The Wonder Worker (77 page)

I was finally forgotten. She spun to face him as if he’d cracked a whip, and as the hissing stopped I saw a change come over him. It was as if a curtain came down over his horror, his enormous tension and his fear for my safety. Holding the crucifix casually in his hands he appeared to relax, although I felt sure this was an illusion created by the sudden onset of a willed stillness. I sensed the narrowing of his concentration as he focused on Francie. His fine eyes were brilliantly clear.

Suddenly he smiled. He was very laid back now. In fact he was enchanting—in the most literal sense of the word; he was weaving an enchantment, spinning a web which would ensnare her. She was being invited to look into those remarkable eyes, which at that moment had no expression other than a peculiarly intense interest, and to read into them whatever message she chose to see there. He was luring her on to believe he would do anything she wanted if she would do anything he wanted—and once she knuckled under to his will she would be trapped. De-willed and de-skilled she would be no better than a robot which could be programmed in any way he chose.

For a second as revulsion overwhelmed my fascination I thought I was witnessing the corrupt act of the wonder worker, but then I realised I was witnessing hypnosis used not for self-aggrandisement but for healing. Nicholas was struggling to beat back deadly symptoms in a woman who was horribly sick, and as soon as I understood this I became aware of the crucifix as he unobtrusively transferred it to his right hand.

“You’re going to keep looking at me, Francie, aren’t you,” he was saying, and he spoke so warmly, so delightfully, so sensibly that Francie became recognisable again as she gazed at him in rapture. “You’re going to keep looking at me and you’re going to forget Alice, aren’t you, because I want you to forget Alice and you want to forget Alice and we both want to forget Alice—we want there to be just the two of us, don’t we?”

Francie was starry-eyed and excited. She was herself once more. The hissing, alien presence had now vanished. “Oh yes, darling, yes, yes, yes—”

“Okay, you’re going to forget Alice is here and when I click my fingers you’ll have forgotten her, you won’t be able to see her any more, she’ll have gone away. You do believe I can do that, don’t you? Of
course you do. So now I’m going to click my fingers”—he clicked them—“and there you are, Alice has disappeared, your wish is my command and she’s gone, no need to worry about her any more, I’ve taken care of her, she’s no longer a threat to us, and it’s just you and me now, just you and me, and that’s what you want, isn’t it? Okay, fine. Now Francie, there’s one more thing you have to do to please me: you have to put down that knife. I’m going to count to five and when I say ‘five’ you’re going to
put down the knife
, put it down on the table. Got that? Okay, good, I’m going to start counting. One—two—”

I was just thinking, awash with relief, that everything was going to be all right when without warning everything went very, very wrong. Francie’s identity began to disintegrate again, this time far more violently. The hissing returned but at once deteriorated into groaning. She was still rooted to the spot but she was shaking violently, and the knife remained wedged in her clenched hand.

“Right,” said Nicholas swiftly, breaking off the countdown, “I can see this is too difficult for you, I can see we’re losing touch, but hold on to the fact that I’m on your side, Francie—hold on to the fact that I’m fighting for you against—”

Francie’s identity was abruptly wiped out. It was as if a drowning swimmer had finally been pulled beneath the surface of shark-infested waters after a prolonged struggle to survive.

The next moment her vocal cords were making a noise like an animal having its throat cut.

Nicholas dumped the attempt to communicate with her, dumped the hypnosis, raised the crucifix aloft and shouted: “In the name of—”

But he was cut off. A voice which sounded male bellowed: “I hate you, hate you, hate you—I want to kill you, kill you, kill you—”

“In the name of Jesus Christ, Satan, I—”

This didn’t work. The voice screamed louder than ever:
“Kill, kill, kill—”

In a flash Nicholas had changed tack. “Spirit of murder, spirit of hatred, spirit of anger, spirit of lust—”

This didn’t work either. The voice yelled loud enough to hurt my eardrums: “KILL, KILL, KILL—” but Nicholas yelled even louder: “—and all other unclean spirits, leave this woman, go back where you came from and IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST NEVER RETURN!”

The thing using Francie’s body raised the knife and rushed forward bent on butchering him.

