by Jason Arnopp
It doesn’t seem the right time to tell her Satan doesn’t exist. Or indeed to ask if, you know, Maria might just be your average teenager who seems a bit nuts – especially against the backdrop of a quiet rural expanse like this. Instead, I ask what led Maddelena to hire an exorcist.
‘Maria started to sleepwalk,’ she says, never taking her eyes off her daughter as Di Stefano gives the girl a final briefing in hushed tones. ‘Or at least I thought she was sleepwalking. In the middle of the night I found her standing outside our home, at the edge of the clearing . . .’
Maddelena flicks her eyes around the church before continuing. ‘She was naked, in the freezing cold. I thought she was asleep, so I said to her, “Maria, please wake up.” But she turned her head, with her eyes wide open. And she smiled. I’d never seen a crazy smile on her face like that. She said to me, “I am awake.” And then . . .’
Maddelena looks set to cry, but steels herself. When she lowers her voice, Translator Tony follows suit. ‘And then . . . she slapped my face and said, “You wake up, you Christ-loving whore, before I rip out your fucking heart.”’
After that night, Maria’s nocturnal wanderings escalated. Maddelena claims she tried locking both of the house’s external doors and hiding the keys, but still her daughter managed to break out. One time, Maddelena and a search party of friends found Maria a mile away from home, in the dead of night. She was writhing around, naked again, covered in the blood of a deer that she’d slain with a butcher’s knife taken from the kitchen.
‘She was laughing when we found her,’ says Maddelena with a shudder. ‘After that, I felt so lost. I knew that only the Church could help with something like this. The old pastor who owns this church helped me make contact with Father Di Stefano in Rome. The good father sent an assistant to meet Maria, then it was decided that a blessing would be best.’
Another euphemism, there. It’s so much easier to agree to a blessing than an exorcism. When I ask if Maddelena ever considered medical help for her daughter, her face suggests that she trusts doctors and science about as much as I trust priests and religion.
‘If this does not work, then maybe . . .’ she says, as if that really would be the last resort.
* * *
I’m unprepared for the transformation of Maria Corvi. I just didn’t expect this skinny kid to have it in her.
Sitting on a simple, creaky wooden chair in front of the altar, she appears withdrawn but compliant, her head bowed, hands clasped on her lap. The only small sign of any real emotion comes when she glances over at her mother. I would place good money on it being a look of resentment. A look that says, ‘Happy now? I’m doing it.’
Maria’s mother doesn’t seem to interpret this look the same way. She smiles back encouragingly and wrings her bony hands in anticipation, as if her daughter is about to audition for The X Factor.
Father Di Stefano stands before Maria, an ancient leather-bound Bible spread across his palms. Beard and Beardless position themselves at either far side, hands behind their backs.
Di Stefano reads interminable passages from the book. His words echo darkly around the ceiling. Maria looks embarrassed, as if wondering what she’s supposed to do. It’s weirdly hypnotic. Thanks to a late night out in Rome, my eyes lose focus and I drift into a dreamlike state . . .
Maria’s whole body goes electric-shock rigid. Her eyes bulge and her hands and feet shoot out in all directions. I can’t see her toes from here, but her trembling fingers are spread wide. She holds this bizarre position for no more than a second before the chair beneath her gives way, breaking with a loud crack.
Maria falls to the ground, her back arching awkwardly over the pile of broken wood, her body limp. I shake my head, disappointed that the all-powerful Church has resorted to age-old slapstick ruses like sawing halfway through chair legs in order to jazz things up. Coming next: Maria and Di Stefano attempt to carry a piano up a tall flight of steps, with amusing consequences.
Beside me Maddelena gasps, a rosary gripped tight in one hand, the beads fit to burst. Beard and Beardless dash in and examine the lifeless girl, while carefully removing the pieces of chair from beneath her. They return to the sidelines: twin roadies who scurried on to fix a rogue microphone stand during a gig.
Di Stefano switches his attention from the Bible to the prone teenager. ‘I am addressing directly the spirit that dwells within Maria Corvi,’ he says. ‘Speak your name, before I have cause to do so myself.’
