Hostage To The Devil

by Неизвестный

  Jamsie, still strapped down, had raised his head from the bed to stare at the threatening form behind Mark. It was constantly weaving back and forward, turning from left to right as if seeking something. But to Jamsie it was less like a cat and more like a man swathed in heavy, black clothes. Mark, intent on watching Jamsie, did not follow the direction of his gaze.

  “You have to come out.” Mark began his final pounding at the spirit. “You have to manifest yourself and leave this human being. In the name of Jesus!”

  The assistants, all still at bay, could see both faces-Jamsie's and the darksome figure's-contorting at this moment. “And not only you, but your inferior and slave, your Uncle Ponto. Him and all who go with him. Out! I say! Out with all of you.”

  Mark's assistants were now in utter panic. All they could see was the menace to Mark from behind him. They tried to move forward against the excruciating rain of sound.

  “We will never rest until we avenge ourselves on you,” the voice was saying, “we will leave this miserable blob of muck dead when we go.”

  “Life and death are not yours to give or take. They belong to Jesus.”

  Jamsie started at that moment to scream, wild hysteria in his voice.

  Mark's ears were filled with that scream; he held the crucifix and prayed out loud, using only two words: “Jesus! Mercy! Jesus! Mercy! Jesus! Mercy! Jesus! Mercy! Jesus!”

  Then his ears were hit by the agonizing screams of the four assistants: they had left their sanctuary-prison against the opposite wall, had penetrated the space between the wall and the cot where Mark stood beside Jamsie, and were once more writhing under the impact of the torture that stabbed at their eardrums.

  But even through the din of Jamsie's shouts and his assistants' screams, deepened by his own praying, chanting voice, Mark heard one sound that reassured him and gave him hope.

  It was the rattling of the pebble avalanche that had never really ceased, but now became more defined. It was a hubbub of wordless voices and senseless syllables all running together and splitting each other in fragments, interrupting and fractioning and changing each other, an undistinguishable medley of sorrow, regret, foreboding, agony. It persisted in rising and falling waves, then started to build up and up to a crescendo.

  Mark took his cue: it was the confusion of defeat and rout. He hurled the words of his power at it all.

  “In the name of Jesus! You must depart! Unclean ones! There is no room for you! No dwelling in this human being. For Jesus has commanded: Go! And you go! Go! Go!”

  Mark remembers clearly stopping at this point. He did some quick thinking. By now the possessing evil spirit should have been sufficiently weakened and Ponto's grasp on Jamsie sufficiently diluted for Jamsie to make his fatal and all-important choice.

  Mark bent down near Jamsie's ear, speaking in a gentle, firm tone. He remembers almost word for word; it was the choice that always came in some way. “Jamsie! Jamsie! Jamsie! Listen to me: Now! You have to choose! You have to make a choice! Either you take a step in trust. You renew your faith. Blindly, mind you, blindly. Or now you yield to Ponto and to all of Ponto's friends. Jamsie! All of them, Jamsie! In the name of Jesus, choose! Now choose, Jamsie!”

  In his turn, Jamsie recalls that at this moment he woke up to the confusion around him. Gradually, as in a thinning haze, he began to make out dim figures besides the Shadow behind Mark, and he saw zigzag gestures, the ceiling and the walls of the room; he felt the pressure of the straps across his chest, middle, and legs. His mouth was dry, he remembers, but he was breathing easily.

  Farther away from the bed, he could not see anything except as a fuzzy gray-black background—the closest comparison Jamsie can give to describe that blurry background is what he saw when he once tried on the very powerful eyeglasses of a friend who was almost blind. Everything blurred together and seemed to darken.

  Closer, he could see the figures of the assistants as they held their ears and struggled with that deafening whistling noise. One was staggering. Two had fallen to the floor. One was standing upright, moving slowly and agonizingly toward him.

  Still nearer to him, he could see two or three single figures, together with a multitude of shapes and forms. Ponto was there, but some infinite distance away. Jamsie could not understand this: Ponto was near, yet far. He seemed to be all squeezed together as if his body was boneless and someone had caught it in an invisible clothes wringer narrowing his girth, splaying his limbs, bulging his eyes. And his look was no longer merely importunate and mischievous. For the first time it was nasty, Jamsie felt, nasty, bitter, hating, desperate all at once.

  Ponto's agony seemed to be multiplied by a whole river of forms and shapes-torsos without heads, heads without bodies, arms and legs without a trunk, fingers without hands, toes without legs, bellies without a body, genitals floating free, long plaits of gray and yellow hair—all wreathing and snaking fitfully, aimlessly around Ponto in zigzag tracery.

