“Whatever or whoever you are, you are commanded in the name of Jesus to state your name, to answer our questions.”
With that, the volume of noise started to increase and with it an uncontrollable dismay and fear in Gerald. He felt himself the target of some leviathan voice croaking from bloated lungs, cavernous throat and mouth, a voice of curses, abuse, blasphemy, in which his secret sins, ill will, obscenities all echoed and rolled and issued as a malignant challenge.
Young Father John found the sounds in the room almost unbearably disturbing. He sprinkled holy water around Gerald and then around the couch. The noise rose to a fresh crescendo, then started to fall away. Richard/Rita, all this while, remained stretched out flat on his back.
As the babel died away in a mumbling and choking sound, Gerald received the first onslaught of the Clash. Nobody had prepared him for it, and nobody had told him what to do. The old Dominican friar in Chicago had merely said that at some point “the old fella” would have to come out as himself. He warned Gerald to take care at that point—“It’s worse than I can ever hope to tell you.” It was.
Gerald’s greatest quality—stubbornness—now became the source of his torture. For he could not, would not let go. He had locked his will into that of the evil spirit. Even if in some exorcists the Clash starts in the mind, the imagination, or in a powerful intuitive sense of theirs, it finally comes home in full force to the will. From the start it was in Gerald’s will that the struggle took place.
Up to that moment he had felt his will pushing against a steel wall of resistance and attack. Now the wall seemed to melt and flow all around, while his will plunged into the molten heart of liquid heat that scorched and sizzled and frittered away every thew and sinew of his will, searing through every trace of padding and protection a human will employs—hopefulness, anticipation, remembrance of pleasure, satisfaction in fidelity, conscious ability to change or not to change, surety, persuasion that one is doing the right thing.
It was not a darkness of mind, but a nudity of will. It was the place of deepest poignancy and sharpest sorrowing that any human being can reach while in a mortal condition. Dante had described it as the pathos of the soul which is not condemned to Hell (and knows that), but has no means of knowing if Heaven exists and yet must persevere in hope that apparent hopelessness is a prelude to happiness and reward.
Then the Clash materialized in his physical self. One by one, his hearing, his sight, his senses of touch, smell, and taste were affected. His vision became blurred—almost the same as when one videotape is played over another; both are clear enough to be seen, neither is clear enough to eliminate doubt. In his eardrums there began the sort of ache produced by a sudden burst of a jackhammer; and the ache continued. Whatever he touched gave him the funny shiver through the small of his back and spine he used to get when somebody rubbed a pane of glass with a dry thumb. His mouth tasted as if he had been chewing sour milk and flour. And a wild odor he could not define lodged in his nostrils. Not of rottenness or putrefaction or sewage, but a sharp odor that his sense of smell could not take without a stinging recoil seizing his sinuses and the back of his mouth and throat in revulsion.
His assistants saw Gerald as he began to jackknife over. Two held him, one on either side; but, faithful to his instructions, they did not attempt to lead him out of the room. “Can you make it. Father?” asked Dr. Hammond. Gerald’s only answer was to jerk his head in a quick gesture.
The uncanny pressure was climaxing inside in his will and outside in his body. He felt the recently healed wounds in his back and belly loosening and flowing, the scabs giving way, and a salty sting in the opening flesh. He felt the wetness of his own blood and sweat. And Gerald knew he now had to make a supreme effort.
“Your name! You who torment this creature of God. In the name of Jesus, and because of his power, your name! Now! Your name!”
He heard the last rumbling traces of that attacking voice fading away. Richard/Rita stirred as if prodded with a sharp knife, writhing his head, neck, and back. He groaned. Then all in the room heard a little gravelly whisper, not faltering, just deliberate and slow.
“Girl-Fixer. The Girl-Fixer. Girl-Fixer. We fix ’em. All sorts of girls. Young, old, married, unmarried, lesbians, neuters, girls who want to be fixed. Those who want to be fixed like girls. Anyone. We fix ’em. Oeeeeeeeeeeeh!” It was a larynx-shaking yelp. “We fix ’em right!”
