Four Nights With The Devil

by Peter Hockley

  BECAUSE YOU USED THE NAME OF

  Without warning the biro pen jerked and thrashed in my hand, as if the evil spirit was unable to write what was supposed to come next. The muscles from my fingers to my wrist strained and bulged so much I thought that something would surely burst. When the pen did continue writing it had severe trouble doing so, as if the devilish influence that drove it was met by an opposing power that resisted it with greater strength.

  THE NAME OF...

  JESUS...

  I thought my hand would be crushed under the pressure of the forces that pulled it first one way and then counter-thrust it the other. Finally, the black ink flowed and with what appeared to be great difficulty, the devil completed and, oddly, misspelled the Holy Name:

  BECAUSE YOU USED THE NAME OF JESUS...

  CHIRST...

  The pen drove onwards.

  I HAVE NO POWER OVER...

  Apparently the demon could write no more, as the sentence broke down and the pen produced only a series of vicious lines and zigzags. I watched helplessly as my left arm – attached to my body, though no longer mine, but satan’s – flailed and twisted savagely, stabbing the Name of the Son of God with the biro.

  My head was filled with the voices of demons. Somewhere, in the dark maze of my mind, only one thought of my own held cohesion and registered as the certain and imminent conclusion to this horrifying nightmare: I’m going to die!

  Fresh words of torment poured onto another page. I felt the evil with every stroke of the pen; surrounded by a thick, suffocating presence of pure hatred which seemed not only to assault me from the outside, but wished to pulverize my mind from within. Repeatedly my hand now wrote:

  I HATE YOU I HATE YOU

  I HATE YOU I HATE YOU

  I HATE YOU I HATE YOU

  satan’s voice burned in my ears; the once gentle voice of “God”, now unmasked as the devil and unleashing upon me all bitterness and fury. The sound of the voice was the most terrifying thing imaginable, conveying such a level of hatred as one would think impossible. I could feel satan’s rage against me and also his lust to kill me; not merely to have me dead, but utterly destroyed. He yearned to rip me into pieces and erase all trace of my existence.

  I had heard this voice once before.

  It was the same one from the previous night, which “God” had called my FEAR. The subconscious enemy that had attacked me from the darkness wasn’t subconscious at all. The voice that yelled it was the devil, threatening to kill me, really was him. satan had tormented me, before returning to whisper sweet words of comfort as my friend, “God”. The masquerade was over now though; there were no more comforting words—only a never-ending onslaught of rage:

  I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!

  Then, the most horrific moment yet. Still sitting on the bed, my body was violently thrown back against the wall, as though I had been pulled savagely by unseen arms that then pinned me fast at the head of the bed. The hand clutching the pen shot upwards directly at my face. With neither time or ability to react, the tip of the biro struck me hard on the left cheek and began spiralling uncontrollably over my face. My arm, like a striking cobra, had fiercely attacked my own face.

  Inside, I was screaming – I could hear it in thought, but, though I strained with all I had, still no sound left my throat. I genuinely expected death at any second. I imagined I was about to be forever locked in the fiery hell of my teenage dream. The vision of the inferno poured back into my mind. I was at the devil’s mercy, of which there was none, and eternal damnation was only moments away. My body was released from the wall and jerked forward, while the pen flew back sharply to the notepad and wrote new messages of hatred directed at me.

  My mother was just a short distance away, sitting in a room downstairs, oblivious to the danger her only son was in, but I knew that even she couldn’t help. As remarkable a provider and wonderful a sustainer and carer as she had been, she had no belief in either God or the devil. There was nothing she could do to rescue me from evil.

  Call Debbie

  The thought lit up amid the firestorm of demonic voices in my mind and I looked to my right, where my mobile phone sat beside me. Debbie, her sisters and Auntie Margaret - they were the only Christians I knew. It was Debbie who believed in Christ and His power; the power that had torn away the devil’s mask of deception. If I had any help left on earth, any slim chance of survival, any hope of deliverance, then it lay with that family. The moment I glanced at my phone, satan mocked and threatened me.

  TEXT DEBBIE

  CALL DEBBIE

  DEBBIE CAN’T HELP YOU

  I HAVE YOU!

  At once, another voice prompted me:

  Call Debbie, now!

  I reached out with my right arm and, with barely an ounce of strength left in me, stretched across the bed in an attempt to get the mobile phone. Even as I moved, a crystal clear voice of murderous anger blasted me, yelling in my ears:

  TOUCH THAT PHONE AND I’LL KILL YOU!

  I’LL MAKE YOUR HEART EXPLODE AND YOU WILL DIE ON THE FLOOR RIGHT NOW!

  I kept moving. But I believed what the devil told me.

  YOU’LL DIE!

  A tidal wave of fear swept over me.

  I’m going to die! Oh God, I’m so sorry!

  My fingers tightened around the small Nokia. I was convinced the devil had the power to kill me, to make my heart explode as he said, but in a mix of rushing adrenaline and blind panic I snatched the phone anyway. My heart hammered fast and loud, and with each new thundering beat I imagined it would be the last. I was sure I could feel the pulsating muscle already tearing, disintegrating, rupturing; I anticipated the moment of death to be a second away.

