The Dark Sacrament (13 page)

“I do.”

“He's a healer. They say he—”

“Ah, please, Carmel!” Jessica cried again. “It's bad enough I'd take Gary to a Roman Catholic monastery, but to a
healer.
Come on. What is he, some sort of witch doctor, or what's this they call it—a shaman?”

Carmel was shaking her head with vehemence.

“Father Dominic is nothing of the sort. You'd like him, Jessica. He's a kind, gentle soul. And he's genuine.” She took her friend's hand. “Do it for Gary. What have you got to lose?”

She made an appointment that day. A two-hour drive took them to the monastery on the shores of Lough Neagh. Gary said nothing as his mother parked the car close to a large and rambling Georgian building. Jessica was nervous as she pushed open a door that seemed to have been built for the passage of giants.

They found themselves in an echoing hall with a high ceiling, bare except for a long, pewlike bench, a table, and old portraits of popes upon the walls. There was a small room off the hall and a sign saying reception.

“We've come for Father Dominic,” Jessica told a smartly dressed young woman.

Minutes later, the monk entered the hall by another door. He was a big man, bearded and dressed in the robe of the Cistercians. Jessica put his age at seventy or more. He barely looked at them as he crossed to yet another door. He pushed it open and beckoned.

But when all were seated in the little sitting room, Father Dominic showed himself to be the kindly soul described by Carmel Sharkey. He spoke softly, smiled a good deal, and did not pry into areas that were of little relevance. He listened to Gary's tale, eyes shut, nodding from time to time.

To Jessica's surprise, she heard her son speaking of matters he had confided to no one else. In the wake of his third seizure, she had sent him to stay with her mother for a few days. She recalled that he returned home, if anything, more nervous than he had ever been. He refused to be drawn out then, but now he was telling the priest what had befallen him. Jessica mused that Catholic confession must work in a similar way.

“I couldn't sleep at Grandma's,” Gary was saying. “I kept seeing things.”

“What sort of things?” Father Dominic asked.

“Bad things. Shadows. Big, black shadows.”

“In your bedroom?”

“Yeah. I knew there was somebody there but I couldn't see him properly. He kept changing. There were noises too.”

“In your room as well?”

“No,” said Gary with determination. “They were all over the house. It was—”

“It's an old house, Father,” Jessica said.

“I kept hearing them at night,” Gary went on. “They were up in the ceiling and in the walls. Real scary stuff. Like there were animals there. But Grandma doesn't
have
any pets. I had to have the light on all the time.”

Father Dominic had gone silent. Jessica saw that he was looking into Gary's eyes with consternation.

“Tell me about this Tyrannus,” he said.

“He shows me stuff. He showed me what I'll be like when I'm grown up, when I'm twenty-eight or twenty-nine. I'm in an office with a big desk. Tyrannus says that if I come over to him I'll be very rich.”

“‘Come over,'” the priest repeated quietly.

“He says I'll have great power in the future. And loads of money. But I must do what he wants.”

 

Let us examine Gary's account. He claims that Tyrannus showed him his future as an adult. Evidently Gary was to become a successful businessman. That, in itself, is most unusual. When small boys dream of their future they do not see themselves sitting in offices. Offices are boring. They see themselves as major-league football players, or rock stars, or astronauts—the glamorous jobs. Gary's account is without doubt highly unorthodox.

 

Having listened to Gary's story, Father Dominic took the boy's wrist firmly in his big hand. From a pocket of his habit he drew out a small object: an oval-shaped silver casket with a glass window. Behind the glass a fragment of something old and yellowed was visible. Jessica knew it to be a relic; Carmel had several. The priest pressed the little casket lightly to Gary's brow and murmured a prayer.

Next, he taught the boy to say another prayer. It was framed in simple words that a child would have no difficulty remembering. Before they left, he took Gary's mother aside and gave her a leaflet containing a simple prayer to be said daily.

