Deliver Us from Evil (36 page)

As the ritual progressed, the bishop asked Frank how he was feeling. “I'm okay,” the dry cleaner replied, “but I feel that the voice inside me is scared. It is talking to me and saying all kinds of things.”

The bishop continued the exorcism. “Demon, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come forth!”

Suddenly I saw Frank's breathing change from slow and rhythmic to rapid and shallow. I could tell at once that the demon was present. Even in this holy place, there was an unmistakable, overpowering sense of evil. The dry cleaner's face tensed up and he began to blink very rapidly, as I felt a subtle drop in the temperature of the church. His eyes widened as if he were seeing some threat that was invisible to me and darted from side to side, looking for an escape. His face took on an expression of hatred and fear, loathing and terror.

Frank reminded me of the criminally insane that I've taken off the street as a cop: all wrapped up in restraints and powerless to do anything as we load them into the bus (cop slang for an ambulance) for a trip to the psych ward. This demon didn't want to be here, but through the providence of God, it had no choice. I've seen facial expressions as strange and frightening as Frank's before, but not what he did next: His entire body began to shudder in stiff, jerky, decidedly unnatural motions.

He opened his mouth and spoke in a voice that sounded much like his own, except deeper and full of scorn. “I don't want to be here. Who do you people think you are?” The question was obviously rhetorical, and we didn't dignify it with a reply. We all knew that the demon had been forced to come forward and was now here for the battle. Breakpoint was here.

“Evil spirit, tell me your name, in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ!” thundered the bishop, touching Frank with a relic of the True Cross.

The mocking laughter that issued from Frank's lips wasn't the least bit convincing. Even though it was sneering, the satanic power was suffering agonies worse than the fires of Hell. It didn't want to leave; it had to be compelled and commanded to depart in Jesus' name. This battle was taking place in a little church in Connecticut but also was being fought on another plane of existence, a spiritual plane older than man; this battle has been raging since before the creation of humanity. This mental, physical, and spiritual struggle was a battle that we humans are caught up in whether we believe or not.

I had a hunch about this demon because of the manner in which it had gotten hold of Frank. Since it snared him through his intellect and spirituality, I suspected that was how it would respond during the exorcism, rather than with physical brutality.

The bishop's dark eyes narrowed into a piercing stare. “Demon, what brought you into this man?”

The voice deepened. “I'm not talking to
you.
I hate you people!”

As if drawing a gun, Bishop McKenna held up a cross. “Demon, begone!”

Now speaking in a low, almost inaudible tone, the evil spirit retorted, “I don't want to be here anymore. I'm sick of you! Stop talking!”

Touching Frank with a holy relic, the bishop asked, “Am I bothering you, demon?” A veteran of over one hundred exorcisms, Bishop McKenna knew better than to fall into the trap of quarreling with evil spirits, since giving them any sort of recognition can be dangerous. The goal isn't to beat these demons in a battle of wits, which could tempt even the most devout exorcist into the very sins of pride and vanity that had led to Frank's possession. Instead, the priest must maintain a humble attitude, remembering that his only power to defeat the Devil comes from serving God's will, not his own charismatic gifts.

The reply sounded like a petulant three-year-old. “You're stupid and everything about this place is stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid! I'm not telling you anything!” Here again I felt the demon was simply making malicious mischief, by encouraging us to think, in our conceit, that we must be a lot smarter than such a seemingly childish entity—a very dangerous thought to entertain.

“We can't believe you anyway, demon,” the holy man snapped back, draping a black rosary around Frank's neck and dousing him with holy water.

The evil spirit let out a taunting laugh. “You people don't make sense. Why are you here?”

“Because we believe in God!” retorted John, the Warrens' nephew, provoked past control.

The bishop ignored the interruption and continued his fierce interrogation: “Don't
you
believe in God, Devil? Where did you come from?”

“If I tell you the truth, you wouldn't believe me. I came because I wanted to. You can't find me because I'm not here.”

