Hostage to the Devil

by Malachi Martin

  Slowly Mark’s features became clear, Mark’s solid features, tense and granite-like, his eyes closed, his hand still raised holding the crucifix. The Shadow was receding like smoke from a cigarette being dissipated in the air. And with it all the noise and din was fading away weakly into silence.

  Over Mark’s face there was a film of fine suffering drawn tight like gauze. Jamsie was stung with compassion. Mark had said to him: “If we get rid of the Enemy, Jamsie, I will be the last to feel the lash of his tail.”

  Mark had lost sight of Jamsie by then. He was in his own travail, his own agony, his own payment of pain.

  It was the young assistant who described the change in Jamsie. There was no more hint of struggle. A great calm filled Jamsie’s features. Mark’s voice still boomed, even though the noise had died away. Mark was repeating again the two words: “Jesus! Mercy!”

  The young priest knew that Jamsie was free at last. He unbuckled the straps that held Jamsie down on the cot.

  “Mark!” Jamsie shouted to the exorcist as he rose up from the cot. “Father Mark! I’m free!” Jamsie touched Mark on the arm. “Father Mark!” He took Mark’s hand and felt the icy cold of those fingers. He stood a few moments waiting.

  Then finally Mark lowered the outstretched arm which held the crucifix. His eyes lost the glassy stare; he blinked and Jamsie saw the look of recognition returning in Mark’s eyes. And Mark saw in Jamsie’s eyes and on his face an expression of peace and lively hope which had never been there since he had known Jamsie.

  The Rooster and the Tortoise

  It was 6:00 A.M. exactly by the clock tower in the Piazza della Liberta of Udine when the party of eight Americans left the hotel in two limousines. Everything in their trip had been planned down to the last detail in timing and ceremonial.

  The date was July 23, and already they felt the high summer heat. Within 15 minutes they had made their way through the narrow streets past arcades and porticos, out of the city, and were on the undulating road down through the coastal plain. Now and again, when they crested a hill, they caught glimpses of the Adriatic Sea as a glinting blue band on the horizon. To the far north stood the Alps, white and on guard.

  Their destination was the village of Aquileia (population 1,500) some ten miles south toward the sea. For Carl, the leader of the trip, this was to be a homecoming: long ago he had lived, suffered, and triumphed in Aquileia. For Carl’s seven companions, it was a pilgrimage to a venerated shrine.

  The two men riding with Carl in the first limousine were his friends and associates; the woman, Maria, had been his assistant for four years. The four college students in the second limousine were psychology majors and Carl’s student assistants. Besides being a highlight in their studies, the trip was a mystical celebration for them.

  In the first limousine, Carl led the conversation in jubilant tones: “We are on the brink of discovering what Christianity was like before the Greeks and Romans distorted it.” He was a thick-set man in his late forties, of medium height, with close-cropped, coal-black, curly hair and beard; high rounded cheekbones beneath a high forehead, eyes not merely black, but shining black, like polished agates. He had a Roman nose, long, straight, with a slight hump in the middle. The lips were full and sat over a strong jawline. He was tanned and healthy-looking. He wore a light suit over an open shirt.

  As he spoke, he gestured quietly to emphasize his meaning. The ring on his right index finger flashed in the morning sun. It was a wide gold band adorned with a gold image of a tortoise. He toyed with the two emblems of an ancient Roman god, Neptune, a dolphin and a trident, which hung on his neck chain.

  Carl was a qualified psychologist, with a prior degree in physics. His studies had led him into parapsychology and research concerning the nonordinary states of human consciousness. Under the impulse of his personal gifts as a psychic, he had been experimenting in astral travel and reincarnation.

  After 11 years of intensive work, he was going to Aquileia accompanied by associates and students. For here, as he and the others had learned a few months previously during one of Carl’s trances, he had lived some 1,600 years previously during a former existence as a public notary named Petrus. In that trance, which had taken place under controlled laboratory conditions, Carl accurately described not merely ancient Aquileia—its amphitheater, forums, public baths, palaces, quays, cemeteries, triumphal arches, and shops. He had given a detailed account of how the fourth-century citizens of Aquileia had reerected a public statue of Neptune which a religious sect had overturned in the previous century. Some weeks after that seance, news had come independently from Aquileia telling precisely of such a statue and of a Latin inscription backing up Carl’s statements.

