Hostage To The Devil

by Неизвестный

  Gerald's health, meanwhile, was precarious and his friends became worried. The doctor told him that he had developed a damaged heart, and his physical lacerations had been very severe. The doctors had patched him up to the best of their ability.

  Besides his physical sufferings, Gerald was the subject of an odd change in his sensations. He could not, for very long, see or touch any material object without this change taking place. As he told me later: “I seemed to be looking through it and around it-not beyond it. For in some peculiar sense it was no longer there. Instead, with some sight other than that of my eyes, I was held by the perception of a condition or dimension or state for which I have no words. It—that condition—seemed to be the real world. The material object—table, chair, wall, food, whatever it was—seemed utterly unreal, to be nothing in fact. And even my own body was for me an imagined shell permeated with and held up by that other condition.”

  The effect of all this was very disturbing, especially when he met others. What they saw was a thin, pale-faced man crooked in his stance, leaning on a cane, who seemed to be looking at them with the impersonal scrutiny of a stargazer or a map reader. He was still kind, affable, even jocular, and always good-humored. In conversation, he seemed to be very interested in people, not so much in themselves, as in what they signified or where they stood spiritually. This was a novel attitude for Gerald. What Gerald himself now found was that every man and woman he met underwent the same “conditioning” in his eyes as material objects. But, differently from objects, once the underlying and invisible condition of a person became clear to him, he sensed a new element.

  He found it hard to express in one word or one phrase this new element. When he went to great lengths to describe it, he ended up—with constant assertions that he was only using images and metaphors—talking about “light,” “blackness,” “presence,” “absence,” “a web of yesses.” His description of someone might be: “He's been saying, 'No, no,' all his life.” Or: “She has never really said, 'Yes,' to the 'presence.' ” Or: “They're in a very black context.” Practically speaking, he found, this new way of looking at people placed him at a distance from everyone, no matter how well he knew them or liked them. Any knowledge of them through his mind and any attachment to them by his will was only possible in this new dimension.

  The pastor of his rectory went so far as to consult one of the psychiatrists whom Gerald had originally consulted about Richard/Rita. When Gerald left the hospital and was convalescing at the rectory, Dr. Hammond together with a colleague turned up at the rectory to see him one afternoon. He had run a complete check on Gerald's background, he told Gerald, from his childhood to that moment in time. He and his colleagues were convinced that Gerald himself had been severely traumatized, and—more seriously—that, because Gerald could not really understand sexuality and its complexities, he had unwittingly evoked an alienated condition in Richard/Rita. In their opinion, and for the sake of their professional integrity as well as Gerald's own sake, they would ask Gerald to place himself voluntarily under their controlled observation at the clinic. Richard/Rita, they thought, would respond to normal therapy.

  For different reasons, the pastor was equally adamant in this point of view. Rumors of the exorcism's strange result had filtered to the bishop of the diocese. And he sent word to the pastor that he expected him to arrange everything so that there would be no more trouble and no fresh rash of rumors and scandal. One report had it that Richard/Rita had raped Gerald. And this was not the ugliest of the rumors floating around the parish.

  Gerald, at first very angry with the psychiatrists, finally began to see it their way. Or at least that was what he said. He added, however, that they should not oppose his finishing the exorcism. If he could only do this, he assured them, then he would be satisfied.

  The final decision, of course, rested with Richard/Rita's family and with Bert in particular. Bert was convinced that Richard/Rita's condition was the work of the devil, and that Gerald or another Catholic priest should be allowed to complete the exorcism.

  It was all very trying for Gerald. He felt “like a museum specimen or a medical case,” as he remarked to the pastor. Besides, something in him told him that Richard/Rita could not go on and survive as he was, nor could he himself leave the exorcism unfinished as it was.

  “I have no death wish, Doctor,” he said to the senior psychiatrist. “But neither have I any illusions about myself or about you. I cannot have long to live—even my own doctors agree on that. You have no religious beliefs whatsoever, on your own admission. Unless we strike a compromise, we will go on talking while Richard/Rita vegetates and I die. So let's make a deal.”

