by Karen Hall
Bob was on the other side of the bed, tirelessly reading the text, as he had been for hours now. Danny was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, showing no sign of reacting; he seemed to be in some trancelike state. Early on, he’d yawned a few times, but he hadn’t moved at all in the past hour. It made the straps restraining his arms seem even more ridiculous than they already had.
“ . . . give me strength against this and every unclean spirit tormenting this creature of yours . . .”
Maureen, Kevin, and Danny’s younger brother, Chris, were waiting in another part of the house. Michael wondered what Bob was going to tell them once he finally admitted the futility of the alleged exorcism.
“ . . . through the same Lord Jesus . . .”
“Amen,” Michael answered, hoping Bob wouldn’t hear the lack of conviction in his voice. It was obvious to him now that there was nothing tormenting Danny except Danny. Possibly a controlled substance or two. At any rate, if the hocus-pocus placebo were going to work, they’d have seen some sign of it by now.
“I exorcise you, most unclean spirit!” Bob went on. “Invading enemy . . .”
“Oh, give it a rest,” Danny said suddenly. Bob looked up. Michael looked up. The voice had come from Danny, but it was not Danny’s. “It’s too late for this one, Padre,” the guttural voice said. “You waited too long.”
Something in Danny’s eyes made Michael shiver.
“Here you are wasting time, when you could be downtown feeding the schizos. Noble work, isn’t it? Keeping wretched people alive so they can live to see another miserable day. I wholeheartedly approve, for what it’s worth.”
The thing on the bed had a contorted grin on its face that was somehow obscene.
Would you stop! There’s no such thing as a demon!
Danny had a grin on his face that was somehow obscene. He didn’t even look like himself.
Would you stop! There’s no such thing as a demon!
Danny turned his head to look at Michael, as if noticing him for the first time.
“Well, if it isn’t Father Rock-and-Roll.” He smiled. “Enjoying the show? Don’t worry, we’ll be done in time for you to get back to Manhattan for the cocktail party.”
Michael felt himself stop breathing.
Bob returned to the text. “I exorcise all evil spirits! Every one of you!”
Danny was still staring at Michael, in a way that made Michael feel slimy. He felt a strange pressure weighing down on him. He glanced around. Bob was still reading. There was no one else in the room. There was nothing to explain the feeling.
But how . . . ?
“Too bad you couldn’t be at your office today,” Danny said to Michael. “Linda, your secretary? No, I’m sorry, your personal assistant—wore that red dress. You know. The one with the scoop neck. If she leans over just right—”
Michael looked at Danny, stunned. Danny smiled at what must have been a puzzled look on Michael’s face.
He heard his parents talking to Linda on the phone, that’s how he knows her name. And every woman in America has a red dress. There’s no such thing as a demon . . .
“ . . . in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Bob said, making the sign of the cross over Danny, “be uprooted and expelled from this creature of God.”
Danny didn’t react, or take his eyes off Michael.
“She just wears it for spite, you know. She gets off on being leered at by eunuchs. She likes proving what hypocrites you all are.”
“He who commands you is He who ordered you thrown down from highest Heaven . . .”
“Last time she wore it, you went home and dreamed about her all night, didn’t you?” Danny said, still smiling.
“ . . . He who commands you dominated the sea, the winds, and the storms . . .”
“But I know what’s under that bullshit altar boy act, and so do you. The liar, the charlatan, the coward—the weak, spoiled twit who wakes up hard in the middle of the night from dreaming about banging his secretary . . .”
“Stop it!” Michael yelled.
“Michael!” Bob’s tone left no room for argument. Michael turned his attention back to the text.
“ . . . Hear, therefore, and fear, Satan!” Bob’s voice was growing louder. “Enemy of the faith!”
Danny raised his voice over Bob’s. “But that’s just a dream, right, Father? You can’t help what you dream, right? That’s out of your hands.”
“ . . . Source of death! Robber of life!”
“What about after you wake up?” Danny asked. “At first light, in the dark, when you think you’re all alone? It’s not out of your hands then, is it? Quite the contrary!”
“ . . . Twister of justice!” Bob snarled. “Root of evil!”
“With full knowledge and free consent of will . . .” Followed by a chilling cackle as Danny threw his head back and laughed.
MAKE HIM STOP!
“You never quite mention that in confession, do you? You confess your temper and your ego and all your noble sins, but you don’t confess the mornings when you take your sheets downstairs and wash them yourself, now do you?”
Michael couldn’t breathe. The invisible pressure had intensified until he felt he might suffocate.
“Michael?”
Bob was waiting for a response. Michael stared at the swimming text in front of him. He couldn’t force himself to function. His body was paralyzed and his thoughts were scurrying like terrified ants, fleeing in circles. Colliding.
How can he know that? He can’t know. But he does. Danny doesn’t know. He does. (What does that mean?) I can’t breathe. Why did You let him do that?
“Michael!” Bob was firm, trying to bring him back.
Michael squinted, trying to make the words come into focus. After a moment, he shook his head. “I can’t,” he whispered. He put the book down on the nightstand and left the room. Behind him, he could hear Danny howl with laughter.
