by Jacob Spadt
“Tell me what you remember about the dreams,” his voice casually probed.
I looked up. The psychiatrist was back. Perhaps it was my attention returning. I was concerned he might have actually been talking for a few minutes before I snapped back to...Doctor what’s-his-name. I searched for the right words to begin describing my scrambled thoughts and found myself falling into a deep hole in my mind. The words bounced off me repeatedly, like a pinball falling back to the flippers because they held no sway over gravity. Just when I thought I wrapped my mind around an answer, the words fell away again slowly...only to pick up speed and then poof. This visual image happened several times, in the few seconds it took him to ask again. Then I found myself asking my own questions internally – a process that seemed to last for hours. The answers were being elusive.
What did I remember? I remembered darkness; lots of pain, and being scared… terrified…that is all. No matter how many different ways the psychiatrist asked, the three elements arranged themselves differently every time. Deeper depths availed, only if my psyche allowed. To tell him more might begin a journey that was more than a pursuit of the truth. I worried about what else I might see. The reality was no matter what truth I told him, things would not go well for me.
My thoughts turned to what had happened. If I spoke about that day, he would think I was nuts. Confusion set in for a moment while I took a breath. There were memories of blood...lots of blood, but the color was too dark – and too red. How I knew it was blood was unknown to me. However, I did know. It felt like a shadow cast over my eyes like a veil kept me from seeing anything more. The fear was prevalent, and the muted color made it worse.
How dark is darkness really? Some call it blackness. I like to think of darkness in another light, beyond just describing different degrees of light. You hear the term “That is really dark,” or “The darkness in his heart.” To me, darkness means something beyond evil, or miscreant. Malevolence is another good word, but even it does not quite hit the mark. Malevolence is a choice. Darkness just exists…everywhere. In the physical, the clinical, and the crusade-like judgments. Darkness simply is.
Darkness has a way of measuring the shadows that steer us one way or another. I may not be the only person in history to refer to the evil nature of man as dark, but my understanding was felt to be greater than most. I did not yet know why. The comparison of blackness to the purity of the night would not allow the two concepts to relate. The simple purity of the night hid all the complexities of the heart and soul.
The soul is like a canvass; everything we do adds color for good or ill. In the end, we have a picture detailing our lives, good and bad, light and dark. These colors camouflaged themselves when one stood in the darkness. We simply existed.
Up until now my canvas had been plain, not having seen or done anything horrific. My head would not fully wrap around this concept and forced me to take pause as images of my child hood raced forward. Drunken so-called "parents" made up the extent of the atmosphere I knew. As I walked around inside my mind, wondering what kind of picture I painted…my own question lingered on the horizon of my thoughts.
"Was the artistry of my deeds worth seeing?"
For most of my life, I had felt like a large cloud hovered over me. The cloud cast a shadow across my young life’s canvass. I wondered how God viewed my life. Was he proud of my actions as a good child? Did it matter at that young age what kind of man I was not? Let us face it, the Dark Ages aside, teenagers nowadays were nothing compared to what they had been during the dawn of man, when you were a soldier and killing by fifteen or earlier. The necessity to stay alive stripped common sense from my generation. Survivors lived on the streets or in neighborhoods where they carved respect out of their enemy’s skin.
This cloud followed me always, but it did not physically exist. Still, I felt its presence hiding me from the world. Sometimes it seemed as if the cloud influenced every decision of mine somehow.
Since childhood, I had felt an evil presence in my life. Ever since my parents split before I was six months old, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. Life took a tragic turn. My mother remarried a rather unpleasant man named Larry, who had already raised his children. He took no interest in me. The abuse started at a young age.
It took me years to put my finger on it – that the cloud I felt started with him. The fear I felt was explainable. Maybe it was just my gut reaction to this feeling of darkness. Something inside me might have hatched and wreaked havoc on the unsuspecting world had I allowed his example to mold me.
The darkness was invisible to my mother. There was no doubt in my mind that if she knew about it, she would ignore it. She saw the abuse, of course, as it was right in front of her. It seemed at times that there was something more behind his eyes. I vowed never to be like him.
Children are fragile only if you work too hard at protecting them. Do not get me wrong, I would have loved to avoid the pain physically. At the time, I did not realize that physical abuse actually built mental toughness too.
Looking back, I was not a fool either. Staying out of my step dad’s way was much easier on my wellbeing than if he caught me in the open. That was the biggest reason why I preferred the night. Hiding was easier. Gazing outside with the lights off, I noticed the gentle illumination from the streetlight in the driveway. Sitting quietly, I could take in the world without the world knowing of my existence.
Sleep eluded me often even when exhaustion was just over the horizon. My thoughts turned to the outdoors during my teen years. Exploration became paramount when I met Jason. We used to spend a lot of time in the woods or walking the roads to some unknown destination, sometimes without saying anything for hours. There were also times we ran from tree to tree pretending an assailant gave chase, or that we were the hunters on some quest to find some mystical monster newly created that day. I do not even remember the name of it to tell you the truth. And through these adventures many times the only light we had was that of the moon. It always bathed everything in an eerie glow, almost iridescent at times, adding a certain element to the hunt.
