Deliver Us from Evil (29 page)

The same question can, at times, tell us if the person was cursed. If that proves to be the case, we must discover
how
the person was attacked. Was the curse attached to a contact object? If the item is ever identified, we can take the correct steps to contain its evil, by reading prayers to lift the curse and disposing of the object in deep water or consecrated ground, so no one else is harmed by its negative charge.

If the evil spell was sent verbally by a sorcerer, we have other prayers to break the curse and send it back to the person who invoked it. Being more of a crafty thinker than I am, Joe has figured out a perfect, Christian way to handle this situation. Rather than fight evil with evil and practice the black arts ourselves by cursing the sorcerer in return, he suggested that we rebuke magicians in God's name, with a special prayer. We ask that the magician will be surrounded by the “Lumen Christi,” or Christ light, by visualizing the person, surrounded by a bright, white light from head to toe, forming a protective shield that won't let evil in or out.

That day the demon didn't give anything up about its mode of entry but was finally provoked to say something. The breakpoint had come. In a deep, guttural voice, it told Bishop McKenna, “I'm going to slit your belly and let your guts spill out!”

Refusing to be intimidated, the exorcist continued to recite the ritual in a steady monotone that betrayed not a flicker of fear. I've noticed that when the bishop is really intent on his prayers, his voice will drop to a soft, hypnotic mumble where the Latin words blur into one long, echoing sound of holiness that seems to last forever.

“Stop your prayers,” the demon ordered. “I'll rip your heart out and drink your blood! You're a dead man, priest! Dead, dead, dead!”

Ignoring these lurid threats, Bishop McKenna asked calmly, “What keeps you here, Devil?”

The response to this question can alert us if there's a cursed object in the home—or on the person—of the possessed. We also may learn if the exorcee is holding the demon there. Many times, even though the satanic spirit causes people awful suffering, they may be unwilling to let go. This is most common when the force attacks through the intellect, since the victims have a harder time distinguishing between their own thoughts and impulses and those artfully suggested by the demon.

Since in some cases demonic brainwashing goes on for many years before the person's will breaks down, eventually alien ideas can sound familiar and even reasonable. When the attack takes a religious direction, it can be harder still for the people to clearly recognize the dividing line between their own faith and the distorted version the demon has presented, but until this realization comes, the exorcism won't succeed.

The fiend in Michael turned to a new, even more appalling line of attack after its garish threats to disembowel, blind, mutilate, and murder Bishop McKenna had no discernible impact. After yelling for a while in a language we couldn't understand, Michael's eyes fixed on a Dominican sister sitting meekly by the altar, praying silently.

The next time the exorcist held up his cross and commanded the satanic spirit to depart, it offered a grotesque alternative: “I'll leave this one—give me
her
! I want the nun!”

The way the demon uttered these words made them sound so dirty that my skin crawled at the vileness of it. What gave this demon the right to use this hideously lewd tone about a nun? It was an obscenity! Joe's intuition was right. But even though my partner suspected a scheme to transfer Michael's demon into some innocent victim, he never dreamed the target would be a nun!

Even the usually unflappable bishop was taken aback. “What did she ever do to you, Devil?”

“The nun knows. She's going to be mine!”

As the demon's horrible laughter filled the church, I couldn't help but glance at the nun to see how she was reacting. Her expression was as pure and pious as ever, and she betrayed no sign she'd even heard the demon's disgusting insinuations. I admired her faith under fire.

To my surprise, since Bishop McKenna always avoids any idle questions, he pursued this line of questioning, apparently curious as to why the demon had singled out the sister for its abuse. The spirit reveled in the opportunity to further defile the nun with its awful words. “I'll take her because I want her! And you can't stop me, priest!”

The exorcist could stand no more. “Silence, Devil!” he thundered, then issued a torrent of Latin.

