Hostage to the Devil

by Malachi Martin

  He glanced at Jamsie: “What is it, Jamsie? Tell me! Quick!”

  Mark was afraid Jamsie would be stilled by fright, or by some power Ponto held over him, or—as had happened in other such cases—that Jamsie would fall unconscious before he could clue Mark in.

  “He’s talking rubbish, Father,” Jamsie answered with difficulty.

  Jamsie began to draw short breaths, as if breathing was now difficult for him. Then he started to cringe and draw into himself. His hands went to his neck as if to support his head. His face turned red. The doctor looked at Mark but made no move yet. The two young assistants stirred, ready to jump to Jamsie’s aid. Mark quieted them with a gesture, then went on.

  “We think Jamsie had better die with the blessing of the Church than live on in such a condition.”

  “No! No!” It was Jamsie, repeating for Mark what Ponto said, but with great difficulty. “I cannot fail. I must have my home. They will not allow that Person…” Jamsie broke off and started to gag and choke.

  Mark went on. “We think Jesus, the Lord of all things, is coming to expel you, you puny and filthy being, expel you and send you back defenseless and stupid where you came from. Jesus cannot be opposed.”

  Mark stopped. Jamsie’s eyes had closed. His hands fell to his sides in a helpless gesture. He started to slither from the chair to the floor.

  “Quick!” Mark said to the assistants. “Get him on to the cot.”

  As he slipped off the chair, Jamsie’s body lodged between the chair and the table, resting not quite entirely on the floor. His fists were clenched and held tightly to his neck, his head was sunk on his chest, his shoulders hunched, his knees bent, his toes splayed out straight and rigid. He was a twisted mass of hard angles and awkward curves. At first, the assistants and Mark thought Jamsie had merely got jammed at a difficult angle between the chair and the table. But after a moment’s effort and examination, they realized that they could not budge his body. It was heavier than anything they could move. They shifted the chair and table away. Jamsie fell heavily to the ground as if drawn by an invisible magnet. Throughout all this his eyes were open and staring sightlessly.

  Perspiring and helpless, the assistants looked up at Mark.

  He held up the crucifix and in a loud voice said: “I command you, Ponto, I command you in the name of Jesus! Let go of this creature of God. Cease to pin him to the ground. Let go, I command you!”

  Jamsie’s body suddenly loosened. His head lolled to one side, his eyes turned upward until only the whites showed, his hands unclenched, and his arms rolled to his sides lifelessly.

  Quickly the assistants picked him up and laid him on the cot.

  “Tie him down,” said Mark. Then to the doctor: “Take a look, Tom. Just make sure, will you?”

  The doctor checked Jamsie’s pulse and looked at Mark forebodingly. “Take it easy, Mark. He’s very low. I have no means of knowing how low without more thorough checking. Take it easy.”

  Mark nodded. He knew he was close to a break in Ponto’s resistance. He motioned to them all to stand back. He took the holy-water flask from the young priest and, raising his hand, faced Jamsie as he lay on the cot.

  Mark sprinkled holy water on Jamsie in three deliberate gestures—he looked like a man throwing a grenade each time. And each time he pronounced in quick succession the words of his greatest reproach. He was addressing the “superior.”

  “Lurking Coward. Filthy Traitor. Defeated Rebel. Come out from behind your miserable secundo, your toady. Come out. And be shamed once more. Once more be defeated by Jesus. Be thrust into the Pit.”

  As his assistants saw him at that moment, Mark had completely changed. Up to this point, he had spoken softly, cautiously, every word and expression coming out of him after a weighty pause. Now he seemed suddenly to be a foot taller. At the same time he seemed coiled up. His face was hard; his mouth barely opened as he spoke; and, on the tape, there is a sudden, unexpected sense of onslaught and fierce hatred and contempt in Mark’s voice.

  In answer to Mark, there came a slow and very weak moaning from Jamsie. It gradually picked up in speed and volume, growing higher in pitch and deeper in resonance. Jamsie’s body shook and vibrated beneath the leather straps holding him to the cot.

