The Other Side of Darkness (40 page)

“Please, dear Lord,” says Mary, “please show Mom that she’s acting crazy and that she needs to take us home.”

“Please, dear Lord,” prays Sarah, “protect us tonight. Send your angels to watch over us. Help Mommy to see that this is wrong and—”

“That’s enough!” I quickly take the next exit from the freeway. The girls remain silent as I slowly drive through the business section of a small mill town. It’s after midnight now, and everything seems to be closed. Except maybe the building down at the end of town. It’s a tavern, but I just don’t care. I know what is wrong. I know what I have to do. And feeling as if part of me is completely shut down and dead now, I do it.

“Get out,” I say to the girls as I come to a stop not far from the tavern.

“What?” says Mary.

“Get out. Get out of the car.”

“Why, Mommy?” says Sarah. “What are you doing?”

“Get out! Get out now! Get out! Get out! Get out!”

I hear the back door open and then close, and then I see my two girls standing on the dimly lit street, clinging to each other as they stare at the car. I punch the gas and drive away. I can hardly see the road through the tears filling my eyes and streaming down my face. And instead of getting back onto the freeway, I go beneath the underpass and start driving up an old logging road that goes east and into the hills. It isn’t a well-maintained road, and there are several times when I can’t tell the road from the blackness that surrounds it, but I don’t really care.

Go through the fire, pass through the flame, on the other side, emerge pure and clean. Go through the fire … through the flame … the other side … pure and clean
. Why can’t I do this right? Why can’t I be purged? Why am I never pure and clean? No matter what I do, the evil remains with me. Why? Why? Why? As I continue into the darkness, I think I am getting closer to the answer. Or perhaps I
am driving straight into hell. But somehow I understand.
I know the truth now
.

It seems perfectly clear.
I am the problem
. The demons are in me. They always have been. They always will be. I have tried and tried to drive them out. I have done everything I know. Used every spiritual weapon I have. I’ve done everything humanly possible. But it’s no use. I am hopeless, useless, a total failure. I am a total failure as a mother. A total failure as a wife. A total failure as a friend, a sister, a daughter. A total failure as a Christian. There is no hope for me.

I continue along this pitch-black mountain road with no idea where it leads, but I am certain it will take me where I need to go—to the other side of darkness, to that place where Satan greets his victims, where demons gnash their teeth, devour, and destroy. I am going there now, and once and for all, I will end this thing.

Just when I am certain that I can’t last another minute, that I must find that precarious place where the steep road drops away to nothing but darkness below, the car hits something. And although I step on the accelerator, hoping that this is it, that the car will leap from this road and plunge me to the end, my car comes to a complete stop.

It is stuck diagonally across the narrow road, and I cannot make it go forward, and I cannot make it go back. I attempt to rock the car back and forth, thinking that it’s lodged on a boulder and that if it can come free, it will plummet down the steep rocky mountainside.

I pound my head against the steering wheel. Over and over I pound it. “
You are hopeless!”
I scream at the top of my lungs.
“Worthless! Useless! A failure! You can’t do anything right! You can’t even kill yourself right! You are a complete and utter failure!”

On and on I go, finally resorting to horrible profanity, which convinces me beyond doubt that Satan has gotten full control of me now. Or perhaps he’s always been in control. All those times when I was pointing my finger at everyone and everything else, it was Satan who was ruling my heart.

It’s very cold up here, probably freezing, and this gives me an idea. I open all the windows and remove my jacket. Perhaps I will get hypothermia. I’ve heard that victims simply fall asleep and never wake up. But as I sit here shivering for what seems like a very long time, I question whether or not I can even do this right.

“Dear Lord, please help me!” I pound my fists on the steering wheel and dashboard. Then I pound my head against the steering wheel again, very hard this time—and complete blackness follows.

W
hen I come to, it is still dark, and I am very cold. It takes me a few seconds to realize where I am and what I have done. But when realization hits, I feel so tormented, so devastated that I desperately wish it were all over. Why can’t it be over? Why didn’t I get hypothermia and just die? Oh, how I wish I were dead or, better yet, that I’d never been born at all.