In translation, the ritual, which takes about twenty minutes, but can be repeated as many times as the exorcist deems necessary, includes these words to the demon: “I exorcise you, Most Unclean Spirit! Invading enemy! All spirits! Every one of you! In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Be uprooted and expelled from this creature of God. He who commands you is He who ordered you to be thrown down from highest Heaven into the depths of Hell. He who commands you is He who dominated the seas, the wind, and the storms. Hear, therefore, and fear, Satan! Enemy of the Faith! Enemy of the human race! Source of death! Robber of life! Twister of justice! Root of evil! Warp of vices! Seducer of men! Traitor of nations! Inciter of jealousy! Originator of greed! Cause of discord! Creator of agony! Why do you stay and resist, when you know that Christ our Lord has destroyed your plan? Fear Him.…”

After several hours of this struggle, the bishop announced a break. While in the movies exorcisms seem to go on day and night without stopping until the possession is broken, that's not how it's really done. Sometimes we stop, we eat a little lunch, we rest, and then we resume. It is up to the exorcist. If he feels we shouldn't stop, we'll continue as long as necessary.

As was the pattern during Michael's seven previous exorcisms, the painter's behavior immediately returned to normal as soon as the exorcism was halted. I've seen this before. People typically react to the ritual in one of two ways. Some have no memory of the ceremony and take quite a while to come back to their senses at the end of an exorcism; others, like Michael, are aware of everything that takes place. Now that the demon was no longer being tormented by the bishop's words, it retreated and Michael was himself again.

During the break, Joe took Michael to a pizzeria, where an odd incident occurred. After the meal, the old man decided to have a cigarette, so my partner handed him his lighter. Although the lighter hadn't been used all day and wasn't the least bit warm, Michael dropped it as if it were a blazing hot coal and yelped in pain. “Get the fuck away from me,” he yelled, his rough language provoking glares from the family in the next booth.

Joe suddenly realized what had happened: He'd been holding a bottle of holy water during the ritual and gotten his hands wet. Although Michael could normally touch holy objects without ill effects, despite his possession, the demon in him was weakening and now howled at the slight trace of holy water Joe's touch had transferred to his lighter.

Despite this promising sign, no further progress was made that afternoon—just more yelling and threats. The second day wasn't much different, except that I began to have horrifying visions during the exorcism. Grim crime scenes I hadn't thought about in years washed my mind with relentless gore. Cockroaches and scorpions marched through rivers of blood, burned bodies rose from the ground like mummies in a horror movie. I began to imagine terrible things happening to my wife and children—thoughts that are so appalling that I refuse to relive them in print. My fondest memories were indelibly tainted by the poison this demon was spewing, and my worst ones were crashing around me.
Don't listen,
I kept telling myself,
it's not real! The Devil mixes truth with lies and twists it into horrible perversion! This is insanity, a glimpse into Hell! God knows it's not me thinking these things!

Focusing on God is the best way to arm yourself against mental attacks from the demonic. Because this form of psychological warfare is so common in the Work, I try to push these thoughts out of my mind the moment they enter, before they take hold in my imagination. I don't consider myself dreamy or prone to flights of fancy, but the demonic can seize on any thread of memory or emotion and weave it into something hellish. This has also happened to me during exorcisms of houses—I've read the Pope Leo XIII prayer hundreds of times and know it by heart, but when a mental attack strikes, I'll suddenly start stuttering and lose my place. Having been my partner for so long, Joe knows without my saying so that it's time to spray me with holy water before I lose it completely.

If blocking the thought doesn't work, I picture a big, silvery cross and concentrate only on that. It's similar to the Christ light I mentioned earlier, which can be used for the same purpose. You just imagine yourself surrounded by a pure white light that goes from the top of your head to the bottom of your heels and use it as a shield against evil thoughts.

But even with these comforting images to protect me, by the end of the second day of Michael's exorcism, I was so mentally drained that my spirituality was at an all-time low. After an exorcism, you just want to get away from it all. I don't mean that I'd lost my faith, but you do take a psychological beating when you go up against pure evil. Once you have felt the demonic invade your mind, even for a moment, you never feel the same again.

