Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  “Look like what Jacob must’ve seen,” he said.

  I knew he was talking about the story in Genesis in which, on the run and sleeping on the ground with a rock for a pillow, Jacob dreamed of a ladder with angels ascending and descending, but from what I could tell he was no angel.

  After a moment of silence, he said, “You think a demon killed Tommy Boy too?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then why all the—”

  “You had a relationship with Tammy, didn’t you? I base that not only on my observations, but witness testimony––and I have her diary.”

  He finished screwing in the lightbulbs and descended the ladder before answering.

  “Brother John, let me tell you something. I’m saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost, but no matter how willing my spirit is, my flesh is weak. I have feet of clay and a tendency to backslide often.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “It wasn’t a relationship,” he said. “It was just occasional sins of the flesh.”

  “It wasn’t occasional for her, was it?”

  “It wasn’t her. She was possessed.”

  “Even if you believe that, it had to make you jealous,” I said.

  “I cared for her.”

  “As a sister in Christ?” I asked, unable to help myself.

  “That and more,” he said, his expression and tone sincere. “I would’ve married her once she had been set free and was really right with God.”

  “Who was she fornicating with beside you?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  It was the first time during our conversation that I thought he was lying to me.

  “You didn’t just backslide again, did you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re lying,” I said. “I’ve seen and done it enough to recognize it.”

  He grinned as if caught doing something cute. “Pray for me, brother,” he said. “I need strength.”

  “Where were you last night after dinner?” I asked.

  “In my room praying.”

  “Like the rest of us, you saw Tammy leave the table with Father Thomas,” I said. “Did you know what they were doing?”

  “Why you think I was praying? She was gonna come to my room afterwards to let me see the new her, but she never did.”

  “Did you go out looking for her?” I asked.

  He hung his head. “I fell asleep.”

  “Because the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” I said. “So you didn’t go out of your room at all?”

  “Not until I had to open the gate.”

  “Did Kathryn tell you what had happened?”

  “Just said to open the gate.”

  “What’d you think?”

  “Honestly? That something had happened to Father Thomas.”

  “Why?”

  “It was just a feeling I had,” he said. “And it was right. Just wasn’t the only thing that happened.”

  “You really believe a demon is responsible for Tammy’s death?” I asked.

  “You don’t?” he said, looking at me with a mixture of surprise and disgust.

  “If it wasn’t a demon, who do you think did it?”

  “No one,” he said, “because it was a demon. ‘We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities.’ How can you know so little about our adversary who roams about like an angry lion seeking whom he may devour?”

  He then began speaking in tongues––the Glossolalia of Pentecostalism, that speech-like vocalization of nonsense syllables––throwing his head up, arms out, his eyes rolling back in his head.

  23

  Father Thomas was slumped in the chair behind his desk. He looked old and weary and guilty. A gold banker’s lamp with a green shade provided the only illumination in the room apart from the sunlight streaming in the narrow strip of window that wasn’t covered by a bookshelf. Light jazz played softly in the background.

  “How long you been doing exorcisms?” I asked.

  “Over thirty years.”

  He had pulled several books on the subject from his shelves for me to borrow and they were in a stack in the pool of light on his desk. Both hardback and softcover, with simple to elaborate artwork, the books claimed to plumb the depths of the dark side.

  “That’s a long time,” I said. “How’d you get started?”

  He shrugged. “Saw a need.”

  “How many have you done?”

  “Hundreds.”

  “There aren’t many exorcists, are there?”

  “More than you’d think,” he said. “Most avoid the inevitable circus that accompanies notoriety.” Touching the books gently, he added, “Some of the most renown are featured in these volumes.”

  I glanced at the books again. He hadn’t arranged them by size, so smaller books were beneath larger ones, and the stack looked like it could topple over at any moment. Their titles left little doubt as to their subject: An Exorcist Tell His Story, Possessed, Hostage to the Devil, American Exorcism, Speaking with the Devil, Deliverance from Evil Spirits, Beware of the Night.

  “A couple of my cases are written about in this one,” he said, withdrawing Cast Out from the center of the pile and placing it on top. “The names have been changed—including mine.”

  “There has to be more to it than you saw a need,” I said.

  “Why’re you a minister? Why’re you an investigator? No simple answers to those questions I bet. We’re complicated beings with complex motives.”

  “Last night at the police station you mentioned knowing the difference between someone who’s possessed and someone with mental illness.”

  “You just know,” he said. “Especially after doing this for so long. I know evil when I sense it, and no matter how demented a person becomes, no matter how bizarre their behavior, there’s a difference.”

  “But are there specific signs you look for to confirm someone’s possessed?”

  “The Ritual mentions three symptoms,” he said. “Talking in unknown languages, exhibiting superhuman strength, and knowing what’s hidden.”

  I nodded.

