Hostage to the Devil

by Malachi Martin

  “You won’t bother me any more. You’ll get off my ass. You’ll…”

  Jamsie’s voice trailed off. A glance in the rearview mirror was enough: Uncle Ponto was on the back seat, that same uncouth smirk on his face that always enraged Jamsie.

  “I told you before,” Jamsie shouted violently into the mirror, “that is a dirty smile. A pig’s smile! A foul, swinish smile!” Then in a sudden excess of anger and frustration: “Hell! Hell! Hell!” He paused to negotiate a corner. “Hell again! Now you’ve asked for it, Ponto. This is it.

  He lapsed into silence, breathing heavily, and drove on. Now and again he shot a furtive glance into the rearview mirror to reassure himself that Ponto was still there. Jamsie could see the squarish head ending in what was almost a point, the narrow forehead with the tiny zigzag eyebrows slanting upward, the large, bulbous eyes with the whites so reddened that you could hardly distinguish them from the deeply pink irises. And Ponto’s nose and mouth and chin—what there was of chin—had always reminded Jamsie of a long, thin pencil stuck in a very ungainly Idaho potato.

  Ponto’s face looked as if it had been put together in the dark by several people working at cross-purposes, with each part coming from a different face. No one part really matched another part. Even his face color, a brownish-black, clashed with his sparse blond hair, which sat like a cheap toupee on top of that peculiar pointed head.

  He would have been comic-looking—and Jamsie sometimes had a good laugh at his facial characteristics—were it not for the normal expression on Ponto’s face. For it was in no way the comic face of a circus clown, in which irregularity and human feeling combined to give a sense of pathos. Ponto’s was a caricature of a human face. Where the clown’s face read: “Laugh! But know that I mirror the helplessness of us all,” Ponto’s face read: “Don’t laugh! But do despair, because I mirror the real absurdity of you all.” And what really prevented Jamsie from any constant amusement about Ponto’s face was the thick transformation through which it could pass. At times it did not look human at all. It was something else for which Jamsie had no name—neither animal nor human nor even a nightmare face born in bad dreams or shown in the Chamber of Horrors.

  “All I’m asking for, all I ever asked for,” Jamsie remembers Uncle Ponto saying softly sometime later, as they drove onto Highway 101, “is that you let me come and live with you. I won’t be in the way. You need a friend like me.”

  Jamsie snorted with rage; his steering became erratic for a moment.

  “You see,” Ponto continued in his primest tones. “You see! You shouldn’t have got so upset. You’re not as good a driver as your father, Ara, was.”

  “Leave my father out of this,” Jamsie grated.

  Ponto’s voice was something else again. Never loud, even when Ponto was screaming, it had a painful effect most of the time. It left ringing echoes inside Jamsie’s hearing, so that any kind of extended conversation with Ponto ended up in jabbing earaches.

  As a matter of fact, Ponto had only started to bother him long after his father’s gradual degeneration from self-supporting artisan to New York hack driver to part-time pimp to dope peddler. Yes, and long after his mother’s taking to prostitution on New York streets as a last, desperate means of livelihood.

  Leave them out of this, Jamsie thought silently. What lay between himself and Uncle Ponto was entirely personal.

  In brief, Jamsie had had enough of Uncle Ponto’s harassment. Two years of sudden appearances morning, noon, and night, and of uninvited interventions that had wrecked his personal life, all this had finally become too much. In the beginning Jamsie had even welcomed Ponto’s unpredictable antics. They had provided some relief to his boredom. At times he had been amused, stimulated, even bettered and helped in various practical difficulties. And, after years of creeping horror prior to Ponto’s first appearance, years of being pursued by strange, intangible threats, Ponto was at least a visible butt for Jamsie’s general anger at life and at people—and at himself. But that had been merely the beginning.

  It might have continued like that if Ponto had not changed his tack. But, after a while, Jamsie had found that Uncle Ponto was pressuring him. From being an occasional visitor and companion, Ponto had started to assume the role and privileges of a familiar, a close associate, an intimate friend. It was only then that Jamsie had received the full blast of Ponto’s twisted personality. And it had been too much for Jamsie.

  They were coming up to San Jose. Ponto had started to speak again. But Jamsie had been taken in by Ponto’s put-ons before. He clamped his lips tight, resolved to give Ponto the old silent treatment. It had occasionally worked in the past.

