Deliver Us from Evil (11 page)

Since demons that serve this unholy trinity came from every heavenly order, their powers vary from great to small. The most powerful demons are referred to as “devils.” They can manipulate blessed objects. Low-level demons cannot. But even the lowliest demon is much more powerful than us human beings and is filled with hatred and perversity. The only weapon we have against them is our faith and prayers. Despite knowing what we had in store for it, the evil spirit in this house wouldn't flee. The demonic are not so quick to give up what they've gained—they must be forced to leave—and that's just what we had in mind!

From what Angelo had described, I was reasonably sure we were dealing with the first stage of demonic activity:
infestation
, where the serpents of Hell worm their way into people's lives with small, malicious acts designed to create doubt and fear, an emotion dark forces draw energy from. The demonic will announce themselves in a subtle way. Your phone may ring three times, with unnaturally short or long rings. When you pick it up, you may be greeted by unearthly growling, strange noises, static, or no sound at all. Just then there will be three knocks at the door, but no one is there when you open it. Or you may hear far more disturbing sounds: someone whispering your name when you're alone in the house, heavy breathing in your ear, or a baby or animal crying in terrible torment, an unnatural crying that tears at your soul. You may feel someone tap you on the shoulder or have your hair pulled, and turn around to find an empty room.

Certain areas of your home may develop cold spots that won't go away no matter how much you turn up the heat or may have sudden, drastic changes of temperature, as if something has just sucked all the warmth from the room. You may hear footsteps walking around in empty parts of the house or the sound of heavy furniture being dragged across the floor. When you look to see the cause of the sound, nothing is out of place. Or you may be all snug in your bed, drifting off to sleep, when you hear a tapping or scratching noise coming from the walls or under the bed. Try as you might, you can't find the source of the noise. Suddenly you may get the unmistakable feeling of being watched, a sensation that makes your skin crawl. A certain room may become hostile to all who enter—even pets may refuse to go into the room, no matter how much they are coaxed. Lights may abruptly turn off, leaving you in darkness, only to blaze on in the middle of the night, jolting you from sleep. The TV or radio will turn itself on full blast—even when it's unplugged. Out of the corner of your eye, you see something move, maybe a black or smoky shape that disappears as soon as you turn your head to get a better look. Perhaps a shadow glides by your bedroom door, a shadow darker than night. Revolting smells that have no earthly origin fill the air.

Objects seem to develop a will of their own, moving around the house no matter how many times you put them back. Perhaps you put your key ring or wallet in the same place every day, but it's mysteriously disappeared when you want to go out. You look all over the house without finding the object, only to have it turn up days later in a place where you already looked. This can lead to arguments, accusations, and disharmony, which are just what the demonic thrive on. But there's also a more sinister plot working here. The phenomena are usually centered around one particular person—an individual chosen for possession, whom we call the “focal person.” He or she will experience all or most of the eerie phenomena, but when these people tell the other family members, he or she will be ridiculed and not believed. Or the person may not say anything at all but may begin to question his or her own sanity and withdraw from the rest of the family. Isolation makes it harder for the focal person to fight back, and there follows a systematic breakdown of that person's will. Once the evil spirit has entrenched itself, it will progress to the next stage,
oppression
, where the rest of the family is also treated to the horrifying phenomena. These scare tactics have a simple, cruel purpose: to break down the victim's will, rendering the person less and less able to resist possession, the demonic's ultimate goal.

Before any of this can happen, however, there must be an invitation that opens the door, allowing a demon to slip into our world. This can happen by accident or by design. Many people make the big mistake of not taking occult practices very seriously. Several TV shows with supernatural themes—ranging from
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
to
Charmed
—depict witchcraft as glamorous. What really disturbs me is that these programs are geared toward kids, giving children the dangerous misconception that dabbling in the occult is harmless fun. Never do they warn viewers that casting spells can lead to an attack by the demonic, nor do they show the living hell some people go through because they thought it would be interesting to mess around with a Ouija board, tarot cards, séances, or witchcraft rituals. Sometimes nothing at all happens; other times, something you can't see sneaks through and starts raising unholy hell in your life.

