The Other Side of Darkness (22 page)

I don’t know how long I stand there, too frightened to pray, too paralyzed by fear to move, a loud ringing in my ears. But as I feel the door pushing against me, I know that it’s all over for me, that the demons are stronger, and that I’m helpless. I am a pathetic excuse for a soldier. The demons have won!

“Mom?” Matthew pushes the door fully open. “What’s going on?”

“Oh!” I jump out of the way, allowing my son in. “I’m so glad you’re home.” I’m about to give him a hug when I smell that unbearable stench again. “You’ve been drinking!”

“Just one beer, Mom, and I didn’t even finish it.” He holds his hands up in defense.

“Matthew!”

“I swear. I didn’t even want it. Honest, I only had it because the guys made me.”

“They made you?” I am glaring at him now, almost as if he is the enemy. Sure, I realize he’s not a demon, but at the same time, I wonder how much control the demons have over him, particularly when he’s been drinking.

“Seriously, it was Jason’s twenty-first birthday, and as a joke someone brought him a six-pack. And after the store closed, he invited us to sit out in the bed of his pickup and have a drink. He’s kind of my boss, Mom. I couldn’t exactly say no.”

“I don’t care if it’s only one beer or even one sip, Matthew Jackson. You are underage, and it’s against the law, and, more important, it’s against the rules of this house. And if you refuse to obey those rules, you will have to find another place to live. Do you understand me?”

He looks shocked and slightly hurt. “Are you telling me to move out?”

“If you’re going to keep on drinking, I am. I cannot have you coming home drunk, Matthew. I have a responsibility to protect your sisters—”

“You think I would hurt them, Mom?” He looks angry now.

“I think that a drunk might do anything. You’re opening the door for Satan and all his demons by drinking. For all I know you’re
doing drugs too. They say alcohol is the gateway to drugs! And drugs are the open door to demons!”

“Mom!” He stares at me in disbelief. “I don’t even know you anymore.”

“You and me both, buddy!” I snap back at him as he throws the strap of his backpack over a shoulder and storms off to his room.

Fine. I may be a failure at spiritual warfare, but I sure know how to fight with my son! Still, this doesn’t comfort me. Not at all. I only feel a deeper sense of despair. It seems I can’t do anything right. How can I possibly oversee the children’s ministries at our new church when I can’t even manage my own family? I not only feel like a failure but a fraud. Maybe I’m demonized right now. Maybe I’m the wolf in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be so spiritual when I am nothing but a fake and a hypocrite.

I sink down in front of the family-room sofa and begin to pray. I pray to escape the fiery darts of my enemy, but at the same time I really just want to escape myself. I must be my own worst enemy. How can I possibly survive me?

S
omehow I pretend to be normal during the next few days. And yet I feel as if I’m walking around in a stupor sometimes … as if I’m not even real. I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but it frightens me. I fear that my spirit is infected and that it’s making me sick. I know I’m housing demons. And I know I must do something about it, but I feel so helpless. Finally, on Saturday, after I told Rick I was having bad cramps and needed to rest, he decided to take the girls on an outing.

Had I known from the onset that this outing was to get pumpkins at a nearby farm, I might’ve made a quick recovery from my cramps and protested. As it was, I felt too weary to fight back. I had already stated several weeks ago that I wanted no signs of Halloween in this house, that it was Satan’s holiday and not something that needed to be gloried in. But once again I was outvoted, and right now they are off slogging through the mud in search of pumpkins.

It’s bad enough that we still have that cat in the house. Rick fell for it right away, declaring that we needed a cat since he’d been having trouble with mice in the garage. So the very next day, despite the fact that I posted Found Cat signs throughout the neighborhood, Rick went out and got a cat box, a giant bag of litter, food, and even a flea collar. The little black beast is still sleeping in Sarah’s doll bed, but I’m afraid I’ll have to put my foot down about that. My dad
made that doll bed for Sarah not long before he passed away. It seems wrong to allow it to be defiled by a cat. A cat that may very well be full of diseases. Especially if, like my family claims, it’s a stray or the offspring of some feral cat. And vet bills aren’t cheap.

I tried to put my foot down on naming this cat, but once again I was powerless. Why should that surprise me?

