The Dark Sacrament

by David Kiely

  He turned out to be a wiry man in his late sixties. He wore the tired, rheumy look of someone who had seen it all, done it all, and was not overly interested in seeing or doing much more of it. But he listened patiently, punctuating Erin’s words from time to time with “dearie, dear,” tut-tutting and raising his eyes to heaven with a “merciful God!” or a “Lord save us!”

  She could not tell him all; that much she had decided on, even before she reached the parochial house. She had asked herself what a fellow priest would make of her husband’s homosexual affair with Father Lyons. It was 2004, and the wounds to the Church inflicted by the disclosure of clerical sex abuse were still very raw. On meeting the elderly priest, she decided that he was not ready for yet another scandal. It might turn him against her, and she desperately needed him on her side.

  When she finished, he sat back in his armchair and said, “Now, to be honest with you, Mrs…. ah…?”

  “Ferguson.”

  “Mrs. Ferguson, to be honest with you, I’m not used to this kind of thing at all. All that exorcism business isn’t done these days anyway. But what I could do is come and say a Mass with you and the boy, and anybody else you’d like to be there––”

  “Oh no, Father—just me and Quentin. I don’t want anyone to know.”

  “I understand. That’s all right. But I think a Mass should do it.” He got up and fetched a diary from a writing desk. “The day after tomorrow, around eight in the evening?” He stood with his pen poised above the page.

  “That would be very good, Father. I’m very grateful. Thank you so much.”

  “That’s all right, Mrs. Ferguson. We’ll do what we can and trust that it works. And if it doesn’t, then we’ll try another way.”

  Trust that it works? Erin had expected somewhat more from the priest. She knew very little about exorcism but had understood that it was the Church’s most effective weapon against the paranormal. She also had been encouraged to place her trust in the extraordinary spiritual power of the Mass. The priest’s words did not inspire confidence.

  It seemed to her that Father Higgins was preparing her for failure.

  He was as good as his word. He arrived at the appointed hour and celebrated a Mass in the living room.

  Erin was acutely aware of the effect he had on Quentin. The boy was nervous; he could not meet the priest’s eye.

  “I sensed what was going through his head,” she tells us. “I’d prepared him as best I could for Father Higgins. ‘He’s a nice old man,’ I told him. ‘He’s coming to say prayers for us.’ I thought he’d be okay with all of it, but he wasn’t. I know it was the collar that did it. As soon as he saw that, he went all nervous. I was hoping he wouldn’t. It wasn’t fair that Frank Lyons turned Quentin off all priests. But who could blame him?”

  Father Higgins, for his part, did not seem to notice or, if he did, paid no mind. Erin had the impression that he tolerated children but had no great affinity for them. After some minutes, however, the priest had, to some extent, won Quentin’s confidence. It was enough for the ceremony.

  It was not the first time that Erin had participated in a Mass celebrated in the home. The Station Mass, a survival from Penal times, was an important ritual in her native Kerry. She and her family had often been invited to attend such an event. It was regarded as a great privilege that the priest should grace one’s home with the sacrament. Candles would be bought and the best linen brought out. The altar would be set up in the parlor with great solemnity, chairs arranged in the room. The priest would make a great show of bringing out the sacred vessels and disposing the holy water and oil. The parlor would be thronged with the devout of the parish.

  But on this occasion, Erin made no such elaborate preparation, nor did she invite anybody else to participate. Father Higgins had asked her not to “go to any trouble.” He came alone; she would assist, reading the responses from a printed sheet. The altar was simple: she used the drop-leaf table in the dining room, draping the middle section in white linen.

  The Mass progressed smoothly. At its close, Father Higgins blessed mother and son. Quentin seemed to have overcome his initial aversion to anything priestly; he had followed the ritual with great interest.

  Lastly, the priest blessed the house, sprinkling holy water in each room while employing suitable prayers. Erin saw him frown when all was completed. Something was troubling him.

  “I see you have no holy pictures in the house.”

  “No,” said Erin, taken aback. She had never gone in much for the iconography of Catholicism, believing that her religion was a personal thing, not something to be validated through a display of imitation art.

  “Oh, it’s very important to have a picture or two of the Sacred Heart or the Blessed Mother herself,” Father Higgins assured her. He was stowing his consecrated objects in a small case. “She’s our protector from all harm, you know, the Virgin. He could never get near her.”

  Erin did not much care for the sound of that “he”; she did not have to ask whom the priest was referring to.

  “Call in to the house and I’ll give you a picture,” he said, as he made ready to leave. “Anytime. I’ll leave them with Tricia. That’s my housekeeper, don’t you know; so if you don’t see my car outside, don’t be put off.”

  “I’ll remember that, Father. Thank you very much. A cup of tea, perhaps?”

  “I’d love to, Mrs. Ferguson, but I’ve another visit to do, so I’d just as soon get on. Thank you all the same.”

  And he was gone. Erin hesitated for a long time at the door. She freely admits that she expected a miracle that day, that her bungalow would be transformed and it would feel different. In fact, it did.