At night, the woods seem to come alive. Although I have only been in the city a few times, night is not the same there. Sure, Jason and I were afraid sometimes. Each sound we heard, whether it was a twig suddenly snapping or some animal calling out, added to the ambience we tried to build together. I never admitted to Jason how scary it was at times. There was a dark swamp, and to this day, I always felt there were eyes on me, looking out from the mist that seemed to shroud the water like some sort of protection from prying eyes. We could never see in, but whatever it was could see out.
When I got scared or worried, it made me that much more aware of our situation. We were alone by choice, and we liked it that way. We never truly felt it. There was never any proof to back up our feelings so we did not go there that often. We saved that for special occasions when something bad happened. It was a method of forgetting your problems and just staring out at the water as if being called by something or someone. Yet out there, it made sense to fear the unknown.
Jason used to tell me stories of living in Seattle. He used to tell me how after 5:00 in the evening the town flipped over and another breed of human walked the streets. Sometimes this breed came into his neighborhood in spite of how rough the neighborhoods were. The nineteen eighties saw many changes to Seattle. He lived there until he was thirteen. That is when we met. Therefore, he had more time spent in a truly hostile environment than I did, even though I lived in one, too. That explained why he was so tough. His parents enrolled him in karate with hopes that he avoid fights up or get beat down living where they did. It was some place called Rainer Avenue South; also known as Rainier Valley.
Apparently, that is where many of the gangs were, so he had to learn to survive in a racially challenged neighborhood, where no matter you’re your skin color, there was violence spread evenly if some one crossed to the wrong side of the street. I never had a problem with the concept of
separation, if it kept people from killing each other. We all bleed red; some people just have a problem getting along with anyone, regardless of race or culture. Let them live apart then. Unfortunately, the concept never works and there are always incursions onto rival turf. That is what most of the fighting was about. Especially if your parents were idiots and did not even think about the consequences of where they lived and how it would affect their kids. Jason’s parents at least gave him a fighting chance. It was the fact that he could fight that eventually led him to my world, albeit much later.
He was good at fighting; hell, he could kick my ass. We used to spar on a regular basis. I was clearly no match for him and he knew it. At times, the thoughts arose that he used to do it to try to toughen me up. Survival had become a way of life to him so he would get a crazed look in his eye when we horsed around. That made me nervous.
One day Jason finally told me a story about a bad scrape with some friends before we met. There were three of them, all from his karate school, so they had some training. Still, it was not enough. When you have three to one odds, training helps if you have had practice in the tactics needed to survive the odds. Only Jason walked away. He never spoke of it again, but I understood now what he experienced. He had seen death first hand and it changed him. The pain he felt from it surfaced and ran along the lines of his generally smiling face. He always thought things were funny, just not that day.
I can see it now in our combat lessons. He positioned himself as if he was outnumbering me. The attacks always came from different locations around me. Yet his teaching worked. My confidence was shaky most of the time, but as soon as I got a little cocky, he would smack me down. It was at these times his inner demons would surface when he was losing the upper hand, which was rare. It never lasted long, and always turned into an ass kicking. He never went full on with me, but he lost himself enough times. From this, I could defend myself to a point, but I could never strike.
My first year with him as friends taught me a lot about defending myself, but I lacked the experience needed to lock it in mentally until the time came to defend myself for real. However, I went to a private school and did not have to worry too much about fighting. That was until my ninth grade year and a bully eight inches taller wanted to get into a tumble. He was a doughboy and had no speed, no form, and no strength, relying on his size to intimidate me. I tried convincing him he could be hurt without trying to actually hit him. The show of force was good until I walked away. He hit me from behind. After I regained my balance, he was sorry he laid hands on me. It was luck, not skill, which helped me prevail. Looking back, it could have gone either way. His size was his advantage as my speed was mine. Winning a fight at school did earn me some respect. Soon after that, I finally expressed my interest in martial arts to my parents, but they shot the idea down.
To them, it was only mind control. They were too narrow minded and set in their ways to consider anything that did not “glorify” God. That line of thinking always made me laugh, and the anger I felt because they denied me lingered just below the surface. It did not make sense that it was not from God. Did he not send his people to fight his enemies? Shortsighted people frustrated me and not knowing how to defend myself was foolish.
My stepfather had Special Forces training. They trained him to kill. What was wrong with my desire to have all my teeth still when I graduated? They did not see it that way...even boxing was not in my future. I was mad. They denied me anything that would help me defend myself.
Lessons from Jason continued while managing to sneak martial arts books from the library to read them cover to cover. My skills improved drastically. “Go outside,” they would say whenever I was trying to study fighting. Without Jason, it was never as exciting. Trying to learn katas in the sun was grueling, especially if you are trying to hide what you are doing. Mother wanted me outside to get exercise. She had no idea how hard I was working inside.