  “And,” he added, “in my considerable experience, and that of the countless exorcists I’ve spoken to, these always surface during an exorcism, never before.”

  “Did Tammy exhibit any of them?”

  He nodded. “All three.”

  “Really?”

  “You don’t believe, do you. Not just about Tammy, but in general. You don’t believe in possession.”

  “I don’t disbelieve. I’m just not as certain as some people—and that’s about most things, not just possession.”

  “I can understand that for an investigator, but for a man of faith?”

  I frowned and nodded slowly. “I really go back and forth between belief and skepticism,” I said. “But most of the time it’s not that I don’t believe, it’s that I’m not sure what I believe. Practice is more important to me than belief. I’m open. Seeking. I attempt to be faithful even as my knowledge and beliefs are fluid.”

  “We live in cynical times,” he said. “It’s the age of the brain, and I’m afraid the soul is what suffers the most.”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed with him exactly. There seemed to be more religiosity than cynicism in the world—especially in our culture. Fundamentalism was on the rise. There was a revival of conservatism and literalism. The religious right was enjoying political power like never before. Maybe what he was saying accurately reflected one segment of the population, but for another significant part nearly the opposite was true. Perhaps more than anything else what we had was a great divide. On one side the post-Enlightenment, scientific-oriented skeptics and on the other the faith-filled, dogmatic fundamentalists. Religion was just one of many ways the world was deeply divided these days—and like politics, education, technology, environmental protection, and wealth, the gulf seemed to be growing wider by the minute. We seemed to be heading toward a r
evolution that would not only see a battle between the haves and have-nots, but between the fundamentalists and the progressives—actually that war had already begun, and it did so long before September 11.

  “If we only had the tape, you could—’course that’s not the same as believing, is it? These really are matters of faith. Plenty of people see and still don’t believe.”

  I nodded and thought about it.

  “‘Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe,’” he said. “Speaking of which,” he added, “what about all the exorcisms Jesus performed? Are they just legends that grew up around the Christian tradition?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think—”

  “But isn’t that part of the problem? All your thinking. What about feeling, discerning, intuiting?”

  The jazz stopped and we sat in silence for a long moment.

  “I’m not judging you,” he said, “just asking questions.”

  “They’re good questions, and I’m fine with you asking them. I do all the time. I have faith, just not certainty. I’m a devout agnostic. And I think I have to be to do what I do, but you’re right. I live in my head way too much.”

  Compassion filled his face and he sat up in his chair a little. “When I was a teenager, I underwent an exorcism that not only saved, but changed my life.”

  Frederick Buechner was right. All theology really was autobiographical.

  “There’s not a doubt in my mind about possession,” he continued, “because I’ve experienced it firsthand. I had an uncle—step-uncle really—who systematically abused me sexually and in other ways. In fact, it was more like torture. He also got me strung out on drugs. I was vulnerable and angry and the dark place deep inside me became the home of a truly evil presence.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He waved off my apology. “I didn’t tell you for sympathy. That angry young man seems like another person to me—a stranger now. I just wanted you to know that I’m not crazy or making all this up, and, now that I’ve had time to think about it, I think Tammy’s experiences with sex and drugs were far closer to mine than I realized.”

  “You think she’d been abused?”

  “I think you should find a solitary place on this sacred ground and read these books. Then read the rest of her diary and see for yourself.”

  24

  The afternoon sun made it warm enough to take Father Thomas’s advice. Sitting in a wooden swing between two cypress trees near the lake, Tammy’s journal and the exorcism books beside me, I was working my way through the stack, the desultory sounds of the day far more distracting than I could’ve imagined they’d be.

  The first book, Psychiatry and Possession, was by a psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Peters, who after years of private practice had come to believe in something beyond human evil and mental illness—demonic possession. He was a respected doctor and best-selling author, and seemed to have academic clout and clinical credibility. During his later years of practice he worked with a patient he believed to be possessed, ultimately performing an exorcism on her, attempting to find empirical evidence of demonic possession.

  In making his case for the reality of possession, Dr. Peters reported that during the ritual the following happened: The patient’s face altered extremely and dramatically into what he called “satanic facial expressions” during the manifestations of each of her demons, which a video camera was unable to capture onto tape; the emergence of four separate demonic personalities, which he believed to be impossible for the patient to create herself; the exhibiting of negative responses to holy water and the Book of Common Prayer; her inexplicable snake-like appearance, which was apparent to everyone present, but not captured on the video recording; and her display of superhuman strength in spite of being severely underweight, malnourished, and sleep deprived.

  This singular experience led Peters to assert that he had answered four complex questions with a degree of scientific certainty: Yes, the devil or a demonic world exists; the phenomenon of the demonic possessions of human individuals also exists; the process of exorcism can, in certain seriously possessed patients, be either curative or strikingly beneficial beyond any other known remedies; and that it is only during the process of exorcism that the demonic possession is fully revealed.

