I leaned one hip against a sink and glanced tentatively at the stall door to my right, cringing as I suppressed a wave of nausea and trying to think of other things to distract myself. The way the sun looked as it rose over the ponderosas that morning. The way we were all going to be raptured away at the end of the summer. The way the fluorescent lights made my acne stand out in the mirrors.
It was no use. There is simply no pleasant way to listen to somebody puking in a public restroom.
Personally, I am not one overly prone to throwing up. Once, when I got some pieces of bailing wire caught in my tonsils due to a bizarre Youth Group Harvest Fest hay ride incident, my mom made me swallow a tablespoon or two full of Ipecac in order to attempt to force it out. She was certain that a piece of hay had simply lodged itself in my throat and needed to be encouraged upwards. She made me take the vile elixir because after an hour of tears and unsuccessful attempts at sticking my finger down my throat and forceful half-grunts which made me sound like a constipated Neanderthal, I could not self-induce vomiting.
All this is to say that vomiting was a relatively new sensation to me at the time, having had perhaps only one or two incidences prior, somewhere in my early, hazy youth. And while puking up the contents of my stomach did not turn out to be a successful method of bailing line extraction (I would need minor surgery for that), I did learn something about myself: I had a serious handicap. Certainly, when I actually needed the skill, I was not able to produce, leaving me somewhat defunct in the area. Which is why I have a kind of weird respect for bulimics. And Tudors. And anybody who can produce vomit on demand, actually.
So when I stood, listening, grimacing and holding down my own impotent gag reflex as Megan retched behind the closed stall door, I have to admit that I was not only disgusted beyond belief, but I was also impressed as hell. When she finally emerged after several minutes of agonized retching, she leaned against the door, exhausted.
“I was throwing up demons,” she informed me with hollow eyes. “I thought I was done, but they just kept coming.”
I glanced behind her at the shimmering fresh bowl, and wondered if they were down in the camp’s septic system.
Earlier that afternoon, we had been enjoying turkey sandwiches in the cafeteria. We never had our expectations set very high for the food at church camp. We were under no illusions that Rachael Ray was hard at work behind the closed doors to the kitchen. As such, we had made the best we could of what we were given. Now, however, I was wishing that I had passed on lunch.
I had sat next to Megan in the lunchroom because there was something about her that intrigued me. She was part of the classification of teenager we called “New Wave,” which would later be called “Goth” and sometimes “Emo” in its millennial reiterations. She wore all black clothing, dark eye makeup and lipstick, and had by her own admission done a fair amount of experimentation in the arena of hallucinogens—information that might have proved useful had I been aware of what that really meant during the time I was sharing a cabin with her.
In retrospect, I am not entirely certain what would have inspired me to keep such company back then in my “über-Christian” state, but I believe I was trying to convert her. It was no secret that she was a troubled youth, if ever there was one. And still, she had a sweet personality. She was always friendly to Scott and me. When she set down her half-eaten sandwich and whispered to me that she was having flashbacks, I was on it. I asked her if she wanted to go lie down. She murmured something about spiders crawling on her hands and nodded emphatically. Seeing my chance to be a good friend, I let her hold onto my arm as we walked back alone through the woods to our cabin, all the while becoming more and more freaked out as she narrated what she was seeing around her. That tree was a dog a second ago. There was an old man peeking at us from behind that tree. And behind the next, another man stood with an axe.
By the time we got to the empty cabin, I was ready. I knew about this sort of thing. I had heard about a girl who had been through an exorcism. She, sadly, had been inhabited by a “Laughing Demon” right in the middle of Youth Group—and there was nothing funny about it.
“Megan, I think we should pray,” I told her, leaning up against a ladder to a top bunk. She stood facing me from a couple of feet away, blinking. Since she didn’t argue, I started right in. I had just gotten to the part where I asked God in Jesus’ name to protect Megan, when I felt like I was being watched. I looked up.
“Stop praying,” the voice told me.
It was Megan’s voice, only not. Lower. Louder. Likewise, her face was her own, only not. Something weird about her eyes. Bigger, more piercing. They were staring hatred clean through me. In truth, they almost looked…reptilian. I stammered a little. I had not exactly expected this. Or maybe I had. At any rate, I attempted to rise to the occasion with Me vs. The Demon, round one.
“In Jesus’ name, leave Megan alone,” I told it.