On the word ‘myself’, something dramatic happens. Something that, I’ll admit, is harder to explain than the magical breaking chair.
As a kid, I owned what is generally referred to as a thumb puppet. A small wooden donkey standing on a cylindrical base, its tiny constituent parts joined by string. When you pushed your thumb up inside this base, it made the donkey collapse. On the withdrawal of your thumb, the donkey would spring back up into its former rigid state.
Maddelena cries out in shock as Maria Corvi springs up from the church floor like my donkey used to. Her heels remain on the ground, but the rest of her rises fast, as if hoisted by some invisible pulley system. Unlike my donkey, Maria remains loose. Her body appears boneless. Eyes shut, she drifts from side to side as if underwater. I stand and peer over the pews, spotting that she’s now up on her tiptoes. It doesn’t seem possible for a human being to achieve this stance, or at least to maintain it for so long. Her centre of gravity is not so much off as non-existent. The magician David Blaine would take notes.
Father Di Stefano, of course, is not fazed. He’s seen all this stuff many times before. Truth be told, he invented it. Because as he repeats his exhortations for the evil within Maria to speak its name, the truth hits me. Remember Jim Carrey’s character in The Truman Show – the guy who discovers that the world around him is artificial? All of this is one big set-up, for my benefit. It’s a feeling journalists will know well on a smaller scale: the sense that you’re no longer a non-influential observer of events, but instead the spark that brought them about.
If Maria Corvi isn’t an actual actress, then she and her mother have surely agreed that she will become one, no doubt in exchange for a better life. (Eleanor: please don’t kick off about libel here. I really can’t be dealing with another debate like the one about Katy Perry and the bag of . . . well, you know.) The arrangement of the pews and the space before the altar resembles audience and stage, with stage managers Beard and Beardless lurking in the wings. After all, what has the Church always been about, if not an audience flocking to watch a performance? And of course here I am, hemmed in several rows back – all the better to stop me seeing this propaganda display from the wrong angles.
Maria’s eyelids flick open, revealing that her eyes now swim with some cunningly applied yellow dye. Nice touch. She’s still up on her tippy-toes, and I now suspect that her conveniently oversized smock harbours some kind of body harness. Her lips stretch back over her teeth to form a sickly grin. When she speaks, her voice is lilting and childlike, in direct contrast to her words. ‘You cock-sucking prick,’ she tells the priest, thereby fulfilling the minimum post-Friedkin quota of fellatio mentions during an exorcism. Translator Tony lowers his voice reverentially as he continues to whisper her words in English: ‘You fuck children and yet judge me?’
Maria’s laugh is slithery. If a snake could laugh, it would sound like that.
This Maria, if that really is her name? She’s good.
To a man like Father Primo Di Stefano, child abuse accusations, whether from entities alive or dead, are water off a duck’s back. Delving into his robes, he produces a sturdy, old-school wooden cross with a Christ figurine on it.
When he presents this trump card to Maria, it’s as if she’s being made to look directly into the sun. She lashes out at the priest and the cross, her fingers cramped into claws. Di Stefano takes a step back, while Beard and Beardless hurry in to restrain Maria, each gripping an arm. She struggles against them with surprising force and sends Beard tumbling to
the ground.
‘Maria is ours,’ she says. Her voice is now deep and throaty, but punctuated by freakish high notes. ‘We are her blood. Her flesh, her bones, her guts. We have freed her soul. By hurting us with your trinkets, you only hurt her.’
Di Stefano steps back into the fray, his cross to the fore, bellowing, ‘That is a sacrifice I’m prepared to make in order to secure her freedom.’
I wonder how Maddelena feels about Di Stefano taking that decision into his own hands. To my consternation, she seems okay with it. Oh, hey, she’s in on all of this anyway. Just playing along with the script.
