Maybe, if his wife wanted to believe in this particular charlatan, the belief would turn out to be more beneficial than reality. Sometimes it didn’t matter where you got the inspiration to make changes in your life. If believing in the ‘luck’ of a rabbit’s foot gave you hope and courage to go through hard times or attempt the seemingly impossible, could the misplaced belief be entirely bad?
With these kinds of confused thoughts churning in his head, making him question his worthiness as a man of God, he pushed the buzzer of Dr. Monroe’s brownstone. The man himself came to the door, and ushered Reverend Sutherland into his Victorian-style office. There wasn’t a secretary or receptionist in sight, and no desk or cubical that might have accommodated one. Dr. Monroe was quite handsome, with blonde hair and beard, wearing an impeccably tailored pinstripe suit and vest. He looked to be about thirty.
Reverend Sutherland accepted a cup of tea, sipped it, and was overcome with an uncontrollable urge to tell everything about himself and his desperate situation. He revealed that his wife, Barbara, had recently awakened from a coma caused by a terrible automobile accident. She was unconscious, on a life support system for three years. Then, she suddenly awakened, with perfectly restored physical and mental vitality. It was if Reverend Sutherland’s prayers had been miraculously answered.
“Except something was wrong,” Dr. Monroe prompted.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Because you’re here, talking to me. And because these things aren’t unknown in the field of parapsychology. Tell me more. I think I can help you.”
His words tinged with hope, the reverend recounted how joyful he had felt, taking his wife back home to his church and rectory. For a while, things had gone well, and they had both repeatedly thanked God for the miracle He had wrought. But then came the shock of discovering that all was not well, after all, for Barbara began exhibiting symptoms of a split personality.
Most of the time, during the daylight hours, she seemed totally normal, like her old self – kind, affectionate, staid and moral. But during the night, her ‘other personality’ would take over. She imagined herself to be Maria Rocail – the wife of a self-styled ‘witch’ named Simon Rocail. The Rocails were notorious for their anti-Christian beliefs and practices. They led a coven of strange, perverted people who performed the Black Mass, indulging in pagan orgies, and tried to work evil spells upon their enemies. They still were worshipped, even idolised, by their followers, even after they both died. Simon and Maria committed suicide three years ago, when they were about to be arrested for causing the death of a small child in one of their occult ceremonies.
Reverend Sutherland had been a bold, outspoken adversary of the Rocails. He had preached against them and their ‘phony’ worshipping of Satan. He had called their ‘witchcraft’ nothing but a blasphemous superstition. And he was instrumental in leading the police to uncover their ritual murder.
When Simon and Maria Rocail poisoned themselves at the foot of their Satanic alter, they left a scroll, signed in blood, which promised that they would come back as reincarnated beings to take revenge on their ‘Christian Persecutors’, especially Reverend John Sutherland. The reverend had scoffed at this threat, and had asked God to forgive him for being secretly glad that the Rocails were dead. He did not believe in their pathetic spells and curses or witchcraft. He was convinced that the Inquisition was a blight upon the Church, a horrible dogmatic mistake that sent thousands of innocents to agonizing torture and flaming death at the stake.
“How did this business with the Rocails’ impact upon your wife?” asked Dr. Monroe.
For a long moment, Reverend Sutherland did not answer. He grappled with the ominous feeling that, in dealing with this so-called ‘parapsychologist’, he was giving in to temptation, allowing himself to be seduced by New Age jargon and methodology that often cleverly disguised the devil’s own, insidious propaganda. But he swallowed his misgivings, telling himself that it was his own overwhelming desire to find peace for his wife that made him so willing to try a desperate approach. And he prayed that God would understand and forgive him.
Usually he had to patiently cajole and lead his parishioners toward deep personal revelations, so he could understand and help them. He was used to maintaining a careful distance from his own emotions as he listened to their tales of sexual abuse, adultery, and so on. But now he felt that he was the one who had to open his own heart to a stranger. And he found it extremely difficult.