She closed her eyes. Whimpered a little. I began to pray harder.
“Don’t stop praying,” she whimpered at me. “It hurts, but don’t stop.”
“You have no business here,” I told the demon. “I order you back to Hell where you belong.”
“Shut up,” it told me firmly, her cold eyes glaring at me once again. Another shock went through my body as I stared back at her.
“In Jesus’ name come out of her and leave her alone,” I repeated, to which it replied by shaking Megan’s body violently before throwing her like a ragdoll onto one of the lower beds, where she proceeded to pass out.
I stood there, staring at her, unsure of what to do next. Had the demon left? Does one touch a person when they are passed out due to demon infestation? Is it contagious? I was not given the chance to find out. That was when she jumped up and ran to the bathroom, where she began puking up demons along with her turkey sandwich.
I stood there at the stall door contemplating whether what I had just witnessed was real. I had heard about things like this happening. Since then, I have watched The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and I can honestly say that it was nothing like that. There were no simultaneous voices jeering at me in German, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic. The only thing I heard was in plain English ordering me to stop praying. There were no amazing feats of contortion. Megan ran on her own two feet in a balanced manner without the bizarre compulsion to defy the bounds of human joints or the laws of gravity. I did not witness a Cirque de Soleil demon. But I must also say that at the time, it felt just as real as if I had.
And, I had no idea whether I had just won or lost. Unlike the Catholics, there are not exactly any commonly known exorcism rites in the Evangelical church. It’s more or less a matter of ordering a demon out of somebody in Jesus’ name and sitting back and letting the unseen powers battle it out amongst themselves. The guys in white versus the guys in red. And now, I knew I had to take the responsibility to lead her to Christ—so the demon didn’t come back with friends (or “Legion”, as the Bible puts it). But as it was, I had no assurance that what I had done was adequate.
I decided that there was only one thing left to do. Take her to King Richard for Round 2. He would know what to do. His primary occupation outside of the church was dealing with the heathens around town; he would surely recognize what was going on. I was just sure he had seen more than his fair share of demon-infested people during his bar ministry.
When she was done hacking up demons, we made our way gingerly back toward the cabin with her holding on to my arm for support. Fortunately, people were coming back from lunch and I spotted Richard’s blond strands bouncing in the wind like glory. Clearly, God had positioned him right where he needed to be. I called out to him. He turned almost as if he had been expecting me. I felt a sense of relief wash over me. Everything was going to be OK.
But everything was not going to be OK. That was when it all fell apart. As soon as Megan understood that Richard had been summoned, she let go of me faster than I could process and took off. I tried chasing her for several steps, but she was clearly faster than I ever would be with a pair of high tech track shoes and professional training. Whatever demons were left in her had specializations in long-distance running.
I fell back, feeling defeated and bewildered.
Later that week when I got home, I tried to explain to my mother what had happened. My mother—who managed to shame me with the level of how impressed she was that Megan could vomit on demand if the whole thing had been a hoax—simply shook her head, commenting that the whole thing sounded “bizarre.” My father, on the other hand, seemed ignited by my story, leading me to a bookshelf he used for his more “interesting” collection of books. Seeming to think that I had suddenly come of age through the experience, he stacked several books on the floor marked with various pentagrams and large red lettering describing how the Church of Satan was alive and well and threatening Christ’s church through rock music and subliminal advertising.
“I think you’ll find these interesting,” he told me. Together, we leafed through the pages and talked about what might be happening on the other side of the veil. It was one of our favorite topics, with me plying him with questions and him answering with what the scriptures had to say on various topics. And while he was never quick to say “this is how it is,” we would spend hours talking together about “how it might be,” with each of us trying to one-up the other on what we knew about what the Bible had to say on the topic, and in what version. It was fun. Like a game. He opened my mind to possibilities, while at the same time challenging me to look closely at the options. More than anyone, my father taught me to question.
“There are a lot of things we don’t understand, honey,” he would say whenever we would come to a stalemate on a topic. “Maybe someday we will, but for now they will just have to remain a mystery.” Then he would put an arm around my shoulders and pull me in close. “Just remember, we’re on this path together. You, me, all of the people you come in contact with every day. As nice as it would be, it’s not up to us to have every little thing figured out. It’s our job to love each other.”
Excerpted from Devangelical, by Erika Rae, 2012.