  Carl had also given details of a mosaic floor that was part of a fourth-century Christian chapel. And he added something piquant which fascinated his associates and students: a description of a very ancient ritual that used to be performed by Petrus and his companions at one particular spot on that mosaic floor.

  The purpose of their present trip was to reenact that ritual on July 23, the summer festival of the god Neptune.

  Now, in the first limousine, Carl was again describing that particular spot and the ritual. The spot was a mosaic medallion depicting a fight between a red rooster and a brown tortoise. Apparently Petrus and his companions—“Christians of the original kind,” Carl commented—used to come and stand in single file to the right of the medallion. Then, one by one, they used to step on the Rooster (symbol of the intellectual pride and imperial power-madness which “had corrupted genuine and original Christianity”), then kneel, and looking at the Tortoise (symbol of immortality and eternity), pronounce the Latin formulae: Ave Dominus Aquae vivae! Ave Dominus immortalis qui Christum fecisti et reduxisti! (Hail, Lord of Living Water! Hail, Eternal Lord who made Christ and took him back.)

  It was this corrective religious aspect of Carl’s experiments and researches that had attracted the interest and attention of many—in particular, of the group accompanying him this morning.

  Norman was reared a Lutheran, but in his late teens had rebelled against the traditionalism and conservative beliefs of his church. He became convinced that Luther was a wanton rebel and Lutheranism a mere sixteenth-century invention having very little to do with the original teaching of Christ and the first Christians.

  Albert, Carl’s second associate, was a former Episcopal priest. After three years in the ministry, he took up studies in psychology, convinced that his church was no longer speaking the language of modern people and no longer delivering the original message of salvation Christ had preached.

  Of the four psychology majors, the group riding in the second limousine, two were Catholic—Donna and Keith; one. Bill, was Jewish. Charlie had been baptized in the Presbyterian Church, but had converted to Judaism two years previously. All four had been educated in the prevalent idea of their time that Western Christianity was a product of Greek philosophy and Roman legalism and organization, and the churches were shams and false representatives of the genuine church of Jesus.

  The group’s plan for this morning was quite simple. Without any fanfare or fuss, they intended to stand around Carl while he reenacted that ancient ritual over that particular medallion in the ancient floor of the cathedral. They had a tape recorder and movie camera. All Carl’s words and gestures were to be recorded on tape and film. Norman, a close and longtime associate of Carl and a fellow psychologist, was to act as monitor: at each stage he would announce into the recorder what was happening during the visit, even as it was being filmed. They half-expected Carl to be able to uncover further evidence of Petrus and his ancient fellow believers. As psychologists, Carl and his companions hoped to obtain some new insights into the parapsychological from the experience.

  Four and a half miles south of the Venice-Trieste freeway, they entered Aquileia. Everything was drenched in blinding sunlight. All colors were fused into the brightness of the day. Circumstances were favorable for Carl that morn
ing in Aquileia. All trace of modern life and activity was dormant. On that summer festival of Neptune, the god of the sea, as they made their way slowly toward the cathedral, all living humans were asleep and hidden, as if Neptune had spread his net over them. Even the dogs and chickens were still asleep. A solitary cat licked and preened itself on a rooftop in the shadow of a chimney.

  Maria touched Carl’s hand, smiling. He responded to her expression of satisfaction with a quick smile, but he said nothing. They were all gazing out at the village streets as they rode toward the square. Houses, taverns, shops became indistinct shapes in the haze of heat and light. For those with eyes to see, this twentieth-century time frame was now transparent. In the boiling quiet they sensed the presence of ancient gods, of lisping shades, and of all those who once walked there in their pride, their sorrow, their loves, and their defeats.

