Page 54 of Splintered
“How are you doing? Truly?”
Ben shook his head. “I’m…”
“This is not what you want. This exorcism.”
“I don’t know what to think about it. I’m supporting Evan’s choices. But if this doesn’t work, then we have to look at different options.”
“An exorcism is not a one-shot deal. This is not like Hollywood would have you believe. An exorcism is a journey. The ritual today will weaken the demon and hopefully banish it. But healing cannot take place in a vacuum. The pain, the suffering in the soul that Evan has gone through? That will take time to recover. His soul is hungry for love.”
“He has my love!”
“And yet, he was afraid to approach you when he needed you most. There is room between you both to draw closer together. Through this experience, and through his healing, I hope that you both will find a new depth of love for one another. One where this will not happen again.”
“Are you saying that it’s our fault he’s possessed? That we did something wrong? We allowed this demon in?”
“No. Demonic possession is not a sin. One doesn’t become possessed because of what they did or didn’t do. You cannot be blamed for being possessed. Possession often comes after great pain. Great tragedy. Demons love to find the weaknesses in our souls, and there is no greater weakness than pain from love.”
“So if he’s possessed, it’s just to hurt him?” Ben paced away. “Are you certain this doesn’t sound like a persecutorial delusion, common in a paranoid schizophrenic break? He’s coming off the medication Dr. Kao gave him, and the symptoms are returning: hallucinations, exhaustion, loss of appetite, fatigue. His mood had gone flat. And with this whole possession thing… what if we’re just feeding into delusions he’s creating? What if we’re sustaining his mental illness instead of helping solve it?”
Father Mathew peered at him. Studied him for a long moment. “Possession often targets those around us. A possession is not designed to most hurt the one possessed. Or rather, the target of the demon might not necessarily be the actual person possessed. Possessions have a way of rooting through lives, through souls, in curious ways. Remember, the demon’s goal is to hurt. Hurt Evan and hurt everyone who loves him. Ask yourself: what is the way you can hurt Evan the most?”
By leaving. By moving him out. By ending us.
By not being there for him.
By not believing him.
But what was he supposed to believe? Where were the facts, the cold hard proof? The MRI diagnosis, the lab results? He didn’t do well in the absence of hard realities. He’d never had the mind for faith, for blind trust over an open canyon. He was feeling his way through this, reacting, trying to keep his head above water.
“I don’t like the restraints.”
“Neither do I. But I know an exorcist who was strangled with his own stole by a woman he refused to restrain during an exorcism. I owe a duty to both Evan and you, and his parents, to keep everyone safe. Evan would be distraught if he realized he’d hurt someone he loved through this.”
Ben paced again, covering his mouth with his hands. He couldn’t reason through it all, couldn’t see through to the other side. In teaching history, he usually could see patterns that led to eventual outcomes, the tides that pushed men through their choices as easy to read and understand as a book, years after the fact.
But in the moment, in the present. How hard it was to see the right choice, the right path.
“When you witness an exorcism, you come face to face with the supernatural world. You have to face the demons and the truth of evil, realities you maybe do not want to face in daylight. You have to face suffering. You have to face the depths of soul-filled anguish.”
“It doesn’t make sense to me why God would allow something like that. Something like this.”
“In everything, absolutely everything, there is choice. Free will is our greatest gift of all, and our greatest burden. If it were inevitable for all humans to become evil, then our creator would be responsible for such an act. If the inevitability of human wickedness is a fact, then of course the creator of humanity should be held to blame. But,” Father Mathew smiled, “human evil isnotinevitable in all of us. There is so much good in us. We are all freenotto cause evil. Not to sin. Not to be wicked. We have the choice to be good, and the choice to be evil. And in that choice, that freedom, lies God.”
“Then you’re saying it’s Evan’schoiceto be possessed?”
“Demons, too, have their choices, and have made their choices. This demon could have chosen differently. Evan’s suffering is the outcome of the demon’s choice to be evil.”
Ben looked away. “When do we begin?”
“When Dr. Kao’s examination is finished.”
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
Dr. Kao pronouncedEvan ready to proceed just before five o’clock in the evening. She’d done a full physical, ran his vitals for a baseline, had even drawn blood for a portable assay. Throughout the physical, Evan had dropped further into a stupor until he was almost unresponsive to her questions. She called Father Mathew into the living room first, and then the rest of the family.
“It’s time,” Father Mathew said.