  “Or are you a secundo of Jesus also?” Mark continued in the same deadly tone. “A real secundo of his triumph? Traitor and Father of Lies, promiser of vain victories? Are you also broken by…”

  Mark got no further. His gibes had hit home. Through Jamsie’s open mouth all present in the room could now hear distant and mincing words, each one peeled out of some acidulous throat, licked by a contemptuous tongue, and thrown in a leisurely and deliberate fashion at their ears like sharp darts of scorn. They all felt that scorn. And they all feared.

  “Clot of mud. Little puppy of fucking animals. Talking beast. Praying with one end and excreting with the other. Depending on mercy. Asking for forgiveness…”

  The contempt was like burning acid to those listening.

  “…smelling like a dunghill. Rotting into a juicy cadaver. Be silent! Retire! Leave this animal to us, the Most Hi-i-i-i-i-i-i-gh…” The one syllable of the last word was strung out in a long note that had a wailing quality of regret. Mark noted it, and took the only way out: attack.

  “Declare yourself, in the name of Jesus!” A long pause. Jamsie’s face was bloodless, drawn. The young priest was about to say something when that voice spoke again.

  “We have never yielded to any power. And we will never…”

  “Then we will begin the exorcism, the cursing out of you, the expulsion of you and all of you in the name of…”

  “No-o-o-o-o-!” Again, that long-drawn-out wailing note. The voice had lost its contempt. There was a sudden urgency in it, almost a craven note.

  Mark had broken a hole in the attack, he knew, and he jumped in with both feet.

  “Your name!” Mark’s command came before that long wailing “No” was finished.

  “Names are for…”

  “Your name! By the authority of Jesus’ Church, your name, I say!” Mark was not shouting, yet his voice filled every part of the room.

  “We are…” Again the wailing note, but this time with a growl-like resonance. “We are all of the Kingdom. No man can know the name. We are alllllllll…” The “l” echoed and echoed until it finally died away.

  “What shall we call you then?” Mark was still insistent. “In Jesus’ name, what name will you obey? In Jesus’ name, what name will you obey?”

  “Multus-a-um. Magus-a-um. Gross-grosser-grossesste. Seventy times. Seventy-seven Legion. All…”

  “Multus? Shall you obey this name, in the name of…”

  Mark was interrupted by Jamsie. He was suddenly awake, his eyes wide open and bloodshot, his body pushing against the straps, his legs kicking.

  “Sit on his legs,” Mark said. The two assistants did so.

  “UNCLE PONTO! UNCLE PONTO!” Jamsie was screaming at the top of his voice with a desperation that froze them all. “UNCLE PONTO! DON’T GO. IF YOU GO, WHAT WILL THEY DO TO ME? UNCLE PONTO! UNCLE PONTO!”

  Mark drew back and thought quickly.

  Jamsie continued blabbering incoherently. Then, in a lower tone, as if wearied by his recent efforts: “Yes…thought you were after my…no, please…don’t do that and…night…radio with Jay Beedem…”

  Mark was thinking. He turned away. The others could see his face cloaked over in a withdrawn look. For a few seconds he seemed to be elsewhere, to be totally abstracted from the situation. Then he rounded unexpectedly like a whiplash, his voice rising in anger.

  “Multus! Multus! Answer us in the name of Jesus. Answer! Answer! By dismissing Ponto! Answer!” Mark waited for a moment. Then he repeated his command.

  “Answer! By dismissing Ponto! Answer!”

  Jamsie’s eyes clouded over, his head fell back, his body went limp. Mark had his answer. He knew: to all intents and purposes Ponto was gone; he was now dealing direc
tly with Ponto’s “superior.” Mark’s aim now was clearly to get all the information he could from that “superior,” to find out in particular as much as he could about the tangled lines of the attempted possession of Jamsie and thus clear the way for a successful expulsion of the evil spirit. Multus, like all evil spirits, could not stand the light of truth.

  The doctor pried open one of Jamsie’s eyes, felt his pulse, and nodded slowly, warningly to Mark.

  Mark fired out a series of questions.

  “When did you start working on Jamsie?”

  “He was chosen before he was born.”

  “When did he know you were after him?”

  “He knew long before he knew he knew.”

  “How did you gain entry to him?”

  “He wanted it. Those who might have taught him otherwise, we corrupted. But he chose to be entered. Only one opposed us.”

  “Who?”

  “He never knew him.”

  “Who?”