Clearing his throat nervously, he said, “When Barbara is in the throws of one of her … uh … nocturnal episodes as Maria Rocail, she becomes more wanton, more lascivious, more sexually aggressive than she ever was three years ago. Sometimes she ‘sleepwalks’ down to the sacristy.”
“How do you know this?”
“I’ve followed her. I had to know – don’t you see? But I wasn’t prepared for the awfulness of it. One night I heard her mumbling prayers to Satan, cursing the Blessed trinity.”
“How did you feel about this?”
“I prayed for her. I asked God’s forgiveness. After all, this blasphemy was subconscious. She wasn’t in control of her faculties. How could she have been? She was always a good, God-fearing woman. She’s been in therapy for the past six months, seeing a psychologist. It doesn’t seem to be doing any good. She read some of your books, and she was impressed. I remain sceptical, to put it mildly, Dr. Monroe. I consider myself a modern, enlightened clergyman. I don’t believe in the occult, the paranormal. I’m here out of desperation – a vague hope that somehow you might be able to help my wife – even if the ‘help’ turns out to be only an ability to replace her present delusion with something less blasphemous and destructive.”
Dr. Monroe leaned back in his swivel chair, pressing the tips of his fingers together. In a tone of wounded sincerity, he said, “You can trust me far more than you know, Reverend Sutherland. I have a degree in psychology. I’m a legitimate scientist, an explorer of the mind, who has found its terrain murky and enigmatic. Certain occurrences cannot be understood in conventional terms. I have come to believe that people’s minds are sometimes taken over by the souls, or auras, of those who are dead.” He paused, eyeing the reverend with a look of bemusement. “I see by your expression that you find this hypothesis utterly outlandish.”
“I’d sooner believe that my wife is schizophrenic.”
“I think that much of what is regarded as mental illness is really a manifestation of the paranormal.”
Reverend Sutherland pondered this for a long time. Then he said, despairingly, “You’re trying to tell me that the Rocails’ curse might have had real power in it?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“I have to admit that the bad luck that befell us afterwards sometimes seemed like much more than coincidence. Not three weeks after Simon and Maria were dead, I suffered a heart attack. Then my wife had the terrible accident that put her in a coma.”
Leaning forward, Dr. Monroe seized upon this point and pursued it intensely. “You must realise that when a person is near death, or in a trance or coma, the body and the soul, the aura, are imperfectly joined. There is less cohesion between the corporeal self and the spiritual self, and at such times a foreign spirit may slip in and inhabit the body. These alien spirits are called ‘walk-ins’.”
“But it sounds like demonic possession, which I’ve always considered to be pure superstition.”
“Or it can be a form of reincarnation,” said Dr. Monroe.
Reverend Sutherland thought this over. “You’re saying that Maria Rocail’s spirit may have infested my wife’s mind and body while she was in her coma?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Dr. Monroe. “Maria’s spirit may have given your wife’s body the power to heal itself and regain consciousness. Now, presumably, Barbara’s own spirit has grown stronger. If we can exorcise the infestation, the walk-in, we may be able to restore her to spiritual health.”
“How would you do this?” asked the reverend.
/> “Possibly through hypnotic regression. Would your wife consent to it?”
“Yes. She would. As I said, she’s the one who suggested that we come to you for help.”
Two weeks later, on a Saturday night, Reverend John Sutherland and his wife, Barbara, came to Dr. Steven Monroe’s office. During the past fourteen days, the reverend’s wife had stirred quite a few special capsules into his evening tea; unaware of this, he thought it was his own desperate hope of making his wife better that caused him to be more amenable, more agreeable, to whatever treatment Dr. Monroe wanted to undertake.
Barbara seemed inordinately delighted to be meeting the parapsychologist and placing herself in his care. It was clear that she already idolised him and put great faith in his curative powers. There was a warmth, an invisible but tangible note of complicity between them. The complicity seemed almost sexual, and the reverend felt a spike of jealousy. Suppressing the feeling, he told himself that it was only natural that Barbara should find Dr. Monroe attractive. He was young, blonde and handsome.
