung open to the apartment, revealing its vulnerable insides. Ransacked, save for the skeleton of walls and doors. Shockingly, no one stole the crystal doorknobs off the blue room. Your mother later reveals to you she was always terrified of the last bedroom. Behind the refrigerator resides the skeleton of a dumbwaiter, sealed after someone started breaking into the other apartments.

Like the ghosts in The Conjuring, your family’s haunted apartment fed off neon-yellow lights and dark rooms. Some rooms were deep blue when lightless, others pitch black. Because the apartment is located in New York City, there is not much sunshine. The largest window, which overlooks the street, faces an enormous and ancient oak tree. Before the tree got bigger, and before everyone died, your family used to lean their bodies out the window, waving you goodbye as your father whisked you away in his silver car.

Someone, please, help. Return to the past, please; fix what was broken.

*

“Is the apartment still haunted?” You can hear your mother on the other end of the phone. She is eating a panini filled with vegetables.

“Of course not,” she mutters between bites. “When your grandmother passed away, I blessed the space with holy water.”

She tells you stories of your cousin, whom she has nicknamed “the sprite.” Your cousin? Turning all the crosses upside-down. Your cousin? Blowing out all the altar candles. Your cousin, stealing silverware and hiding plates beneath her bed. Does she feel the energy in the blue room? Does she, too, feel haunted? Though she hates you, the two of you have a similar history. Like all the women on your mother’s side of the family, you have eating disorders and are survivors of sexual violence and abuse. No matter how hard you try, she won’t speak to you unless at funerals. Her aunt prevented her family from seeing yours after you failed high school, falling asleep in class and engaging in self-harm due to being sexually abused on a daily basis.

I’m dancing back the energy in the apartment, she once explained, whispering in a rare phone call after your grandmother passed away. I put up blue lights everywhere; I’m reclaiming the energy through my art.

Are you able to reclaim what was lost to you? You are like a geologist examining a semi-precious stone, writing about new aspects as they are revealed to you. Processing is nonlinear. If you took years to sift, surely, you’d understand everything by now; the toll of violence. Rhythms of a body. Nightmares, facts, creaks, scars. Processing is writing is reflecting is immediate. You have the privilege of a laptop and a desk, and you write like hell to reclaim what is still lost.

*

The children sculptures atop the mirror in The Conjuring remind you of the doorways and bedframes in The Haunting (1999). Based on Shirley Jackson’s novel, The Haunting of Hill House, its main character Eleanor is lured to a large castle for a sleep study. She, too, sees the spirits of deceased children, and finds herself lost in a rotating room of mirrors. Like The Conjuring, mirrors are used as communication devices. While Eleanor sees an alternate version of herself, pregnant, Judy Warren is taunted by her reflection, an alternate version of herself tapping on the glass with one long nail. You know from your family, and from research, mirrors can be important communication tools. In Maggie Stiefvator’s series, The Raven Cycle, mirrors are set to face each other in a dangerous ritual. To stand in the center would be to teleport. In your own childhood home, the mirror helped you to process the past. You know from your upbringing not to trust adults.

As a child, you spent hours abreacting in front of the mirror. You are not ready to recount these stories in an essay, but the feeling of claustrophobia and fear of suffocation have followed you to adulthood. Sometimes, you feel someone gripping your throat and choking. It’s just stress, say your friends. Would they have said the same to the survivors of ghost and monster movies? Or would they, too, need to become final girls in order to understand.

*

You had a toy box when you were younger, with a ballerina in the center. In your EMDR container exercises, you placed all your traumatic memories inside this toy box, velvet, sealing it in your abuelita’s apartment, in a large dresser. Her room contains two mirrors; one, a thin slab hanging from the closet, and the other attached to the bureau. Though you didn’t see anything in the room, you felt a presence. It is now occupied by your younger cousin. Watching horror movies helps you to process your lived experiences of trauma. The desperate sobbing. Their please-believe-me’s. Their statues of Christ and Mary, their abusive family members, daughters and girls pitied because of what they went through.

Patrick Wilson plays both the husband of Lorraine in The Conjuring movies, and Renai’s husband in the Insidious franchise. Upon seeing him in The Conjuring, a wave of panic washes over your body, glueing your hips to the couch. Why have you seen this man before? Why does this man feel abusive? Think back to the first time you watched Insidious. Remember Patrick Wilson, possessed, harming his wife.

Upon freeing himself from a demon of his childhood, Patrick Wilson’s character exists in reality once more. Renai cowers in the corner of the room at the sight of her husband. It is her face you resonate with the most. Her look; don’t hit me.

Your partner play-punches you. While he used to play-hit you hard, now it has become soft. You wonder, did these moments ever happen at all? One day, in the kitchen, he raises his hands to hug you. He raises his hands, period. You flinch; he laughs.

*

There have been exactly two séances in your abuelita’s apartment. One séance took place in the kitchen, when your mother and aunt were still kids. They accidentally knocked over both candles, almost lighting the kitchen tiles on fire. The second séance was hosted by your cousin. She brought a hundred-dollar bill, several small oranges, and Wita’s rosary. She prays for the apartment to be hers, someday. Months later, your abuelita passes away. Your cousin calls you on the phone, half-whispering, to tell you she thinks she’s responsible; you tell her you understand. If you’d been able to ask the spirits to take the life of one of your abusers, you would have. One man has overdosed; another is in jail for stabbing his ex. The rest are trying to live quiet lives. Do their wives know? Who else lives with scars.

