CHAPTER 7

One day Bruce and I walked into Spag's and I said, "You ever find that you go in a place like this to witness and you end up just walking around looking at people?" I intended this as a confession of sorts, but Bruce took it as a slur directed at him. To make matters worse, I said, "I'll go this way," and I walked away from him. We crossed paths once in the store and I didn't even look at him.

Two hours later, Ericka and I found Bruce four blocks away, standing on a streetcorner, lonely, bitter and cold. When we got home she went in his room with him for several minutes. She came out fuming mad, and corralled us all into the living room.

"We need to clear up some bullshit in the family, and it has to do with ..." She pinned her eyes on me. "You. You have been callous, hard-hearted and cold. You don't give a damn about Bruce! You don't give a damn about Fran and you don't give a damn about me -- all you give a damn about is yourself! And it's got to stop, Karl, and it's got to stop now. You've got all this ego puffing your head and no love tenderizing your heart."

Her assault lasted the better part of an hour. She lit into me from one angle and another, pinned me to the wall and watched me squirm. Every time I thought the offensive was losing steam, she would think of another point and hammer it home with renewed ferocity. I'd never seen a woman so angry for so long -- hell, I'd never seen anyone so angry for so long.

"And listen, Karl ... " She took a breath, weighing her words. "You're not possessed, but you've got spirits floating around your head, and they've got to go."

That was the knock-out. You don't lightly tell a believer he has devil spirits for company. If I was under the influence of spirits, I would be blind to them, and maybe to everything else that mattered. If I thought this entire attack was a little overwrought, maybe I thought so because devil spirits were clouding my judgment. If devil spirits are influencing your thoughts, then what you think doesn't count.

"What've you got to say?" she asked Bruce. He said nothing. "What about you?" she asked Fran. She said nothing either. I could tell they both felt sorry for me. They both thought I had it coming, but not this bad. Ericka never asked me what I had to say. She did keep thinking of more things to tell me. Finally she quit. It was time for dinner.

I would have liked to crawl in a hole somewhere. The least I could have done is said I wasn't hungry and gone for a walk. But as much time as I spent hungry (not to mention walking), I wasn't about to skip dinner. I ate with my head down while Ericka tried to clear the air by laughing and joking and goofing around. When the food was gone I slunk off to my room and lay down in the dark.

Ericka appeared in the door and joined me in my bed. She put her arm around me and started tenderly stroking my head. Fury and shame were surging inside me, though I lay as still as a corpse, wishing she would get her damn hands off me and get out of my room. Spirits hanging around my head, I thought.

And then I could see them. They were swarming in the darkness overhead, misty entities with heads and tails, like comets, and occasionally I could make out a leering face. I was having a waking nightmare. They started divebombing me -- one by one, from a hovering pattern overhead, gathering strength and weight and throwing themselves into a free-fall ending in my body, pummeling me in the midriff, which absorbed them head and tail.

I lay there paralyzed, mute, in a state of pure terror. Did Ericka see them? No, only I saw them -- proof that she was right. Maybe Ericka was not Ericka at all -- maybe she was just a very convincing devil spirit.

I pictured Ericka, so tenderly stroking my hair, suddenly rising up with a mouth full of sharp teeth and plunging them into my neck. A shock wave pulsed through my body. The image was as graphic as if it had just happened, and it came back again and again.

"Let's pray," she said.

NO! screamed my mind.

"You pray," she said.

NO! Inside my head, my fists beat against the walls.

The silence grew long.

Was I going to let the spirits have me?

"Father ..."

The first word was the hardest part. It took me a long time to follow it with another. It was the first time I'd been asked to speak, and I was to address my comments to God Himself. Slowly I found words.

I prayed that God would melt the ice around my heart. As if the prayer were literal, water started spilling down the sides of my head.

Ericka had broken me.

© Karl Kahler 1999