Beware the Night

by Ralph Sarchie

  If all this wasn’t enough to scare the wits out of our students, Joe had one final warning. Recounting his phone conversation with the painter, he told the class that Michael’s final remark about wanting to swap places with someone else might be no joke. “I don’t think any of us can truly understand how desperate this man is. I have a hunch that somehow he’s made a bargain with the demon for a transference to take place during the exorcism. If we’re not extremely careful, someone could end up being possessed!”

  Our students were clearly shocked—and a bit skeptical. “Do you really think he’d try to do such a thing?” Rose asked. “Is it even possible?”

  “We have to be prepared for any kind of attack, even an attempt at possession,” Joe emphasized. “There’s no evil the demonic won’t stoop to—and this man has endured so much that his spirit is broken. He wouldn’t care if another person had to suffer in his place, if that meant his suffering would be over. He said he’d do anything to be free.”

  I urged our students to take every spiritual precaution, both for themselves and their families. “Civilians can be attacked too,” I cautioned. “If you have a relative whose faith isn’t strong, that person could be a weak link in our battle. Help that family member get in a better relationship with God.”

  The students looked grimmer than ever now that Joe had fully described the dangers they’d be braving, should they decide to assist with Michael’s eighth exorcism. During the class, I also got a little “warning” that the Devil didn’t like what we were up to. We listened to some of the tapes of Michael’s previous exorcisms, but not all. Knowing that any time this particular demon is discussed, creepy phenomena occur, I went upstairs during a break in the class to check on my dog, Max. Jen was out at the movies with Christina.

  I found the door of my apartment flung wide open—even though no one else was at home, and I’d locked it myself. Since I have guns in my home, I am extremely careful to keep the door secured at all times, yet unless Max, my dog, had learned to unlock and open doors, I knew I’d just gotten a visit from the demonic. Yes, it was a minor thing, and I thank God for that, but in retrospect, it was also the first hint of the harm and suffering this exorcism would bring me—and everyone else involved. As I was about to discover, the demonic never forget and never stop seeking vengeance.

  Chapter Eleven

  The September Curse

  WE DECIDED TO hold Michael’s exorcism over a three-day period, with the last ritual, if needed, to be performed on September 14, a holy day, the Triumph of the Cross. This date commemorates a seventh-century victory where a Christian emperor regained relics of the cross Jesus died on from a Persian ruler who had stolen them. To ready ourselves, Joe and I both purified our bodies and spirits with our usual, pre-exorcism black fast. On the day of the exorcism, we visited our respective churches, confessed our sins, and received Holy Communion, so we’d be in a state of grace.

  The exorcism began on a Friday morning. Phil, Antonio, and Scott volunteered to assist, while Rose sat in the back of Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel and supported us with her prayers. I spent the first fifteen minutes of the ritual puking my guts out. I had knelt in front of Michael to check his leg restraints, and when I did, I got a whiff of an incredibly foul odor, one of the signs of possession listed in the Roman Ritual. I won’t be melodramatic and say it was worse than rotting flesh—a stench I’ve had the misfortune to encounter more than once on the Job—but it was close. It’s hard to describe what it smelled like, definitely not fire and brimstone, as you might imagine, but sort of like decomposing garbage. After vomiting in the bucket we put out for the exorcee, I went outside so I wouldn’t disrupt the ritual. Since I had very little in my stomach after my fast, I stood in the church parking lot dry-heaving all over the place, until I felt that with the next heave my entire stomach would come up.

  Finally I returned to the exorcism, making damned sure not to walk in front of the old man. The bishop was still reciting the Litany of the Saints, so I tried to slip inconspicuously into the pew. Michael instantly turned to me with a very nasty grin and said, “Looks like you need an exorcism too!”

  I kept silent. No one should speak to a possessed person during an exorcism except the priest. I run my cases like a police operation, and if there’s one piece of discipline I particularly impress on my investigators, it’s this: Talking to a demon can cause an assistant to be attacked or even become possessed.

