Deliver Us from Evil (20 page)

Once the demon is forced forward—and it
must
be forced, since it won't come out on its own—the stage of
pretense
begins. This is the most confusing stage of exorcism, since the demon will try to hide behind the personality of the exorcee. Using the person's own voice, it will make the possessed person act naturally, exhibiting no sign of what it is actually up to. This is an attempt to make the exorcist unsure or doubtful that possession is the problem. During this stage, the person may just sit quietly, doing nothing out of the ordinary. Only experience lets the exorcist penetrate these mind games and manipulations.

This stage, I've found, only occurs when the person doesn't exhibit any of the signs of demonic presence that sometimes take place at the start of an exorcism: uncontrollable shaking, jerky or unnatural body movements, evidence of extreme pain, or a look of complete and utter hatred that everyone involved in the Work has seen. As a cop, I've gotten plenty of murderous glares from people I've arrested, and knew they wouldn't hesitate to blow me away if they got the chance. Chilling as these glares have been, they pale in comparison to the malevolent look only a demon can provoke, which takes loathing to a new level—the depths of Hell. Yet the demons who manifest themselves so early and vividly are also the ones who give up the fight the fastest: They're the low-level forces: “the brutes,” which have limited powers of resistance, don't speak during exorcisms, except perhaps in growls or gibberish, and are usually quick to flee from the power of the Cross.

Pretense, if it occurs, must be shattered as quickly as possible, because as long as the demon conceals itself, the exorcism can proceed no further. The exorcist must compel and adjure the satanic power, in the name of Our Savior, to reveal its name. The demon will resist this because once it answers, the charade is over. If it says anything, the evil spirit is losing ground. It is only a small victory in the battle, but a victory nonetheless. In some cases the spirit may stretch the pretense out for hours, trying to stir up doubt and lull everyone into a sense of false security. I have seen exorcisms go from quiet to extreme violence in seconds flat, so I know how hazardous it is to lose concentration.

It's not pretense that's dangerous but what follows. While the demon is trying to fool us into thinking it's not there at all, it
avoids
drama. This stage boils down to a battle of wits between the exorcist and the concealed demon. It's only after the exorcist forces an end to this hide-and-seek game that we reach the next stage,
breakpoint.
This is the stage where the fiend lets loose, sometimes leaping out of hiding and launching an all-out attack.

No one who participates in an exorcism is spared, but the exorcist bears the brunt of the assault. I look on his job as similar to mine when I'm collaring a criminal. The bad guy knows he's headed for jail—that's the reality—but when you tell him to put his hands behind his back, you have to be prepared for anything. He may stand there obligingly and let you put the cuffs on, or he may fight you with everything he's got. Demonic spirits are criminals of the most sadistic kind: They invade someone's house or, worse still, body. Their terrorism is an offense against humanity and God, so exorcism is the spiritual equivalent of an arrest. The trouble is, you can't grab a demon, throw him down, and punch the daylights out of him if he resists: It is only by the use of prayers, fasting, relics, holy water, and most important of all, the grace of God that a demonic spirit is cast out, to, it is hoped, the ultimate prison, Hell.

When breakpoint is reached, anyone in the church is fair game. Assistants often can be the targets, simply because they're there and determined to free the possessed from the craven creature that has taken him over; and because the demonic hate everybody, even
you
! An analogy I like to use is this: What's the best way to attack someone you hate? The answer is as simple as it is cruel: by attacking his children. Not only do satanic spirits do this literally, by picking on kids in demonic-infested homes, but they also do this figuratively, by attacking humanity—God's children.

One form of suffering evil spirits often inflict on assistants is the mental attack. We all have memories, some good and some bad. Don't think for a minute that the demonic will hesitate to torture you by taking your most joyful recollections and perverting them into something horrible. And as for awful memories you've stuffed in the back of your mind and almost forgotten, they'll come crashing back during an exorcism, with the volume of emotion turned up until it's unbearable. Think for a second of the very worst thing that's ever happened to you; then imagine being bludgeoned with this scene over and over, with each detail as vivid as if you were experiencing it all over again, maybe in agonizingly slow motion, like a nightmare where you know something horrible is going to happen but are powerless to prevent it.