Gerald’s weight on the arm of his assistants grew heavy. The pressure on him was increasing again. But he knew the name now. Girl-Fixer. He had broken through the deadly charade and he knew with every instinct that he must pursue hard before his advantage could slip away.
“You will tell us: how many of you are there? Who are you? What do you do? Why do you hold this creature of God in slavery? You will tell us. Speak!”
Gerald would have gone on repeating the same commands, but the younger priest made a small gesture reminding him he was falling into a repetitive pattern. They both waited. Gerald was still fighting the poison inside him. All his pain was with him.
“Take you, for example, Priest!” The contempt and hate in the tone was chilling. “We fixed you, didn’t we? Just feel, kiddo. Or just try to do something with your end, fore or aft. Oh, yes! We fixed you. Oeeeeeeeeeeeh!”
Gerald steadied himself and tried to wet his lips; his mouth was dry and furry. His sight was getting blurred again. He had to keep at it. The teacher lifted a cup of water to his lips. He had to keep at it. He moistened his tongue and started again.
“Tell us, in the name of Jesus…”
He was interrupted by a low groan from Richard/Rita. Its agony paralyzed everyone; joined to the volume of pain and suffering in his own body, it struck Gerald dumb. Each of the others was affected by that groan: each one’s imagination and memory went out of control. The police captain was back in the Korean prison camp where he had languished for two years; his buddy was groaning his life away in pain, as a grinning interrogator scraped the flesh off his ribs. The teacher was back in Surrey, England, in 1941, beside a German plane that had crashlanded, bursting into flames; the trapped German pilot was screaming, “Mutti! Mutti!” as he burned inside the plane. Richard’s brothers were standing beside a shuddering, dying wolf they had shot over ten years ago during a hunting trip in Canada with their father; the wolf was groaning defiance and coughing up blood and staring at them. The doctor was back on a house call of the previous winter when he had watched a father, bending over the still-warm body of his dead three-month-old baby son, choke in hoarse, dry sobs. Everyone felt guilty, as of murder or willful torture. Someone or something was suffering untold pain and blaming them all.
Only John, the younger priest, had no horror image or dreadful memory. He tried to finish Gerald’s command. And it was a painful mistake.
“Answer,” he said loudly, his voice cracking with nervousness. “In the name of Jesus, answer our questions…”
“Don’t, John,” Gerald interrupted thickly. But it was too late. The damage was done. The groaning stopped. Richard/Rita rolled over on his back, then sat up. There was a sudden, dreadful lull. The others were jerked back to the present. They tensed, ready to jump and hold Richard/Rita down. But all Richard/Rita did was to open one eye. It appeared luminous, slitted, evilly joyous, focusing on John.
“Ah! The lily-white cur!” Each word came out like paste squeezed slowly from a tube. Everyone present and listening waited on every syllable. “We’ll fix you. In time.” Gerald was filled with pity for John: now he was in for it.
“You’ll lose some of your hair. And you’ll sit in a confessional and secretly wonder why they do the things they confess to you. And the wonder will change to curiosity. And the curiosity to desire. You won’t admit it, but you will end with desire. To murder. To steal. To fuck. Whatever they tell you. And you’ll feel the prick in you and you’ll fudge on the monies. And you’ll tilt the bottle. Then you’ll let her hot hands soothe your fever”—the sarcasm was biting—
“and when you get up, she’ll drive you to the sea for your health and you’ll have a quickie in the back of the car—all for the love of your sugar-coated Jesus. And she’ll need more and more of your love of God. And more. And more. And more. And”—the voice was now at a screaming crescendo—“you’ll take several wives of several men, just to console them. You’ll be a whoremaster on the altar, you lily-white cur. And you’ll be afraid to confess it.” Richard/Rita started to screech and howl with laughter, rolling around the couch. “Maybe”—he stopped laughing and fixed John again with the one eye speculatively—“maybe, you’ll come even into my box.”
The captain laid two strong hands on Richard/Rita’s shoulders, restraining him firmly but gently. He was suddenly quiet. Then he turned the one eye on the captain and wrinkled his nose in mock disgust: “He’ll screw your wife. Yours! She wants him already. A nice clean young man no woman ever had.”