He begged me to sneak out one weekend. I did not dare. Sneaking out from home was bad for my health. I did obey the rules on this one. It just was not worth the risk of not being able to spend the night over at Jason’s, or vice versa. When we did hang out it was usually at his house. My parents were too protective to allow me any such freedoms, so I never dared any such attempts while at home.
Jason’s parents were lax. Whenever I stayed over, they let us roam freely. He was responsible, but I was a good influence on him morally, so there were never any constrictions. In return, we never gave them reasons to mistrust us. At night, we stayed later at the lake or we rode our bikes crazy distances. Out of all of our time we shared, we enjoyed walking the woods most of all...suddenly everything changed.
I paused, startled. Had I been speaking aloud this entire time? The doctor looked bored, and I realized he had just finished asking the question. He sat and waited for my answer. My internal conversation had taken only seconds. Yet if I told him the truth, he would have me committed. We stared at each other as I repositioned painfully in bed. He got bored with my silence because he stood up and turned around, moving the chair off to the side and back against the far wall.
Funny, in my mind I had covered from start to finish. I was a geek, a bookworm, a wimp, and probably a coward because I backed down from most confrontations. Thanks to my stepfather, fear of someone hitting me prevailed. Perhaps had the beatings been worse there would be less fear. Maybe I would have been tougher.
Nothing prepared me for what he said next.
“In the past six years you have sustained a series of injuries I’m afraid without leaving the comfort of your own bed. We placed someone in the room soon after the incident happened.” I could see a puzzled look on his face.
“It started with claw marks appearing in various places on your body. The nurses and doctors thought at first it might have been your family leaving marks on you by accident. Your mother was very upset and passionate about your recovery. It crossed our minds that maybe she was trying to cause pain to see if she could wake you up. They monitored her visits, and she made no efforts or gestures to harm you. Yet the markings continued. Initially, no one ever actually saw them take place. They were seen at varying intervals, at first.” He paused, but I did not interrupt him. This was all crazy to me, but something held my tongue.
“We brought in the church to observe you and see if there was any sort of presence here that might be attacking you. They ruled out demonic attacks quickly. The priest felt nothing present and did not see any marks that were similar to demonic possession. This went on for many, many months, about fifteen. We were close to ruling it out when a large amount of blood came from a wound on your back. They classified it as a puncture wound. I saw the blood soaking the sheets right in front of my eyes. When we rolled you over a wound opened up right in front of me. Then several more appeared. We could not patch you up fast enough. Blood…given right away, saved your life. You were going to die while we stitched you up.”
I began trying to move some of the muscles in my back to see if I could feel anything of the sort. My entire back still hurt. Further movement aggravated things greatly. I needed to slow down. Movement meant pain.
“This repeated so frequently that we had to leave you on your stomach to monitor your condition every day. I thought it was strange that it was only on your back that the marks appeared at first. It showed no signs of stopping. Slowly they began to appear all over, and there was no pattern to it. Nothing made any sense; the church came back to evaluate you, and they still could not detect any evil forces or demons at work. You were not convulsing during the attacks. This stumped all the doctors and scientists. Then one day they suddenly stopped.”
The doctor paced the room in front of me. He walked over and poured some water into a cup, took a long drink while watching me. It was bizarre. The chaos beheld was great. My mind drew blanks.
I just sat there staring at him and him at me. I was starting to feel like a freak. Movies from my childhood played mentally. They were the kind of
movies where something unseen attacked someone, but there was always some way of detecting it. Granted those were movies.
He drank his fill and began again. “Several weeks later, it started up again, only this time it was broken bones, torn muscles, and crushed vertebrae. Then there were wounds to suggest something larger was somehow hitting you from beyond who knows where. You were getting the hell beat out of you somehow, and we could only watch and attend to your wounds. Your story stayed quiet save a few church leaders and scientists who came to participate in a comprehensive study. Many different churches sent many different priests to try to find answers. Eventually, they all left. However, the Catholic Church stayed and began to perform exorcisms on you. Nothing worked. The attacks came and the damage was left in their wake.”
“The science community brought in several different devices to see if they could detect paranormal activity. For weeks, machines that monitored movement, and several light spectrometers, decorated your room. Another device that measured electromagnetic fields found nothing. That is actually the one they figured would catch it. Nothing worked.”
“Samples of your tissue were analyzed at the lab. Your DNA was tested and retested. There is nothing special about you other than elevated levels of testosterone in your blood. Why your body was healing and literally re-knitting was something some of the best could not figure out.”
He was still pacing the room and was looking out the windows now. I could see his reflection and the mystified look he held close.
“After a year of dealing with these new threats to you, the church finally gave up and posted a priest here twenty-four hours a day. There were no answers, nothing logical anyway. They left the priest incase last rights or spiritual intervention was required. Even though your family is not Catholic, they stayed.”
A sideways glance from him showed me he was not much of a believer. Faith was a joke to him. He continued.