Sycorax's Daughters

by Kinitra Brooks, PhD

  So he began to fear he would look into a mirror and see ghosts – particularly ghosts of doomed souls — standing behind him as he took his morning shave.

  After that came the fear of closets. He began to understand that the telephone was a symbolic element that could bring about true communication and connection between the two realms. If one reckoned phones as portals, then wasn’t it logical that a spirit could use any cupboard or closet door to enter his home. All this was truer than the natural facts of the physical realm; they were a higher truth revealed from a higher realm. The tangible facts of daily experience gave way to mightier, more spiritual, more divine facts.

  He began to worry about the closets in his children’s rooms.

  Was it not possible that demons could enter into their rooms through those closets? But what could Kayvon do about that? The house needed closets. Sheilah was a shopping fiend. But as easily as the fear came, its soothing counterpart came. Did not the Bible say God’s word was powerful and faith was “the substance of things hoped for”? And was not the substance an action? The substantiating of things hoped for? How could he substantiate a fence on that portal? How could he close it? By simply believing he had power to close it. By simply telling his children how to close portals.

  So when his daughter, Violet, had a vision of demons under her bed and the boogeyman coming in through her closet, he told her she had the power to substantiate a fence against it. He armed her with Psalms 91 and other psalms of protection and the closet fear closed in on itself, conquered.

  It goes without saying that minor mirrors were also considered by Kayvon’s spiritual imagination: television, computers, radios were also portals. Through these portals came spirits. False or true. But more likely to be false. For God’s word alone held truth. Was not Christ The Way? The One Way? The True Door? The perfect portal? Were not these spiritual promises nothing more or less than spiritual facts? Facts to which the lesser facts of demons and wrongly-opened portals would have to yield?

  Over time, he even developed the skill of seeing the portals people carried around inside them and could perceive with his spiritual sense the emotional, spiritual, and physical portals in human bodies. Thus, he became well-known in the little churches of his region as an exorcist and as a man highly-skilled in removing ghosts, demons, and other unwanted spiritual phenomena from people, animals, places, and things. And because of his experience with Michael, he managed to keep his soul pure because he had no desire to end up in hell. Nor did he wish anyone else to end up in that terrifying place. And this is perhaps why Kayvon was so passionate in his battles against demons: he always remembered his friend’s post-death telephone call.

  So, instead of keeping his knowledge to himself, he gave countless seminars to churches and paranormal societies on the efficacy of C hrist’s blood and name in casting out spirits. These seminars were invariably entitled “How to Speak to the

  Boogeyman.” And often, after studying under Kayvon’s tutelage, many would return to him rejoicing about their freedom from the bondage and terror of evil spirits. It must be said that there were a few who attended Kayvon’s seminars who were not successful against demons, sprites, ghosts, and poltergeists. Invariably, they were people who either refused to give up a cherished object (for instance, a piece of Mummy cloth bought in Egypt, an Hawaiian or Mexican artifact or some other item whose preciousness they valued more than their very lives) or those who simply refused to use the name of Jesus Christ to expel the demon. For although there are exorcists in many lands, those shamans, priests, and witch- doctors are accustomed to pleading and bribing spirits or even sending the spirits into the bodies and houses of their enemies.

  Some, it is true, trusted only in the power of human authority to cast out unfleshed beings. But even they often failed because they either would not accept the lordship of Jesus Christ over all things or they could not quite believe in the power of the great gospel.

  Around this time, a child named Ethan Chen was brought to Kayvon’s attention. The little boy had been silent and sullen for quite sometime, and seemed unwilling to tell his parents his fear. At last, the child was taken to a psychologist, an Iranian-American by the name of Saladin. Something in the kindly eyes of the therapist made the child take courage and tell the adult all of his fears. This is how the child explained the situation. He would lay in his bedroom, his head covered under the Mickey Mouse blankets, hoping she would not come. But she always did. At least two nights a week. She, it turned out, was a headless female torso who would materialize in his room. Ethan’s bedroom door would clamp shut under his shaking hands. His fingers would go clammy and inside his Spiderman slippers, his little hammer-toed feet would grow

  cold. He would shout and plead and beg the looming specter to not hurt him, to just leave, leave, please, please! She would call to him, laughing. And that was damn strange because she had no mouth, at least no physical one his little kid eyes could see. When she spoke, her voice grated, like fingernails against a blackboard, and it sounded muffled as if it came from behind some thick invisible wall. Which Ethan figured was understandable because, after all, she had no mouth. And, as providence would have it, it turned out the psychologist believed in spiritual matters. Djinns, evil spirits, ghosts, and all such matters. But he, as a Moslem, would not, could not, in anyway invoke the name of Jesus as Lord.

  Saladin, therefore, passed the matter to Kayvon, for they had met at a conference on the paranormal earlier that year.

  Dr. Saladin ventured to bring the entire family together to battle the entity. But when he and Ethan tried to explain all this to the child’s mother, it was all to no avail. Ethan tried to explain how the room would go cold when the spirit entered. And he followed his mother around when bedtime came, telling her repeatedly that a naked female spirit without a head lived in the walls and came to visit him at nights and could his mother please sleep in his room with him, or maybe could he sleep in hers, especially since now his daddy had run off. He told his mother, “when she comes into the room, the room smells like dead people.”