  Peters concluded the following: Possession is not an accident. In becoming possessed, the victim must cooperate with the devil in some way. Such cooperation can range from a conscious and deliberate pact with the devil to a child’s seemingly innocent denial of reality, choosing lies over the truth. He also believes that the initial cooperation is often made under great duress, and that thereafter possession is a gradually growing process. He defines an exorcism as a massive therapeutic intervention to liberate and support the victim to be able to choose to renounce the possession and reject the devil. Often the victim will not offer an explanation of why he or she became possessed until after the exorcism is concluded. The more recent the time of the onset of the possession, the more the exorcism is likely to be successful. Exorcisms of genuinely possessed people should be expected to be combative—some physical restraints are almost always necessary. Exorcisms should be conducted by a team, never an individual. He also highly recommends all exorcisms be videotaped—both for legal and educational purposes.

  Though a non-denominational Protestant, Peters argues that the Catholic Church, through its rigorous hierarchical and authoritarian control, was a guardian of “correct” theology and practice for all of Christianity on several issues, including possession and exorcism. According to him, it has been the only church to have maintained over several centuries formal instructions concerning the diagnosis of possession and the ritual of exorcism.

  I looked up and thought about what I’d read. Here was a doctor, a respected man of science, who had taken a scientific approach to the subject. He was rational, reasonable, and credible. I couldn’t easily dismiss him or what he was reporting. Much of what he described was similar to what Father Thomas was claiming happened with Tammy. Of course, Father Thomas had no doubt read this account. I remained skeptical, but not as incredulous. I could feel myself becoming more open to all possibilities—and not just as a commitment to the concept, but truly more curious and open. Putting aside the book on exorcism, I picked up Tammy’s journal and began to read.

  Depressed. So down last night I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Up until three in the morning thinking about how different my life is than what I thought it would be.

  Everything I’ve ever attempted has failed. Everyone around me seems to be succeeding at what they’re doing—their careers and businesses are not only going well, but bringing them fulfillment. Unlike me, most of the people I know are satisfied with their lives.

  How can they be so damn content? They seem to be good at life—the little things of life that I abhor. I’m no good at living. At finding meaning in the mundane, at doing what needs to be done. I resent it.

  I’ve never found a job completely satisfying, never not longed for something else. Maybe my restlessness is merely faithlessness, my avoidance of pain, of discomfort. Or maybe it’s just delusions of grandeur. I’m living a little life—obscure, anonymous, on the fringes, making no significant contribution to the world—and I loathe it.

  Countless people have told me I’m special, beautiful, can do anything. They’ve said I’ll do great things, go places, succeed, and I’ve believed them. But so far I’ve done nothing, been nowhere to speak of, made no contribution, and I wonder whether I ever will.

  Looking up from the page, I saw a young woman with badly cut short black hair coming toward me with a small brown paper bag. She was dressed plainly in worn, inexpensive clothes and walked like someone trying not to offend the ground she was stepping on.

  When she reached me, she looked at me briefly, gave me a hesitant smile, then ducked her head and looked away.

  “Keith said to bring this to you,” she said, holding up the bag. “It’s lunch.”

&n
bsp; “Thank you,” I said. “And him.”

  “It’s a couple of sandwiches, an apple, and a soda.”

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” I said. “I’m John Jordan. I’m here for a visit.”

  “I’m Amber,” she said. “I help out around here. I’ve been visiting my folks.”

  “So you live here at the abbey?”

  She nodded.

  “When’d you get back?” I asked.

  “Last night,” she said.

  “What time?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure. ‘Round eleven.”

  “How’d you get in?”

  She looked perplexed. “Nothing’s locked. I just walked in. This is a very open place. People come and go all the time. All of the homeless in the area know they can come out here any time of the day or night and find shelter and something to eat—same for teens.”

  I realized how little we knew about who was actually at St. Ann’s last night, and how their reputation for openness would make it virtually impossible to ever know for sure. Could Tammy have been murdered by an opportunistic killer, someone who was just passing through? It was possible, but improbable, and it certainly didn’t feel like that type of murder to me.

  “The front gate wasn’t locked?” I asked.

  “Oh,” she said, “yeah, it was. I just had him drop me off at the gate and walked the rest of the way.”

  “Him?”

  “My boyfriend.”

  “You’ve heard what happened?”

  She nodded. “It’s so awful.”

  “You see or hear anything?”

  She shook her head. “No, I swear. I’d tell you if I knew anything.”

  “How well’d you know Tammy?”

  She glanced down at the book I was holding. “Is that her diary?”

  I nodded.

  “Then I’m sure you know,” she said.

  “Actually, I’m just starting it. Haven’t read anything about you yet.”

  “Well, let’s talk when you do. I need to get back to the kitchen right now.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the sandwiches.”