  Jamsie had heard it all before: what Ponto thought of his father and mother; how he, Jamsie, should stay away from women and liquor (“Women are death,” Ponto dinned into him; “booze makes you easygoing”); who really was Jamsie’s friend in this life—Ponto himself, or people like Lila Wood, Jamsie’s onetime girlfriend, and Lila’s friend, Father Mark. On Ponto rambled.

  Jamsie had just passed San Jose and entered Highway 52, and was heading eastward to Hollister. Ponto’s tone took on a note of suspicion.

  “You told me you didn’t like San Benito County, Jamsie!” A pause. Jamsie!

  Jamsie kept his eyes glued to the road.

  Ponto changed his tone. Now he was wheedling. “Just say, ‘Yes,’ Jamsie.” Ponto was almost plaintive. “Just say, ‘Yes.’ You’ve no idea…I don’t want to go back…All those homes up there…” Jamsie glanced up at the houses dotting the hillsides. “There’s no welcome for me up there in spite of their boozing and bitching and despair.”

  With no reaction or answering word from Jamsie, Ponto fell silent. Jamsie stared ahead. Another long silence.

  Sometime later, as Jamsie turned south on Highway 25 into the San Benito River Valley, a sardonic smile crept involuntarily across his mouth. I’ll show you, he was thinking. You little sonavabitch. This will rid me of you, get it all over with, once and for all.

  Uncle Ponto was agog again. He was becoming frantic.

  “Jamsie, you’re opaque to me now. Stop THAT! You hear me! Stop THAT! I’m getting bad vibes, very bad vibes. All darkness and fog.”

  The memory of Lila’s friend, Father Mark, came back to Jamsie again. “Mushroom-Souper,” that’s what Ponto had derisively nicknamed Father Mark. On the one evening Jamsie had visited with the priest, Mark had treated him to mushroom soup made from his own recipe. Afterward, Jamsie had talked with him into the small hours of the morning, telling him of his early life, of Ponto’s harassment, and of his own deep despair and continual rage against life. Mark seemed to understand much more than he was able to explain to Jamsie. But several times during that conversation, Jamsie had found himself incapable of going along with what Mark proposed: to get rid of Uncle Ponto. Always, at that point, Jamsie felt an unaccountable fear. If Ponto no longer existed in his life, what would happen? It was just as if Ponto represented some security or as if in some way or other he had given his word to Ponto.

  He glanced at Ponto in the rearview mirror. Ponto was leering contentedly. The sight of that gash Ponto passed off as a smile roused Jamsie’s anger again. He could not restrain himself.

  “You’re the son of the Father of Lies!” he shouted poisonously at Ponto. “That’s what Mark said Jesus called him…”

  Jamsie’s ears were split by a high-pitched scream from Ponto. “DON’T!” Ponto shouted. “Don’t mention that person’s name in my presence. Don’t mention THAT!” Ponto’s queer face was contorted in utter misery.

  There was silence for a while. Jamsie glanced at either side. How happy he had been here in this countryside with his father for a few days of a childhood visit years before. Eastward stood the Diablo Range—an ironic touch to the situation, Jamsie thought. To the west ran the Gabilan Range. Ahead lay the Pinnacles National Monument. They should arrive within an hour at the park.

  Got to get it over with, Jamsie began saying to himself over a
nd over again. But, as the memories of his childhood happiness passed before his mind, he began to wonder. Got to free myself, he found himself thinking. Got to rid myself of this “familiar,” got to free. But Ponto started to chatter again and interrupted his thoughts.

  Every time he started to think, really to think, Ponto would interrupt. That, he realized, was what capped his resolution to end it all: this perpetual muzzling of his thoughts and feelings. When Ponto talked in his strange way, his words seemed to drown all of Jamsie’s thinking. He could not think or feel.

  Jamsie pressed down on the accelerator. He had to get to the Pinnacles.

  Then, without warning, pain blocked his memories and dulled all thought. He felt the pressure inside his chest. He had experienced it before when trying to resist Ponto. It began at his rib cage just beneath his skin; and, as it had during the last few weeks, it started to contract inward toward the center of his body. It seemed to be pulling at his brain trying to force it down his spinal column.