You can also be attacked in other ways. One of the most humiliating is having very personal sins you've committed—and never confessed—be blurted out by the demon for all to hear. Demons, however, have no way of knowing about wicked acts you've confessed and been absolved of, since God has forgiven them. Such sins are invisible to the forces of Hell, because they're no longer attached to your soul. There can be spiritual assaults, a form of torment that's usually reserved for the exorcist, since doubting his faith or questioning God while performing the Roman Ritual actually can be fatal.

Another sign of breakpoint is a change in the exorcee's voice. At times the demon will speak in the person's own voice, and at others, in a harsh, guttural, or unnaturally deep voice, making a woman, for example, speak in the voice of a man. Some demons even fluctuate between different voices, all the better to cause fear and confusion. Even in these instances, you can tell when the evil force is talking because it can't help but reveal it is
not
the exorcee. A satanic spirit may talk of the possessed in the third person and say, “I [or we] took him because he was so good” or “I [or we] cursed her.” You get the sense that the satanic spirit thinks of the person as its property and of a human body as a mere container for its evil. The symbolism is obvious: “Back off, priest—this person is
mine
[or ours]!”

Father Martin describes a stage he calls
voice
as a frequent, singularly disturbing offshoot of breakpoint: An unnatural babble begins. “The first syllables seem to be of some word pronounced slowly and thickly—somewhat like a tape recording played at subnormal speed,” he explains. “You are just straining to pick up the word and a cold layer of fear has gripped you—you know the sound is alien. But your concentration is shattered and frustrated by an immediate gauntlet of echoes, of tiny, prickly voices echoing each syllable, screaming it, whispering it, laughing it, sneering it, groaning it, following it. They all hit your ear.”

I myself have never yet heard the voice, but according to Father Martin it is agonizing to endure. The exorcist must get himself under firm control and command the voice to be silent. His role is to get as much useful information from the demon as possible while demanding that distractions be stopped. Bishop McKenna says that the voice hasn't been a problem in his exorcisms: “Blessedly, I have been spared such molestation or visions of this kind myself. I am in no way psychic, completely lack any sixth sense, and consider myself the opposite of clairvoyant. I focus entirely on the standard, traditional ritual of the Catholic Church for exorcism and ignore any gibberish I might hear from the possessed.”

Next in Father Martin's stages is
clash
, a battle of wills that concerns only the exorcist and the demon. Even the possessed person is excluded from this fearsome struggle, where the hellish force tries to engulf and overpower the priest, who, in turn, calls on God to banish and defeat this agent of the Devil. Propelling the exorcist on is his knowledge that he has already won the earlier battles, by forcing the spirit to come forth, give up its pretense, respond to questions, and abandon its techniques of distraction. Now it only remains for the diabolical presence to make its final surrender, in the aptly named stage of
expulsion.

Departure would be too mild a term for this stage. As in every preceding stage, the demon must be forced, compelled, commanded, and driven to obey God's will, as expressed through the exorcist. In real life, the last act of this diabolical drama is almost an anticlimax: The exorcee will tell us that the evil presence is now gone. Some people's relief and gratitude is so profound that they break down and cry. Others have no memory of their possession and may even be puzzled as to why they're in the church or who we are. Since these reactions also could be a demonic ploy—a new form of pretense—the exorcist will continue to use prayers, relics, and holy water to make sure the demon truly has been expelled.

While a satanic spirit may give an indication that it's leaving, the only one I've seen during a solemn exorcism comes in the form of extreme violence suddenly stopping. I never ask for a sign that the Devil is gone during exorcisms of houses, but sometimes I've gotten one anyway. The sign is usually a loud bang from an empty part of the house. It's one of the ways the demonic let you know they're gone—for now.

