“Jonathan, I want an answer, an unequivocal answer to my question. This is important.”
“On the contrary, Jesus has come to me, and I have become his priest. Praise Jesus! Praise the Lord of our world!”
David had to be satisfied with this answer, so he went on to the next stage.
“Then, Jonathan, we will repeat, first, the Credo, and then your baptismal vows.” David hoped in this way to avoid the necessity of going through the formal ritual of Exorcism. After all, he reasoned, if Jonathan could answer thus far satisfactorily, then the possession might just be a partial thing.
David took up the first phrases of the Credo. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.” There he paused, waiting for Jonathan. But Jonathan had seemingly started before he had ended the phrases, and all that David could hear were the words “the Earth.” He started the next phrase, “And in Jesus Christ,” but broke off because Jonathan was still talking on.
“Two or three billion years ago, the Earth. Each one of us 50 trillion cells. 150 million in Caesar’s day. 3,600 million in our day. 200 million tons of men, women, and children. Two trillion tons of animal life…”
“Jonathan, let’s get on with it…”
“All so that Jesus can emerge. Oh, beautiful Omega! Praise Jesus! Praise the Lord of this world with which we are all, all 200 million tons of us, are one.”
David stopped and looked hard at Jonathan. He still had his face sunk in his hands and was still talking.
“Oh, what they’ve done to it. Jews and Christians. These Judeo-Christians.” Jonathan’s voice now sank to a whisper of disgust. “The pontiff of creation—that’s what they made every man and woman.” Jonathan’s shoulders shook; he was sobbing.
Again as before, David felt a strangely welcoming agreement in himself for each statement of Jonathan’s. Some hidden part of him he had not known was saying again with insistence, “Yes! Yes!”
Jonathan’s voice took on a speed and haste of assertion. “And what started as a pioneering weed, a trial species with toads and cock robins, zooming upward to the Jesus Point, suddenly turned and made the planet its playground, the stage of its jig-acting, its domain.” The voice sank again to a whispered prayer. “Poor Jesus! Poor world! Praise the Lord of the World for Light! Poor Jesus!”
The surge of agreement in David started to sour. What was it Father G. had said? David’s memory started to spin and turn. Panic seized him. He rummaged desperately through his recollections like a man plowing through a pile of old papers in search of a sorely needed document. He searched back to the beginning, back to the first instructions bustly Father G. had ever given him. What was it?
Jonathan’s voice broke in on him.
“Father David, you are not with me. Please be with me!” It was insistent. David glanced again at the graceful hands covering the face and intertwined with the golden hair. Jonathan looked like an angel of God clad in light, doing penance on his knees for the sins of men. David wanted to say to him: “Yes! Jonathan, don’t fear! I am with you! Yes!” The words rose to his lips like a drink offered. But a quick wave of uneasiness hit him again; and again that question came back like a boomerang: What did Father G. warn him against? What had he said? What was it? Jonathan’s voice broke in again.
“Father G. is past and gone.” David was shocked by Jonathan’s reading of his own inmost thoughts. “Back to the womb of all of us. Let the dead bury the dead, Father David. You and I. We live. Let us walk in the light, while we have it.”
Jonathan talked on now, intermingling Scripture with his words. David turned away as if warding off some influence coming at him from Jonathan; and his mind reeled as he tried to regain his lost ground. He looked up at the ceiling. He felt at bay: there was only Jonathan and himself, and between them a strange ether, an invisible corridor of communication. And, all the while, his memory was still groping and working overtime, looking for a firm hold for his mind and will. Ah! At last! That’s what Father G. had said: “The Angel of Light.” That’s what he wanted to remember. “The Angel of Light.” And Father G. had warned him, too: “Your great danger, David, is that you think too much. Too much of the old cerebellum in you. Listen to your heart. The Lord speaks to your heart.”
A strong feeling of relief passed over David. A space was being opened up inside him—free, untrammeled, easy, roomy, fresh, private—untouched by that coiling dark pathway of communication between him and Jonathan.
