Hostage to the Devil

by Malachi Martin

  “Who is this?” Mark asked the girl’s mother in a whisper.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Father. He used to be with her now and then. He came in a few moments ago. I thought he…” She trailed off helplessly.

  Mark was now close enough to see the girl’s eyes in the semidarkness. They were open and fixed on the man at the foot of the cot. The little light thrown by the single bulb in the room picked up the oddest expression in her eyes. Mark’s mind flashed in a split-second memory to a pet rabbit he had had as a boy. One day he found the rabbit huddled and shivering staring at the cat that hovered by its cage. The ugly glitter in the cat’s eyes—its superiority, its mysterious pull on him, its cruelty and disdain—was hypnotic. The fear that paralyzed the rabbit was dreadful and pathetic.

  “She doesn’t need you.”

  The words came from the man standing at the foot of the cot. The accent was normal. The tone was authoritative. There was no hint of hostility, just utter finality.

  Mark fumbled for his crucifix and the little bottle of holy water he always carried. He had decided in that instant to give the girl a blessing and to leave it at that. He was not begging for trouble. Perhaps she was not even Catholic.

  “That is enough.”

  The same voice again, but this time the tone held a definite menace. There was an implicit “or else” in those three words.

  Mark was puzzled. Perhaps the man did not understand. He turned and faced the dark figure. It seemed to withdraw deeper into the shadows.

  “But I’m…” Mark began by way of explanation.

  But he never finished the sentence. The entire “scenario” as he had seen it up to that moment disappeared. It all became clear to him. The hard rind seemed to have been peeled off of his inner self; and he became wholly sensitive to what lay behind the “scenario” facing him—the girl, the man, the old woman, the dingy room, and the peculiar atmosphere enveloping all three of them. He was instantly aware of multiple relationships stretching taut like invisible cords among all present.

  He drew back almost in shock at what he now understood. He knew that somehow the girl was in thrall to that man. And he knew it was far beyond the thralldom of a prostitute to her pimp. Somehow the man could assert his claim with a brutal authority.

  The girl’s mother touched Mark on the arm. They left the room. Outside, their conversation was brief.

  “No, Father,” she answered his question. “He’s not her pimp.” She looked at him with eyes full of despair. “I thought you’d get to her before they arrived.”

  “They?” echoed Mark with a new sense of shock. The mother nodded her head and stared steadily at him. He made a move to go back in.

  “No.” She laid a hand gently but firmly on his arm. “No. You’re still young. You don’t know what you’re up against. You can’t deal with anything like this. Yet.” And then, already moving away from Mark to the door of the apartment, “Save yourself. Father. She’s already in their grip.”

  She opened the door, and then closed it between them before he could ask any more questions.

  “You can’t deal with it.”

  He never forgot the woman’s words. But it took him some months and many experiences before he began to understand that he was more than once up against cases of possession. Sometimes the situations resembled that of the dying girl, but not always.

  At the end of the year Mark went to his superiors again and asked to speak to the official exorcist of the diocese. There was none, he was told, at that particular moment. But, said the official with whom Mark talked, if any cases of possession came up, they would call Mark in. He said this with the jocularity that is so often the sign of total ignorance. After all, the official added, with what Mark had been through, and if Mark’s suspicions were true, he already had more experience than anyone else they knew.

  The official’s tone may have been light, but the result of the conversation was serious. Mark was now official exorcist of his diocese.

  With intermittent breaks in his routine and some trips to other parts of the country and to Canada, Mark’s ministry in New York lasted for 24 years. During that time he developed his knowledge and skill in dealing with cases of possession (real and counterfeit—he always said that out of every hundred claimants there might be one genuine case). But, more importantly, he became aware of an entire world of the spirit about which he had been taught nothing in the seminary and which seemed to flourish as the dark underside of life in his beloved New York.