  His mother stroked his bowl-cut hair and responded, “Son, how do you know how dead people smell?”

  He answered, “I just know.”

  His mother, who was a nominal Korean Christian who had fled all things supernatural as a reaction from her family’s history of shamans, merely responded, “That psychotherapist is feeding your fear by allowing your imagination to run away with you. I’m glad you feel free to tell us all your fears, but my son, none of this is real.” She told the psychotherapist that if he didn’t desist in nurturing the child’s fear, she would have his license revoked. Thus, the psychotherapist was removed from the case but not before he had given the child Kayvon’s telephone number. The child, at first, did not call Kayvon because they had not been properly introduced. So the torment continued.

  One day, the child’s mother asked if he wanted to switch rooms with his sister, Ruth. Such a question only showed how much she disbelieved him. He thought of Ruthie alone in that room and what the spirit would do to her. He decided he didn’t want Ruthie to be hurt. “I’ll stay in my room,” he said. He said this although he was sure the spirit would kill him but he was prepared to fight her. He fought her a long while. Needless to say, he figured it best to not even mention that the spirit tried to force sex on him.

  At some point, although his mother had balked at the idea of bringing the entire extended family together, Ethan told his Uncle Li all about his peculiar problem. His uncle who believed in such matters, said it was a demon, and that such things were common.

  This uncle therefore tried to persuade Ethan’s mother to take him to a Shinto priest. But Uncle Li was also a drunk and Ethan’s mother thought her brother was a man whose mind was filled with grandiose ideas born from drink. She blamed the uncle for filling Ethan’s head with superstitious old stories and added that he was probably the one who had planted the thought in Ethan’s mind in the first place. Uncle Li attemp
ted to battle the spirit by himself, using candles, talismans, and charms he had bought from Chinatown. But, as often happens when one dabbles into spiritual matters that are too large and complicated, Uncle Li only infuriated the spirit. A week after his imperfect attempt at exorcism, Uncle Li died. Suddenly and strangely. He also left a note among his sparse belongings telling his sister that he knew the spirit was going to kill him. Although Ethan had been pondering telling his grandmother about the spirit, he decided against it because he loved his grandmother and did not want her to suffer a similar fate.

  Ethan got to reading the Bible and visiting the local shrines whenever the family went to the city to Chinatown. He took to buying Catholic candles at the supermarket and burning them on rocks in the woods near their upstate New York home. He’d buy talismans from a friend of his who knew shamans in the city. He stopped complaining about the spirit. His mother noticed his new-found peace and said it was good he was well again, and that he could study the spirituality of other cultures if he didn’t go overboard. His older brother, Arnold, said he was just a silly kid turning to religion because his dad had deserted the family for his sleazy co-worker and because he watched too many news programs.

  Ethan listened to them, tried to mull over their words, and sort through what was happening in his room at nights. He read about generational curses. He read about haunted houses. He read about psychosis, mental illness, and depression. But nothing helped and after a while it just seemed to him that neither Buddha nor the Christian God were strong enough to help him. He began to believe the entire thing was his karma. Yet, he kept wondering why such a bad thing, such a weird thing, should happen to him.

  And all that time the Beloved, as the spirit called herself, kept attempting to seduce him. At night she would appear suddenly in his room and tell him laughingly to lift the covers, to not be afraid of him, that she was there to protect him and love him. The silky smoothness of her ice-cold breasts, the rawness of the moist place between her legs (even though she smelled like garbage and a dead dog he once found in the woods) — they seduced. After a while, he gave in to her. What joy she brought him! What shame too!

  Terrified at first at the sudden venture into sexuality, he grew to like the wild force of her sex, grew to love her. But she was headless, mouthless, lifeless.

  He was no more than eight years when the visitation began, about ten when he began to give in to her. That was about the time he began to realize that goodness was all a crock. Or at least that goodness had little power. Heck, his dad wouldn’t have dumped his mom if the world so was good and if God had any control.

  But still, he did feel that he was a bit abnormal. He knew that love between a spirit and a human could never be permanent. One day, he told the Beloved so.

  She answered him, “One day, you will touch my human flesh, hear my human voice, and enjoy my human body.”

  “How will I know you?” he asked. After all, the Beloved had no head.

  “You will find me,” she answered. “Seek me. Love many women. Seek and you will find me.”

  And that’s what he did. He dated many women, of all colors, but none of them thrilled his body as much as the Beloved did. There was always something lacking. He told this to the Beloved when she visited him. “I searched,” he pleaded, “and none of these women give me the pleasure that you do. Their bodies aren’t as cold as yours. They don’t look like you. They don’t smell like death.”

  “You will have to search for me in other places,” she said. “Climb windows, enter locked houses. Find me. I will live in one of those women. Find me, and pleasure me.”