Then a sharp word—his own name pronounced like the snapping of a horsewhip—hit his ears.
“David! David!” It was Jonathan. This time the voice had an admonitory note, the tone used by a master or a superior. The roles were curiously reversed.
David heard his young assistant priest whispering in his ear: “David, he’s shaking. Do you think he’s all right? The doctor is afraid…” David motioned to him, and looked at Jonathan again closely. Jonathan’s face was still hidden in his hands, but he seemed to David and the assistants to be racked with sobs and sorrow.
David decided to try another approach. He had to get a toehold. Somehow he had to get Jonathan to resist the evil spirit possessing him; he had to force that spirit out into the open. And he had to keep control of himself in order to do that.
In retrospect, given David’s nature, his action was almost inevitable. And given the reality of his situation as distinct from that of Jonathan, what followed was both inevitable and necessary.
He drew near Jonathan. Commiseration and compassion were uppermost in his mind. He put a hand lightly on Jonathan’s shoulder and spoke.
“Jonathan, my friend. Don’t give in to sorrow. I will never leave off or abandon my efforts. I will not desert you now until…”
“I know you won’t…” Jonathan’s voice seemed to be forced out between the violent contraction of his chest and throat. “I know you won’t because”—Jonathan paused and drew a deep breath—“my brother, you can’t. You can’t.” It was a dreadful rasp, a curious hiss that reached like a hand inside David’s mind. David started to withdraw his hand; and as he did, he felt strange impulses in his mind: a fierce persuasion beat at him that he and Jonathan were the only sane people in that room. The others, his young colleague, the doctor, the psychiatrist, were mannequins, plastic models of reality, picaresque heroes in a cosmic joke. Only Jonathan and himself. Only Jonathan and David.
“You’ve got it, David!” whispered Jonathan. A rasp. A hiss.
Who was in control?
“Got what?” David hardly had the words out of his mouth when he felt some understanding beyond words, some common current of thought, as if David and Jonathan were sharing a common brain or some higher intuitive faculty that dispensed with the need for word of mouth. “Got what?” David said it over and over again. It was a sort of cry, a protest against deception. For in those moments it all became clear to him. He knew for the first time: he himself was being slowly pervaded by the same spirit of evil which held Jonathan; and he understood Jonathan knew that also.
Jonathan lifted his face suddenly and looked at David. His right hand, with the crooked index finger, came down tightly on David’s hand as it rested on his own shoulder. David was like a man who saw a ghost: suddenly pale, shrunken, staring eyes, tight-lipped, short of breath, sweating profusely. For the face he saw on Jonathan was wreathed and twisted, not by sorrow or tears of pain, but in smiles and merriment. He had not been racked with sobs but with suppressed laughter. And that laughter now broke from his lips with a gust of relief. He shouted into David’s face.
“You’re the same as me, David! Father David!” David’s young assistant, Thomas, drew near to David. The doctor and the psychiatrist fell back, overcome by surprise, looking incredulously from David to Jonathan and back to David. David shrugged off the offer of help from Father Thomas.
“You have adopted the Lord of Light, like I have, you old fool!” shrieked Jonathan between his cackling laughter. He loosened his grip on David’s hand and ro
se to his feet. “Physician, cure yourself!”
Jonathan roared in amusement. His laughter filled the little room; he doubled over in merriment, slapping his knee, tears running down his face. “Ha-ha! David, you’re a joke. You’re a soul-fellow of mine. You don’t believe one goddamn lousy thing of that childish hocus-pocus.” Each word hit David like a physical blow. “Hoc est corpus meum! You’re as liberated as I am, man. You belong to the New Being and the New Time.”
Suddenly Jonathan quieted down. “And you were trying to exorcise me?” The contempt that replaced the laughter was enormous. He leaned forward, thrusting his face close to David’s. In a slow, deliberate tone, emphasizing every word: “Get out of here, you puny weakling! Get out of here with these scarecrows you brought with you. Go bind up your wounds. Go find if your sugary Jesus will cure you. G-e-t o-u-t!” The last two words were two slowly delivered, heavily loaded syllables of contempt and dismissal.
