Haunted
Cyn Bagley (c) 2015. Published in "Ghostly Glimmers."
It is common knowledge that ghosts haunt the place of their deaths. And yes, many times they do. But I remember one case where a ghost haunted a person. My name is Albert Schwieizen and that person was my mother Gertrude.
As a small child, Gertrude had been kidnapped by a serial killer, whose preferred prey were young girls under six. He would take them to a certain forest clearing and perform a human sacrifice. The police, once they found the clearing and the remains, believed he was involved with a satanic cult.
Oh yes, you have probably heard of him. Notoriety sticks to the most heinious killers and he was undoubtedly one of those.
In the case of my mother, before he finished his ritual, the police surrounded the clearing and killed him in front of Gertrude’s eyes. The trauma didn’t seem to affect her. Of course there were very few, if any, child psychologists at the time. Her parents breathed a sigh of relief and and went on with their lives.
Their defense mechanism of denial was a major reason Getrude forgot. Of course children are little egoist and are contented in their little worlds. As for Getrude, her trauma didn’t appear until she had a son, me. Yes, it started after my birth.
What I was told is that when her emotions opened up to another helpless person that she began to see the ghost.
He was tall and darkly handsome with a cruel twist to his lips. The first time she saw him was at a dinner party. When she asked who that man was, the hostess was unnerved that Gertrude was pointing to an empty corner. By the time I was ten she was in full-blown schizophrenic episodes. Her psychologist tried counseling, shock treatments, and finally a lobotomy.
It was after the lobotomy that she became possessed. Soon after the surgery, she bit off a male nurse’s ear. For her safety and the safety of the staff, she was put in an isolation room. She painted the walls with anything she had including blood until the staff gave her writing instruments.
Some of the pictures on the walls were death scenes of girls she had never met. These were the same girls who had been killed by the serial killer, who had kidnapped her long ago.
When I was eighteen my father told me that my mother was still alive. He took me to the gray installation filled with the cries of the criminally insane. My father, a researcher, had spent many of his working hours trying to understand why my mother was insane. He looked into viruses and DNA code, but he was still unable to find the cause of my mother’s insanity.
We went to the isolation chamber that had become her haven. I looked at her paintings. I took pictures of the walls. As I looked into her cold dead eyes, I knew she was gone and that something, someone else, peeked out of her dark brown eyes.
The next day I took the pictures to the police to compare them with the file on the serial killer. Every child on the wall was in that file. I had my proof. The thing looking out of my mother was that man who had killed so many innocent girls.
My father didn’t believe me. But, I spent months trying to convince him that we needed to have an exorcism performed on her. Finally he gave in.
The next step was to convince the Church that she needed an exorcism. I was told that they didn’t do them anymore. That exorcisms were to hard on the exorcist and the person possessed. When they gave in, then I had to find a priest who would do it.
On the day of the exorcism, the sky was dark and cloudy. The priest started at noon when the sun and power of the light was at its peak. My father and I tied Gertrude to the bed. Then we held her down by her shoulders as the priest started his prayers and chanting.
He threw droplets of holy water on her body. It steamed when it hit her face and hands. She screamed at us in a low power voice, telling us our sins. We prayed as she told of the death of each child and how it made her feel so powerful to see the light leave that little body. When she finished the details she named each girl.
The priest continued and tears fell from my eyes. We didn’t falter. We didn’t fail. We held her there until that last final scream.
If I believed in hell, I would have consigned that spirit there. It had tortured my mother for years.
I grabbed my mother’s chin and looked into her eyes. I saw her there for one moment. She smiled at me and then relaxed, her eyes glassy. A doctor shoved us away and checked her pulse. They tried to resuscitate her, but she was gone.
The grief was terrible. I had lost her twice.
***
So that is why I hunt ghosts. Not the ones that haunt structures. Not the ones that touch you when you are wandering the cemeteries at midnight. I hunt the ones that possess people. The ones who harm and torture the living. I send them to where they belong.
Sometimes I save the poor soul who has been possessed. Sometimes, I don’t.