“She’s been here four days,” Rick announced just this morning as he cuddled the black kitten with Sarah and Mary looking on. “And it doesn’t look like anyone is claiming her. Therefore, I’m going to name our cat. Since she arrived the week of Halloween, I’m calling her Spooky.”

“Spooky!” said Mary. “That’s perfect, Dad.”

“Hey, Spook,” Sarah cooed as she scratched the kitten’s head. “Welcome to the family.”

How can they be doing this to me? How can my own daughters, the ones who did spiritual warfare at church with me just a few days ago, now turn on me like this? Can’t they see that they’re being sucked in? Don’t they know that their father has no spiritual sense about these things? Of course, I have to admit, at least to myself, that I’m no better. The way I see it, we’re all headed for serious trouble. Satan is getting the upper hand in this family, and I’m a big part of the problem.

After everyone’s gone and I finally have the house to myself, I take some action. First I put on a pair of heavy rubber gloves, the kind I use for cleaning toilets. Then I put the pile of framed photos, the ones I set out in the garage the other night, into the garbage can. I go through the house looking for other items, anything that has connections with ancestors, anything that might be bringing this evil curse upon us. I pray as I go, asking the Lord’s Spirit to guide me.

I remove a number of foreign trinkets that my mother brought us from some of her trips abroad. I bag up a pair of black candlesticks that have been in Rick’s family. I don’t know their origin, but they simply feel evil to me—like something that might’ve been used in an occult ritual. I find lots of things, some that were gifts from questionable people. Like the stuffed unicorn Lynette gave Mary for her last birthday. I’d always felt that was spiritually wrong.

So far I have avoided Matthew’s room. The door is closed, and he will have a fit if I go in there. But this is my house, and I’m the one doing the cleansing. To leave one room undone will defile everything. So I open the door and go in. I can feel a spirit of darkness in here, and it doesn’t take long before I discover the source. Since he started working at the bookstore, he has started collecting more books and CDs, and I am appalled at what I find, not hidden, but lying around for anyone to see. I carefully pick up the evil-looking CDs and horror novels. I bag them up and take these things along with everything else out to the garbage can. It takes several trips.

Fortunately, the can was emptied on Thursday, so it has a fair amount of room today. But by the time I’m finished with this spiritual cleansing, it is three-fourths full. I find an old, nearly empty fertilizer bag and press it onto the top of the can to cover the contents in case anyone decides to snoop. I use a piece of lumber to pack down the contents in the can. Some of the items break as I pound against the bag with the heavy piece of wood. And I get a strong sense of relief with these crunching noises, as if I am breaking through the bondage of the evil past, breaking free from the ancestral curse. I also feel a twinge of guilt, but then I remind myself that most of the things were from my family, and nothing is terribly valuable. Not that one can compare earthly values to what these things can cost us in a spiritual sense.

They were only odds and ends. I peel off the sweaty rubber gloves and lay them on top of the fertilizer bag. The “antiques” were simply things I scavenged from my mother over the years. Things no one else wanted. Now I can see why. Oh, I know that some of the items buried in that pile of garbage were from Rick’s side of the family, but they were holding deep, dark secrets, not to mention demons and curses. I can’t dwell on all that now. I should simply rejoice that I have finally purged our home of evil. I close the garage door, locking it. Now if only the garbage pickup was tomorrow. But tomorrow is Sunday.

I am spiritually exhausted as I return to my room. My plan is to finish my cleansing by praying for our entire house, every square foot, perhaps even anointing the walls with oil, as Cynthia once suggested. But I am so worn out that I fall asleep.

Before I know it, Rick and the girls are back with their pumpkins. I get up and tell them that I’m still not feeling well and that I’m going to lie down, but it is simply my escape from them as they go against me by making plans to carve jack-o’-lanterns from the pumpkins they brought home. All three of them, as well as the pumpkins, are dirty and messy, and I can’t bear that they are standing in my kitchen. Rick is already gathering knives, and the image of them standing there like that makes me think of satanic sacrifices, and I am forced to look away.

“Why don’t you carve the pumpkins on the deck,” I say over my shoulder. “It’ll be easier to clean up.”