  Although each exorcism is different, and the Roman Ritual permits the priest to add whatever he feels is necessary to free the possessed, there are certain questions an exorcist always asks, such as, “What is your name, evil spirit?” Being a Traditionalist Catholic, Bishop McKenna always asks them in Latin and then, if there’s no reply, in English. I remember how utterly amazed the bishop was at one exorcism when the exorcee, a high school dropout, needed no translation: She gave an appropriate answer in English to each Latin question. More remarkable still was a nearly illiterate farmer, who actually gave his replies in fluent Latin!

  At times, the name the demon gives will correspond to its method of attack or a weakness it exploited to take control of the person. Father Martin wrote about a possessed woman whose face was fixed in a ghastly, twisted grin. During her chilling exorcism, the satanic spirit gave its name as “Smiler.” In sharp contrast to this harmless-sounding name was the effect it had on the priest, who suddenly found himself overcome by supernatural despair, feeling that God, Heaven, Earth, goodness, and evil were somehow “a cosmic joke on little men who in their turn are only puny little jokes.” As the demon smirked, the exorcist slipped into the trap of wondering if all of existence was just a meaningless farce, then collected himself—and commanded Smiler to depart.

  Some believe that once the evil power gives its name, the spirit is loosening its grasp and will be cast out. If so, the response when Bishop McKenna asked this question wasn’t encouraging, since the demon said nothing. Nor did it react to the next question, “When did you enter?” Clearly we’d reached the pretense stage.

  Like an experienced police interrogator, the bishop never let up the pressure. “Devil, I adjure you, in the name of Jesus Christ, to reveal how you entered.”

  This question is asked because the demonic often enter through one of the chakra points: the body’s centers of psychic energy, which run in a vertical line from the base of the spine to the top of the head. From these points flows the aura, the spiritual protection that surrounds each person. If you are free from sin, your aura is very strong and intact, but if you let your faith slip away, it develops breaks and chinks that can let the demonic in. A weak aura attracts diabolical spirits; a strong one repels them. If the exorcist can find out which physical entry point the satanic spirit used, he can then apply relics to that area and cause the demon great torment that may spur it to flee.

  The same question can, at times, tell us if the person was cursed. If that proves to be the case, we must discover how the person was attacked. Was the curse attached to a contact object? If the item is ever identified, we can take the correct steps to contain its evil, by reading prayers to lift the curse and disposing of the object in deep water or consecrated ground, so no one else is harmed by its negative charge.

  If the evil spell was sent verbally by a sorcerer, we have other prayers to break the curse and send it back to the person who invoked it. Being more of a crafty thinker than I am, Joe has figured out a perfect, Christian way to handle this situation. Rather than fight evil with evil and practice the black arts ourselves by cursing the sorcerer in return, he suggested that we rebuke magicians in God’s name, with a special prayer. We ask that the magician will be surrounded by the “Lumen Christi,” or Christ light, by visualizing the person, surrounded by a bright, white light from head to toe, forming a protective shield that won’t let evil in or out.

  That day the demon didn’t give anything up about its mode of entry but was finally provoked to say something. The breakpoint had come. In a deep, gu
ttural voice, it told Bishop McKenna, “I’m going to slit your belly and let your guts spill out!”

  Refusing to be intimidated, the exorcist continued to recite the ritual in a steady monotone that betrayed not a flicker of fear. I’ve noticed that when the bishop is really intent on his prayers, his voice will drop to a soft, hypnotic mumble where the Latin words blur into one long, echoing sound of holiness that seems to last forever.

  “Stop your prayers,” the demon ordered. “I’ll rip your heart out and drink your blood! You’re a dead man, priest! Dead, dead, dead!”

  Ignoring these lurid threats, Bishop McKenna asked calmly, “What keeps you here, Devil?”

  The response to this question can alert us if there’s a cursed object in the home—or on the person—of the possessed. We also may learn if the exorcee is holding the demon there. Many times, even though the satanic spirit causes people awful suffering, they may be unwilling to let go. This is most common when the force attacks through the intellect, since the victims have a harder time distinguishing between their own thoughts and impulses and those artfully suggested by the demon.

