Four Nights With The Devil

by Peter Hockley

  Go and apologise. You can still convince her about Me

  I wiped the silver table with a damp cloth and removed the writing, put the pencil away on the shelf and hurried out of the door to make peace with my friend and try again to capture her soul for “God”. I found Debbie sitting in the staff room and it was clear from the blank expression she wore on her face that my attack had left her stung and upset. She stared at the wooden table top and didn’t even look at me as she muttered that her mother would arrive soon. I had never been very good at apologising and seeing Debbie in such a state, with me alone to blame, all I could blurt out was a weak “I’m sorry”. It didn’t feel right to try converting her to my new spirituality now either; that would have to wait until another time.

  Debbie’s lips curled slightly into a smile and she said she accepted my apology. Overcome with shame and having no clue how to mend the cords of friendship I had so violently ripped apart, I spewed out excuses and reasons why I had shouted. My head throbbed again and the muggy, stifling atmosphere around me returned. The thing was, I explained to Deb through a hazy fog of thoughts, I was just so excited to find “God” after all the months – no, years – of searching, now all I wanted was to share that excitement with her, my closest friend. Really, I told her, “God” had taken over my life. The young Christian looked up with another smile – one that seemed forced – and said, simply, “I know he has, Pete.”

  The call came from Debbie’s mother to say she was outside. In silence, we left the staff room and made our way to the car.

  Chapter Sixteen : The Face of Evil

  Margaret Apudo is a woman of sharp wisdom, integrity and honesty, and is one of the most generous people I have ever met. At her insistence, I called her Auntie Margaret.

  From the beginning, Debbie’s mother opened her house to me and welcomed me in. With generous hospitality, she showered me in loving kindness, gave constant words of encouragement and inspiration, and filled my belly with more delicious meals than I could recall; so much goodness, I truly felt like an adopted son. I knew very well I didn’t deserve any of it. I enjoyed her heartfelt warmth and received her goodwill with gladness.

  From the things Debbie told me, I was aware from the start of our friendship that all of her family were devout Christians. It was that one fact that terrified me so greatly when Deb first introduced me to her mum. Although Auntie never sat me down to give a lecture on Christian doctrine, morality or ethics; she never expounded on the important texts of the Bible or preached to me a sermon on the Ten Commandments.

  No, Auntie was much smarter than that.

  I am sure that the ever-discerning Kenyan lady noticed how I squirmed in my seat when we drove along in the car and she listened to her favourite Christian praise songs. I hated those tapes, loathing their happy-clappy tunes which oozed gooey affection and overflowed with levels of devotion to God that were, to me, indecent. The singers all seemed to have come untethered from reality. But what could I do? It was Auntie’s car and her music, leaving me as her prisoner and with no choice but to listen to songs about the love of Jesus, peppered with ecstatic cries of “Hallelujah”. Worse, at night I would lie awake in bed and find myself humming those same infuriating songs as they replayed themselves over and over in my brain.

  Most people greet one another using the tried and tested formula of asking, “How are you?” or perhaps, “How have you been?”

  Not Auntie Margaret.

  Every once in a while – and I never knew when, for it happened completely at random – I would walk into a room and Auntie would beam at me, saying, “Hello, Pete! Jesus has kept you well, yes?” Nothing in life made me cringe like that greeting. I would be immobilized by embarrassment. All four girls would be fighting laughter, not to mention Auntie herself. If I managed to mutter anything in response it would be gibberish. “Uh...I, um...Oh, Yeah…I’m fine, thanks.”

  Once, before the days of my fascination with Islam, while we talked on a completely unrelated subject, out of the blue, Auntie told me point blank that I should consider Christianity for my life. I asked her why and she said that only through a relationship with Jesus could I have true and lasting peace. I laughed – a little too loudly – and replied that I was fine as I was. That was a blatant lie. My aching soul craved deep and enduring peace more than all the wealth in the world. I just didn’t want anything to do with Jesus.

  On another occasion I visited the family and took a cousin of mine, named James, to meet them. Auntie Margaret’s conviction of faith certainly wasn’t veiled but was evident for all to see, with framed Bible verses hanging on every wall in her living room. Before arriving I warned James to prepare himself for the open display of religion and my cousin, an unbeliever like me, readied himself to enter the sanctuary of the Zealous.

  Auntie and her daughters were as warm and hospitable to James as they had ever been to me and he firmly enjoyed their company. While we were there the television set was on – the news – reporting that a suicide bomber had struck in Israel. Recorded pictures from the scene showed bloody survivors lamenting and crying in panic; sirens wailed and police shouted orders amid the carnage, as the dead were hauled away under white sheets stained with red. Auntie took in the story and announced to the room that such violent events were to be expected. “These are the End Times,” the lady said. “The Lord is coming soon.” James and I shot nervous glances at each other, equally embarrassed to be within earshot of such eccentric words. If Auntie noticed our awkwardness she didn’t seem to care one bit.

  Afterwards, James and I walked the short, five-minute journey back to my place and my cousin’s laughter filled the air when I remarked: “They’re really nice people, all of them. But that Christianity stuff is plain weird!”