  Closest to him of all, except for Mark, Jamsie saw the Shadow. It loomed up above him with a superhuman stature. It was neither black nor gray nor white but an indefinable amalgam of shifting darkling shades, much like the smoke from wet coals-never still or calm, but ruffled and rippling irregularly. Head, shoulders, hands, mouth, eyes, feet were clear enough to be perceived, but not clear enough to be described.

  Jamsie heard Mark's voice then, gentle, firm, finalizing.

  “Jamsie! Now is the time to choose. Remember! I told you. You! You choose. You have to choose. Of your own free will.”

  Somehow or other, Mark's voice was reaching Jamsie in spite of the din and the distracting gyrations and febrile jumping of all those forms.

  “Choose! Choose! Yours is the choice. Now!” Mark's unhesitating syllables clung to Jamsie's memories.

  Jamsie could not see Mark's face as Mark bent down to speak in his ear, but the Shadow's features were clear. A kaleidoscope of expressions passed over that face. Jamsie began weakly to remember. Where had he seen this expression? That expression? The next one? The last one? They all seemed different, yet they all seemed to be the same. Then Jamsie realized that the various changing expressions were repeating themselves over and over again, coming and fading and returning in a carousel set to the din and shouts and screams. “Choose! Choose!”

  It was Mark's voice again. Jamsie turned. He tried to make out Mark's face. He could not. From forehead to chin Mark seemed to be faceless. But he still heard Mark's voice.

  Then his memory began to clear. The expressions became more familiar. Yes. . . yes. . . that was his father's, Ara's. . . and that one Uncle Ponto's. . . the pimp's. . . Jay Beedem's. . . Jay Beedem's?“, ”Choose! Jamsie! Choose!“

  Then, interspersed with the changing faces, Jamsie began to see the other funny-looking faces he had seen in all the years back to his childhood, 1960, 1958, 1957, 1949, 1942, 1941, 1940, 1939, 1938, 1937, 1933. And he began to see that his fright for all these years had been a form of fascination, that even while running away from the “funny-lookin' faces,” he had been inviting them, that he had wanted to be found by them!

  Inside his deepest self another movement started, beyond his willing. The desire to be rid of that fascination. But there was still the agonizing fear and doubt. “If I stopped looking at that carousel,” Jamsie today describes his feelings at that point in the exorcism, “I felt I would cease to exist. I would die, die, die sort of thing.”

  Then his fascinated gaze faltered and flicked away from the carousel of faces for an instant over to Mark's face.

  Mark was no longer faceless for Jamsie. He did not have the features Jamsie knew as Mark's. Still, Jamsie knew, they genuinely belonged to Mark. Another puzzlement for Jamsie.

  He peered at Mark, staring at the eyes and the nose and mouth. The colors of his face were beginning to glow and shimmer in old gold, in tarnished silver, faded blue and brown and yellow. Jamsie half-feared to find some phase of the “funny-lookin” face“ on Mark, but there was none. And he had no fear or
fright. Another emotion, other thoughts were coming to Jamsie.

  Mark's voice reached him again. “You must choose, Jamsie.”

  Jamsie glanced again at the Shadow. In all its bulk and in every weaving curve of its changing face and figure there was now a certain cringing. Jamsie read hesitation there, even as he found himself fascinated always by the changes.

  Jamsie began to look back and forth from the Shadow back to Mark, then at the Shadow, slowly at first, then quickly. And Mark's insistent “Choose. Make your choice, Jamsie!” came to him again and again.

  Suddenly he understood. He was free. No one would force him. No one could. He was free—to go on immersing himself in the changing horrors of the Shadow, or to look at Mark and make an opposite choice.

  He started to gaze steadily at Mark; and in that look he knew he was choosing.

  There were no words on his lips. He had no sentence in his brain, no concepts in his mind about that choice. He was choosing, merely because he chose to choose; and, choosing thus, he was freely choosing.

  And as the thrust of his choice gathered strength within him, he began to recognize the new lines and shades in Mark's face: all the traits of goodness and joy and freedom and welcome he had ever known in others—Lydia and Ara of years ago, Lila Wood, the old icon at home in New York—all were there as so many frames, as mirrors reflecting an immense beauty and joy and peace and unshakable eternity.

  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 re-erected 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 pr
eached.

  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 lie 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 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 morning 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.