  The deal was made. With conditions. Dr. Hammond was to be present at the exorcism. If he and the doctor, independently of Gerald, decided the resumed Exorcism ritual should be aborted at any particular point, Gerald would abort it. The exorcism would not be allowed to go beyond two days at maximum. On the other hand, Gerald would be in complete control as the exorcism proceeded. Dr. Hammond would behave exactly as one of Gerald's assistants. There were one or two other conditions, mainly to help the professional assessment and examination by the psychiatrist. But Gerald was satisfied. He had gained an opportunity to finish the exorcism.

  It was clear to Gerald now that only when he had attempted to uncover and separate the evil spirit's identity from Richard/Rita's, only then had he been attacked. He would take up at that very point where the process had left off and proceed with great caution, not drawing attention to himself in any way and endeavoring to rely on the power of the official ritual and the symbolism of his function.

  Early one morning, then, four and a half weeks after the violent interruption of the exorcism, Dr. Hammond drove Gerald down to Lake House to resume the exorcism of Richard/Rita. The assistants were there already, together with Father John. It was a somber day. A strong wind again bent the trees around the house. It started raining shortly after they arrived and continued all day and into the evening.

  Lake House itself was still and quiet. Richard/Rita was lying on the couch quietly dozing when Gerald arrived. Then, as if on signal, he doubled up and sank his teeth into his instep, opened his eyes and fixed them silently on the door through which Gerald and John would enter. Bert and Jasper, both carrying signs of the last few weeks in drawn looks and low voices, stood with the police captain and the teacher. Nobody spoke very much. As Gerald entered, Richard/Rita's eyes blazed with a fresh light. He moaned hungrily as a dog would for more food. His hands were opening and closing. Gerald gathered up his strength as he took his place beside the couch. He had carefully prepared his opening statement. But before he could speak, Richard/Rita beat him to it. Loosening the teeth hold on his instep, and still glaring at Gerald, he said: “Gerald, darling, why all the trouble? Look what you have brought on yourself. You needn't bear all this pain. You have no need to pay such a price.” It was the same trap. This time Gerald was ready.

  “The price—whatever price is necessary—has already been paid. You will obey the authority of Jesus and of his Church. Announce your name.”

  Even as Gerald spoke, the pain ran quickly through new lanes in his flesh and bones. The lower part of his body, from his navel to his toes, grew rigid. The assistants saw the veins bulging on his forehead. He was fighting for control, struggling not to lose consciousness, straining to hear. Waiting and straining. Richard/Rita sank back flat on the couch in a deflated fashion, eyes closed, arms and hands thrown across his chest.

  After a dull pause, when he had almost given up hope of evoking obedience from the spirit, Gerald began to hear something that resembled a voice but that was totally unintelligible to him. At first, he thought that a group of people had arrived unannounced on the front lawn of Lake House and were congregating close to the front windows. But when he concentrated on that direction, the sound seemed to be coming from Richard/Rita, then again from the back of the house. He distinctly heard several voices talking at the same time, b
reaking off, starting, laughing, occasionally grunting, even yelling in a mock fashion. They seemed to be both male and female, but the female voices seemed to dominate. Then the chatter died away as if they had all moved away from the house.

  Gerald stared at Richard/Rita: he was silent and motionless. Gerald was about to speak when the voices started again. This time they were in the room, but tantalizing him: when he concentrated on Richard/Rita, they seemed to come from behind him; when he turned around, they seemed to come from Richard/Rita. He began to feel as if fragments of voices were free-floating and moving around the room. The assistants had not been prepared for eerie happenings such as this because Gerald did not have enough experience or knowledge of Exorcism to give them very detailed warnings. The strain they were undergoing showed in their constant perspiration and trembling.