There are also people who know the spirit world exists and try to manipulate it to do their bidding. Maybe they deliberately invite the demonic into their lives, hoping to gain wealth and power. These people are Satanists and worship Satan as a god who will bring them earthly delights. What they don't grasp—until it's too late—is that once you cross that line, you put yourself in debt to the Devil. Sooner or later, he is going to collect, possibly in this world, certainly in the next.

Along with dabblers and practitioners of the dark arts, there are also innocent bystanders who somehow get snared by the occult. Like tragic victims of a drive-by shooting, they are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. They might buy their dream house or move into a nice little apartment, not suspecting the horror that awaits them. Although the demonic aren't necessarily bound to any particular place, they may linger on the scene if something bad happened there in the past: A homicide, domestic violence, child molestation, satanic rituals, and drug abuse are all draws for the forces of darkness, due to the intense negative emotion associated with these events. As my partner Joe puts it, such houses sit like Venus flytraps, waiting for their unwary prey.

*   *   *

While Angelo didn't know if any of these things happened at this particular house—or what its history was—he did mention something curious about the landlady. Several times after he'd moved in, she'd stop by to collect mail. Although he politely invited her in, she always insisted on standing out on the street while he went to get the letters.
How very odd
, I thought.
It seems that this woman is afraid to set foot in her own house! I bet she knows exactly what's waiting inside—and how it got there!
One possibility is that the building was once the home of a wicked person, whose human spirit lingers there. Since one of the laws of the spirit world is “like attracts like,” a place haunted by an evil ghost (the spirit of a departed person) can become a magnet for demonic forces as well.

Whatever the explanation for their problems was, I felt the people I was meeting tonight definitely fell into the innocent victim category, especially after Jill, the new mother, began relating her story. She was a big, athletic redhead with a ruddy face, pale blue eyes, and a sharp, beaklike nose. Although her body was slightly softened from her recent pregnancy, she was bursting with health and vigor: I could picture her as the captain of the lacrosse team in high school. In sharp contrast to her Amazon-like build, she had an unexpectedly high, girlish voice.

Her living room was cluttered with colorful toys and baby equipment. For all the cheerfulness of the surroundings, I could see she was very upset. Like Angelo, she said a disturbing incident had happened to her family on the day they moved in—but they didn't take it seriously until later on. That night, she told us, “my four-year-old son came into the bedroom and told me he'd seen a woman in white standing at the foot of his bed. I said, ‘Go back to bed, Timmy, it's just a dream.'”

Over the next two weeks, she was quick to dismiss other odd events—too quick, she now admitted. As they settled into their new home, she kept hearing Timmy talking to someone in his room. When she muted the TV to hear what he was saying, he'd quickly call out, “It's only make-believe, Mommy.” Sometimes she'd go into his room and see him chatting away, engrossed in some game with his apparently imaginary friend. When she'd ask what he was doing, he'd immediately assure her it was just pretend.

What happened next sent chills down Jill's spine. It was one of those really beautiful winter days we sometimes have in New York—so nice, in fact, that she decided to let Timmy go out in the backyard to play and get some fresh air. The little boy was very excited and asked his mom to bring out his new toy car. Just big enough to hold a child, it was made of bright yellow and orange plastic, had doors that really opened, a driver's seat, and was operated by foot pedals. Timmy climbed in—and was still in the car an hour later, when Jill came to the door to call him in for lunch.

Obediently, Timmy drove the car over to the house and got out, making sure to close the plastic door. What Jill saw then made her doubt her sanity: The door to the toy car opened by itself, as if some invisible child had just gotten in. It drove around the yard, stopping at the exact spot Timmy had parked it. Again the door opened and closed all by itself, much to the delight of Timmy, who was jumping up and down, so thrilled he was squealing. His new friend had taken a joy ride in the toy car. Seeing his mother's jaw drop in terror and her wide-eyed astonishment, he calmly remarked, “It's only make-believe, Mommy.”