I cannot bear to think of what I have done. How could I have possibly abandoned my two beloved daughters like that? And what has become of them? This thought makes me so sick that I open the car door and lean over and retch the contents of my stomach onto the muddy road beside me. I retch and retch and retch. Why can’t it kill me? I know why I made the girls get out of the car. It was to spare them. To save them from the devil—and from me. To take them any farther with me would have put them in greater danger. Oh, why am I still living? Why must I be tortured like this?

I’m still shivering, and my head is throbbing. I can feel the swollen place on my forehead, but it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t enough to kill me. I attempt to rock the car again, but it seems solidly stuck. Suddenly I remember a scene from a movie where a murderer stuffs a rag in the exhaust pipe and the person in the running car is asphyxiated with carbon monoxide. I turn on the engine again, raise the windows, turn on the lights, then grab my jacket and climb out of
the car. I slip through the mud as I make my way to the rear bumper. Then I kneel down until I can smell the gasoline and feel the heat of the exhaust. I stick my jacket into the pipe, stuffing it hard against the fumes trying to escape. Then I hurry, slipping and sliding through the mud, and climb back into the car. I make sure the vents are closed and the windows are tight, then I lean back.

This will be it. It will all be over soon.

Dawn is coming now. A small slit of golden light breaks through the silhouettes of trees up ahead, and I realize that my car nearly made it to the crest of this hill. Although a tiny part of me is hungry to see light again, I am mostly disappointed. I wanted to die out here in the darkness. I deserve to die out here in the darkness. Why is it taking so long?

I stare at the golden strip of light growing larger as the sun steadily rises above the top of the hill. And despite myself, I think about my Lord. I am thinking that, despite all my horrible mistakes and how I am completely unworthy to live, I do not want to be separated from my Lord for all of eternity. And yet there seems no option. How could he still want me? I have failed him. Failed him in every possible way. I wanted to fight his battles, to defeat his enemies, and the only thing I have defeated is myself.

That was never me
.

I sit up straight, looking around to see if someone is here in the car. Did someone actually say that? Maybe I just imagined it. Or maybe it’s the carbon monoxide fumes finally doing their work. But I run these four small words through my head over and over.
That was never me. That was never me. That was never me
. And I don’t know how, but I get it. God is telling me I’ve been wrong. Confused and misled. I have been the world’s most foolish sheep,
tricked by a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Somehow I know this deep within me.

Just as plain as the sun that’s now shining in my face, I know without a doubt that it’s the Lord who said those four words. He’s telling me that everything I’ve done—so many things in his name, telling myself I was doing them for him—
that was never him
. And it occurs to me that people tried to tell me. Rick, Colleen, my sister, even my mixed-up mother—they all warned me. But I wouldn’t listen. Instead, I trusted people like Glenn and Bronte. The image of those two hits me again with full force. How could I have been so deceived?

“I am such a fool.” I lean back in the seat and close my eyes. “Please forgive me, Lord. I am such a fool. Have mercy.” Tears pour down my cheeks as I think of my girls—and what I have done. My heart feels like it’s being wrenched from my chest. But what can I do? So I pray. Only it’s not a warfare prayer. I simply ask God to gather Mary and Sarah, and even poor Matthew, into his arms and to protect them. And then I begin to drift.

I startle at the sound of pounding on glass and turn to see a bearded face peering at me through my car window. At first I think it is Satan, here to gather the remains of my life. Then he smiles, and I think maybe it is the Lord. But I am too sleepy to do anything.

“Open the door!” the man yells. “Or we’ll bust it in.”

But my arms feel as if they are tied to my sides, and all I can do is simply close my eyes and wait for this to end. When will it end?

The next thing I know I am being dragged from my car. I am wrapped in a smelly wool blanket and bundled into the back of a club cab, which then rattles down the mountain road. Fast enough, judging by the trees that blur together as they whiz by, that we may
go flying off the edge and plunge to the final end below. But we don’t. I can hear a man talking on a radio or phone or something, but the words go right over me. And it feels like I can’t move. I vaguely wonder if I’m paralyzed. But I don’t think I really care.