*   *   *

I felt very nervous when Bishop McKenna put a crucifix in Tony's hand at the start of the ritual—he'd never done this at any previous exorcism. The figure of Christ on the cross is the symbol of our salvation, but in the hands of the possessed it can become a weapon. In the real-life case later fictionalized in
The Exorcist
, a priest was maimed for life during the exorcism of a child (who was a boy, not a girl as in the film version). During the Roman Ritual, the exorcee yanked a spring out of the mattress he was lying on and used it to slash the exorcist's arm open to the bone. The priest was horribly scarred and never regained use of the limb.

From that moment on, I watched the musician like a hawk, ready to quell any threatening move on his part. I'd assisted at one exorcism a while back where the possessed person constantly tried to scratch and bite the assistants. It was this man's fourth exorcism—and each had become progressively more violent. He was possessed by seven different demons, and each ritual brought a more powerful one forth. During the exorcism I attended, the demon decided to compel the man to tear at his own hands with his teeth, and it took eight of us to save him from serious injury. Today there were only four assistants—and I prayed that would be enough.

The bishop read the Roman Ritual over Tony but got no reaction at all. That's how some exorcisms go—it's a long struggle to force the evil spirit forward. The holy man stopped his prayers to ask the musician how he felt. “I'm getting some pain near the bottom of my spine,” he said softly. This is one of the major chakra points—and from what Tony had told me, I knew it was the area through which the demon had entered.

The bishop stood right in front of Tony, a spot I didn't like, since he could be hit before any of us assistants could react. In Latin, he demanded, “Tell me your name, demon!” Getting only silence, he repeated the order in English. The second time, Tony's head jerked and he made a guttural sound. Whether it was a word or not, I couldn't tell, but the battle was definitely on.

Sensing this, the bishop took two steps back, to my relief. Tony began breathing heavily through his nose, and his head and neck jerked wildly from side to side, as if he were afflicted with Tourette's syndrome. The demon was finally showing itself, and the musician muttered something that sounded like “No.”

Bishop McKenna reached the point where the ritual calls for the exorcist to drape his stole around the possessed person. He touched a relic to Tony's head, chest, left shoulder, and right shoulder—the sign of the cross. The response was a very loud and distinct scream: “Shit!” The flagrant obscenity was in sharp contrast to Tony's usual mild, soft-spoken manner. “Shit!” he screamed again. No pretense here—the demon wasn't bothering to hide itself.

As the ritual continued, the demon roared its defiance in an unknown language, a Babel of tongues. Sometimes it sounded like Arabic, at others Hindi, but for all I knew it might be an ancient tongue humankind has forgotten or that was never spoken on Earth. The only word I could recognize, if you want to call it a word, was “Nayacota,” the nonsense term that Tony had told me was the demon's way of saying “no.” I have never come across this expression in any other case, so it was probably unique to this particular evil spirit.

The words became a torrent, but the bishop ignored them, saying “Tell me your name, Devil!” Tony yelled out two completely incomprehensible syllables. “How many are you?” the man of God demanded. He received no reply until he sprinkled holy water on the musician.

“Shit!” the diabolical spirit yelled again, then Tony broke into heart-rending sobs. The priest paid no attention to either the cries or the curses: The demonic have a million tricks to stop the Roman Ritual. As he sternly intoned the prayers, the musician alternated between shouting vulgarities and weeping like a child. Suddenly he turned to me, tears streaming down his cheeks, and asked for a cross to hold. I will not respond to an exorcee during the ritual, but the bishop once again allowed him to hold the crucifix, and Tony grabbed it like a lifeline.

You might think this meant he was freed of the demon, but not so. We could see Tony struggling with the evil spirit, weeping and clutching the cross when he was in control and recoiling from it with dreadful shouts when the Devil regained the upper hand. It was incredible to watch the battle raging inside this man.

*   *   *

Over two hours had gone by, and the bishop was on the third reading of the ritual. Tony's yelling and jerking had subsided, but he was still snared by the satanic force. He whispered that his back was causing him great pain, so I lifted his shirt so that the exorcist could anoint his spine with holy oil and apply relics.