Too shocked to speak, she beckoned her son to come inside. She couldn't believe what she'd just seen. Dread washed over her, as she struggled to calm herself.
There must be some logical explanation,
she thought,
but what?
Deep down, she knew there was none. As soon as her husband, Bruce, came home, she told him what she'd witnessed.

“It must be the wind,” he said, knowing his wife was a practical soul, not given to imagination.

“But it wasn't windy,” she insisted, getting upset all over again. “The air was completely calm, I tell you!”

“Still, there must be a reasonable explanation, honey. Maybe it was a vibration from a truck,” Bruce suggested.

Close to hysterics, she shouted, “No, that wasn't it. How many times do I have to tell you: Timmy's toy car drove all by itself!”

“That's simply not possible,” he insisted. But it
was
possible, because Timmy's new friend was older than mankind and evil beyond comprehension. Their family had been chosen by a demon and had just entered the infestation stage of diabolical activity.

Trying to push the unsettling episode out of her mind, Jill busied herself the next day with unpacking. As she put Timmy's clothes into his bureau drawers, she suddenly smelled the unmistakable scent of cologne. A man's cologne, but not her husband's, the fragrance was so overpowering that it filled the room, as if someone had sprayed it everywhere. Just then a closet door was flung open with such force it banged into the wall, leaving a dent. Everything she'd carefully arranged in the closet came flying out. Scared and confused, Jill just shoved the mess back into the closet and slammed the door shut, unable to make any sense of what was happening to her in this house.

As an investigator of the preternatural, I'd heard all this before. I'm well beyond being shocked by what takes place in these cases, but what Jill said next really made me sit up and take notice. She explained that when she was living in her previous apartment, several miles away, she'd suddenly gotten the urge to move to a new building. “I'm not sure
why
I felt a need to look at this particular time, because everyone was telling me it was the middle of winter, and I should wait until spring. But I just had to move, and nobody was going to talk me out of it.”

Once she called a real estate agent, something strange happened. “Timmy said to me, ‘Mommy, don't take the place on Fresh Pond Road, because there's no room for my baby sister.' I didn't know what he was talking about, since I hadn't looked at any apartment on Fresh Pond Road, but two days later, we did see a place on that street, decided it wasn't big enough for the baby, and turned it down. I didn't connect this to what Timmy had said. Actually, I'd forgotten about it.”

A few days later Timmy had another suggestion. “Mommy, take the apartment two blocks from Myrtle Avenue.” Again Jill didn't pay much attention, since she hadn't seen an apartment off Myrtle Avenue.

“I just needed to move, and that was all I was concentrating on,” the young mother emphasized. “A couple of days later I heard about this place. When I saw it, I told Timmy it was perfect. He was very happy, so I asked if he liked it too. ‘Yes, Mommy! This is the place I was telling you about.' Although the apartment
was
two blocks from Myrtle Avenue, I thought it was a big coincidence, a little weird maybe, but I didn't think a thing about it until creepy stuff started to happen. Now I really believe I was
led
here!”

That feeling was correct. Jill and her family were led—or lured—to the demon's lair. Incredible as it sounds, satanic powers can draw someone to a particular place by influencing the person to make a decision he or she wouldn't ordinarily make. The peculiar thing, I immediately noticed, was that this apartment didn't have a room for the baby either, yet Jill had found it “perfect.”

And how did this four-year-old know in advance what apartments they'd see? And was it really
he
who was so eager to live by the graveyard? I believe Timmy, for all his youth, was a very special kid, and the demonic had singled him out for his strong psychic abilities. While there's no special personality trait that defines who will be selected as the prey, generally this person has some weakness or point of vulnerability that can be exploited. I'm convinced that if we hadn't intervened when we did, Timmy ultimately would have become possessed. It's extremely rare, but satanic spirits can—and do—take over children.