The next day was Sunday, which we'd set as our day of rest from the exorcism. As Joe and his wife, Alla, were walking to evening mass, a heavy branch fell from the top of a tree, narrowly missing them. After mass, they met me outside the church, and Joe told me what had happened. It was a calm night, with no wind at all. We walked back to the spot and looked at the branch, which was large and would have certainly killed Joe if it had hit him. There was no sign of rot—it wasn't a dead branch. It had been ripped off the tree with tremendous force. We saw this was a second attempt on Joe's life by the demonic. There was no need to say anything: We both knew the psychic's prediction had just come true.

Since Monday was the day of the Triumph of the Cross, the bishop, Joe, and I brought relics of the True Cross with us. I sat behind and to the right of Michael with my relic at the side of his head, and Joe held his relic to the back of the housepainter's neck. Then Bishop McKenna stepped forward with his relic, for the part of the ritual that goes (in English), “Behold the Cross of the Lord. Depart, Enemies!”

At the simultaneous touch of
three
relics—the number that symbolizes both the demonic and the Holy Trinity—Michael's eyes went wild, darting from side to side. He wouldn't turn his head to look at any of the crosses, but there was no escape from the sight of them. What I saw in his eyes will be with me for the rest of my life: It was the look of a cornered beast that was trapped and frightened, but vicious at the same time. As a cop, I have seen people in all states of rage, anger, hate, pain, and death, but I can't describe his reaction in these terms. They say the eyes are the window of the soul, but what I saw there was not human. It didn't contain one ounce of humanity, and I will never forget it.

This soul-searing moment wasn't a turning point. The end of the third day was the same as the beginning of the first: Michael wasn't freed. For whatever reason, the powerful demon that had him in its grip wouldn't leave. The painter seemed pretty much resigned to ongoing possession, despite the torment it caused him.

“How do you feel?” the bishop asked in a kindly tone.

“I know you did your best, but it's still there.” The housepainter sounded weary. “I guess that's just how my life is meant to be.”

Although the bishop offered to set up another exorcism, Michael declined, then thanked all of us for our efforts.

“I'll always pray for you,” Bishop McKenna said.

“So will I,” added Joe, giving Michael's arm a friendly squeeze. “You can always call me.”

I also prayed that our efforts might bring him some relief in the future or had helped weaken the demon. Joe refused to be discouraged by the result, pointing out that our efforts may well spare Michael the most heinous form of demonic captivity: perfect possession. In ordinary cases of possession, even though the person's will breaks down and he can no longer fight off the invading demon, his soul—contrary to what most people believe—still belongs to God, not the Devil. Only when the person
voluntarily
surrenders his spiritual essence, by making an actual pact with the Devil, can he suffer perfect possession, lose his immortal soul, and consign himself to eternal damnation. As the great exorcist Father Martin once said, “Ralph, if you ever come in contact with someone who is perfectly possessed, run like hell!”

Michael's exorcism wasn't the end of the case for him—or for me. Every September since then, the demonic has gotten its revenge on me for the moment of sheer terror it felt in the bishop's church. It didn't do this through outward phenomena, such as hideous apparitions or formless black shapes. Instead, it acted under the cover of darkness, with a new form of psychological attack. Every September since this exorcism, my life suddenly becomes a battleground.

Now, the people who know me best will tell you I'm not the easiest person to get along with. You might say there's a touch of Michael in me, because I can be bad-tempered, nasty, and argumentative. Yet even with these combustible traits, the problems I've had in this particular month aren't always my fault. The first September after the exorcism was when Joe and I had our big blowout, after my partner got lost on the way to a case. Our split resulted in the New York organization we'd run together breaking up, which is why I worked alone during some of the supernatural cases I investigated. We didn't speak for six months after this quarrel.

When I finally did call Joe, we got to talking about what happened, and he said, “Ralph, do you know what month we had the fight?”