IV

It was all over even before I could shriek in terror.

Nicholas moved the crucifix to parry the blow from the knife but the slash never came. Francie—the thing—or things—whatever—came to a dead halt as if slammed by a tremendous force. For one long moment she was paralysed, arm raised, knife poised, fist clenched, head thrown back. Then as her eyes rolled upwards in their sockets she gave a long howl and fell to the floor in a convulsion.

V

The convulsion probably only lasted a few seconds but at the time it seemed never-ending. When at last she lay still I thought she was dead. She had let go of the knife as she fell to the floor, and Nicholas, glancing at that long, smeared blade as he knelt beside her, said to me abruptly: “Fetch a roll of paper towel and a clean dish-cloth.”

The contrast between the prosaic request and the grossly abnormal behavior I had just witnessed was so great that at first I couldn’t think where to find what he wanted, and when I did reach the kitchen I couldn’t remember why I was there. Closing my eyes I took several deep gulps of air as if I hoped that oxygen would kick-start my brain.

A stench greeted me on my return to the study, and I found that Francie had not only urinated but defecated. Instantly I wished my memory would go on the blink again, but I knew this was a fact I was going to remember.

“Thanks,” said Nicholas, taking the paper towel and the dish-cloth from my hands. Tearing off a strip of the towel he used it to pick up the knife which he then wrapped in the clean dish-cloth. It didn’t occur to me until long afterwards that he was taking such care with the knife because it was an alleged murder weapon.

“Is she dead?” I finally managed to ask.

“No, just asleep. They always sleep afterwards.”

“Was it an epileptic fit?”

“More or less.”

“How much more,” I said shakily, “and how much less?”

“Well, the episode could certainly be described as a fit. But I don’t think she’s now going to start suffering from epilepsy.” He stood up
and put the wrapped knife in a drawer of his desk before reaching for the phone. As he dialled the numbers he said without looking at me: “I don’t know how I can even begin to apologise for recruiting you as a witness to that particular scene.”

“I’m okay,” I said automatically without having the slightest idea whether or not this was true. “But I need to understand what happened. Then I won’t feel so—so—”

“Yes. Just a moment.” He turned his attention to the phone. “Val, it’s me. Look, Francie’s just behaved like a paranoid schizophrenic and tried to kill me—she’s now out cold after a seizure. Can you—” He broke off, then merely added a second later: “Thanks,” and hung up. “She’ll organise an ambulance,” he said, “and come straight over.” He tapped some keys on his computer and when Francie’s phone number flashed on the screen he started to dial again, but although he waited for a long time, no one answered. Replacing the receiver he squatted down to take another look at Francie but there was no change; she was still so deeply unconscious that she scarcely seemed to be breathing.

Straightening his back he turned to face me. “All right, let me try to offer you some kind of explanation,” he said, “but it’s not easy because when all’s said and done this condition is a mystery—it’s part of the mystery of consciousness and the mystery of personality. One day the scientists will uncover the mechanics involved but just uncovering the cerebral processes won’t explain why these things happen and what triggers them. A lot of mental health is a mystery. Mental illness isn’t as clear-cut as lay people think, and often diagnosis isn’t easy. There’s also a problem with language.”

“What language?”

“The language we use to describe and categorise what’s going on. People mistake symbols for reality and treat the symbol as reality itself, but the purpose of a symbol is to point the way to reality—to make reality easier to grasp when there are no precise words to describe it. Another problem is that words used to describe a phenomenon are treated as an explanation and they actually explain nothing; they just allow the phenomenon to be placed in a category.”

“I don’t follow.” This was an understatement.

“Well, schizophrenia, for example, was originally just a description of various symptoms, yet now, if you say someone’s schizophrenic, you’re probably saying that to explain why someone’s behaving in a certain way. In fact it doesn’t actually explain anything. And take the
word ‘demon,’ used in its modern sense. Some people think a demon really is a little creature with horns but other people think this is just a visual symbol for one of the dark forces of the unconscious mind.”

“And who’s right?”