We come to a stop, and I see an ambulance waiting. As two men help me out of the truck, at first dragging, then carrying me, I can tell this is the town where I dropped off Mary and Sarah the night before. I want to ask, “What has become of my girls?” but I can’t get the words out. It’s as if my brain isn’t functioning, as if it’s finally quieted down for a change. So I don’t fight it.

I don’t remember blacking out, but when I open my eyes again, I am in a hospital room. And, once again, my arms feel like lead, as if they’re tied down to my sides. Then I see that they actually are strapped down. As are my legs. This seems strange, but perhaps this is my punishment. It seems minor compared to all I have done. And, in fact, it’s a relief. It’s an even bigger relief when I learn that my girls are safe … a relief that’s wrapped in layers of guilt.

It’s not long before I figure out I’m in the lockdown unit of Saint John’s Hospital, in the very town where I used to live, where I used to have a home, a husband, children, a life … I’m a patient in the psychiatric ward, the place where crazy people are kept out of harm’s way. Not that I want to harm anyone. Well, maybe myself, although I seem to have already done a pretty adequate job of that. Though I never really did finish it.

I think I’ve been in here several days when I overhear someone explaining the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning and how it can take a couple of weeks before the patient fully recovers. “There may still be brief losses of memory and perhaps even some mood swings, but it will abate in time.” He pauses. “Of course, as you know,
she will still need further psychiatric treatment after that.” The man continues talking to someone. Maybe it’s Rick. I think he’s been here a few times. Not that we’ve talked. We haven’t. At least I haven’t.

Two weeks after that night

If someone had given me a keg of dynamite and said, “Here, go ahead and blow up your life,” it couldn’t have been much more effective than what I’ve done. Maybe quicker and less painful. I am so ashamed. So very ashamed.

Dr. Doris (she likes being called by her first name) has been working with me. One of the first things she told me was that I need to start controlling my inner voice. “The one that is always condemning you,” she explained after I confessed to her about the things I so often tell myself and the names I use, like “loser” and “failure” and “useless” and “hopeless.”

“You cannot allow that inner voice to keep bullying you, Ruth.”

Then she gave me a CD to listen to that says positive things, uplifting things, things I wish someone had said to me a long time ago. Maybe someone did. Maybe I just forgot. I imagine that it’s the Lord’s voice and that he might say such kind and gracious things to me. But I still find myself doubting that possibility. And I still find myself wanting to go to battle with my demonic oppressors. Although Dr. Doris says those demonic beings were not real, I find that hard to believe. I tell her they seemed very real to me. And then I tell her that I wasn’t the only one to see them.

“The power of suggestion is strong,” she explains. “The mind is complex, the memory can be confusing, and the imagination is a powerful force.”

“Are you suggesting that I imagined all those horrors?”

“Have you ever had a nightmare, Ruth?”

“Of course. Who hasn’t?”

“Did it seem real?” she asks me.

I don’t know the answer.

“You are highly susceptible to these kinds of hallucinations.”

“Hallucinations?” I try to make sense of this, but so much is still murky … or maybe it’s the meds.

A few days ago Doris put me through a battery of psychological tests. “You display all the symptoms of someone who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder,” she explained after determining the results. “More commonly known as OCD.”

“Like that show
Monk
, about the detective?” I can barely remember seeing it once, a long time ago.

“Sort of. But every case is unique.” Then she explains that my kind of OCD made me take normal things to unhealthy extremes. “An obsession is something you can’t let go of. For instance, you keep thinking about the same thing or repeating the same sequence of words. It’s like you get stuck on something and can’t escape it. Do you understand?”

If I weren’t so depressed, I would just laugh. “Yes, I understand. Trust me … I understand.”

“And a compulsion is when you do something almost uncontrollably. You experience a pressing need to, say, wash your hands, and nothing and no one can stop you from doing it. In fact, you may do it over and over.” She peers over her reading glasses at me. “Do you know what I mean?”