  Bizarre religiosity aside, I had great respect and profound affection for the whole family. I was grateful to have such loving and sincere friends in my life.

  On Monday, 9th December, 2002, the fifteen-minute drive seemed normal enough to me. I had no clue that earlier in the evening Debbie had telephoned her mother and that for several hours the family had all been praying intensely for the salvation of my soul. It was quiet in the car but that in itself wasn’t unusual. There were just some nights when everyone was too tired to talk after working all day. So it was without conversation that we drove the short distance home. The only sounds were the purr of the engine and the Christian music that floated through the vehicle. That night the songs made me particularly uncomfortable, even twitchy. My skin crawled with every happy verse and joyful chorus. My hands balled into fists and I had to grit my teeth throughout the cries of praise and worship of Christ. More than once, Auntie reached for the dial and raised the volume slightly. Each increase made me squirm even more in my seat.

  They’re wrong! I thought. My mind was clouded, full of anger and dark. They don’t know anything about God!

  Relief from the torturous Holy music came not a moment too soon, as the car pulled up outside of my house and I climbed out. I was about to swing the door shut, when Auntie Margaret called out something that caught me totally off guard. She had given me a lift home many times and always bade me farewell with a kind, “Good-bye, Pete,” or, “See you soon, Pete.” Sometimes she would tell me, “Say hi to your mum, Pete.” But on this night, as I stepped out of the car, behind me I heard, “God bless you, Pete.”

  The words had a stabbing effect on me and I halted for a moment, before closing the door without reply. The vehicle pulled away and I shook my head, dismissed the incident as more Bible bashing nonsense and walked to the front door. It was after 9pm.

  Mum was sat in the living room with her sister, my Aunt Jane, and I greeting them both, dropping down hard into an armchair, tired. I answered their questions about my day with lazy, disinterested responses, not really wanting to encourage conversation of any kind. My head felt heavy on my shoulders and my ears fizzed with an irritating low hum of untraceable origin. There was a newspaper beside me. I opened it but
found myself unable to concentrate on any of the articles inside. Words and pictures blended together in a confusing blur and nothing registered in my brain.

  My attention was distracted, being pulled away from the paper by something invisible to the eye that nudged and poked my mind. A familiar voice spoke within me, quiet, yet containing an urgency that I had never heard before.

  Come upstairs, Peter. We need to talk right now.

  It is important.

  Come upstairs and write

  Without saying a word to anyone I went immediately to my room, gathered the notepad and pen and climbed onto the bed. Almost half of the pad was now full with the written dialogue between “God” and I. In all previous encounters, I had been the one who got the pen and reached out to make contact with “God”. Now “He” wanted to talk to me and it appeared to be a matter of some necessity too.

  I opened the pad to a clean page and sat with the biro tip resting on the paper, waiting. After a brief moment, the rest of the world fled away and the pen moved, slowly at first, then picking up speed. The first sentence came out.

  You should have trusted Me

  In seconds, words were streaming out at an incredible rate – I had never known “God” to respond in such an aggressive manner. It was a struggle to follow what was being written, reading everything from the great distance of a deep trance. The buzzing in my head grew louder by the minute. New sentences poured out rapidly and I could barely absorb what was materializing before me, while the pen moved ever faster in my hand. Something about the meeting felt wrong. From the words that manifested it was clear that “God” was displeased with me. Before, I had been moved to tears by the loving things “God” told me and had been awestruck at “His” beautiful explanation of life and its meaning. Now, the spirit said quite bluntly that our relationship wasn’t a game and I should have listened to “Him” instead of following Debbie’s suggestion, because “He” was there to help me.

  That’s the problem with you – you never pay attention when you’re supposed to

  “God’s” words were stinging barbs and I felt my heart beat faster with rising apprehension. I watched, helpless, as more condemnation followed and my life history appeared. The spirit listed past mistakes and highlighted every moment in my life where I had, according to “Him”, let myself down and missed the mark through lack of care and attention.

  You’ve never been good enough. All that begins well with you is ruined in the end – and you never learn.

  You never learn!

  My hand scribbled furiously and multiple pages of the notepad were quickly filled. When the bottom line was complete, my other hand snatched at the page and turned it over, where the increasingly severe rebuke continued without breaking the pace. “God” blamed me, accused me of causing our relationship to falter and even implied that I had somehow betrayed “Him”.

  My arm was beginning to hurt. My fingers gripped the biro tight and wrote so forcefully – unnaturally fast – that the taught muscles in my wrist felt as if they were being wrenched apart. My dizzy head pleaded with my hand to stop moving but my flesh would not obey. It was as though every desperate thought-command I gave to my fingers was choked immediately. I was powerless under “God’s” total control and “He” would not relent. With every new sentence “He” grew darker and more hostile. All of “God’s” previous kindness had dissolved – replaced by a hailstorm of stern, attacking remarks; replaced by hate. And with every word that appeared on the paper I heard “His” voice in my ears, ringing with bitterness and spite.

  Everything is your fault. You should have listened to Me when you still had the chance. All you had to do was follow My instructions – but you couldn’t do that, could you?