“It doesn’t matter because the only thing that matters is that the patient is suffering and needs help. When you’re working at the cutting edge of reality, there’s no time to meditate on semantics.”

“But when you helped Francie just now—”

“I treated her by naming the demons and casting them out. That’s the religious language. Or you can switch languages and say in the language of psychology: I dealt directly with the unconscious mind, bypassing normal thought processes and flinging out words which triggered the release of certain malign archetypes—”

“Wait, wait, wait, I’m getting all muddled and only understanding about one word in twenty—”

“Okay, let me try again. There are various medical words which can be used to describe Francie’s condition but I don’t think they’re going to prove adequate as explanations when she makes a reasonably quick recovery.”

“You think she’ll
recover?
” The idea seemed inconceivable.

“She’ll need a lot of treatment, but yes, I believe that in the end she’ll be the same person as she was before the other personality muscled in on her.”

“And when you say ‘the other personality,’ you mean—”

“A psychiatrist might try and float the theory that she’s suffering from a multiple personality disorder, but since that particular illness usually stems from a long history of severe abuse and since Francie’s abuse was a fantasy—”

“She was possessed, wasn’t she?”

“That too is just a description, and in the end ‘possessed’ is as hazy a word as ‘mad.’ To be quite honest I’m still by no means certain what was going on.”

“But you must be—you were certain enough to exorcise her!”

“Strictly speaking that wasn’t an exorcism. The rite to exorcise the Devil takes a lot of time to set up and the patient has to consent.”

“But you called on Satan!”

“I blew it and made a mistake. Well, I nearly blew the whole thing—”

“But Nicholas, if that wasn’t an exorcism, what on earth was it?”

“It was an emergency rite of deliverance, but I’m not at all keen
on that sort of thing—I’m not one of those glitzy Charismatics who see demons everywhere—”

“But the deliverance worked!”

“By the grace of God, yes—or did it? What exactly was the right button which switched her off? I’m not at all sure certainty’s possible here.”

By this time I was far more confused than I had been at the start of the conversation. “Nicholas, I don’t understand why you’re floundering around like this! Aren’t you supposed to be an experienced exorcist?”

“Yes, and that’s exactly why I’m floundering. I know enough to know how little I know for sure. Sometimes I think the Christian ministry of healing isn’t so much about problem-solving as mystery-encountering.” He smiled at me unexpectedly.

“You mean that even though you’re so experienced—”

“This was very different from the type of experience which normally comes my way. I usually only exorcise places. That’s pretty mundane; one can be well prepared and business-like. As for deliverance, I like to set up the rite well in advance after a great deal of prayer and counselling and with a doctor in attendance. My ministry’s about being low-key, not about shouting at demons and waving a crucifix around like a magic wand—and it’s not about using hypnosis without medical supervision either … Of course there are doctors who would say I overpowered Francie by the power of the will and not by the rite of deliverance at all.”

“But in the end you ditched the hypnosis,” I said at once. “You ditched everything except the crucifix.”

He seemed surprised that I’d noticed. “That’s true,” he said, “I did—I had to. The hypnosis was successful in calming Francie, but I couldn’t have hypnotised that other personality. It was much too strong.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t the Devil?”

“I’m not sure of anything. I’m shell-shocked.”

On the floor Francie moaned, making us both jump, but she remained unconscious.

“I was lucky to survive,” said Nicholas, looking down at her. I saw him shiver.

“But you couldn’t have got killed—you called on Jesus Christ!” I was unsure how far I believed this.

“But not to save me. To save Francie—and I believe she would
have been saved even if I myself had been killed in the process. But it would have been entirely my fault if I’d been killed. I’m so debilitated at present that the last thing I’m fit for is the ministry of deliverance.” He finally allowed himself to sink down on the swivel-chair at his desk and close his eyes in exhaustion.

Withdrawing to the kitchen I made us both some sweet tea. I was still feeling shattered but it helped to go through the familiar routine of tea-making, and when I returned to the study I found Nicholas had also been on the move again. He had covered Francie with a blanket from the bedsit and opened a bottle of lavatory cleaner from Lewis’s bathroom. A pungent chemical odour was now masking the stench from the body.