  All Jamsie could think of was the counterstratagems Mark had tried to teach him that evening.

  “Jesus,” he muttered under his breath.

  Then he began to spell the word out letter by letter. “J-E-S-U-S, J-E-S-U-S, J-E-S-U-S.” About 20 times. Next he spelt the name out by running down the alphabet from A to J, from A to E, from A to S, from A to U, from A to S. Then he started all over again.

  He did not do this as a prayer. He had been taught it by Father Mark as a means of blocking Ponto’s influence.

  The internal pressure started to lessen. He could breathe again.

  “Jamsie,” came the horrified squawk of Uncle Ponto. “You know I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all. You know very well. I can’t stand that. Stop it this minute, or I can’t go on. You will lose me, you hear. You will lose me.”

  Jamsie started laughing, first of all quietly in his throat, then uncontrollably out loud.

  “My friends and relatives won’t like this at all,” squeaked Ponto, voice high-pitched, elbows beating against his sides, hands wringing in the air. Jamsie laughed and laughed. This was what he used to call Ponto’s “duck fit.”

  At least that worked, he thought. He did not know why that name disturbed Ponto. But Jamsie laughed from sheer relief nearly all of the next 32 miles. He had a pain from laughing. He was profoundly relieved to have got the best of Ponto for now, at least.

  At times he stopped laughing when his thoughts became grim. Then, catching sight of Uncle Ponto’s pointy little skull, heavy lids, and chinless face covered with that fretfulness of Ponto’s “duck fit,” he would start laughing again.

  At the gate of Pinnacles National Monument the ranger took his money. Jamsie parked the car beside the Visitor’s Monument, bought a map and a flashlight, and set off across the chaparral of Pygmy Forest. He knew where he wanted to go. And he was almost jubilant. But immediately Uncle Ponto was by his side. Jamsie now paid no attention to him. Something in the air exhilarated him. He felt freer than he had for a long time. He started to walk quickly. “Reservoir, here I come!” he hummed to the tune of “California, Here I Come!”

  Ponto started to wheedle him again. “Jamsie, sit down a moment. Smell the hollyleaf cherry, the manzanita, these wild flowers. Sit down and rest a while. You were told to watch your heart. You’re my investment. You’re home for me. You’re not going to walk all nine miles up and down, are you? Please! Jamsie! Please stop and talk it over with me. Please!”

  Jamsie kept on. As he started to climb up to Bear Gulch Caves, he opened the map.

  “It’s no use, Jamsie.” said Ponto. “I tell you, it’s no use.”

  Jamsie turned his back on Ponto, searching the map for his way to the reservoir. But Ponto was up to his tricks again. Every time Jamsie’s eyes and finger came near that name on the map, the name shifted. It shifted and sidestepped and dodged him, zigzagging across the map.

  Jamsie began to get angry and then fearful. He slammed the map onto a flat rock and plunged his finger at “Reservoir.” But it was too late. “Reservoir” slipped off the map and shot up into the sky over his shoulder.

  Jamsie sprang up, cursing and hurling profanities at the blue sky where the word “Reservoir” danced and flowed around like a pennant towed by an invisible airplane. He swayed as he squinted up. Suddenly, “Reservoir, here I come” danced around in the sky. Then a whole skyful of dancing words spelled out letter by letter—and backwards: S-U-S-E-J, E-I-S-M-A-J, S-U-S-E-J, E-I-S-M-A-J.

  Jamsie stamped on the ground. He was violently angry again. “To Hell with you and your tricks, you filthy brute. To Hell with you and your tricks…”

  But he only heard the echo of his own shout and knew he was alone. He looked up. All was quiet. The sky was clear and blue. There was no trace of Uncle Ponto. The dancing letters were no more. He was alone.

  He grabbed the map and stumbled on. Now his mind was made up.

  After another half mile, Jamsie entered Bear Gulch Caves. He had been here about 20 years before with his father, and his memory started to serve him.

  Halfway up through the narrow corridor of the cave, he began to hear more than his own footsteps. At first, it was the splashing of unseen cascades and the gurgling of underground streams. But quickly he began to realize a voice was becoming audible. It was Ponto’s, of course.