  The village was almost incongruously dominated by the huge cathedral and its spired campanile. Aquileia, a 2,000-year-old city, was once the fourth most important Roman city in the world, after Rome itself and Capua and Milan.

  Then joined to the Adriatic by six canals, it was the only city outside Rome empowered to strike its own coins. The capital of a strategically and economically vital province, it was famous for its theater and its religious festivals, its celebration of mysteries, and its curative waters. It was the meeting place of Roman emperors, popes, synods; residence of its own patriarch; prized by German and Austrian kings; fought for by Slovenes, Huns, Avars, Greeks, Franks, English, Danes.

  Now Aquileia is an obscure little farming community off the beaten track, a forgotten and inconsequential village not shown on general maps, and described by sardonic clerics in Rome as “a cathedral with some streets attached to it.”

  Carl’s party drove directly to the cathedral; they had made arrangements with the guardian. As they got to the door, the student assistants began the “experiment.” Donna started the movie camera, and Bill started the tape recorder. All was set. Every one of them was tense and expectant. A certain air of happy quest descended on them.

  Their course now was to enter the cathedral, walk down its central nave, turn right at the sanctuary, and descend into the ruins of the fourth-century chapel.

  Carl’s behavior changed the moment he stepped out of the limousine. He was no longer smiling and relaxed. He had that “look” his associates had come to know so well—his eyes heavy-lidded and almost closed, the head lifted, hands hanging by his sides, and on his face a special glow of absorption and reverence they had come to associate with his “trances.” There were hints of ecstasy and happiness at the corners of his mouth. The utter calm of rapture seemed to descend on him: his forehead and cheeks were utterly smooth, free of wrinkles and lines, as if the skin were suddenly made young again or drawn tight by an invisible hand.

  But the general expression of his whole face was abstracted and bloodless. There was no hint of a personal expression, no indication of a word about to be pronounced or of a passion about to erupt, neither confidence nor fear, neither welcome nor hope of welcome, neither compassion nor expectation of compassion.

  And around the eyes, in a way none of his associates and students could ever explain, there was what they had come to call the “twist”—some crookedness, some wry misshapenness, as if the natural contours of skull, forehead, eyes, and ears had been splayed out of kilter by some superhuman force residing in him temporarily with tremendous and awe-full power. It was ungainly and uncomely but accepted by those around him as inevitable. Carl always referred to it as “my divine suffering.” For his theory—or rather his belief—was that during psychic trances a human being with an “open soul,” as he used to phrase it, was “taken over,” was “possessed” by the superhuman. The merely physical frame of that human being was overwhelmed—suffered, in that sense—by the inrush of silent divinity. The thin wall of reality separating the divine and the human was temporarily breached, and the human was “marinated” in the divine.

  Now all waited. Carl had to move and talk. There must be no outside interruption, no external stimulus. The minutes ticked by. They still had not moved from the entrance. Carl’s lips moved, but there was no audible sound. Then he shifted his stance, turning slowly in a half-circle, first toward the sea six miles away, then in the direction of Venice in a southwesterly direction. As he turned, he had a questioning expression on his face. He seemed to be waiting.

  They heard scraps of words and sentences: “…the fourth canal…Via Postumia…must have the integral number of…”

  But his voice sank to a whisper and died away completely by the time he was facing in the direction of Venice. On his face, there was now a look of thunder and bitterness. His lips were working furiously as if in heated argument or commentary. But they heard nothing. Again he turned around, to face the cathedral door.

  “Now 0800,” recorded Norman. “Carl is moving into the cathedral. His right hand is raised in salute, palm turned outward.”

  Carl’s face was calm again. His lips had ceased to move. They entered a great golden-brown sea of silence, sunlight, and color arched over by the stone ribs of a roof that curved and soared away out of sight.