“Frank, hold it,” Gerald said hurriedly to the captain. He squeezed John’s hand to reassure the young priest. He was now standing erect by himself. He reassured them all with a glance. Then slowly and in a solemn tone of voice to Richard/Rita: “Your name is Girl-Fixer. You will answer our questions.” Painstakingly he listed them: “How many of you are there? Who are you? What do you do? Why do you hold this person whom Jesus saved?”
Each question acted like a hammer blow on Richard/Rita. With each one Richard/Rita sank back further on the couch. He seemed to shrink and diminish as if being flattened. A look of trapped horror spread over his face like a film.
Gerald continued: “I ask these questions in the name of Jesus. You will answer.”
Richard/Rita’s body relaxed and went limp; he lay on his back, eyes closed. The captain loosened his hold finally and stood back. Gerald motioned to the assistants; they moved away from the bed. Richard/Rita’s two brothers looked at each other for a brief instant. They recollected later: their horror was almost equaled by their curiosity. What malign and dark forces had seized their brother? Why? Could he be freed of them? Would they give up?
The pressure on Gerald was lightening inch by inch, he felt. He could feel little pockets of relief throughout his body. His vision started to clear up again. His ears stopped aching. He was no longer bleeding. He still had the inexorable gnawing around his middle, but now it was a dully insistent pain, steady, unwavering, predictable.
For a few minutes Richard/Rita’s mouth opened and shut alter nately. They could see his tongue moving inside, his cheeks tautening and loosening, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down. He seemed to be forming words soundlessly.
Then they began to hear him, at first faintly as a distant whisper, then in half words, then broken phrases, finally in whole sentences punctuated by trailing pauses and delivered in that gravelly tone which not even his brothers recognized as that of the Richard they had known all their lives. Dr. Hammond, too, had recovered his composure, and was once more engaged in clinical observation of what was happening.
“How many of you are there?” Gerald repeated. Then he leaned forward listening intently. Bit by bit, he began to pick up the middle of words, the beginnings of phrases.
“…numbers…no bodies, fool…can you can’t…numerality…spr——…negative math…count only in power…unbroken will each and eve——…stick together…gargantuan push on little pygmies…no one solitary…off on their own…nothing…any one of us alone is nothing, has nothing…among us, a single spirit is merely a few fibers—will, mind—strung out on a measly being forever headed to an eternal absence, an endless vacuum…a belly on two legs stumbling aimlessly across the dry bed of confirmed hopelessness…that’s each one alone…impossible…nothing, a real nothing…hating, loathing, loving unlove and unloving…together around a human or hating the High Enemy…oaaaaaaaaaah…the push and shove and dent we make, the Kingdom, the Kingdom, there High Enemy never rules, dense, indistinguishable, one mass, one will, one complete beast, one brilliance pouring from the Daring One to all the others. So that humans back into the corner…take darkness as their lot, disease and pain and death and darkness…on all sides scratched, bitter, stung, deadened, maddened by the crawling members of the Kingdom, the Kingdom…”
“Have you all various names?” Gerald interjected. “Are you all equal? What are your identities?”
The voice coming from Richard/Rita had sunk to a stage whisper.
“Brilliant! Brilliant!” the psychologist breathed wonderingly to Gerald. “Just the question to be asked!”
“Must you go further on this line, Father?” Bert asked Gerald, watching his brother in dismay.
“Kindly wait, my dear man.” Dr. Hammond’s eyes were bulging with interest, his face flushed with anger at the interruption. “This may be a landmark case of multiple personality.”
Gerald looked sideways at the psychiatrist. It was a look more of pity than surprise. But there was no time for more.
“…round and fat and red and black and male and female and what they do or smell like or walk like or do like, pygmy humans…names, what names?…a breath of little lungs…it’s what we do, we are…millions if you count the wills, the minds, infinite if you weigh the hatings, the living hatings…one above the other, no one is all, all are under one, some so near the Daring One they have intelligence only the High Enemy can match, some so low they are turds, the shards, the lumps beneath his heel, the dust between his toes…and loving it all, all the degradation…anything to disfigure beauty.”