*

While once you were a terrified child, you are now a curious adult. You want to watch horror movies to help pull dissociated memories from the back of your mind. They no longer terrify you. You are fascinated by the monsters. Their too-long arms and plastic bodies, monsters with a penchant for human flesh.

You experience flashbacks from horror films. Work to peel back the layers. In your pelvic floor therapist’s office, the room reminds you of the home of a therapist in the first Smile movie. The Smile Entity is a possessive creature who climbs through its victims mouths, forcing the host to take their lives. The Smile Entity is contagious, hopping bodies at random. Through watching the Smile movies, you were able to pull out deeper memories of your jaw trauma. Recall your body, in general, stretched beyond its limit. Laying down on the leather bed, your specialist tells you to butterfly your legs. One hip is tighter than the other.

Is it okay if I go in? she asks, and the language reminds you of an EMDR session. Go in, your therapist might say, meaning, go into your mind.

Of course, you tell your specialist, appreciative of her asking for consent. The flashbacks start as soon as she hooks her finger.

In one flashback, you are in The Night House, a sheet over your head. Like ghosts and old furniture, your body feels unreal. You try to explain to your specialist. She asks you a series of questions; has anyone pulled at your thighs? Your mouth? Yes, yes. You trust her. When she is out for a session and her colleague is doing internal work with you, your legs light up in excruciating pain.

“The other specialist was telling me you couldn’t handle the tissue breakup?” she asks upon returning.

“It was. . . intense. Sharp.”

“Did you feel scared around her?”

It was the locking of the door. A series of flashbacks. The second pelvic floor specialist said, I’m sorry you’re in pain, but it makes sense with what you’ve been through. I mean, I’ve never been through it—obviously. Or perhaps it was upon finding a clear baggy of rainbow balloons near the lube.

Is the pain lessening? she’d asked, doing clamshells with your legs.

Yes decreasing, you lied.

*

There are dolls in The Conjuring: Last Rites. A golden unicorn carrousel, a thunderstorm. Bloody keys, coughing fits, a locket filled with water. A teddy bear, bruising, a doll parroting mommy? Mommy? After becoming possessed, Lorraine’s fictionalized version of her daughter, Judy is found crouching in the corner of the bedroom.

Mommy? I don’t feel so good, she croaks.

Watching Judy helps you remember crying out for your mother. Throwing up nonstop, as a child. You remember bloody noses and accidental strangulation. You have a flashback of your father, but nothing beyond him standing in front of you, body overflowing with rage.

Ed recalls Judy was stillborn. Watching the stories of these abusers, you are trying to make sense of your pelvic floor injuries. Of your family.

At school on Wednesday, one of your graduate teaching assistants visited with her newborn. You walked by her sleeping baby on the way to class. She tried to talk to you, but you couldn’t focus. Something was wrong, all wrong.

Tug on the arm of your colleague. Hear her whisper, let’s go to my office. Say a quick goodbye to the GTA before bursting into tears. Not even twenty-four hours earlier, you’d been on campus, looking at an ad of a uterus. Got nausea? Fatigue? Pelvic pain? Night sweats? The uterus was smiling. Yes, you told the organ. I have all these symptoms! At the end of the ad, the word perimenopause flashes in bright white. Tell a different colleague. Hear her say, you can’t be perimenopausal, you’re too young, as if you are both under water and she is trying to teach you the answer to the universe. Recall your physical therapists and a chiropractor telling you your pelvic floor has been damaged because you were raped. Hear your partner’s voice in your head as he said, “I don’t understand why you focus on the rapes from high school so much. You were raped other times in life, and you remember those more. What was so bad about the first times?”

In the movie, Ed appears to love his wife and daughter. They have lived through so many hauntings. They have survived possessions and demonic mirrors and blood floods. You wonder why they were portrayed with love after learning there is a specific clause in Lorraine’s filming contract said she couldn’t be portrayed with any abuse narratives. To protect whom? She is portrayed as someone who not only sees monsters for what they are, but believes the stories of survivors, too. Remind yourself their “good” nature is fictional. Become so nauseous from your research, you need to shut the movie off.

In one of the last scenes, Lorraine and her daughter are holding onto each other, don’t shut it out; don’t run. You know this feeling, of facing your reflection when covered in blood. Thrumming beneath the surface of your skin is rage. Frustration with your mother for bringing you around abusers, knowing full well what was going to happen. Rage, she didn’t believe you until you were older. Rage, rage, at the demonologists who claim to be helping people. The dance of the survivor is a constant negotiation. Sometimes, we are in gentle sunlight. Other times, we are begging those closest to us to believe our stories. To hold our abusers accountable. You are grateful to know the truth, yours and the truth of other survivors. Tell your mother you can’t return to the unsafety of your childhood home, her mood transformations and rage, swinging like a dagger in the air. You’re an adult now; leave the mirror exposed to oncoming the storm.

BIO: Sam Moe is the author of nine books. Her most recent poetry collection, RED HALCYON, is forthcoming from Querencia Press. Her debut short story collection, I MIGHT TRUST YOU, is out from Experiments in Fiction (2025). She has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and received fellowships from the Longleaf Writer’s conference and the Key West Literary Seminar. Sam has also attended residencies at The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, VCCA, and Château d’Orquevau.

Photo of Sam Moe