  “Call it imagination; I don’t know,” she says. “But there was a special feel to the place when I went back inside. Quentin seemed to feel it too, because he wasn’t a bit nervous, like he was when the priest came. There was such a sort of glow of peace about the place.”

  Best of all, the coldness that had plagued the house had retreated. That night, Erin slept better than she had in a long time. She awoke the next morning feeling refreshed and, in a sense, liberated.

  The days passed. The glow of peace remained in Erin’s home. Life returned to normal. Quentin seemed calmer, too. Often she would watch him at play with the other children, and there was nothing about his behavior that set him apart. On the contrary, the other boys accepted him readily. They might tease him about his “funny” accent, but that was all. Linda looked in on them and complimented Erin on how well both were faring.

  Then the cracks began appearing in the newfound quietude. The first incident occurred ten days following the Station Mass. It was afternoon. Quentin had just come in and gone to his room to change out of his school uniform. Erin, as usual, prepared a snack for him in the kitchen. He was taking longer then usual. She went to see what was keeping him and found him struggling with his jumper, one arm in, one arm out.

  “Here, let me,” she said, stooping to help him.

  Quentin sat on the bed as Erin adjusted his jumper. But as she straightened, she found him looking over her shoulder and wearing an expression she could not read.

  “Mommy, who’s that man behind you?” he asked. “The man in black.”

  Erin dared not look around. She could feel her scalp crawling, as if bugs were moving over it. Quentin seemed unperturbed; she was beside herself with fright. There was someone behind her. The sense that alerts us to the presence of another in close proximity was telling her there was a third person in the room. Somebody was breathing on the back of her neck. She could feel her hair being gently disturbed with each gust of breath.

  “Nonsense,” she managed to say, despite her disquiet, “there’s no one here but you and me, sweetheart.”

  It was true. As she spoke, she could feel the presence behind her departing, almost as though somebody had gone out the door without making a sound. She could see Quentin following something with his eyes, and it horrified her. She coul
d barely contain a scream. Her impulse was to bundle the child into her arms and get as far away from the house as possible. Instead, she tousled his hair and took his hand.

  “Here, come. Your tea’s getting cold.”

  In those few minutes, Erin’s home had subtly changed. It was as though Father Higgins had never been there and no Mass had been said. She thought of the “holy pictures” given to her by the priest’s housekeeper, some of which she had placed in Quentin’s room. She asked herself why they were not doing the job the priest had promised they would. She wondered if her own lukewarm faith was not lessening their efficacy.

  “I got really scared that day,” Erin confesses, “but I prayed that it would be a one-off. Even though I had felt some kind of presence, I was willing to believe that it could just as easily have been my imagination. Children can have very colorful imaginations too, so I managed to convince myself that Father Higgins’s Mass had worked, and I tried to get on with things as normal.”

  But normality did not wish to come to Erin. That same evening, the electricity started going haywire. Lights dimmed and brightened again for no apparent reason; the refrigerator went off ten or twelve times a day; the electric shower turned icy without warning. Often the television set and Quentin’s PlayStation switched themselves off, much to the boy’s annoyance.

  The erratic surges and power outages became so frequent that Erin learned to anticipate them; she knew instinctively when the lights would fail and would go in search of candles and matches. She called an electrician in to inspect the wiring. He gave the house a clean bill of health. The wiring was new, he said; there should, by rights, be no disruptions. He muttered something about the “local grid” and “surge impedance,” and left without charging her any more than his call-out fee.

  The electricity was not the most ominous sign that the attacker had returned to the house in Donegal. Quentin reported seeing the strange, unclothed boy again.

  “It made me go cold,” Erin says. “I know kids sometimes have invisible friends, but this wasn’t like that. For me, the naked boy and the sobbing I heard that night were connected. Quentin told me he was playing with Connor in the back garden and he saw the boy come in the back door. He followed him and found him in his room. He was kneeling beside the bed and praying. How was I going to explain to Quentin that him seeing this strange boy was somehow ‘normal’ behavior—that all children saw spirit children?”

  A catalog of events followed the apparition in quick succession. They left Erin in little doubt that she was dealing with the preternatural, as opposed to benign or even neutral forces. The foul odor and the freezing cold returned. The sobbing of the phantom child could be heard not only in the middle of the night but during the day as well. Often she would feel a presence behind her in the kitchen. And, in a ghastly echo of her experience in the old house in Dingle, something would pound loudly on her bedroom door.

  She had lost faith in Father Higgins’s Eucharist but still clung to the hope that prayers and holy pictures would keep the darkness away. That hope was to disappear when a final and terrifying manifestation intruded into her home.

  “I’d just come back from shopping and unlocked the front door when I saw it. There, in front of my eyes, was a black thing. It wasn’t real; it wasn’t a human being. It was half shadow, half creature. It was moving at great speed down the hallway. I nearly collapsed.”

  She could not remain alone in the house yet had to be there for Quentin. She called Linda and had her come over. She vowed to say nothing about the apparition; she was convinced that her friend would not believe her. As it turned out, explanations were superfluous. The moment she opened the door, Linda recoiled in fright. She grasped Erin’s arm and pulled her outside.