A fit of crackling, cackling laughter seemed to grip Richard/Rita. Whatever or whoever was amused, it was a frightening look Richard/Rita now wore: his mouth drawn back, all his teeth bared, his cheeks lined from the stretching of the lips, chin bobbing up and down, nostrils flaring and distended—and the ugly horror of that amusement. This was no belly laugh or dry, subtle joke, no reaction to fine wit or deep humor. Just a triumphal screeching sound undulating out on felt waves of satisfaction for hate, of acquiescence in unhappiness, of refusal to envisage any existence but that of living in death, of mercilessness, of perpetual banality exalted into a way of existence.
Gerald spoke again. “What do you do, you of the Kingdom? Girl-Fixer? All of you? What do you do?”
Richard/Rita was now covered with perspiration. His clothes and the top of the couch were sodden. The temperature of the room had become stifling in the last hour. A stale odor hung in the air. Each one present had a throbbing headache. Bert and Jasper had begun again to support Gerald on either side. Both the brothers looked like men wounded and bled dry of any feeling. They had been numbed by compassion for their brother and by fear for his well-being. Father John was saying his rosary beads. The teacher and the police captain stood on either side of the couch. Listening to Richard/Rita’s rambling talk, they seemed to have shrunk to shadows of their former selves, their burly forms drooping and listless.
The only one still spry, coldly thoughtful, active, still moving around and in apparent control of himself, was the psychiatrist. In spite of his apparent stress, there was a gleam in his eyes, picked up by his steel-rimmed spectacles, that bespoke the professional behaving predictably in the teeth of invaluable experience. Dear God, Gerald prayed silently, let him be spared the price of any further stupidity he may yet commit.
Dr. Hammond, however, concentrated on Richard/Rita’s reply as his body stiffened on the couch. The police captain and the teacher held Richard/Rita down. Jasper left Gerald’s side and placed his hands on Richard/Rita’s ankles. They could all “feel” the resistance coming.
“Why should we reply? The High…”
“Because Jesus commands you. And his cross protects us. And you were defeated by his sacrifice. And you will obey. Answer.”
Again Richard/Rita went limp. The groaning started and lasted a minute or two. James could feel his brother’s whole body vibrating as if electric waves were being shot through it in quick, successive spurts.
“We…we…leave us to the Kingdom. You hear! Rita is one of us now. Forever. You
cannot have Rita.”
“Rita is baptized. And saved. And forgiven. You do not anymore have the freedom of Rita’s body and Rita’s soul,” Gerald shot with a savagery he never had felt before. “You will tell us what you do, how you fix. Answer. In the name of Jesus.”
For a few minutes, Gerald had the impression that the confused babel of voices was starting again, but it came to nothing. In that tiny, limping, unknown voice, Richard/Rita spoke again. It was the weird and unaccustomed voice that made him a stranger to his brothers.
“Oh, it starts with the box and ends with the box. So long as we make them think the box is all, we fix them. We can make a whore of the grandest—all legal, all secure, if once…if once they think the box is woman, woman a box…the greatest insult to the High Enemy, because woman is likest to the High Enemy. A man is a thing. A woman is being. We fix them so they think…it’s nothing but a big, fat dick in a sea of hormones, and smellings and screams, and all the shouting and jabbing and pulling and jerking. Tie them to the dickybird tight in his cage. Tie them to that. Don’t let them see beyond. And she will make the man in her image. Tie him too…” Richard/Rita broke off, turning on the couch and gasping as if for air. “You! Priest! We’ve fixed you for…”
“No, Girl-Fixer. Jesus has defeated you. In his name you will answer: why do you hold this creature, Rita, in slavery? Why?”
Gerald in his inexperience was following a dangerous yet apparently elementary line of reasoning. It seemed logical to him to insist on finding out why or how Richard/Rita had come to be possessed. But there was always the danger that his own mental curiosity would conquer his better judgment. He might, in that case, advance so far as to tamper with the innards of evil and get injured beyond repair.
Hostage to the Devil Page 32