  Dr. Hammond's reaction would have been comical under any other circumstances but these. As Father John told it afterwards, the psychiatrist started off with a professional expression of “business as usual”—grave, expressionless, watchful eyes, steadily taking notes. After a few minutes, his note-taking stopped, the expression on his face changed from the bland professional to incredulity, then a touch of impatience (as if he were being subjected to a practical joke), and finally the slightly ashen look of a man catching up for the first time with something unintelligible and alien to his opinion, threatening to his sanity and self-control.

  Gerald's puzzlement and dismay increased, because now he thought he could distinguish single words and phrases of one voice in particular; but every time, other words and phrases broke in and cluttered his hearing. It all ended up as abstract gibberish.

  Then the various strands of female voices seemed to quicken in pace and to start blending into one pitch and timbre, as if, syllable by syllable, all were catching up on a lead voice. And the male voices began to slow down in attack and amplitude, until they became a series of squeaks and sonorities more or less parallel but never coinciding. The two levels, male and female, began to mingle and sound as one in various syllables, but there were always overtones and annoying echoes muddying his efforts to understand. Gerald decided to intervene.

  “Whatever or whoever you are, you are commanded in the name of Jesus to state your name, to answer our questions.”

  With that, the volume of noise started to increase and with it an uncontrollable dismay and fear in Gerald. He felt himself the target of some leviathan voice croaking from bloated lungs, cavernous throat and mouth, a voice of curses, abuse, blasphemy, in which his secret sins, ill will, obscenities all echoed and rolled and issued as a malignant challenge.

  Young Father John found the sounds in the room almost unbearably disturbing. He sprinkled holy water around Gerald and then around the couch. The noise rose to a fresh crescendo, then started to fall away. Richard/Rita, all this while, remained stretched out flat on his back.

  As the babel died away in a mumbling and choking sound, Gerald received the first onslaught of the Clash. Nobody had prepared him for it, and nobody had told him what to do. The old Dominican friar in Chicago had merely said that at some point “the old fella” would have to come out as himself. He warned Gerald to take care at that point—“It's worse than I can ever hope to tell you.” It was.

  Gerald's greatest quality—stubbornness—now became the source of his torture. For he could not, would not let go. He had locked his will into that of the evil spirit. Even if in some exorcists the Clash starts in the mind, the imagination, or in a powerful intuitive sense of theirs, it finally comes home in full force to the will. From the start it was in Gerald's will that the struggle took place.

  Up to that moment he had felt his will pushing against a steel wall of resistance and attack. Now the wall seemed to melt and flow all around, while his will plunged into the molten heart of liquid heat that scorched and sizzled and frittered away every thew and sinew of his will, searing through every trace of padding and protection a human will employs-hopefulness, anticipation, remembrance of pleasure, satisfaction in fidelity, conscious ability to change or not to change, surety, persuasion that one is doing the right thing.

  It was not a darkness of mind, but a nudity of will. It was the place of deepest poignancy and sharpest sorrowing that any human being can reach while in a mortal condition. Dante had described it as the pathos of the soul which is not condemned to Hell (and knows that), but has no means of knowing if Heaven exists and yet must persevere in hope that apparent hopelessness is a prelude to happiness and reward.

  Then the Clash materialized in his physical self. One by one, his hearing, his sight, his senses of touch, smell, and taste were affected. His vision became blurred-almost the same as when one videotape is played over another; both are clear enough to be seen, neither is clear enough to eliminate doubt. In his eardrums there began the sort of ache produced by a sudden burst of a jackhammer; and the ache continued. Whatever he touched gave him the funny shiver through the small of his back and spine he used to get when somebody rubbed a pane of glass with a dry thumb. His mouth tasted as if he had been chewing sour milk and flour. And a wild odor he could not define lodged in his nostrils. Not of rottenness or putrefaction or sewage, but a sharp odor that his sense of smell could not take without a stinging recoil seizing his sinuses and the back of his mouth and throat in revulsion.