Touching Frank again, first with a holy relic, then replacing the black rosary with a white one, the bishop never broke eye contact as he steadily intoned the Roman Ritual of Exorcism.

“Stop! Stop! Stop talking!” the demon shrieked. Frank's head and shoulder jerked in a more intense robotic tic, as if the evil spirit were trying to shrug off the torture it must be suffering. The exorcism was proceeding just as I anticipated—a lot of head games, but no rough stuff so far, thank God.

“What keeps you in this man? Answer me in the name of Jesus Christ! Who cursed him?”

That evoked a defiant outburst. “I won't tell you. What you're doing is not working,” the diabolical force repeated over and over. The torrent of words stopped for a moment, then Frank's eyes began blinking much more rapidly, and his lips moved again. “I cursed him because he was too good, so very good. I had to have him make a wrong decision.”

Bishop McKenna had heard enough of this nonsense. It was Frank's vanity—not his virtue—that had allowed the demon to possess him. The priest held up a crucifix and made the sign of the cross over Frank's body. “With the help of God, I'm commanding you to go out of him, Devil!”

The demon's remarks became increasingly incoherent: “What are you? If I stay here, it's because I want to! Stop talking.… I won't do it.… Stupid people.… I won't do anything.…” The words became quieter and quieter until I found myself straining to hear them. This can be a distraction technique satanic forces use to break an exorcist's concentration. If so, it didn't work, since the bishop never wavered in his recitation of the ritual. Acknowledging defeat, the deep, contemptuous voice finally sputtered to a halt.

The priest's voice remained firm and steady as he finished the ritual, touching Frank repeatedly with relics, making the sign of the cross over and over, and giving many sprinkles of holy water. I could see Frank's breathing slowly return to normal, and the shuddering stopped.

Although the demon had been banished for the moment, all of us sensed that the war wasn't won yet: Frank wasn't free. When I spoke to him afterward, I could see that he was still confused about the true nature of the demonic spirit possessing him and still didn't grasp how warped his religious experiences really were. The demon was causing so much pain in his life but, at the same time, was giving him what he believed to be special insight into God. In his own mind Frank became more important than God. His aim was to know the divine plan, but he had no reverence for God. That's what this demon gave Frank: not a sense of hope and love that true religious experience brings, but a twisted sense of cold “understanding” that had no real meaning.

“Where do we go from here?” JoAnn asked.

“Frank needs another exorcism, whenever he feels he's ready to try again. This isn't like going for surgery, where the doctor opens you up and removes the poison from your body. This is spiritual and has a lot to do with the spirituality of the person. When a demon attacks through the intellect, as it did with your husband, it's harder for the possessed person to see his situation clearly. Sometimes this happens soon after the exorcism. In other cases it takes longer for someone to find his free will and help us force the demon out.”

Frank was very somber after his exorcism and was completely silent when I drove him and JoAnn back to the train station. The only words of encouragement I could offer Frank were that we would continue for as long as he was willing to accept our help. The bishop, however, wasn't discouraged. He's found that fewer than half of his exorcisms succeed on the first try, and even repeated attempts may fail if the person isn't willing to let God back into his soul.

“By no means is this over,” he assured me when I returned to the church to pick up Joe. “Heaven only knows why this man refuses to give up the demon that is such a cross of suffering to him, but if he's determined to punish himself, we must pray that the Lord in His providence will allow Frank's soul to be saved.” Bowing our heads, we each lit a candle for the dry cleaner and his wife and stood in silence, watching the brave, hopeful flames shed their glow on the little church in Connecticut.

 

14

POSSESSED OVER THE PHONE

Like serial killers and sexual predators, whose crimes often have a distinctive pattern or “signature,” the demonic have their own M.O. While the goal is always the same—to destroy humanity—some evil spirits act like street punks, announcing their presence with lurid acts of vandalism and senseless destruction; others attack physically, clawing and scratching their victims in maniacal rage.