  Then Carl headed straight down the 110-foot nave. Sixty-five feet wide, the floor was one whole ocean of mosaics flanked by solid columns on either side; it ended in a semidomed apse where the high altar stood. The sun’s rays were pouring in through the nave windows and slanting down upon the expanse with dovetailing shafts of light and shadow. Dust shimmered in paths of light, flecking the air with colors of the mosaics and the surrounding walls, red, yellow, ochre, purple, orange, green.

  For three-quarters of the nave the little group walked solemnly and steadily over that magic flooring teeming with designs of garlands, birds, animals, fish, ancient Romans, all glowing with deep tints and sophisticated forms.

  Carl made only one detour: when he reached a particular medallion set in the floor, he paused. His lips were moving again: “…weakness…to prefer death to strength…prostituting humility of this weak…” Then in staccato repetition under his breath he uttered the old Roman words for Rome’s cruel strength: “Virtus, virtus, virtus, virtus…”

  Norman glanced at the medallion. “Carl is circling this mosaic of the Good Shepherd,” he recorded.

  Carl’s own voice tapered off with whispered tones of disgust: “…braying donkey…Alexander’s god…a braying donkey…”

  After this, Carl walked on calmly until he reached a broad mosaic band beyond which they saw a composite picture of the sea. The ancient artists had depicted boats, fishermen, fish of all sizes, sea serpents, dolphins, and a recurrent theme: Jonah, the Old Testament figure, in the mouth of a whale.

  Carl’s behavior became erratic at this point, and his face again mirrored anger together with confusion and contempt. He drew back with a low hiss of breath, his body almost crouching. Then he bobbed his head from side to side, as if seeking an exit between dangerous thorns.

  Norman recorded, his voice stumbling as he followed Carl’s changing course. “Carl is moving to the left. Slowly…now to the center, now to the right—no, he is moving leftwards again, stepping on a Jonah medallion.” Then in an aside to Donna, who was still filming all of Carl’s movements, “Move over in front of him, Donna, move up front, please.” Donna did so.

  Painfully, with sudden stops and cautious steps, Carl made his way up to the steps of the sanctuary. As Donna directed the camera at him, his eyes were wide open and blazing with an anger Donna had never seen in them. “Carl is turning back,” Norman continued to record. “He is going toward the tunnel door.” This tunnel led down to the fourth-century chapel over which the present cathedral was built in the eleventh century.

  Donna was the first to reach the rectangular floor of the ancient chapel. She photographed the arrival of Carl, Norman, and the others. Carl now walked unerringly forward, but bowed his head several times as if acknowledging presences the others could not perceive.

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nbsp; The floor was another elaborate mass of Roman mosaics—pheasants, donkeys, fruits, pastoral figures and scenes, flowers. Carl did not stop until he reached a wide band of orange marble which ran the width of the chapel.

  “Carl is standing at the orange band,” Norman continued his recording. “Beyond it are many geometric designs.”

  After about 30 seconds, Carl’s behavior changed. His face lit up. His head was lifted high. Both hands were outstretched. He stepped across the orange band and walked straight to a medallion lying just beyond the geometric designs. This was the spot where the ancient ritual was to be enacted. The medallion showed the Tortoise glaring up at the Rooster.

  Carl’s companions gathered around the medallion. Donna stood opposite Carl, the camera directed straight at him. “Carl’s hands are joined, palm on palm, at his chest,” Norman whispered into the microphone. “His eyes are closed. This is it.”

  No sooner had Norman said this than Carl opened his arms to full length on either side of him; he raised his head until his eyes were directed upward behind closed lids. His companions began to hear half words and syllables of that ancient incantation he had come to recite: “…aquae viv…immortalis…” But he seemed to gag or stutter when he reached the word “Christum.” He never fully pronounced it. It came out as “Christ…Christ…Christ…” (rhyming with “grist”). And as he stuttered over that first syllable, his voice got louder and louder, and his breathing became faster and more labored.

  “Here, Bill, take the mike,” Norman said quickly, “but hold it so that we can still catch my comments and his words.” He had been instructed by Carl that, if there were any unforeseen block or difficulty, he was to take Carl lightly by the hand and guide him in on top of the Rooster.