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Although [i]The Exorcist[/i] had always been his favorite piece of fiction, not even in his wildest dreams did Father Stone see himself as Max von Sydow, wearing a hat with his clerics and arriving at a house that didn't look like a home at all.

The young Jesuit thought for a moment that perhaps Father O'Malley was playing a joke on him – but only for a moment. From what Father Stone knew and heard about O'Malley, it seemed as though there was never a time when the old priest wasn't serious. The few times that O'Malley bothered to write him back and the even rarer occasions that they spoke to one another face-to-face, it felt as though John O'Malley always carried with him an anchor around his scrawny, ancient neck that threatened to wrap itself around his neck too.

Ever since the day O'Malley became his mentor – if what he did could be considered “mentoring” – Alex Stone always wondered where that anchor would take him, were it allowed to simply fall.

And isn't falling the most natural thing in the world for an anchor to do?

Come to think of it, it wasn't disquiet that he was feeling at that moment. If anything, it felt more like a homecoming, even though he's never been here before.

“Should I feel bothered by that?” Stone asked out loud, before realizing that he wasn't the only one anymore standing outside the premises. There was a rider now, not too far from where he stood, and whoever they were, he hoped they didn't hear him talking to himself through that helmet.

“Pardon me, uh, miss,” he said, approaching the rider as her helmet came off, “are you with whoever's in that house over there?” 


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[center][color=008B8B]𝚂𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢, 𝙻𝚘𝚛𝚎, 𝙿𝚎𝚛𝚔𝚜 [/color]
Father Stone considers the house he was sent to just as Ximena arrives, and makes contact with her. [/center]