By the time Michael had recovered enough to continue, Danny had reverted to his catatonic trance. Eventually he fell into what seemed to be a normal sleep, at which point Bob declared it a day. He told Maureen, Kevin, and Chris not to feel discouraged. (“The shortest exorcism I’ve ever heard of lasted three days. It’s not as easy as it looks in the movies.”) He promised he and Michael would return first thing in the morning, and left them his beeper number in case anything drastic happened in the night.
On the train back to the city, Michael couldn’t stop shaking. He was nauseated, his body ached, and he went back and forth from chills to feeling feverish. He told Bob he was coming down with the flu. Bob shook his head.
“It happens,” he said.
“Do you feel like this?”
“Not as bad as times before. Try not to think about it.”
“Fine,” Michael said. “If I throw up on your feet, try not to think about that.”
“Wouldn’t be anything new,” Bob answered with a familiar smirk.
“Jesus,” Michael muttered to himself. Or maybe to Jesus.
“You did fine,”
Michael opened his eyes. “I wasn’t having performance anxiety,” he said, instantly regretting his choice of words. Bob didn’t show any sign of making the connection. For all his purported calmness, he looked ashen, and about ten years older than he had that morning.
“Doesn’t take long in a room with it to make you a believer, does it?” Bob asked.
Michael shook his head. “I just—”
“What?”
“I know I believe something right now that I didn’t believe when I woke up this morning. I just don’t know what it is I believe.”
“Tell me what you’re sure of.”
Michael waited a moment before he spoke. “There was something in that room.” He said it quietly, as if voicing it aloud would make things worse. He didn’t even like admitting it to himself, but there was no way around it.
Bob nodded.
“It’s in Danny,” Michael continued. “It can take hi
m over.”
I can’t believe it, and it makes no sense to me, but I saw it. I heard it. And besides . . .
Bob waited.
“Everything he said about me is true,” Michael said quietly. He hadn’t known he was going to say it until it was out.
Are you crazy? You could have told him it was a lie and he would have believed you.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Bob said. “That’s what he wants.”
Michael stared at Bob, amazed.
“But . . .”
“No but. Beating yourself up right now isn’t going to help Danny.”
Bob leaned forward, closer to Michael, unwilling to let him escape. “Tell me how I can help you,” he said, in a tone far gentler than anything Michael had heard from him yet.
Michael sighed. “Make it make sense,” he said.
Bob nodded, undaunted by what seemed, to Michael, an impossible request. He thought for a moment before he spoke.
“Obviously you believe in the concept of spirit,” he said. “You believe in God.”
“Yes.” That was the only thing he still felt sure of.
“So tell me. If you believe in a benevolent spirit, why do you have trouble believing in an evil spirit? There’s just as much evidence in the universe to support its existence as there is to support the existence of God. The cynic in me thinks there’s more.”
“I don’t know,” Michael said, shaking his head. “I mean, I throw words around like everyone else: Satan, Lucifer, Christ casting out demons—but I’ve always thought of those words as symbols. Metaphors.”
Bob started to speak; Michael cut him off.
“Don’t crank up your anti-Jesuit spiel. Historically, we’ve been as into the mystic as anyone else.”
“Historically, yeah. Have you looked at a copy of your own magazine lately? It’s about as spiritual as an ACLU newsletter.”
“Spirituality takes on a lot of forms.”
“Yeah, well—when we go back in there tomorrow, try some aromatherapy on it and see how far you get.”
Michael didn’t know where Bob thought he’d gotten with the Roman Ritual, but he let it go.
“All right, you tell me,” Michael said. “You really believe in the Devil?”
“I don’t believe in a little red guy with horns and a pitchfork.”
“What, then?”
“I think it’s all very complex, interwoven. I believe there’s more than one level of evil. At least two that I’m sure of: the evil of man himself, and something larger. I think of it as capital-E Evil. I think it parallels the hierarchy of Heaven. God, saints, angels—Satan, demons, lesser demons—they are all beings. I know that. Whether there’s any logic—any human logic—in it or not, my experience has reinforced that belief time and again. I don’t know what form it all takes. I don’t know what Satan looks like any more than I know what God looks like. What I do know is that when big-E Evil finds a doorway into the human realm and can communicate on a level we understand, it’s not some vague, nebulous force. It’s right there, in the room, in your face. It’s individual. Personal. I swear to you, these things have personalities.”
He gave Michael a second to digest this, then continued.
“It’s like most of life, Michael. You hit a point where it stops making sense, and there’s no place left to look for answers.”
Michael thought about it. He had no argument for that.
“What did you believe before this morning?” Bob asked. “How did you think of evil?”
“I told you, it was all very abstract,” Michael said. “This . . . stuff . . . floating out there, like radioactivity. We could get off course and veer into it; it could corrupt our thinking, pull us farther out, like an undertow. We lose ourselves. We lose God.”
“And where did this stuff come from?”
Michael shrugged. “Original sin?”
Whatever that means . . .
“Maybe our wrongdoings create some universal cesspool of negative energy.”