  Mark still gave the impression of jaunty objectivity. But now there was a deep underlay of awareness and shrewdness. And he was open and sensitive to the slightest trace of diabolism, while highly skeptical of all claims of diabolical “attention.”

  It was a source of some amazement to his close associates and superiors that he did not go the way of most exorcists. A few years’ active ministry in Exorcism, and the majority paled, as it were: they seemed to wither in a variety of ways; some by illness, others by premature aging; others still because they seemed to have lost the will to live.

  “Most of us crawl away and die somewhere quietly,” Mark said as we talked one evening. I knew he was right.

  “Why not you, Mark?”

  “Well, you see,” Mark began jokingly, “I have this great pal upstairs, and when I start into one of those exorcism businesses, he comes along and holds my hand.” But at the end of the sentence Mark’s eyes were away over my head and his expression was not in the least jocular. It was luminous and fixed on some object or person I could not identify.

  One colleague of Mark’s with whom I talked had been a close friend since their seminary days. They had always exchanged confidences. But all that had changed. He told me he had long since realized that Mark’s inner life had been invaded by a dimension of which he knew very little and at which he could only guess.

  Mark seemed all of a sudden very old and deeply weary to his friend. For most priests, as for most lay people, the world of the exorcist is totally unknown. The toll it takes is incommunicable and can pass unnoticed for years, even by those nearest to the exorcist.

  But in those days Mark was still a young man. He lost most of his hair before he was thirty-five, but so did his two brothers. His health remained excellent. He exercised frequently, and rarely seemed to be affected adversely by his job. For two or three weeks after his first brush with an evil spirit, he seemed retired into himself and to be in deep thought. Then he snapped out of it. When he came across his first case of a “familiar” spirit (the subject was a pimp arrested for a multiple murder), he was completely befuddled, as he now admits. “Evil was very hard to trace,” he recalls. “And I had two psychiatrists telling me that this was a classical case of multiple personality.” In spite of the psychiatrists’ opinions (which seemed to be somewhat confused, anyway, Mark recalls) and his own puzzlement about the case, Mark decided to try Exorcism because of four cardinal “symptoms”: the physical disturbances accompanying the presence of the pimp, the pimp’s physically uncontrollable and violent reaction to the crucifix, to the name of Jesus, and to holy water.

  The only type of possession that produced a strange and unwonted tension in Mark was what he came to discern as “the perfectly possessed.” His colleagues learned of such cases from Mark only because from time to time they sensed a peculiar tension very unusual in Mark. And occasionally they questioned him, thinking that he had had some accident, or that he was in some danger, or that they might help solve some problem. What they saw in Mark at such times, as they or some of them came to learn, was not a nervous tension, but rather an intense watchfulness and wariness which, his friends felt, was directed even at them. At those times he gave the impression of extreme guardedness. He was tight-lipped, gimlet-eyed, and curt in his conversation. When they finally were able to draw him out. and he gave them some idea of the condition of those who, he found, were perfectly possessed, they were taken aback by his totally negative attitude. This, too, was very un
usual in Mark.

  To all questions as to why there was no room for mercy or hope in such cases, Mark would try to recount some of his experiences with the perfectly possessed. But most of all he reflected the reality of the experience in a stare of such stark and concentrated realization that no one could pursue the subject further with him.

  At the age of sixty Mark asked for a sabbatical. His health was still good, but something was changing in him. The years had piled up inside him an accumulation of disgusts and reticences that finally even he could not ignore.

  His preference for a temporary location fell on San Francisco, where he had many friends and acquaintances. By April 1963, he was in residence there. He was given little by way of duties in the parish where he was staying, and spent most of his time in the open air.

  But his compassion and his professional interests were aroused when Lila Wood, one of his acquaintances, talked to him at length one day about Jamsie Z., whom she had recently met at the broadcasting studio where she worked, and who not only seemed deeply troubled, but was more or less politely shunned by everybody.