“I think you should know, Mrs. Lyttle, that you did well to bring the boy to me today. I don't like what I see in him. There's evil at work, I'm afraid.”

Jessica was stunned by his directness. She fumbled for words, unwilling to accept that Carmel had guessed the truth and that the monk was confirming it.

“But he's only a child, Father.”

“Indeed. Children know the difference between good and evil by an early age. Five or six, mostly—if not before. Your son is choosing evil. He is entertaining this ‘demon.' I've seen its like before and I know it for what it is.”

She turned to look at Gary. He was still seated on the chair that was too high for him, legs swinging in impatience as his eyes roved the dark paneling of the room and its somber paintings of ancient martyrs. Evil? She saw no evil there.

“He's going to have a very difficult and painful life if he doesn't resist this thing now,” the priest said. “It's imperative that he fight it, and you have to help him in that fight.”

His words dismayed Jessica. But she was angry, too, at the ugly picture being painted for her. In what was becoming a perverse situation, she felt the need to assert what
she
believed.

“Listen, he's fantasizing!” she said defiantly. “Nobody believes in demons anymore. We live in more modern times, Father.”

“Indeed,” Father Dominic continued calmly, “but I assure you they are not a fantasy. The Devil and his fallen angels exist, whether you believe in them or not. Not believing in evil means you are not armed against it. For whatever reason, your son has become a prime target. God is requesting that you turn back to him. It is up to you to help Gary come to this understanding.”

Jessica felt defeated, hopeless. She wanted to cry.

“I want you to promise me something,” the priest said gently, sensing her despair.

“Yes, Father?”

“I want you to promise me you'll have him say those prayers to the Blessed Mother every day. She has such great power over the evil one,” he added enigmatically. “She'll protect you. Prayer is the only way to fight against this. And I want you to bring Gary to see me again. Shall we say this day fortnight?”

Jessica agreed. By the time they got home again, she felt that she needed a strong drink. She had much to mull over, and most of it was decidedly unpleasant.

Under his mother's supervision, Gary recited twice a day the short prayers that Father Dominic had taught him. He continued to visit the hospital in Letterkenny, and Sally reported steady progress. Jessica brought him to see Father Dominic again, and continued to do so every other week. After each visit it seemed that a little more of Gary's old self was being returned to him. Jessica felt that a bleak period was ending, that whatever it was that had come into the boy's life was leaving him in peace.

But Gary skipped his prayers one day, and another day soon after, and before long he had let the habit slide. Jessica had never held with prayer at the best of times, and perhaps for this reason did not mind too much. And everything was fine again, was it not?

She had lulled herself into a false sense of stability, so much so that when the next untoward manifestation took place, she found herself totally unprepared for it. It happened one evening as Kelly
and Gary were doing their homework. Once more, it was Kelly who alerted her.

“Mommy, Gary's going all funny again!”

She turned, to find her elder son staring into the middle distance, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings. His left hand was moving rapidly over his copybook. That was the first indication that all was not well.

Gary is right-handed.

Jessica watched with astonishment and a creeping disquiet as her son's pen traveled over the page. The words he was writing—though English they were—made no sense at all.

“What's he writing, Mommy?” Kelly asked nervously, sharing his mother's unease.

“I don't know…. Gary?”

Gary did not reply but continued to write frantically. Then all at once he stopped. His body seemed to relax and he calmly turned to the next page. Jessica went to snatch the copybook away, but before she could reach it, his body had tensed again and the frantic writing continued. She tried to lift his wrist, but was shocked to discover that his arm and the hand that held the pen were quite immovable, as if “made of rock.”

She watched in horror as the writing, clear and then illegible by turns, started pouring out filthy words and phrases that had no place in a ten-year-old's vocabulary. There were drawings too: little designs resembling signs of the zodiac and five-pointed stars. She knew they were not idle doodles but had darker connotations.