  Since in some cases demonic brainwashing goes on for many years before the person’s will breaks down, eventually alien ideas can sound familiar and even reasonable. When the attack takes a religious direction, it can be harder still for the people to clearly recognize the dividing line between their own faith and the distorted version the demon has presented, but until this realization comes, the exorcism won’t succeed.

  The fiend in Michael turned to a new, even more appalling line of attack after its garish threats to disembowel, blind, mutilate, and murder Bishop McKenna had no discernible impact. After yelling for a while in a language we couldn’t understand, Michael’s eyes fixed on a Dominican sister sitting meekly by the altar, praying silently.

  The next time the exorcist held up his cross and commanded the satanic spirit to depart, it offered a grotesque alternative: “I’ll leave this one—give me her! I want the nun!”

  The way the demon uttered these words made them sound so dirty that my skin crawled at the vileness of it. What gave this demon the right to use this hideously lewd tone about a nun? It was an obscenity! Joe’s intuition was right. But even though my partner suspected a scheme to transfer Michael’s demon into some innocent victim, he never dreamed the target would be a nun!

  Even the usually unflappable bishop was taken aback. “What did she ever do to you, Devil?”

  “The nun knows. She’s going to be mine!”

  As the demon’s horrible laughter filled the church, I couldn’t help but glance at the nun to see how she was reacting. Her expression was as pure and pious as ever, and she betrayed no sign she’d even heard the demon’s disgusting insinuations. I admired her faith under fire.

  To my surprise, since Bishop McKenna always avoids any idle questions, he pursued this line of questioning, apparently curious as to why the demon had singled out the sister for its abuse. The spirit reveled in the opportunity to further defile the nun with its awful words. “I’ll take her because I want her! And you can’t stop me, priest!”

  The exorcist could stand no more. “Silence, Devil!” he thundered, then issued a torrent of Latin.

  In translation, the ritual, which takes about twenty minutes, but can be repeated as many times as the exorcist deems necessary, includes these words to the demon: “I exorcise you, Most Unclean Spirit! Invading enemy! All spirits! Every one of you! In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Be uprooted and expelled from this creature of God. He who commands you is He who ordered you to be thrown down from highest Heaven into the depths of Hell. He who commands you is He who dominated the seas, the wind, and the storms. Hear, therefore, and fear, Satan! Enemy of the Faith! Enemy of the human race! Source of death! Robber of life! Twister of justice! Root of evil! Warp of vices! Seducer of men! Traitor of nations! Inciter of jealousy! Originator of greed! Cause of discord! Creator of agony! Why do you stay and resist, when you know that Christ our Lord has destroyed your plan? Fear Him.…”

  After several hours of this struggle, the bishop announced a break. While in the movies exorcisms seem to go on day and night without stopping until the possession is broken, that’s not how it’s really done. Sometimes we stop, we eat a little lunch, we rest, and then we resume. It is up to the exorcist. If he feels we shouldn’t stop, we’ll continue as long as necessary.

  As was the pattern during Michael’s seven previous exorcisms, the painter’s behavior immediately returned to normal as soon as the exorcism was halted. I’ve seen this before. People typically react to the ritual in one of two ways. Some have no memory of the ceremony and take quite a while to come back to their senses at the end of an exorcism; others, like Michael, are aware of everything that takes place. Now that the demon was no longer being tormented by the bishop’s words, it retreated and Michael was himself again.

  During the break, Joe took Michael to a pizzeria, where an odd incident occurred. After the meal, the old man decided to have a cigarette, so my partner handed him his lighter. Although the lighter hadn’t been used all day and wasn’t the least bit warm, Michael dropped it as if it were a blazing hot coal and yelped in pain. “Get the fuck away from me,” he yelled, his rough language provoking glares from the family in the next booth.

  Joe suddenly realized what had happened: He’d been holding a bottle of holy water during the ritual and gotten his hands wet. Although Michael could normally touch holy objects without ill effects, despite his possession, the demon in him was weakening and now howled at the slight trace of holy water Joe’s touch had transferred to his lighter.