  Mark asked Lila many questions, until she had given him a fairly detailed picture of Jamsie’s odd behavior. Even from this secondhand description, Mark was pretty certain that in Jamsie he was probably up against a case of a “familiar.”

  What distressed Mark most in his own first long discussion with Jamsie was his strong impression that, short either of a miracle or of Exorcism, Jamsie Z. was on the high road either to complete possession by his insistent “familiar” or to suicide as the easiest way of ridding himself once and for all of his misery. Mark knew the symptoms. And, more importantly, he had acquired over the years an instinct for the crisis point of “familiar” possession. The instinct was like that developed by painters for color and hue and chromatic intensity. That instinct could not be taught, but could only be learned by experience.

  The person harassed by the “familiar’s” advances, in the extreme stages of that harassment and just before the final outcome, generally begins to have dim perceptions of some more potent figure or force, as a greater shadow thrown by the lesser “familiar” or that which follows on the “familiar.”

  After Jamsie Z.’s unmistakable experience at the reservoir, Mark knew several things: there was no doubt in his mind that Ponto was totally real; there was no doubt that he, Mark, would be making a fatal mistake to be put off by the bizarre and often unbelievable predicament of Jamsie, or to dismiss his rages and antics as “psycho” behavior; and there was no doubt that Jamsie had reached the critical point.

  The exorcism involving Jamsie Z. and Uncle Ponto lacked much of the violent, scatological, and pornographic elements that accompany other types and cases of possession. The struggle was at a different level, involved a different genre of spirit, and concerned a possession whose intensity was achieved over most of a lifetime.

  Mark had come to know by experience that the degree of intelligence and knowledge that generally seems to characterize “familiars” is very low, sometimes approaching the level of half-witted children. “Familiars” seem to have only a small quantum of factual knowledge and very little power of foresight or anticipation. They appear to be bound by cast-iron rules and to be in strict dependence on a “higher” intelligence about which they talk frequently and to which Ponto, for example, had to have recourse at every crisis.

  The “familiar” gives the impression of a weak mirror reflection, so to speak, of a greater one. So great seems this dependence of the “familiar” that it never directly engages the exorcist.

  This attribute of the “familiar” spirit in particular complicated Mark’s efforts. It meant he was working by proxy, or on a secondhand basis. Jamsie was the only one able to hear and see Uncle Ponto, and Jamsie had to verbalize it all for Mark. Ponto could hear and see Mark, but it was only when Ponto’s “superior” took over that Mark was dealing directly with the evil spirit.

  In excerpting Jamsie Z.’s exorcism, the choice fell primarily on those exchanges that bring out two points: first, the process of Jamsie’s possession, and second, the extremely complex relationships implied by this kind of possession—Ponto’s relationship as the “familiar” to Jamsie as the possessed, on the one hand, and the relationship of both Jamsie and Ponto to the “superior” spirit, on the other hand.

  Mark’s past experience of possession by “familiar” spirits had taught him one principal difference between the exorcism of a “familiar” and that of the other kinds of evil spirit. Other types of possessed find themselves almost completely bereft of their freedom. They are saved solely by an influx of grace, channeled through the ministrations of the exorcist. But the victim of the “familiar” spirit is quasi-possessed by the “familiar,” until he gives final consent to the “familiar” and to a “sharing” of himself. Even then, the loss of control over one’s inner self does not appear so deep that contact with the exorcist is to all intents and purposes impossible for him, as it often is in other types of possession where the evil spirit “hides” behind the identity of the victim and responds instead of the victim. In this type of possession, it is almost as though the “superior” spirit “hides” behind the “familiar” instead.

  Being relatively free, then, and not out of contact with the exorcist, the victim of the “familiar” must be active in his own exorcism. He, in fact, must be the final source of his own liberation by accepting the healing and salvation from God. And, in this sense, the exorcee in such a case is the one who enables the exorcist to complete his work.