And so it goes on. Yellow-eyed Maria verbally abuses Di Stefano, spits, shrieks and generally misbehaves. Di Stefano remains devout and steadfast. He brandishes his religious iconography as a pepper-spray threat and mentions Jesus Christ at least three times per minute. Translator Tony struggles to keep up with them.
Now. Here’s the thing. It’s a universal truth that laughter becomes more insanely delicious the more wrong it is.
Taboos are funny. They just are. When you’re absolutely, definitely not supposed to laugh, that’s when laughter is all the more potent and combustible. As scarily inevitable as a sneeze, or an itch you just have to scratch, no matter how demented you’ll look.
You might be sitting among heartbroken folk at a funeral. You might be sitting behind a TV news desk, staring into a camera and telling the world about the latest genocide.
Or, as in my case, witnessing a faux exorcism.
Surely I can’t be the only man on earth who considers The Exorcist a comedy. Even when I first saw it as a child, in the late eighties, the film provoked far more chuckles than shivers. Friedkin’s po-faced seriousness really tickled my ribs. ‘The power of Christ compels you!’ became something to yell at other kids in the playground with a big grin.
As the action escalates, so does my urge to laugh at it. This whole charade is so very deadpan that laughter is the only sane response. Part of me needs to laugh, in order to exorcise myself of these ridiculous characters. And while I’m genuinely overcome by mirth, there’s no doubt that my laughter will also be a statement. Because people’s enduring belief in conveniently invisible devils makes the work of science so much harder. It slaps a leash on progress and encourages backward thinking.
In 2012, while appearing on a TV show in the Dominican Republic, US magician Wayne Houchin unexpectedly had his head set on fire by a man who reportedly believed him to be a voodoo practitioner. In 2013, a YouGov poll found that over fifty per cent of Americans believe in the Devil and exorcism. And earlier this year, in his documentary about ‘gay cures’, British doctor and TV presenter Christian Jessen encountered American teenagers who genuinely thought homosexuality was caused by demonic infestations.
Belief in the concept of Satan possessing children has led to murders around the world. Sometimes these murders are deliberate: kids have been burned and buried alive. Such things are straight out of the Dark Ages. Other deaths have resulted from misguided attempts to get those imagined demons out, often by one of those maverick exorcists. In the Philippines as recently as 2011, an anorexic girl named Dorca Beltre starved to death during a botched five-day exorcism.
And so we must laugh at this medieval crap. It is our duty to do so.
My laugh explodes out of me in a great belly-pumping blast, amplified by its own inappropriate glory.
Bex is still shrieking as we bash our way out through Satan’s mouth, which frames the entrance and exit.
A simple ghost train transforms her into a distressed damsel. Every single time, her frightened koala arms grasp me as nylon cobwebs brush our faces and gurning ghouls spring up left, right and centre.
The Hell Hotel sits in a tangled web of gaudy light bulbs, roller-coaster tracks and crazy crane-like rides at the far end of Brighton Pier. When we’re both home and need a catch-up, this is our ritual: ghost train, then pints, then chips. I’ve checked into the Hell Hotel more times than I have into actual hotels. So has Bex, and yet it never seems to lose that primal power over her. I, on the other hand, simply appreciate the ancient gear-grinding mechanics that propel our car through darkness. This visit feels extra special, being our first since I got out of rehab a few weeks back.
We stroll back along the pier’s charmingly uneven floorboards, heading for Victoria’s Bar stationed halfway along it. To the west, the horizon is ablaze. Gulls soar overhead, seemingly carried against their will by freak winds – the kind that can jump down your throat and steal your breath. Bex takes her wild red corkscrew hair in both hands and reins it in with a scrunchie.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this,’ I say. ‘I know you’re not exactly religious, but you do think there might be a God. So do you actually believe in ghosts?’
‘If you accept the possibility of God, then you have to accept the possibility of ghosts. Because you just never know, do you?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. Thanks to science, we do know.’
‘How can we know what happens after death? It’s death! The great unknown. But we can’t imagine having no consciousness; feeling nothing forever.’
‘What do you feel while you’re asleep, though?’
‘I dream.’