“Like nuclear waste?”
Michael nodded.
“And why would an all-powerful and benevolent God let that happen?” Bob asked.
“If He gives us free will, He has no choice. There’s no way life can be as wonderful as it is unless the ability to destroy life is as horrible as it is, and if we have free will, we’re going to have that ability.”
“Natural disaster?”
“God’s way of reminding us not to put our hearts and souls into material possessions,” Michael said. “Although I doubt He ever accomplishes much more than making people update their homeowners’ policies.”
“So you had it all figured out. Now what?”
“You know what. Whatever was in that room today . . .” Michael shook his head. “It wasn’t some cloud of New Age negative energy. It was . . .”
“What?”
“Old Age Hell,” Michael answered, shivering. He wrapped his arms around himself and wished for a stadium blanket. He was freezing.
Bob nodded. “We rational modern people don’t like to think about anything we can’t understand. Floods and famines and plagues. We think we can explain everything, and if we can’t, it’s because we haven’t isolated the right gene just yet; but a little more money, a little more research . . .”
Bob stopped. He seemed to be waiting for Michael to speak, but Michael couldn’t make his head stop spinning long enough. Bob went on.
“Now, what’s a rational, modern Jesuit to do with the thought that when Jesus talked about demons, He meant demons?”
“I don’t know,” Michael answered. “I don’t know how to make myself suddenly believe things I don’t believe.”
“You mean you don’t know how to allow yourself to believe things you don’t like. You can’t deny what you saw and heard in that room today. You know what it was. Evil. Individual, personal, intelligent Evil.”
Michael put his face in his hands. God, help me. I believe it. How can I believe it? What does it mean?
“The good news,” Bob said, “is that the minute you believe that, you become a lot safer. The best thing Satan has going for him is people’s refusal to believe in him. You don’t arm yourself against something you don’t think is there.”
Michael looked at Bob. There was something in his eyes. A milder version of something that had been there all day. A vague uncertainty. No. More than that. What, then?
Fear?
A horror of a thought was creeping into the back of Michael’s mind. “Safer?” he asked.
Bob nodded.
“But not safe?” It wasn’t really a question. Michael could already see the answer in Bob’s face.
“What are you telling me?” Michael asked. It took everything he had to speak at all. “When I walk into that room, God can’t protect me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“People have died during exorcism. Priests have died.” He sighed. “I’ve known a few who may as well have. Others don’t seem too much worse for wear. I don’t know what makes the difference.”
“But you’re okay.”
“So far. Though I wouldn’t say I’ve been the same. No one can go one-on-one with that kind of Evil and come out of it unchanged. I feel it.”
“Feel what?”
Bob took a moment, then spoke softly. “It takes something out of you. I can’t tell you what that’s like. You’ll find out soon enough.” Bob’s voice was filled with pain.
“Why do it, then?” Michael asked.
Bob smiled sadly. “Back when you guys were ‘into the mystic,’ you would have known the answer to that.”
“What would I have known?”
“It’s all about who you work for,” Bob said, ignoring Michael’s tone. “God or Satan. Good or Evil. If you love one, you have to hate the other. If you love one, you have to do battle with the other. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.”
Michael didn’t answer. Nothing felt simple to
him right now.
Back in his room, Michael got undressed and set the alarm clock for five a.m. He wanted plenty of time to pray before leaving for Long Island. He was so tired he knew he wouldn’t be able to focus for very long tonight.
He got into bed and pulled the blanket around him as if he were four years old and trying to protect himself from the under-the-bed monsters. He could see Danny’s face as if it were still in front of him. Not the real face. The other one. The evil one. Contorted. Hideous. Utterly inhuman.
He turned off the light; the room was dark.
Dear God . . .
Dear God, what?
Dear God, why would You create something so vile?
If there really is a Devil, one of two things has to be true: (1) God is not all-powerful, or (2) God is not all-good.
The first thought was merely deeply disturbing. The second thought was too frightening to even go near. Not so much because it was blasphemous, but because it scared the ever-living hell out of him.
Dear God, please give me the—
His head was suddenly full of voices. He couldn’t make out any words, but the din kept him from being able to hear his own thoughts. In his mind, he could still see Danny’s face, and all the voices seemed to be coming from it. He tried to continue praying, but no words would come to his chaotic mind. He tried again.
Our Father—
More chatter. Louder. Voices. Laughter. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t remember the words. A line, then. Anything!
Deliver us from evil . . .
He could feel himself trembling. He pulled the blanket closer, but he knew it was useless.
Deliver us from evil . . .
He closed his eyes tightly, but it didn’t make Danny’s face go away.
DELIVER US FROM EVIL!
“Danny” started to laugh—a depraved cackle, rising above all the voices, so loud in Michael’s head he couldn’t believe he was doing it to himself. Then Danny stopped laughing and the sounds ended abruptly. Perfect silence. Then:
If He can . . .
Howling laughter.
IF HE CAN!
Rain had begun to fall; Michael could hear it on the fire escape outside his window. Thunder rumbled, somewhere far away.