  It’s now! It’s now!

  In a vision I saw my own lifeless body on the floor. Falling backwards, I collapsed onto the bed.

  NOW I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!

  YOU’RE GOING TO DIE! DIE!

  Oh God, it’s now! NOW!

  I held the mobile in my trembling hand and could do nothing with it. All of my thoughts were scrambled and confused. My left hand was yanked back to the notepad, where the pen stabbed and scratched the paper.

  I HATE YOU!

  My skull burned. The menacing voice in my ears swore vengeance and destruction, telling me it was no use trying to contact Debbie.

  I HAVE YOU! YOU’RE MINE!

  Groggy, drunken with fear, I found myself hazily punching keys on the phone’s keypad. Confusedly, I wasn’t dialling a number but typing out the words of a text message:

  Help - the devil’s in me

  Hand shaking, I pressed the button to send and away the message went to Debbie. satan rained torment on me, reminding me of one of the first things he told me our first night together.

  WE WILL BE TOGETHER FOREVER

  YOU CANNOT GET AWAY FROM ME

  YOU’RE MINE!

  I was too scared to consider that satan had repeatedly warned me of my impending demise and yet I still lived. It didn’t register in my consciousness that the devil was the father of lies, nor was I aware of the spiritual forces that presently worked on my behalf. My Christian friends had prayed for me, at great length and with dogged persistence. Even at that moment, while I sat whimpering on the bed, despairing and broken, wondering why Debbie was taking so long to respond and anticipating that death and hellfire would arrive before her answer – though mere seconds had elapsed since I sent the text – I had no idea what heavenly warfare had erupted all around me. Though the prince of evil still controlled my flesh and hurled curses at me, I was unable to see that the full ferocity of his anger was already restrained by a far superior power. He held me for now, though satan’s grasp was loosening by the minute.

  All I knew was that Debbie was taking a long time to answer. With great strain, having to force concentration against the mental assailment, I located Deb’s number in the phone memory and hit the dial key.

  SHE CAN’T HELP YOU! NO ONE CAN

  I WILL NEVER
LET YOU GO!

  First, a painfully long silence as the call connected, followed by ringing. When we last spoke, I yelled in my friend’s face – or rather the demon inside of me had – that I hated her Christian God and His Son, Jesus, and that I would never be a believer like her. Now my pride was dismantled and the only hope I had was the young women from Kenya and her faith in Christ.

  At the Kwanga house, my text message reached Debbie and, though she was unaware of the scene unfolding in my bedroom, it was obvious to her that the enemy had finally been exposed. As soon as she read the SMS, Deb immediately gathered the rest of the family to engage in urgent prayer for my deliverance. Even as they hit the living room floor on their knees, my call to Deb’s phone came through.

  In my room, I lifted the phone to my ear and heard Debbie’s voice on the other end, both strong and calm. “Hello?”

  Every instinct pressed upon me to scream for help, but when I started to, my throat constricted and something invisible took hold of my mouth and slammed it shut. Inside I cried in desperation, but my lips wouldn’t open. It was as if my jaw was wired and clamped shut. Debbie said again, “Hello? Pete?”

  I tried with everything I had but couldn’t talk. Against my will, the hand holding the phone moved down from my ear and I found myself with the device in front of my mouth like a radio. Debbie spoke a third time, “Hello? Pete, are you there?”

  My mouth opened and muttered a single word – heartless, cold and flat. The demonic attack of that night had reached its totality in that satan had control of my voice, too. My lips moved, but it truly wasn’t me who said:

  “Hello.”

  I still held the phone like a radio in front of me. Debbie started to respond but was cut short by the same stone cold tone.

  “Hello.”

  I knew what I wanted to say to alert Debbie to the terrifying situation, but all of the words remained locked up in my head; I really couldn’t transfer them to my mouth. The fright swelled in my chest in blood-freezing dismay. Meanwhile, the Christian, unsure if there was a problem with the line or that maybe I hadn’t heard her, spoke once more, “Hello? Pete?”

  The demon mimicked her:

  “Hello. Hello.”

  In agony and distress I tried calling to my friend. All that sounded was a voice, blank and dispassionate:

  “Hello, Debbie.”

  Then, something that scared me to the core as I heard the words break from my lips.

  “Pete can’t talk to you right now.”

  Debbie was unflinching. She understood the situation – and who it was that spoke to her – and she quickly rebuked the evil spirit over the phone, snapping, “Shut up, satan, in Jesus’ Name!”

  Incredibly, her command had immediate effect and I found my voice at once, pleading, “Help me, Debbie - he’s got me!”

  Deb told me to hang on and fight the devil’s attacks by praying and calling on Jesus myself. “We’re praying for you, Pete. Mum and I are going to get in the car and come for you, okay?” I begged her to hurry and she assured me that they would arrive at my house soon. Before she rung off, the Christian reiterated her word of advice: “Pray to Jesus, Pete! He will save you!”