  “His father’s father. He was given that role by…” The voice wailed away in the same regretful note of sorrow.

  “By whom?” Mark insisted. No answer.

  “By whom?” Mark repeated the question, and added: “Or shall I tell you by whom?”

  “By that Person who is beyond notice by us. By the Claimer of all adoration. By the one who never received and will never receive our adoration…”

  “Did you make Jamsie see the ‘funny-lookin’ face’?”

  “No. His protector. We would never frighten him away. We are more powerful than that. It was his protector trying to warn him.”

  Now the tone had changed. A new truculence had entered it. Mark heard it and whitened. He had presumed too much. The voice continued gratingly. It was as if the owner of that voice saw Mark’s discomfiture. A hail of sharp questions rained down on his ears, and his mind started to boggle under the weight of the images they evoked.

  “Do you think you have escaped us, Mushroom-Souper? Do you think that one of these filthy whores didn’t change you? How many times have you lusted after them? Remember the Harlem house and the seventeen-year-old? Remember when she shoved her pussy at you and you saw the black hair glistening on those tawny thighs? Remember your hard-on? Ha! Ha! Priest! You fucking priest! You little burning cock! Ha! Ha! Your prayers were of no avail then. And your Virgin with her lily-white conception was of no avail. Or did you remember to tie the rosary around it and hold it down? Remember! Remember? Remember your wet dreams? We do. So we do. And you do! Don’t you think a bit of you belongs already to us? Prieeeeeeeeeest!”

  Mark was beaten temporarily. He staggered back. And then he saw Jamsie: both eyes open, his mouth split in a wide, full-toothed grin. He was listening and laughing. Mark got the message. Ponto and his “superior” were leaving.

  The young priest tapped Mark on the shoulder and pointed to the window. Thin pencils of sunlight were pointing in from the outside. Another bright and hot day had started.

  Mark heaved a sigh. Another half hour, he thought, and he would have nailed down the “superior.” “Okay. Let’s wrap it up for now, until tonight.” He had recovered his nonchalance. “We meet at 10:00 P.M. sharp. Get some rest. Tonight’s the night.”

  Then they did what they had done each day before this. Mark recited the Anima Christi. Afterward, he went upstairs and said his Mass. The four assistants took turns watching over Jamsie. In an hour or so after that, he woke up with no memory of what had happened the previous night.

  On the last night of the exorcism Mark had a plan to precipitate events if Ponto delayed very long in coming. He had a trump card up his sleeve. There was a certain risk in playing that card; and in what he proposed to do he was incurring dangers on himself as well as on Jamsie.

  But the alternative was almost as stark and forbidding. Jamsie was getting progressively weaker in his resolution to undergo the rite of Exorcism, to resist, to survive. He could collapse completely at any moment. He could, indeed, fall into a comatose state as a prelude to an early death—Mark had known such cases—or he could emerge in a state of complete shock. In either condition, Jamsie would be inaccessible. And Mark himself would be left forever with a nagging doubt about Jamsie’s fate. There would be no way of knowing if he had become one of the perfectly possessed, immune to any touch of therapy, isolated from any saving intervention, trussed, mummified, and locked away safely by the evil power that possessed him perfectly. Or if he had gone insane in a strictly psychological sense of the word. In any such condition it would be impossible to know how much he perceived of the other world, or if he could pray and exercise his belief and thus cooperate with God’s grace for ultimate salvation.

  Mark fervently wished to avoid the dubious and dangerous character of such an ending to the case of Jamsie Z.

  Mark’s trump card lay in a fact that had emerged during his routine inquiries about Jamsie and his general background.

  Jamsie had been baptized at home by his grandmother over the kitchen sink. He had been born in a very weakened condition. The attending doctor had despaired of his survival, and his very pious Armenian grandmother had baptized him, because she feared the priest would be too late. From what Mark could find out, there was a reasonable doubt that Jamsie’s baptism had been valid.

  Jamsie’s grandmother had known very little English and she certainly did not know the words of baptism in English. It was she who had poured water over his baby head. But, it appeared, the Irish midwife who was helping Lydia, Jamsie’s mother, in the childbirth, had pronounced the words of Baptism.