  Despite this promising sign, no further progress was made that afternoon—just more yelling and threats. The second day wasn’t much different, except that I began to have horrifying visions during the exorcism. Grim crime scenes I hadn’t thought about in years washed my mind with relentless gore. Cockroaches and scorpions marched through rivers of blood, burned bodies rose from the ground like mummies in a horror movie. I began to imagine terrible things happening to my wife and children—thoughts that are so appalling that I refuse to relive them in print. My fondest memories were indelibly tainted by the poison this demon was spewing, and my worst ones were crashing around me. Don’t listen, I kept telling myself, it’s not real! The Devil mixes truth with lies and twists it into horrible perversion! This is insanity, a glimpse into Hell! God knows it’s not me thinking these things!

  Focusing on God is the best way to arm yourself against mental attacks from the demonic. Because this form of psychological warfare is so common in the Work, I try to push these thoughts out of my mind the moment they enter, before they take hold in my imagination. I don’t consider myself dreamy or prone to flights of fancy, but the demonic can seize on any thread of memory or emotion and weave it into something hellish. This has also happened to me during exorcisms of houses—I’ve read the Pope Leo XIII prayer hundreds of times and know it by heart, but when a mental attack strikes, I’ll suddenly start stuttering and lose my place. Having been my partner for so long, Joe knows without my saying so that it’s time to spray me with holy water before I lose it completely.

  If blocking the thought doesn’t work, I picture a big, silvery cross and concentrate only on that. It’s similar to the Christ light I mentioned earlier, which can be used for the same purpose. You just imagine yourself surrounded by a pure white light that goes from the top of your head to the bottom of your heels and use it as a shield against evil thoughts.

  But even with these comforting images to protect me, by the end of the second day of Michael’s exorcism, I was so mentally drained that my spirituality was at an all-time low. After an exorcism, you just want to get away from it all. I don’t mean that I’d lost my faith, but you do take a psychological beating when you go up against pure evil. Once you have felt the demonic invade your mind, even for a moment, you never feel the same again.

  The next day was Sunday, which we’d set as our da
y of rest from the exorcism. As Joe and his wife, Alla, were walking to evening mass, a heavy branch fell from the top of a tree, narrowly missing them. After mass, they met me outside the church, and Joe told me what had happened. It was a calm night, with no wind at all. We walked back to the spot and looked at the branch, which was large and would have certainly killed Joe if it had hit him. There was no sign of rot—it wasn’t a dead branch. It had been ripped off the tree with tremendous force. We saw this was a second attempt on Joe’s life by the demonic. There was no need to say anything: We both knew the psychic’s prediction had just come true.

  Since Monday was the day of the Triumph of the Cross, the bishop, Joe, and I brought relics of the True Cross with us. I sat behind and to the right of Michael with my relic at the side of his head, and Joe held his relic to the back of the housepainter’s neck. Then Bishop McKenna stepped forward with his relic, for the part of the ritual that goes (in English), “Behold the Cross of the Lord. Depart, Enemies!”

  At the simultaneous touch of three relics—the number that symbolizes both the demonic and the Holy Trinity—Michael’s eyes went wild, darting from side to side. He wouldn’t turn his head to look at any of the crosses, but there was no escape from the sight of them. What I saw in his eyes will be with me for the rest of my life: It was the look of a cornered beast that was trapped and frightened, but vicious at the same time. As a cop, I have seen people in all states of rage, anger, hate, pain, and death, but I can’t describe his reaction in these terms. They say the eyes are the window of the soul, but what I saw there was not human. It didn’t contain one ounce of humanity, and I will never forget it.

  This soul-searing moment wasn’t a turning point. The end of the third day was the same as the beginning of the first: Michael wasn’t freed. For whatever reason, the powerful demon that had him in its grip wouldn’t leave. The painter seemed pretty much resigned to ongoing possession, despite the torment it caused him.