The devil comes at night

In 1989 I was living on the couch of two older gay male friends. Michael and Tim gave me a spot to crash at when I was temporarily homeless at 17.

Both of them were at work that night, so I was sitting in Michael’s beige recliner in front of the television, snacking and dozing. Some time later I woke up in a terrified start; that kind of jolt you get when you’re half asleep in a hypnagogic state.

This time I was terrified, not startled. I reached over to turn the brass lamp on (the one with the white pleated paper shade). It was a mistake to watch TV in the dark, because A Face could get me. One of the Faces that flashes for just one frame on the screen during The Exorcist. The white, dead, toothful face.

I had just seen The Exorcist for the first time two weeks earlier (and being a masochist, I was reading the book). To say that it terrified me does not capture the level of fear. It made me feel the way a little kid feels when he has a horrible nightmare and he’s not yet old enough to be confident that it wasn’t real.

That film, and the book, left me unable to sleep with the lights off for almost three weeks. For years afterward, scenes from the movie popped up in my mind when I was anxious or spooked. But it wasn’t the movie or the story that “made me” afraid of things in the dark. That fear, a fear of the devil himself, was already there. The film merely put a particular era’s cover and branding on an existing fear.

Since I was a small boy I’ve been afraid of the devil. Satan, specifically. And I’ve been afraid of his familiars, his demons, the places and people where he allows himself to be glimpsed. The child possessed, even momentarily. The cloven hoof of the goat that looks at you in such a way that you know he knows.

Along with the devil I’ve been frightened by ghosts all my life. Stories like The Turn of the Screw scare me at a soul level. Serial killers, slashers, war mongers—they don’t frighten me. The unquiet dead do.

I’m writing this to try to start figuring out why and how I can be afraid of things that I don’t think exist. For the first time in my life I’m uncertain about what I think is and isn’t real when it comes to the spiritual and supernatural. Logically, I don’t believe in God. I just don’t see the evidence (yes, I know, religious readers, that I may be looking for God with the wrong binoculars. I do know.). My doubt is the same and no more interesting than the doubt of people far more brilliant than me throughout human history.

But a part of me—a fragment of my personality?—obviously believes in the devil and ghosts. This could not scare me as badly as it does if I didn’t believe it were true. Do you not think?

The interesting part is that I’m getting closer to believing in the devil consciously, but still having a hard time believing in God, the complementary side. This is going to take time to sort out.

Devils and haints only come to me at night, and only sometimes. They will be gone for months, then they will come back as they did two nights ago. As I got sleepy on the couch and thought about going to bed, I thought I saw movement at the end of the dark hall. I was immediately bolt upright and awake, heart pounding. There was a dead woman there in the dark, behind the curtain that separated the rooms, so I quickly went to my bedroom with a book.

There was no safe harbor. I knew there was a dead woman under the slats. A bathtub corpse lady with skin-slip. All she wants to do is touch my feet. That’s all. She just wants to touch my feet to let me know she’s there.

Yes, she’s a character from The Shining. But again, that’s just branding on an extant fear. The bathtub corpse lady is just one of the dead women who have lived under my bed these 50 years. Sometimes it’s been a witch who lives in the forest, or a Victorian mother who won’t rest in the grave. The costume hardly matters.

When these apparitions come (thank God I’ve never actually seen one with my eyes) I wonder if I’ve brought it on myself. Have I invited the devil into my home? I have had times when I seriously contemplated whether I was born of the devil, whether I carry his mark, whether I’ve been his all along.

Starting in childhood, the devil has asked me from time to time if I’d like to live deliciously. The details of these stories are, even for me, too personal to set down in writing, but I have answered “yes” more than once. In my childhood dreams, and sometimes in waking life, though I never thought of my actions at the time as answering Satan’s call.

The dose makes the poison, and the sweet life eventually turned bitter. I have lived deliciously many times. Now, I want to live sanely, normally, and with good purpose.

But the devil is still haunting me. He and his corporation. His ghosts, his demons, his factotums. His automata.

The night fears recede with the morning light, but they come back. Where do they come from? What are they telling me? Will I learn that it’s all been true all this time? Will I die and, as I fear, wake up in hell for eternity, the final destination that’s been printed on my ticket from birth?

Will the dead woman be back tonight? Will I regret writing this tomorrow?

Both are likely.

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