  “Close that door quick!” she cried. She seemed near hysteria.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  Linda could hardly speak coherently. She retreated down the path.

  “Oh my God, Erin, you tell me. I just saw the most awful-looking black thing on your stairs! What the hell is going on?”

  In the stillness of a monastery in a neighboring county, the venerable Father Ignatius McCarthy listened to Erin’s story without interruption. She told him everything: about the car accident that had brought her into Ed O’Gribben’s life; about his rapist of a father and the despicable mother who prostituted her own children; about Ed’s incestuous siblings; about his gay lover, Father Lyons, and the pedophiliac crimes the pair engaged in. She told him of the paranormal events that had persecuted her in Dingle and followed her to Donegal. Lastly, she told him about the most frightening thing of all: the black entity that appeared to be no more substantial than a shadow.

  For the first time in a long while, Erin experienced the relief that came of unburdening herself, of confiding her distress to this kindly stranger in that silent, sanctified place, without fear of censure or of not being taken at her word.

  “I think that it’s old Mrs. O’Gribben, Father,” she said. “She resented me from the beginning. And when she died…well, it was then that all those strange things started happening.”

  “In the Dingle house, yes. But not now. I believe it’s Father Lyons who’s haunting you.”

  “A priest?”

  “Yes. But it wouldn’t be the priest himself, you understand. It’s whatever it was that got into him while he was alive. It still has him in its clutches, you see. And there’s only one thing that will make it let go. Father Lyons needs your prayers and forgiveness, Erin. He won’t leave until he gets them.”

  It was the last thing she had expected. If she understood correctly, Father Ignatius was placing the burden of the manifestation on her. As though she had brought it all on herself. She felt anger well up inside her.

  “Can you forgive him?” the priest asked.

  “No, I can’t. Not after all he did. To Quentin, and me.”

  Father Ignatius patted her arm. “Erin, forgiveness is a crucial part of healing. Forgiveness frees us from all those emotions Satan uses to keep us bound: hatred, unkindness, revenge, depression—all the unloving ways of being. Father Lyons did wrong; we both know that. But what he needs more than anything is the forgiveness of those he did most harm to. In this instance, he needs your forgiveness.”

  Erin found it difficult to return his steady, kindly gaze.

  “I…I’ll…” She was lost and did not know what to think or say.

  “That’s why he’s come back, my dear. You must pray for his soul. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll do anything, Father.” Erin was weeping. “I’ll do anything you suggest—whatever it takes—to be free of this. Truly!”

  “I’m glad.” Father Ignatius laid hands upon her head and prayed silently over her.

  “I’ll come tomorrow,” he promised, “to offer a Mass and bless the house.”

  It took Father Ignatius McCarthy more than three hours to perform his “blessing” of Erin’s home. It was a considerably more elaborate ritual than he had given her to believe and differed greatly from that enacted by the other priest.

  After offering Mass in Latin and English in the parlor, he went through the house, spending a considerable time praying in each room and blessing it with holy water and incense. He requested that he be left alone in each of the rooms and that all doors remain shut.

  Erin has vivid memories of the sacrament. It evidently made a tremendous impression on her.

  “It was an unusual Mass,” she recalls. “After Father Ignatius had taken the Communion host and sipped the wine, he raised his eyes heavenward and started praying in Latin—at least I think it was Latin. It sounded a bit strange at first, but as he went on I realized he was ‘talking to God’ and that I was being given the privilege of witnessing something special.”

  The sacrament being ended, the priest bade Erin and her son to remain where they were. He asked them to kneel for his blessing. He was going to anoint them, he said.

  “It’s oil, sweetheart,” Erin tol
d Quentin. “Father Ignatius is going to rub a little bit of oil on your forehead.”

  “But I don’t want to get dirty.”

  The priest chuckled. “It’s not that kind of oil,” he told the child. “It’s sweet oil. It’s like a sort of perfume.”

  As is the case with holy water, holy oil—or chrism, a mixture of oil and balsam—is important to all Christian rites of exorcism. Oil, when used by the faithful, is believed to negate the power of demons, their attacks, and the preternatural forces they invoke.

  Father Ignatius moistened a thumb and went to Erin first. He paused and frowned.

  “I saw him looking past me,” she says. “He was looking the same way Quentin did that day when I was helping him with his jumper. I had the distinct impression that Father Ignatius might be seeing something in the room behind me. But he never let on. I’m sure he didn’t want to frighten Quentin. Or me, for that matter.”

  It was growing dark when the last room in the house was purified to the satisfaction of the priest. If Erin expected a dramatic change in her home, she was disappointed. She could not help feeling that, far from helping, the Mass and the blessings had made matters worse. There was an eerie sense of foreboding about the place. Quentin must have felt it too; not in a long time had she seen him so morose.

  Father Ignatius took her aside. He seemed to sense what she was feeling.

  “You mustn’t think that everything will be as right as rain now,” he said. “These things take time. But be assured that from now on, those things that were afflicting you will lessen considerably. In time, they’ll disappear altogether.”