David was now like a man trying to stand up after a heavy physical blow. “Come, Father David,” the younger priest said quietly but urgently, as he took in the look of superiority and command in Jonathan’s face. “Let’s go, David,” said the doctor.
David turned for an instant and looked at Jonathan. The others saw no fear on David’s face, only puzzlement and pain. Their look followed David’s. There stood Jonathan watching their retreat. His whole appearance had changed. His head was uplifted. He was standing tall and erect. His golden hair fell around his shoulders like a halo catching the winking light of the candles. His blue eyes were shining with hazy light. His right hand was raised in such a way that his stiffened index finger was laid across his throat. His left hand hung by his side.
“Go in darkness, you fool!” Jonathan screamed in a high falsetto. His right hand descended in a vicious gesture and swept the candlesticks off the table onto the floor. The candles went out and the room was in semidarkness. The young priest had the door open. All four men moved out quickly. “In darkness! Fools!” Jonathan’s voice pursued them. As they emerged, they suddenly realized that the temperature of the day was already hot; inside, in the room, they had been cold.
David literally stumbled into the lighted hallway and leaned against the wall. Beside the hatrack, Jonathan’s mother was sitting in a straight-backed ornamental chair. Her hands held a rosary on her lap. Her head, eyes closed, was bowed. After a few moments, she raised her head and, without looking around at David, she spoke in a quiet voice full of resigned sorrow.
“He’s right. My son. The devil’s slave. He is right, Father David. You need cleansing. God help you.” Then, as if she sensed some apprehension in David and the others for her sanity or her faith, she added: “I am his mother. No harm can come to me.” It was an instinctual thing she said, but David was certain she was correct.
David stumbled past her. Nobody looked at her. His companions eased David into a car and drove him to the seminary. Once in his room, he sat wearily with the young priest for about half an hour.
“What are we going to do, Father David?” Thomas finally asked. David made no reply. He was now wholly occupied with himself and with the black reality he had discovered inside himself. He looked at the young priest and felt strangely out of place. What had he in common with that fresh face, the black cassock, the white round collar, and—above all—that look in the young priest’s eyes? What was that look, anyway? He screwed up his eyes staring at Thomas. What was that look? Had he ever had it himself? Was it all a joke? A mere charade or piece of imposed childishness? Young priests must believe—like young children. Then they grow up—as children do. And then they stop having that look. Stop “believing”?
“You are surrounded by quotation marks, Thomas,” he said stupidly to the younger priest. Then he lapsed into silence still staring at his colleague. What in the hell was believing anyway? That inane look! What was that look! As if all was sugar and spice and goo and kindness and pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die and infantile trust. Why was that look so open and wide-eyed?
“Stop looking like a fool!” David shot the words at Thomas. Then he realized what he had done. “Sorry, Thomas,” he mumbled lamely, seeing the young face pale. David began to cry in silence.
“Father David,” Thomas drew in a breath. “I have no experience. But you need a rest. Let me phone your family.” David nodded helplessly.
In the early afternoon David was driven up to Coos County, back to his home on the farm. His parents were delighted to see him. They now lived alone except for one sleep-in help and a gardener who stayed at the farm.
That night David went to bed in the room he had occupied during his childhood and youth. But some time after midnight he woke up covered with perspiration and shaking like a leaf. He did not know why, but a deep sense of foreboding filled his mind. He got up, went down to the kitchen, and heated some milk. As he returned to his room, he stopped at the door of Old Edward’s room. He stood there for a moment, sipping the milk and thinking in a vague, undirected way. As he describes it now, his mind was still clearing, like a jumbled TV picture slowly coming into focus. Then, with nothing particular in mind, but only by some blind impulse, he opened the door of the room, reached for the light switch, and stepped inside.
The room was much the same as it had been the evening of Edward’s death, except for one change: a large photograph of Edward, taken a few months before he had passed away, hung over the mantelpiece. It looked down at David. He sat for about an hour in that room. Then, under the same blind impulse, still unhurriedly, he went to his own room, transferred his bedclothes and personal effects to Edward’s room, and then went to sleep there.