  And that’s what he began doing. He was eighteen when he raped the first girl. But even then, the pleasure was nothing compared to what the Beloved gave him. He didn’t like to see the girl lying there under him, crying. The Beloved told him that guilt prevented him from enjoying himself, that he should cast guilt aside. The Beloved had spoken the truth. After the fifth rape, he began to allow pleasure to flow into his body. The pleasure helped to push the guilt away. When he pushed himself into the women, he felt the Beloved’s joy working inside him.

  About this time, he found a slip of paper on which a telephone number was written. Not knowing to whom the number belonged, he called it.

  “Hello?” he said, awkwardly. “Who is this? I found the number in my bag.”

  “Ah, you found my number?” Kayvon asked. “I did!” Ethan stuttered. “But who are you?” “Who are you?” Kayvon asked.

  “I’m Ethan.”

  Kayvon thought for a moment. He had a gut feeling, and he always trusted his gut. “Are you, perhaps, being tormented by a demon?” Kayvon asked.

  Ethan was amazed. Someone had just read his mind. Perhaps there was a God. Perhaps something was more powerful than good after all. “I am! I am!” he said, delighted.

  “And do you want me to rid you of it?” Kayvon asked.

  Ethan thought for several seconds. The exhilaration he always felt when the spirit lay with him. The future she promised…he could not give it up. No, no, he could not. So he said to Kayvon,

  “No, it’s okay. I’m okay.”

  Kayvon was disappointed, but added, “Shall I tell you how to get rid of the Bogeyman anyway?”

  Was the Beloved the Boogeyman? Ethan thought. But surely not. The Beloved was a bringer of joy and power. She made him feel special. From what Ethan had heard of the Boogeyman, the Boogeyman only terrified little kids.

  “I used to be afraid of it,” Ethan said. “But not anymore. I don’t need to know.”

  Kayvon’s ultra-aware gut suddenly began acting up. The flesh of his skin went all goose-pimply. He pondered commanding the spirit to leave this reticent boy immediately. But then checked himself. If the spirit left the boy, and the boy remained empty of any knowledge of God, wouldn’t the spirit return with seven more worst?

  “Just let me visit you,” Kayvon pleaded. “We can. . .” But as he spoke, the boy quickly hung up.

  All that night Kayvon was plagued with nightmares. His sleep was riddled with visions of headless women and of souls suddenly snatched from life and worst, most of them, being tossed into hell. “How awful, how awful,” he woke up screaming. Grief and weeping assailed him! For it was one thing for someone evil to roam the earth. But how much worse for a decent but unsaved person to be suddenly murdered, suddenly slain, then thrown into hell without hope of salvation from tormenting demons. That encounter with Ethan was one of the only losses in Kayvon’s many battles against evil portals.

  Now, sitting on his bed in Attica, Ethan no longer felt or even understood the terror that used to make his little boy body tremble.

  He did not like being in jail though. The Beloved had been faithful throughout all his ten years of murdering and raping. She always protected him. Even when he murdered those two little four year old girls in the park. The Beloved had told him to, and he understood the expedience of it. There was little about the Beloved’s commands that he never understood. She was always right. Hadn’t she told him to decapitate several of the women he had raped? To make them in her image? Hadn’t he done that? And those women’s bodies had never been found. If only he had listened and had avoided the woman in the mall, the woman who turned out to be the mother of his son. If he had done as the Beloved had ordered, he would not have ended up in jail.

  He lay in his cell remembering his trial and thinking. How strange it had been to hear the court officers, the prosecutors, and the cops call him a rapist! Surely a rapist wouldn’t kneel between the legs of a woman to pleasure her! How could the judge not understand that he was searching for his truest love? Detective Ramsey had even called him a sick puppy. Stupid woman! When he got released, he wouldn’t immediately kill her though. That was just the kind of thing the cops would expect of him. He’d bide his time. Besides there were more important things to do. He still had to find his son. The Beloved wanted that. And he had to find the Beloved also. The true physical living representation of the
Beloved who had loved him all those years when he was a boy. The Beloved with a head, a mouth, human flesh. He would search for her again. As long as it took ... and he would find her.

  As for Kayvon, when the trial was depicted on the true crime channel, he had been one of the few viewers who believed Ethan’s testimony of a demonic Beloved who came through his closet. The others thought it was some silly made-up insanity defense. But Kayvon knew better. Kayvon continued to save many souls from demons throughout most of his life. And often, as he saw an entity fleeing back through whatever portal it came, he would think, “Perhaps, perhaps, God will use what I’ve done as Michael’s own redeeming work. Maybe I will see Michael in heaven one day. Who knows? Maybe he’s there already.”

  Sweet Jesus in the Corner

  by Tenea D. Johnson

  Names

  stick in her craw.

  As she tries to digest

  the regret of years living what life no one else wanted:

  scrubbing, struggling, scrabbling work

  until there was nothing good but

  two blissful mornings spent picking flowers,

  when no remembered that they needed her to do

  what they were capable of & on that last day, in the corner of her room

  Sweet Jesus saying it’s time to let that go, dandelion, & off she floats: seed, precious weed.

  The Monster

  by Crystal Connor