  If this were so, then the Baptism had indeed been invalid. The same person who pours the water must pronounce the words. Otherwise, no Baptism of that kind is valid. The baby is not baptized, has not become a Christian.

  To create even further doubt, the parish priest, who had finally arrived much later, never bothered to correct the doubt and baptize Jamsie provisionally. Such “conditional baptism” is usually conferred in such cases. But, for whatever reason, apparently this had not been done.

  Now Mark proposed to baptize Jamsie. Instinctively, as an exorcist, Mark knew that the “rejection” of Evil Spirit implied in Baptism of an adult was something a mere “familiar” could not handle. The “superior” would have to intervene in a new way in order to protect the common interest of “familiar” and “superior” alike.

  And then it was Mark’s object to attack the peculiar bond between the “superior” spirit and its “familiar” spirit. That much done, Mark would no longer have to deal secondhand; he would have the “superior” in the open—not temporarily as in the previous sessions, but as the “responsible party,” so to speak. From then on Mark could handle things as in a more “normal” exorcism.

  Having spent, therefore, one hour waiting for Ponto to come, Mark had Jamsie lie down on the cot, where the assistants strapped him securely. He now proceeded with the Baptism, Jamsie answering all the queries which are put to an adult person about to be baptized, reciting the Creed and making other professions of faith.

  This went on for a short while in relative calm, until Jamsie broke off in the middle of a sentence. His voice changed, and he said quickly to Mark: “He’s coming back. He’s in a terrible state.”

  Uncle Ponto was obviously with Jamsie. Mark’s plan had worked that far. He and his assistants listened to one end (Jamsie’s) of a bizarre conversation and tried to guess what was said at the other end (Uncle Ponto’s).

  “I will not have you in my life.” Jamsie was looking over to the door of the room. He was silent for a few seconds. Then he spoke in a waspish tone. “What happens on Jupiter and what I could do with much money—a million bucks—is all hogwash. I want to be left…”

  Now Jamsie was looking at the ceiling, now at the window, now over toward the door again. “That won’t help at…” His face flushed with anger. “But why should I be afraid to die? Others have had to go.”

  Mark and the others continued to listen in silence. Evidently Pon
to was in a bad state.

  Jamsie broke in: “Mark says Jesus said you’re a goddamn liar and…” Interrupted, Jamsie looked over in the corner and scowled. “I’ll talk about what I damn well please, and listen…”

  Then something happened of an abrupt and quite unexpected nature. Jamsie’s eyes grew larger, the whites of the eyes shone. His face seemed to cave in, to lose some substantive strength. He shrank back on the couch, into himself.

  Mark was by his side in an instant and laid his hand in Jamsie’s. It was a prearranged signal between the two of them. Jamsie had time to press Mark’s fingers lightly, then he started weeping and sobbing.

  “It’s no use.” His fingers let go of Mark’s hand. “It’s no use. I’m finished. He’s back. They’re all back.”

  Mark took the crucifix and started immediately. When he did, Jamsie seemed to go to sleep suddenly, his jaw sagging, spittle running down his chin.

  “Multus!”

  “Mushroom-Souper!” The words were pronounced with a velvet smoothness, but icy cold.

  “Multus! Answer us. It is you and no one else?”

  “Mushroom-Souper, you ludicrous little pigmy. We have our mark on you. All this hocus-pocus will not keep you or him that belongs…”

  “Multus! Answer us!” Mark had the spirit where he wanted it. “Jamsie’s ‘familiar’ is Ponto. Why do you say he belongs to you? Who are ‘us’ then?”

  “You smelly ones walk around in bodies of slime and mud and muck. You say one, two, three, four hundred, seven million, a trillion. Ha! Ha-Ha!”

  “Multus! Is Uncle Ponto you? Are you Uncle Ponto?”

  “We are spirits. There is no one, two, three, four, hundred, seven million, a trillion. We are kinds and species. We are spirits! Powers. Dominations. Centers. Minds. Wills. Forces. Desires.”

  “Answer in the name of the Church. Answer the questions of Jesus’ authority. Are you Uncle Ponto?”

  “Yes! Ha! Ha! No! Ha! Ha!” The laughter froze the blood in the listeners’ veins. It was a rollicking sneer of contempt, no fun in it, no humor. Then: “Ponto is us without the intelligence of the Claimant.”