  His assistants saw Gerald as he began to jackknife over. Two held him, one on either side; but, faithful to his instructions, they did not attempt to lead him out of the room. “Can you make it, Father?” asked Dr. Hammond. Gerald's only answer was to jerk his head in a quick gesture.

  The uncanny pressure was climaxing inside in his will and outside in his body. He felt the recently healed wounds in his back and belly loosening and flowing, the scabs giving way, and a salty sting in the opening flesh. He felt the wetness of his own blood and sweat. And Gerald knew he now had to make a supreme effort.

  “Your name! You who torment this creature of God. In the name of Jesus, and because of his power, your name! Now! Your name!”

  He heard the last rumbling traces of that attacking voice fading away. Richard/Rita stirred as if prodded with a sharp knife, writhing his head, neck, and back. He groaned. Then all in the room heard a little gravelly whisper, not faltering, just deliberate and slow.

  “Girl-Fixer. The Girl-Fixer. Girl-Fixer. We fix 'em. All sorts of girls. Young, old, married, unmarried, lesbians, neuters, girls who want to be fixed. Those who want to be fixed like girls. Anyone. We fix 'em. Oeeeeeeeeeeeh!” It was a larynx-shaking yelp. “We fix 'em right!”

  Gerald's weight on the arm of his assistants grew heavy. The pressure on him was increasing again. But he knew the name now. Girl-Fixer. He had broken through the deadly charade and he knew with every instinct that he must pursue hard before his advantage could slip away.

  “You will tell us: how many of you are there? Who are you? What do you do? Why do you hold this creature of God in slavery? You will tell us. Speak!”

  Gerald would have gone on repeating the same commands, but the younger priest made a small gesture reminding him he was falling into a repetitive pattern. They both waited. Gerald was still fighting the poison inside him. All his pain was with him.

  “Take you, for example, Priest!” The contempt and hate in the tone was chilling. “We fixed you, didn't we? Just feel, kiddo. Or just try to do something with your end, fore or aft. Oh, yes! We fixed you. Oeeeeeeeeeeeh!''

  Gerald steadied himself and tried to wet his lips; his mouth was dry and furry. His sight was getting blurred again. He had to keep at it. The teacher lifted a cup of water to his lips. He had to keep at it. He moistened his tongue and started again.

  “Tell us, in the name of Jesus. . .”

  He was interrupted by a low groan from Richard/Rita. Its agony paralyzed everyone; joined to the volume of pain and suffering in his own body, it struck Gerald dumb. Each of the others was affected by that groan: each one's imagination and memory went out of control. The police capt
ain was back in the Korean prison camp where he had languished for two years; his buddy was groaning his life away in pain, as a grinning interrogator scraped the flesh off his ribs. The teacher was back in Surrey, England, in 1941, beside a German plane that had crashlanded, bursting into flames; the trapped German pilot was screaming, “Mutti! Mutti!” as he burned inside the plane. Richard's brothers were standing beside a shuddering, dying wolf they had shot over ten years ago during a hunting trip in Canada with their father; the wolf was groaning defiance and coughing up blood and staring at them. The doctor was back on a house call of the previous winter when he had watched a father, bending over the still-warm body of his dead three-month-old baby son, choke in hoarse, dry sobs. Everyone felt guilty, as of murder or willful torture. Someone or something was suffering untold pain and blaming them all.

  Only John, the younger priest, had no horror image or dreadful memory. He tried to finish Gerald's command. And it was a painful mistake.

  “Answer,” he said loudly, his voice cracking with nervousness. “In the name of Jesus, answer our questions. . .”

  “Don't, John,” Gerald interrupted thickly. But it was too late. The damage was done. The groaning stopped. Richard/Rita rolled over on his back, then sat up. There was a sudden, dreadful lull. The others were jerked back to the present. They tensed, ready to jump and hold Richard/Rita down. But all Richard/Rita did was to open one eye. It appeared luminous, slitted, evilly joyous, focusing on John.