Donna was a thirty-year-old divorcée who lived in Pennsylvania with her eight-year-old son. She had a peculiar problem with her phone. While she was chatting with her boyfriend, Mike, one night, their conversation was repeatedly interrupted by bursts of static on the line. When Mike joked that it must be a poltergeist, the call was abruptly disconnected. Puzzled, he immediately called Donna back and asked if she'd hung up on him. She said she hadn't, so Mike repeated his joke, “It must be a polter—” Before he could finish the word, the phone went dead again.

When Mike called me, my first question was,
why
did he say that word? He said he didn't know—it just popped into his head from nowhere.
Not from nowhere
, I thought.
Definitely not from nowhere!
Now, you may say, “Hey, come on, how could you be sure that anything was really happening? Someone just happens to mention a poltergeist—and then they have one?” But that's not what I thought at all, because I knew this was no poltergeist. These supposedly childlike, noisy little spirits that like to stir up mischief are pure folklore, but are sometimes confused with human spirits (ghosts of departed people that remain earthbound) or inhuman spirits (demons that are pure evil, and never walked Earth in human form). In this case, I saw the demonic at work, concealing its intent by sending Mike a misleading telepathic message. The bait was taken, and now he and Donna were primed to believe they were dealing with a harmless “poltergeist.”

I kept these thoughts to myself, however, and scheduled a face-to-face interview with the couple the next day, at Mike's Pennsylvania home. His block was a maze of dreary low-rise brick buildings, set off at angles to the street. His two-bedroom apartment had a tidy but neglected appearance. Other than a few sickly-looking plants next to an old but comfortable sofa, he'd made no effort to decorate. Apparently, he preferred to spend his spare cash on toys, since the living room was dominated by a huge TV, a very elaborate stereo system, and one of the largest collections of CDs I'd ever seen. I also noticed a tape recorder attached to his phone and a pile of neatly labeled cassettes next to it.

*   *   *

After setting up my video and audio equipment, I began by explaining that I'm not a parapsychologist or ghost hunter. “I'm a Catholic and approach cases from a religious point of view,” I told the couple. “I don't charge any money and make no guarantee of success, but I will do my best to help you. If you ignore my advice, however, or aren't completely honest with me, my involvement ends. I'll walk away and not come back. If that's OK with you, please confirm for the tape that you asked me to investigate the problems you're having.”

Both of them immediately agreed to these terms. I approached the interview the same way I would any crime report: I try to stay neutral and let the people explain what's been going on,
then
ask questions, using the police formula of who, what, when, where, how, and why. There are times, of course, in both the Work and on the Job, that we never find out the why. In this case, I felt there might be a combination of factors. While Mike didn't strike me as a gullible guy, he had a rather limited knowledge of spirits, which can be a dangerous thing. Although I can't say for sure what attracted a demon to them, my chief suspect was a man they both knew. Not only was he a reputed drug dealer, but he was also a practicing Satanist.

As the couple began telling their story, I could tell they were good people—and I could also see, in a single glance, exactly who Mike was: a fellow police officer. He didn't have to tell me his profession; it was written all over him. There are basically two types of cops: Those who consider police work just a job and the buffs, who have blue running through their veins. Mike was obviously a superbuff, what we call a “four-by-four,” a guy who works the 4:00
P.M.
-to-midnight shift, then goes to a cop bar with his partner and drinks until 4:00
A.M.

I knew the type well—I used to be one of them myself. He had all the hallmarks of a buff: a large muscular build, with the distinctive doughnut gut we cops get teased about; a macho swagger; eyes that constantly scanned his surroundings for signs of trouble; and, of course, that stereotypical cop mustache: bushy, black, and trimmed with military precision. Like Donna, he'd been married before, and was the father of two young children.

Donna was as feminine as her boyfriend was masculine. She favored pretty prints, tight pants, and high heels. Despite her devout Catholicism, she had a strong earthy streak and often used language you definitely wouldn't hear in church. Her son, Bruce, didn't seem embarrassed by his mother's loud voice and raunchy speech. He was a fat little kid with dark olive skin, remarkably white teeth, and a sulky expression. Throughout the interview, he chewed gum and played with an action figure he was holding.