  WHY DIDN’T YOU TRUST ME?

  The catalogue of my failures and personal flaws grew longer. A summary of all the reasons why my life accounted for nothing and possessed no value or worth; why my own incompetence, foolishness, wastefulness and disregard for all wisdom and sound advice was the reason for the empty and unsatisfied soul within me. What happiness I could have known, “God” said angrily, if only I had obeyed “Him” instead of following my own reckless and intemperate will. The diatribe went on. There were, strangely, references to my father, a man whom I had never met, had never laid eyes on before and who had never been part of my life. In a curt and nasty way, “God” declared that my father was dead.

  In pain, my hand pushed the pen harder.

  Through clouded thoughts and rising panic, the veil which had covered my mind since the first night with “God” lifted. The shell of confidence in my spirit-companion cracked, as the light of truth dawned on me. Blindness painfully became sight. And then my hand dragged the pen down the paper, scratching huge, black capital letters that covered a third of the page:

  YES YOU FOOL

  The air tightened around me.

  The only sound was the awful scratching of pen on paper.

  That and the thunderous beating of my heart in my chest.

  The biro kept moving.

  Fear rushed over me like floodwaters engulfing a drowning man.

  Because I knew.

  Before the last terrible words of that sentence were formed—a heartbeat before—with absolute horror, I knew what was coming and in that one dark moment my entire world crashed around me, shattering into a thousand fragments, lost forever.

  I AM THE DEVIL

  Words can never fully convey the sensation of terror that overwhelmed me at the sight of that name on the paper. The fear that took hold of me was instant and paralysing, a gut-wrenching dread so bad that, at once, my stomach balled and I felt sick. The blood drained from my face and all strength throughout my entire body vanished – it was literally sucked right out of me, leaving every muscle, from head to foot, feeble and helpless. Only my left hand, holding the biro pen, continued to move furiously, underlining the word “devil” non-stop. I was powerless to prevent it.

  Not only my body but my soul, too, was crushed. Exposed to such smothering fear and confronted by the tangible presence of evil, murderous, unseen, and bombarding me from all sides, my will was broken in pieces and all hope was destroyed. My mind could only imagine that death remained for me and, yes, hell: fire and eternal torment. I already felt dark claws of infernal damnation reaching out to lay hold on me and drag me screaming into everlasting destruction. I was lost.

  As quick as a camera flash, a single image flared in my thoughts and was gone:

  A crown of thorns.

  Debbie was right all along. Her religion – everything she had ever said – was the truth and now I knew it. God really existed. Not my “God”, a lying, evil imposter, but the God of the Bible. Jesus Christ had lived on earth and died on a cross, crowned with thorns just like the Christians told it. And I knew that He – Jesus – whose Holy Name I once used as a swear word and barely an hour earlier had mocked and cursed, whose Name had exposed the real identity of “God” just as Debbie promised it would, this same Jesus had truly risen from dead. Though I understood none of the doctrine, grasped no point of the theology and was entirely ignorant of Christianity’s deeper meaning and significance, I knew, without question, it was true.

  But what good was this truth now? satan had fooled me and through deception had made me his captive. I was certain there could be no help for me now; death and darkness were inevitable and soon coming. I felt as if I had gone over the edge of a high cliff and found myself freefalling. The safety of solid ground was gone forever; there was no way to undo what was now happening and nothing could prevent death. The dream of all those years ago – dying and being cast forever into hell – was in fact prophecy about to be realised.

  My heart pounded so loud it echoed in my ears like the drumbeat of my own doom. My mouth, which had suddenly become dry as sand, hung open and, though I tried desperately to cry out, strength was gone and no sound emerged. I wanted to scream but all that came from my throat was a pitiful whimper. The pen conti
nued underscoring the name of the enemy, cruelly taunting me over the true identity of the spirit I had willingly accepted into my life and allowed to have control of my body.

  I AM THE DEVIL

  Never – not once in my entire life – had I considered the possible existence of satan. Not for a single moment in all the years I had wondered and searched after God did I think seriously about the devil. I always thought that he was a scare story, told to make people go running to church. I needed no convincing when “God” told me that satan was only a figment of man’s imagination. Now I knew that he was real, for he possessed my body and soul. My “God” was satan.

  I was pinned to the bed. Whether it was the devil or my panic that locked me down I don’t know, but I couldn’t move. Fear rolled over me in unbearable waves. Even if I had the power to run, where could I go? The devil was inside of me; demons were all around me. No matter where I went, the power of evil would still be there. There was no escape. My right hand grabbed the full page and turned it. Immediately, new words were being written in the same large upper-case letters. Again, the scratching of the pen filled my ears, joined now by the shrieking echo of innumerable evil voices that yelled as one.

  I TRICKED YOU BECAUSE YOU’RE DUMB!

  YOU’RE ------- STUPID AND I HATE YOU!

  That alone almost covered the entire page. I was so frightened I wanted to cry, but tears refused to come. My head rocked back in a wail of terror, though I produced only the same wounded whine as before. My other hand snapped the page over again.