In such a bizarre situation, she did the only thing she could. Grasping Gary around the waist, she pulled the chair from under him and hauled him away from the table. Incongruously, his body remained in a rigid seated position as though the chair were still in place, while the hand clutching the pen continued to make frantic writing motions in midair. Jessica lowered Gary to the floor. He collapsed, seemingly in a dead faint.

“I was sick with worry,” she says. “It was too much to take. I never saw the like of it. I couldn't understand any of it; it was crazy. I thought Gary was going to die. But a few seconds later he was all right again. He opened his eyes and looked around. The first thing he said was, ‘What happened, Mommy?' He didn't remember a thing. Nothing.”

Jessica tore the pages from the copybook, ran into the living room where a fire burned in the grate, and tossed them onto the coals. She averted her eyes as the pages burst into flame. She could not bring herself to look at the strange lines written by her son's hand. Nor did she wish to know where the garbled words and sinister pictographs had come from. Of one thing she was certain: they had not come from Gary; the words had not been his. More unnerving still, the handwriting had not resembled her son's. It was too elegant, as if from the hand of an artist.

When she returned to the kitchen, Gary was again seated at the table, wearing the same glazed look. She shook him; she was angry. He seemed to come to his senses. But then he looked her in the eye, and Jessica will never forget his words, so utterly out of character and so unexpected were they.

“
F*** you,
” he spat and ran from the house.

Jessica believes that her mind was fully made up at that moment. She was finally acknowledging that she was up against a very powerful force, one that could induce a sweet, mild-mannered fifth-grader to change utterly. The change was frightening. Jessica had feared it before; now she was in holy terror of it. She asked herself what could happen next.

She thought of God. Her visits to Father Dominic in his monastery had, to an extent, turned her thoughts to the Lord, yet she had to admit to herself that it was a deity unfamiliar to her. The monk's religious world, with its statues and incense, was not the one she had known as a child. She told herself now that it was silliness, that God did not change but his worshipers did. Christ was Christ, whether worshiped in a vast, thronged Roman basilica or in a plain and unadorned Lutheran chapel.

But these were rational considerations. Her heart told her that she must seek out the help of a priest of her own faith. She withdrew to the quiet of her bedroom, picked up the phone, and called John Ashwood, an Anglican vicar.

He came to visit her that same evening. He was sympathetic on learning of her difficulties and at once recommended the services of an exorcist.

“What!” She was incredulous. “Are you telling me Gary needs to be
exorcised?
”

“I do. From what you tell me, it sounds as if there's an unclean spirit at work. I'm not saying that it's controlling Gary; I'm saying that it's influencing him in some way. And it's time to send it back to where it came from before it does any more mischief.”

Her son needed an exorcism. She turned the curious word over in her head. Its associations seemed too outlandish by far. But she had to face facts and take the minister's advice seriously.

“All right, Vicar,” she said at last. “If you think it'll help Gary. When could you do it?”

“Not me. I haven't the experience. But there's a good man who does: Canon Lendrum. He's retired now but still very active with deliverance.” He patted her wrist. “Leave it to me. I'll get in touch with him. If anybody can help, it's William Lendrum.”

Jessica and her son arrived by taxi at the Lendrum house in south Belfast on a wet, March afternoon. It was Gary's first visit to the city. From the bus he had seen the twin cranes in the old Harland & Wolff shipyard, “David” and “Goliath.” They loomed majestically on the skyline, bright yellow against the gray. He wished to go there at once, see the giants close up. “Later, dear,” his mother promised him. There was more urgent business to attend to.

Canon Lendrum studied the boy—perhaps the youngest “visitor” he had ever welcomed into his home. He hesitated before thinking of Gary Lyttle as a demoniac, one suffering from demonic oppression. During his long ministry he had encountered several such unfortunates. None had appeared as normal—or as bright—as did Gary.

He impressed the canon with his spontaneity and precociousness. He answered all questions put to him seemingly without guile. There was no sign whatsoever of the willfulness that Reverend Ashwood had spoken about on the telephone, and certainly no trace of the bad language. Gary seemed to him to be a well-adjusted boy.