  Mark spent quite a lot of time explaining to Jamsie this peculiarity of his forthcoming exorcism. Jamsie, like many others, had never reflected on his freedom. Free will was just a vague and abstract term for him. It took Mark a good deal of explaining to get Jamsie to understand that he had to exercise an option. This was the basic option of free will. Mark could only indicate to Jamsie when he should make a tremendous effort of will. Only Mark would be in a position to know the precise moment at which Jamsie could most effectively make that choice.

  A peculiarity of this exorcism had to do with a ploy of Ponto’s that had the same mischievous quality about it as many of the antics that had worn Jamsie down so much. The exorcism could be performed only after the sun went down. In fact, it was not always possible to start immediately at sundown; Ponto might not respond or appear for quite a while. And it was not possible to continue the exorcism after sunrise. This was not considered by Mark to be characteristic of this type of possession—just a mark of malice on the part of Uncle Ponto and his “superior.” The night held terrors for Jamsie from which he was free during the daytime. That was a plus for Ponto and his “superior.”

  On the other hand, during daylight hours, Mark had ample time to consult the psychiatrist who had dealt with Jamsie. He also had Jamsie thoroughly checked by a doctor of his own choosing.

  The psychiatrist remained in his unwavering conclusion that Jamsie was not suffering from anything like paranoia or schizophrenia. And finally during the exorcism itself Mark found that the Uncle Ponto Jamsie saw and heard informed him accurately about things which Jamsie could neither have known nor guessed.

  Each session of the exorcism took place in a basement room of the rectory where there was virtually no probability of interruption by the outside world. Jamsie sat on a kitchen chair at a table except for the last portion of the exorcism. The assistants were four in number: a younger priest Mark had pressed into his service, two young friends of his who worked in a law firm together, and a local doctor whose judgment Mark felt he could trust.

  Jamsie’s exorcism lasted over five days.

  Mark always began each session with the Salve Regina, a prayer to the Virgin, and he ended with the Anima Christi, a prayer to Jesus. Only in the last two sessions were there any violent objections channeled through Jamsie to these prayers.

  The first three sessions of the exorcism were full of irrelevant discourses by Uncle Ponto (all put into words b
y Jamsie). Mark bided his time and was certain he could afford to wait. He knew that sooner or later Uncle Ponto would break down and his “superior” would have to intervene.

  This is what happened in the fourth session.

  UNCLE PONTO

  The time was 4:15 A.M., just an hour before sunrise. Mark had started the fourth session a little after midnight. He had pounded Ponto with questions through Jamsie for four hours, but Ponto had dodged them with prattling and nonsense.

  At this late moment in the session, Mark saw Jamsie straighten up in the chair and look to one side. To Mark it was obvious: Jamsie was seeing more than Ponto now. This was the first flaw, the first sign of weakness, the first indication Ponto’s “superior” might be coming to his aid. Maybe Mark’s pounding with questions had not been so wide of the mark after all.

  Mark’s mind raced back over his most recent questions and hammerings at Uncle Ponto. He could think of only one thing that might have evoked Uncle Ponto’s “superior.” In answer to a spate of nonsensical remarks on Ponto’s part, Mark had said in tones of utter disdain: “We have now come to the end of your intelligence. You have no more defense and no more explanations why this human soul should become ‘familiarized’ by you. You are repeating yourself. You are a nothing and worse than a nothing compared to the power of Jesus. In his name I tell you: you have to go forth and leave this person and go back to the one who sent you. You and he are defeated by Jesus.”

  “It’s the Shadow, Father,” Jamsie was staring, almost transfixed. The eyes of the pathetic young prostitute of nearly 30 years before, staring at the man in the shadows at the foot of her bed, seemed to stare for a moment from Jamsie’s face, so similar was the look.

  Mark went on inexorably. “You are completely at the mercy of Jesus, you and all associated with you. Jamsie, however, is protected. You have no greater one, no one to make up for your stupidity.”