  “Jamsie, you know I will have to give an accounting for all this foolishness. I am responsible.”

  The voice came from above. Jamsie pointed the flashlight to the roof. Long ago some huge blocks of rock had fallen across a narrow fissure in the canyon wall and stuck there, closing it from the light of day and forming a roof. Ponto was dangling in between two of those rocks, his eyes glittering with malice. “Oh! I’m here all right.”

  “What the…” Jamsie was about to erupt; then all the fight drained out of him. He suddenly felt weak and helpless. In a sort of desperation, he started to run and stumble through pools of water and over rocks, wetting his feet and scraping his shins and ankles. Behind him, always near, came Ponto’s mocking voice: “This can only end badly, Jamsie, if you keep on like this. You have to come back to me in the long run, you know. You can’t do without me now. Not now!”

  That “Not now” pursued Jamsie in a thousand echoes. It increased his panic and his need for flight.

  Then he saw glimmers of daylight ahead of him. He scurried on, pursued by Ponto’s voice echoing from every cranny. Finally he clambered up the last few rock steps cut out of the cave walls, and into the sunlight. Ponto’s voice seemed to die away into the darkness he had just left. He was out of breath, perspiring from every pore, and shaking. He had bruised his elbows, knees, and ankles. His hair had fallen over his eyes.

  But the sight now before him was a sudden distraction from his panic: the reservoir, calm, blue, unruffled, glasslike, without the merest ripple. And reflected in its face were the brown and gray and black spires and pinnacles of the surrounding land, undisturbed images intertwined with the greens and ashen-whites of the vegetation. It was a perfectly still mirror world in which the only movement came from the few clusters of utterly white clouds reflected from the sky. There was no sound whatever from the great things around him. Distance was telescoped. Time paused for him.

  Then, in a little inner explosion of a new panic, Jamsie noticed the Shadow over to his right. A tall finger of brown-gray crag jutted out of the cliff wall over there. The Shadow stood beneath it and out of the glare of the sunlight.

  Over on his left Ponto’s exasperated voice called out from the cave mouth: “Well, if you have to do it, get on with it. Get it over with! Go on, Jamsie! An ideal place for it!”

  Jamsie glanced over at the Shadow. In the darkness beneath the crag he thought he saw a movement, like someone sighing with relief that the desired end was near.

  Ponto’s voice struck at him again: “Go on, fool! Jump! They tell me it’s okay now. Jump!”

  As Ponto’s voice died away, the Shadow moved beneath the crag ever so
slightly. It might have been bending forward a little in order to follow more closely what Jamsie was about to do. Its outline, still dim, became more visible in its general details.

  What Jamsie now found strange was his own lack of rage and fear. For the first time in three years, he felt neither. Instead, he felt that relief and easement of body and mind somehow akin to what you experience when you fill your lungs with air, after having held your breath to the point of suffocation. Why am I calm now? was the question he put himself.

  He turned his head and gazed at the Shadow, as if he knew the answer to that question lay in its direction. That question and others were agonizing. His eyes calmly bored into the darkness surrounding the shape.

  In the few moments before the Shadow slipped back into obscurity, Jamsie had enough time. The face, the head, the way it stood, all the details began to fall into place for his memory. The Shadow was tall, abnormally tall. And bulky. The body was covered in black folds. He could see the two arms raised at the elbows, the palms of the hands turned out toward him, the fingers clenching and unclenching. The head was lifted up, thrown back, as it were, in a fixed haughtiness, a resisting pride. Dimly he could make out eyes, nose, mouth.

  The shape of that face riveted Jamsie’s attention. It had all the details of a human face. Yet it was not human. It was something else. Where had he seen it? That face had been with him all his conscious life, even in his childhood and during his teens. And from the first day he had taken a job. Sure, it was Ponto’s face. There was something of his father’s face there, too, the face Ara had late at night when he was on a “job.” And others he had once seen but had now forgotten. Many others.

  It all took a few quick moments. As the Shadow receded noiselessly into the darkness beneath the crag, Jamsie became conscious of another element in himself. It was a tiny voice of instinct, a primal part of him still alive and vibrant. He knew he had seen the father of all man’s real enemies. The Father of Lies and the ultimate adversary of all salvation, of any beauty, of each truth throughout the cosmos of God’s working.