“Okay.”

“And when you’re done, put those muddy clothes in the washing machine to soak.” I head back to my room and close the door again. As I hit my knees, I realize that my earlier sense of deliverance, the
spiritual elation that came with the removal of the contaminated items, has left me. I feel flat and empty and just as frustrated and frightened as before. Perhaps even more. Why is this not working?

While I made some baby steps today, I am in serious need of personal deliverance. There’s no denying that I am a huge part of this problem. Perhaps I am the entire problem. I think I have purged our home, but I’m still here, and I’m still housing evil. My fingers are shaking as I dial Cynthia’s phone number. And though I thoroughly expect condemnation from her and certainly the loss of my so-far-unfulfilled position as director of children’s ministry, I cannot help but confess just about everything to her. To my surprise, simply saying these horrible things aloud actually makes me feel a tiny bit better. Although I am also embarrassed. It’s humiliating to let others see your messes, your weaknesses. “So it seems that I am demonized,” I finally tell her.

“I’m not the least bit surprised,” she finally says when I’m done.

“You suspected that?” I ask weakly.

“Remember when we prayed for you at Bible study? I felt that was just the beginning.”

“Then why would you ask me to help with the children’s ministry?”

“Just because you are under attack doesn’t make you evil, Ruth.”

“I feel evil.”

“Don’t you know that all of us in leadership positions are highly subject to satanic attack? Think about it. If the devil can knock out a leader, he hurts more than just one. He hurts all who are beneath him.”

“So what do you do, Cynthia? How do you fight back?”

“I do constant spiritual warfare, Ruth. Don’t you?”

“I try …”

“Well, don’t feel bad. It’s only natural that you’ve been under such an attack.”

“Really?” I feel a faint wave of hope.

“Yes. The problem is that you’ve isolated yourself for too long. You’ve kept these things to yourself. You need to be honest, to tell your brothers and sisters when you’re in need so we can pray for you, for deliverance.”

“Yes!” I sigh deeply. “That’s what I need.”

“Do you want some of us to come over and pray for you right now?”

I glance around my bedroom, my refuge. “No,” I say quickly. “My family is home, and it’s not—”

“Why don’t you come over here then?” She sort of laughs. “It’s only me, you know.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Not at all.”

“Okay. I’ll be right over.”

Rick and the girls are still outside. It seems that pumpkin carving is quite an ordeal. And it irks me that they really seem to be enjoying themselves. But I suppose I should be thankful for this distraction, and at least it’s not terribly cold outside, although it’s starting to get dusky. I write a quick note, saying I have an unexpected church meeting, and then hurry out to the car.

I feel like a criminal as I quietly back the car out and zip away. “I am a grownup. I can come and go as I please.” But even as I hear these words from my own lips, I don’t believe them. Beneath the sound of my voice, my mind is saying,
I am a fraud, a fraud, a fraud, afraid, afraid, afraid …

And I am clothed in guilt and fear as I walk up to Cynthia’s little house and knock at her door.

“Bronte is on her way over.” Cynthia lets me in. “She’s living with Glenn and Kellie, you know.”

“I didn’t know …” I glance around Cynthia’s sparse living room, and the barrenness of her walls reminds me of my own house. So I tell her of my recent purging, of how I am attempting to remove all traces of evil from my life.

She nods. “Yes. That’s wise. I am constantly amazed at where dark spirits can pop up. Why, I was sitting here reading a library book one day, and suddenly I knew in my spirit that the book, although a good Christian book, had been defiled. I’m not sure if this was a result of the last person who had read it, or perhaps the book had brushed up against some satanic book while waiting to be reshelved in the Christian section.”

“Did you throw it away?”

She almost smiles. “I nearly did, but I didn’t want to be stuck with a fine. I live on a fixed income, you know. So I just wrapped it in a plastic bag, stuck it on my back porch, and returned it the next day.”

Soon Bronte arrives, and the two women prepare to pray for me.

“I really appreciate this,” I say nervously as I sit in the kitchen chair that Cynthia places before me.

“First of all, you need to tell us some things,” says Bronte. “It might not be easy, Ruth, but you have to be honest. Otherwise, it won’t work. Do you understand?”