He gave the reverend a cup of tea that was strangely strong and bitter. Then he asked the reverend’s wife to lie down on a black leather couch. Taking out a gleaming gold watch, he dangled it on its chain in front of his patient’s eyes, making arc back and forth, giving off spangles of light, as he ushered her into a deep hypnotic trance – in the trite and usual way in which this type of thing has been portrayed in thousands of pieces of fiction. The very triteness of it imparted an ‘unbelievability’ to the proceedings that made Reverend Sutherland feel quite distant to what was going on, almost as if he weren’t in the same room. His head was groggy, and his eyes blurry, and he felt stuporous, powerless to intervene, a condition aided and abetted by the capsules that Dr. Monroe had secretly dropped into his cup of strong, bitter tea …
… and when he regained consciousness, he was still groggy, his eyes swimming, his head reeling in disbelief. At first he thought he wasn’t awake at all, but in the throes of a nightmare.
He was in his own church, which had been transformed in a weird and frightening way.
The altar wasn’t his altar, but a twisted satanic version in the shape of a large, red, glittering, five-pointed star made of a clay-like material. Dr. Steven Monroe, Barbara and three others, all wearing black, hooded robes, were seated at the points of the star. Black pentagrams were painted on their foreheads. Their faces appeared grotesque, demented, in the wildly flickering candlelight. At each point of the star stood a human skull, and each skull supported a tall red candle, rivulets of wax running down over the skulls’ foreheads and dripping like tears from their eye sockets. The centrepiece of the altar was a huge black and red sculpture of an evil goat god with wild, curving horns and a pair of claw like hands holding a silver dagger and an ornate silver chalice.
On the wall behind the altar was a huge black crucifix illuminated by candles in silver sconces. And nailed to the crucifix was a leering human skeleton, its bones yellowish, giving off a putrid aroma from the decaying slivers of flesh still clinging to them.
From his seat in the first pew, Reverend Sutherland recoiled from the awful sight and the stench of it. He wanted to rush up there and tear it down, rip its nails out of the plaster, but he was unable to move. He just sat there, trembling, trying to make himself arise or speak, or do something to put a stop to the obscene proceedings.
Dr. Monroe said, “Please begin, Maria.”
Reverend Sutherland squinted to see if his nightmare had truly come to life, and the witch, Maria Rocail, was truly there at the Satanic alter, her evilly beautiful face hidden in the shadow of one of those black hoods.
But, no! It was his own wife who answered to the name ‘Maria’, and began praying. “Lucifer, I have come before you to perform your ceremony for the reclamation of the dead. We beg you to bless our deeds, that we perform in your almighty name. Consecrate the blood that we drink to show our oneness with you, the Lord of Hell!”
What blood were they talking about? A scream pierced the church, and Reverend Sutherland’s eyes darted left, as from the side door behind the altar a young woman was carried in to the church by two more robed and hooded figures. She was strapped, nude, into a chair made of rude wood, like an electric chair. The hooded men carried her, chair and all, and sat her down to the left of the altar, where she continued to scream for a while, till at last the screams subsided to weak whimpers.
“Go on, Maria,” prompted Dr. Monroe.
Barbara said, “Oh mighty Lord Satan, we worship you with all our hearts and humbly submit to your desires and commandments. We believe, with everlasting conviction, that you are our creator, our benefactor, our lord and master. We renounce Jehovah, his son, Jesus Christ, and all their works. And we declare to you, Lord Satan, that we have no other wish but to belong to you for all eternity.”
The girl in the chair moaned piteously as Dr. Monroe arose, taking from the alter a pair of crossed human bones and placing them at her throat, just as a legitimate priest might have used crossed candles to bless the throats of the Christian faithful on Ash Wednesday. The young girl screamed again, but her voice was weak and hoarse.