David stayed almost four weeks on the farm. In the beginning, he went out every day for long walks and to do some manual work on the farm. Sometimes he passed by the copse at the west end of the house, but never entered it. He would stand a while ruminating and then go on his way. He looked up some old friends, and spent a good part of the evenings with his parents.
Toward the end of the first week, this loose and varied schedule changed. He began to spend most of the day and night in his room, coming out for his meals, rarely going outside the house. Then about the third week, he did not emerge at all except to use the bathroom. He did not open the shutters in his room. He ate sparingly, and toward the end lived on milk and biscuits and some dried fruit which his mother left on a tray outside the door of his room.
From the beginning of his stay he had warned his parents not to be alarmed by his living habits. On his first day there, he had gone to see Father Joseph, the local priest, whom he had taught in the seminary. During the last ten days of David’s stay at the farm, that priest was the only human being who visited and spoke with David.
David kept a minutely detailed diary during those four weeks; and, except for certain moments when he lost control of himself (of those moments he has no clear recollection), there is a more or less continuous chronology of events—the inner experience David went through and the external phenomena that marked this crucial period.
During all this time, down in Manchester, Jonathan lived at home with his mother.
Comparison of how David and Jonathan spent specific days and hours during those weeks has been difficult to achieve, but there is clear indication that certain states through which David passed coincided—sometimes to the hour—with strange moments and behavior in Jonathan’s life. Our chief intent, however, is to trace David’s experience, for, in the technical language of theology, Father David M. was deprived of all conscious belief. His religious faith was tested in an assault which nearly succeeded in robbing him of it all. Mentally and emotionally, he found himself in the state of one without any religious belief whatever. To this extent, David, who still felt that his vocation as priest was valid, had handed over his mind and emotions to some form of possession.
There would have been no struggle, much less any agony, if David’s will had not remained stubbornly attached to his religious beliefs. Inch by inch, figuratively speaking,
he had to fight for survival of his faith against a spirit to which he himself had granted entry and which now made a bid to take him over completely. Consciously he had been admitting ideas and persuasions for a long time. He had not realized until now that all such motivating ideas and persuasions, for all their guise of “objectivity,” had a moral dimension and a relation to spirit—good and evil. He had failed all along to realize that nothing is morally neutral. With these ideas, persuasions, and deficiencies as a most suitable vehicle, there had entered him some spirit, alien to him, but now claiming full control over him.
During those four weeks on the Coos farm, David’s entire life as a believer flashed by him continually and ever more intensely like photographs being flipped with the thumb—childhood, schooldays, seminary training, ordination, doctoral studies, anthropology trips, lectures, what he had written in articles and books, the conversations he had held, constantly changing panels. When he reached the end, they began all over again.
Cameos. Little scenes. Faces long forgotten. Words and sentences echoing back in half-complete fashion. Vivid memories. Each one with an individual conclusion. The day he told Sister Antonio in the convent school that Jesus could not possibly fit into the communion wafer. David was eight years old. Sister had patted his head: “David, be a good boy. We know what is right.” They had given him no choice and no answer. No choice. No choice, rang the silent echo.
His interview with the bishop for acceptance into the seminary: “If you become a priest, you are called to a perfection of spirit not granted to the majority of Christians.” Spirit is not elitist. Not elitist. Not elitist. Not elitist, went the echo.
The echoes rang through the hall of years in David’s brain, as the “photographs” continued to flash before him.
He remembered the moment he became convinced that there were no reliable records about Jesus written during Jesus’ own lifetime. In the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the letters of Paul, there was only what men and women believed and thought they knew 30, 40, 60 years after Jesus’ death. Even if they believed they knew, how could David be sure that they knew? He was thinking and believing only what they thought and believed. “I have no records. It sounds like delusion.” Delusion. Delusion. Delusion. The word was a hammer blow in David’s whorl of memories.
Hostage to the Devil Page 20