  I had never prayed to Jesus before in my entire life. When I embarked on my spiritual journey to find the Creator, I referred to Him only as God. In the year that I researched Islam, I called Him Allah and then, of course, I later discovered the false “God” of the new-spirituality book series. Not once had I ever looked toward heaven and considered Jesus Christ as the One to whom I approached; His Name had only ever been a swear word for me, casually thrown around without a second thought. Just an hour earlier, outside the staff room at St. Anne’s College, I had said the most terrible things about Jesus—blasphemy of the vilest and most disrespectful kind.

  JESUS HATES YOU! YOU CURSED HIS NAME!

  HE WON’T HELP YOU

  Surely Christ wouldn’t listen to my prayers now. After a lifetime of abusing His Name and the sinful way I had scorned Him that very night, how could Jesus want to rescue me? To Him, I imagined, it must be only fitting that the hordes of hell now descended upon such a disgusting and unholy creature as myself; to drag my accursed soul into the pit was what such as I deserved.

  Through the dense maze of hopelessness and misery, the other, encouraging voice came back to me.

  Pray to Jesus. You must pray to Him now

  Jesus will save you

  Through stammering lips, with a mind confused by fear and satan suffocating my thoughts with evil images and words, and with the pen in my left hand still scrawling hatred in the notepad, I called out to the Son of God to save me, recycling one simple, frantic sentence over and over.

  “Help me, Jesus! Please help me!”

  HE CAN’T HELP YOU! HE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOU!

  WHY SHOULD HE, AFTER THE WAY YOU MOCKED HIM?

  Whatever small amount of courage had formed with the knowledge that Debbie and her mum were on the way dissolved into anguish.

  PRAYING IS USELESS! YOU’RE MINE!

  My prayers faded and images of death and descent into the everlasting flames of hell flashed before my eyes. The voices of demons crowded my head like a swarm of bees; I was dizzy, sick with fear and torment. But my Christian friends were praying all the while and they were coming quickly, bringing with them the power to break the devil’s hold on me completely.

  The devil is a liar. Resist him.

  Debbie is coming. Remember her words – pray to Jesus

  satan had told me that if I touched my phone to call Debbie, he would make my heart explode and cause me to die. I had called my friend and I was still breathing.

  He’s a liar

  I prayed, “Jesus, oh, Jesus, please help!” A faint glimmer of hope shone in my soul. The horror that possessed me was so thick, covering every inch of me, it clogged my mind and the fear of death weighed heavily upon me like a concrete jacket; but now something chiselled away at the dread – a new confidence, miniscule at first, though growing. I wasn’t certain that Christ would deliver me, only that after minutes of satanic assault, including savage threats upon my life, I had been preserved thus far. The spiritual battle for my soul raged on and the tide of war was turning. “Save me, Jesus!” I cried.

  Determination – or desperation disguised as bravery – rose to challenge fear.

  I HATE YOU!

  satan continued blasting me, but my left hand, which had until then been moving in a mad frenzy with the biro, suddenly became still on the notepad. A second later my fingers released the pen which fell lifeless onto the bed. The mobile phone in my other hand joined it. My heart thumped. Each exhalation of breath was a gale of wind in my ears.

  Debbie is coming soon

  I appealed to Jesus again for help. Through a plague of horrifying, devilish visions, the blurry fog of confusion lifted slightly and I found new strength in my muscles and readied myself to move.

  I’M GOING TO KILL YOU! YOU’LL BURN IN HELL!

  I wavered, lingering on the edge of the bed. My eyes stuck to the open notepad beside me and the thick, black words that cursed me. In my mind, the dark red cloud of hellfire that once devoured me in a dream was coming for me again. The sound of its thunderous roaring was as clear as the night I dreamt it. In the next second I might die and enter that pit of everlasting perdition for real.

  My lips trembled. “Jesus..?”

  Don’t hesitate. GO!

  In defiance of danger and with no more than a thread of hope, I swung my legs onto the floor and bolted for the door. Every step of the way my heart felt like it would burst right through my chest. I imagined the floorboards would disintegrate and I would fall hopelessly into endless darkness. The thousand enraged voices of the devil were deafening in my ears:

  I HAVE YOU!

  YOU’RE MINE!

  I’LL KILL YOU!

  HELL!

  HELL!

  HELL!

  Though it seemed like an eternity since the nightma
re began, from the moment the devil revealed his true identity to the moment I fled out of my room, I can’t imagine more than six to eight minutes had passed by.

  I ran.

  To the stairs, to Debbie, to Christ, I ran.

  Chapter Seventeen : Deliverance

  From the evening I sat in the front garden and asked God to reveal Himself, throughout all the months that followed, searching for spiritual truth, I had not breathed a word about my religious curiosity to my mother. I didn’t know how to open the subject with her, perhaps out of fear, or even embarrassment. Mum didn’t believe in God, so how would she react if I suddenly started talking to her about Him? I also wanted the situation to be right. I wanted to be firm and secure in my faith (in whatever form that faith may be) before sitting down with her properly and saying, “Mum, I’m a believer now. I’ve found God.”

  What I never expected was to be flying down the stairs late at night and wheeling into the living room, full of fright and with a face covered in biro pen lines. Nonetheless, that is exactly what happened. I almost fell into the living room, my lungs gasping and my mother looked up from a crossword puzzle with a startled expression.