Barbara Sutherland took the silver dagger from the altar and moved in close, so that she and Dr. Monroe flanked their victim, leering down at her. Barbara said, “Lucifer, we ask you to bless her, the source of our communion. May her blood give us strength to do your bidding and grant new life to Simon Rocail., our leader.”
Dr. Monroe replaced the human bones on the altar, and took up the silver chalice. Barbara laid the dagger across the girl’s throat, ready to slice the jugular vein, as the chalice was put in position to collect the blood. The girl emitted one last horrible scream, which was cut short by the slicing dagger. Her life gurgled out of her, and her blood was collected.
At the same instant, Reverend Sutherland felt a wrenching pain in his chest. He was having a heart attack. He knew it. But he scarcely cared. He did not want to endure any more of this horror.
His vision dimming, out of the blur he saw Barbara and Dr. Monroe coming toward him, holding aloft the blood-filled chalice. It glittered alluringly as Barbara said, “By this blood, grant our beloved leader renewed life, Lord Satan, so that he may continue to serve you!”
With a shudder and a groan, Reverend Sutherland felt his heart explode. He had always hoped to go out with a prayer on his lips, but he was unable to manage. Somehow there was no prayer left in him. At the hour of his death, thanks to its obscenely sacrilegious circumstances, he was unable to summon his faith.
Barbara approached her late husband’s corpse, sat next to him in the first pew, and put the chalice to his dead lips, making him ‘drink’. Most of the blood ran down his chin, but some also ran into his mouth.
In a little while, he awoke. He felt the warmth, the adoration, of the hooded figures surrounding him, in his own church.
Barbara smiled at him. She kissed him and said, “Welcome back to me, my husband, Simon Rocail!”
The hooded figures murmured appreciatively.
Reverend John Sutherland, his body now inhabited by the walk-in, Simon Rocail, put his arm tenderly around his wife, and said, “My faithful spouse, Maria. It’s so good to be with you again, darling.”
“Thanks be to Lucifer,” said Dr. Monroe.
Simon Rocail said, “Take my hand, brother-in-law. I congratulate you on a job well done in our absence.”
“You are the best brother anyone could ever have,” said Maria, as Dr. Monroe bent toward her to accept her kiss on the cheek, and the other hooded figures gathered around, chuckling in delight.
THE END
Exclusive screenplay excerpt from the sequel to Pontypool.
pontypool changes
By
Tony Burgess
EXT.FIELD dawn
The pickup truck in the field. Mary standing beside it. Les still having trouble with his door. He stops, then slides over to the open passenger door and gets out.
Mar
y begins to walk as Les stands where she had been and leans down to look inside the truck. Mary stops and looks back. Les straightens up and walks toward her. Mary commences walking and Les follows, seeming to trace her very steps.
EXT.CLUTTER DRIVEWAY DAWN
The Clutter Mailbox, in the distance, in the dawn glow, the Clutter house. Mary and Les walk into frame at the base of the driveway. Cut to Les and Mary facing the house, they stare up, the wind blowing their clothes.
MARY
Who’s that?
EXT. FRONT STOOP. DAWN
Someone, a young man, Jeffrey, is pulling planks from the burnt stoop. Another man walks by the kitchen window. JULIE appears at the window looking out. Her mouth is clearly TAPED shut. A man rises behind her and pulls her from the window.
ext.CLUTTER DrIVEWAY. dawn.
Mary leaps forward.
MARY
Oh God! Julie!
Les tries to stop her but she breaks away and runs to the house. Les pauses for a moment and looks at his hands, surprised.
LES
No gun.
Les looks up then bolts after Mary.
INT.CLUTTER LIVING ROOM – dawn
In the kitchen are an ELDER MAN, a YOUNG MAN, a YOUNG WOMAN and Julie. The elder man passes Julie to the woman and gives her a serious look. The young man spots something through the planks.
Holiday of the Dead Page 55