‘Good for you.’ I’m about to explain the burden of proof and the truth about so-called near-death experiences on the operating table when a new urgent query consumes her: ‘Anyway, what happened in Italy?’
I tell her about the Laugh, on the way to the pub. Whenever Bex laughs, or even smiles, she holds one hand over her mouth because she wrongly thinks her teeth are too big. ‘You’re a bad man. So where does the YouTube video come into it?’
‘I’ll get to that. Give me a chance!’
‘Okay. So. You laughed during the exorcism . . .’
‘Yes,’ I say, revving myself up into a clickbait headline. ‘And you’ll never believe what happened next.’
Alistair Sparks: ‘There follows a series of text messages exchanged between Jack and myself during the week prior to his trip to Italy.’
28 October 2014
Hi, Jack. Long time, etc. Hope you’re okay. Heard from Murray the Agent earlier – I’m pleased you’re out and starting a new book. What’s it about?
Oh please, like you really care. Don’t talk about me behind my back.
Of course I care, Jack.
Have you become a born-again Christian or something?
Despite everything, there’s no need for things to be unpleasant. What’s the new book about?
HA, ‘despite everything’ – thanks for reminding me. It’s about ghosts. Now fuck off.
Really?! Why ghosts?
(Jack never replied.)
1 Jack very rarely named specific social media sites in his books. According to his agent Murray Chambers, this policy was his ‘revenge’ against sites who refused to pay him for name-checking them – Alistair.
2 Jack Sparks on Drugs (Erubis Books, 2014), p.146 – Alistair.
CHAPTER TWO
Father Primo Di Stefano straightens until he’s the height of the silver cross on the altar behind him. His frock sweeps dramatically and his eyes are the size of eggs.
‘Signor! Please, what are you doing? Show some respect.’
Di Stefano gives good rage. As an octogenarian, he has much to be furious about in life, ranging from the world’s decaying moral core to having to push when he urinates. Throw in a Vatican-load of righteous zeal and you have a man capable of apoplexy.
Beard and Beardless grimace, fists clenched by their sides. Maddelena’s gaze scorches the side of my face.
The church falls grimly silent.
Grinning broadly, I applaud the assembled players, hands above my head, each clap resounding in the rafters.
‘Chill out,’ I tell them. ‘I’m just enjoying the show. Highly entertaining.’ Tony helpfully translates.
Maria’s reaction is the most curious. Instead of raving about the crucified Nazarene, she looks str
aight at me. A glint of sun makes those yellow eyes burn as she cocks her head to one side, quizzical. And she smiles at me. Everyone else is scowling, but Maria smiles. Still playing the role, I suppose. Improvising. Riffing. What a trouper.
She turns to look back across the church at something. I follow her gaze over to that towering stained-glass window on the rear wall. Then her eyes are back on me and she’s got a weird, knowing look on her face. For the life of me I can’t work out what this odd little moment with the window is supposed to mean.
Evidently keen to re-establish the mood, Di Stefano intones what I later discover is an exorcism prayer. Maria ignores him. She’s still looking right at me. Getting sick of her smile and B-movie eyes, I pull out my smartphone. The reception here is patchy, but I grab a scrap of signal.
Di Stefano’s pronouncements and Tony’s translations (‘In the name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, strengthened by the intercession of the immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of God . . .’) fade into the background as I check my updates. Social media is the usual heady potpourri of hearts and minds.
‘How long were you in rehab for, dawg?’ enquires Jack Sparks on Drugs fan Monky617 (two months is the answer, in case you’re similarly curious – and the only drug I’ve done since leaving is alcohol, which was never my problem in the first place), while PaulTrema8 wants to know what my next book is going to be about (as if the exorcism isn’t a pretty good clue). SpazzDick2, on the other hand, kindly offers, ‘I’ll punch ur fucken head off u arogunt [sic] cock.’ I’m pretty sure I blocked him last week, but apparently not. Must have been his earlier incarnation, SpazzDick1.
‘. . . as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God . . .’ drones Di Stefano, as Maria gnashes something feral back.