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Overview
For some Catholics, the answer is in the old adage, "Rome has spoken, the case is closed." Yet history tells a different story. When Rome speaks, the debate often heats up. And the case is never closed.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780824526771 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | PublishDrive |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2003 |
| Sold by: | PUBLISHDRIVE KFT |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Running from the Devil
A Memoir of a Boy Possessed
By Steve Kissing
The Crossroad Publishing Company
Copyright © 2003 Steve KissingAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8245-2677-1
CHAPTER 1
A Day to Remember
I knew what it felt like to pretend that the teacher had a pie in her face, that a girl had a beard, or that a priest was a Russian spy, the cross around his neck a camera beaming pictures back to the Kremlin. As such, when I had my first hallucination I knew that the horribly strange stuff in my head was not of my doing.
Some days are made for remembering. Like the day when you first learn how to ride a two-wheeler. Or, in my case, the day I and everyone else in my second-grade class saw Suzie Littlementh nearly naked. She was dressing for gym when the fire alarm sounded. She ran outside wearing nothing but her white go-go boots and pink panties. One doesn't forget a day like that. And I certainly have not forgotten the first day that someone or something came out of nowhere and took control of my mind.
On that day, I was an eleven-year-old fifth-grader at St. William, one of several Catholic elementary schools in the working-class Cincinnati neighborhood of Price Hill. The year was 1974. My favorite football team, the Miami Dolphins, won their second straight Super Bowl, thanks largely to Bob Griese and Larry Csonka. Ray Stevens' "The Streak," was my favorite song. And the adults all seemed to be talking about Watergate, whatever that was.
The day I first lost control of my mind was typical fifth-grade fare: homeroom, reading, history, and gym in the morning. Then a lunch of peas, canned ravioli, and fruit cocktail entombed in green gelatin. Recess was spent trying to outrun the guy covering me in tag football. It was then on to religion, math, and social studies.
That otherwise ordinary October day was deceptively sunny. My mind, like that of every other kid in the building, was intently focused on playing outside after school. The urge to enjoy the outdoors was at its zenith. The sun's bright rays recalled summer past, but the sun's low position reminded us that shorter, darker days were coming. The day, no doubt heaven-sent, was the kind when you played and played until your mom begged and begged you to come home for dinner.
Without warning of any sort, I began to hallucinate in social studies, smack in the middle of a tricky pop quiz on American Indians. One moment I was trying to remember the various ways the Red Man used maize; the next moment my brain felt as if it were tossed into one of those domed dice tumblers in the middle of a board game, some angry person pounding it over and over, dissatisfied with every number.
Everything registered as something other than who or what it really was. David McKinley, seated to my right, continued to look like himself, but my mind identified him as my thirty-five-year-old Uncle Lloyd. Kim Lacey, to my left, didn't physically change either (nor did I ever want her to), but my mind convinced me she was pop singer Helen Reddy. The pencil holder on the teacher's desk became a shovel; the film strip machine, a tuba; the corner coat rack, a big strip of bacon. And the blackboard became a hypodermic needle, blood on the tip.
I heard voices, too — startling voices, as when adults argue in the next room. The voices shouted in English, I think, but their speech was garbled, like when someone tries to talk with a mouthful of potato chips.
And I felt my brain change as if the soft tissue was turning to concrete from the inside out. My scalp tingled, and I would have sworn my hairs were standing on end, tiny sparks frolicking around my follicles. Never before could I recall actually feeling my brain. It creeped me out worse than the time when Carol Dank had a nosebleed and the teacher had her stand above the aquarium, the fish rising to the surface to sip her blood.
The experience, which lasted only seconds, seemed much longer. It was as if Time had been sucker-punched in the stomach and was now bent over, heaving, trying to recapture its breath and its dignity. (A position not unfamiliar to me.) The disturbance left as quickly as it came, zooming away like the Starship Enterprise after Captain Kirk orders the engines pushed to Warp 6.
The totally unexpected and freaky nature of what I experienced had the same effect on me as the nasty bicycle crash I had a few months earlier. I was zooming down the sidewalk faster than ever before, 100-percent pleased to be alive, pretending that I was piloting an airplane above a dense jungle, dropping napalm on the enemy. And then without warning, my front wheel hung up on something and I was kissing concrete, my palms, knees, and nose all losing some skin. I was no longer the carefree airplane pilot, but a villager down below, my skin on fire.
The episode in school left me with a C-minus on the quiz and a creepy feeling that stubbornly clung to me, like a Cracker Jack tattoo, for days. When the bell rang that day, I bolted out of the building, my mind racing, my young heart full of fear. Despite the sun and the warm fall breeze, I was in no mood for the usual after-school adventures with buddies Greg Teal, Lou Bella, and Kevin Craine. I just wanted to get home. Fast.
I spent the rest of the day on high alert, expecting the sensation to return. In fact, I hoped it would. Another episode wouldn't catch me off guard, I reasoned, so I'd be in a better position to analyze it.
I waited, too, for Mom or Dad to notice that something wasn't right with me. Married in their teens and only a few years older when they had me, they were young and as hip as parents could possibly be. And perceptive, too. I never had to tell them when I wasn't feeling well or when I was reprimanded for acting up in class; Mom and Dad could always tell. Surely, they would see this.
But my parents didn't notice that night. And I couldn't bring myself to tell them. How could I put into words something so odd, so troublesome, so downright frightening? The words were nowhere to be found. Besides, the adults in my life would have assumed that I was telling another one of my fibs.
Back in second grade, I told my teacher that my mother was expecting, for it seemed as if all the other students' mothers were pregnant. When my classmates brought in pictures of newborns wrapped tight in hospital blankets, I brought in a tale about my mother's miscarriage. I told the story so convincingly that the teacher gave me a sympathy card to give to my mother. And I was dumb enough to give it to her.
But the hallucination was not the work of my imagination. Of that much I was absolutely certain. I considered exaggeration — in all its forms — one of my greatest talents. Maybe my only one. Adults often praised my creativity. And my friends enjoyed my storytelling, especially when the antagonist was Bloody Bones, the rickety skeleton who patrolled our school at night, tormenting any student foolish enough to stay behind.
I told my best Bloody Bones stories in dark closets on rainy Saturday afternoons. My face, taut with exaggerated strain and partially illuminated by the beam of a dim flashlight, made believers of everyone who heard my yarn.
So I knew what it meant to imagine something that wasn't — and maybe even couldn't be — true. I knew what it felt like to pretend that the teacher had a pie in her face, that a girl had a beard, or that a priest was a Russian spy, the cross around his neck a camera beaming pictures back to the Kremlin. As such, when I had my first hallucination I knew that the horribly strange stuff in my head was not of my doing. It was not pretend. It was not a dream. No, it was as real as my orange-and-black bike with the banana seat. As real as my school desk with the flip-up lid. As real as my love for rockets, race cars, and reading.
But what was the cause? Everything had one.
There was nothing unusual about the day. I had risen early and eaten a bowl of oatmeal with my siblings: Larry, a seventh grader; Dave, in third grade; and Teri, in second. We didn't talk while we shoveled the oats into our mouths and listened to Top-40 tunes on WSAI-AM. Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" and Jim Croce's "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" were included in that morning's play list. We then walked, along with our cousins Mike and Lisa, who lived below us in our two-family home, to St. William, a half-mile away. The rest of the day prior to the hallucination was also too ordinary to provide any clues.
But there must be some explanation, I thought. My favorite subject was science. Great minds figured out gravity, molecules, and how to make soft-serve ice cream, so certainly I could unlock this mystery of mine. For a week, my mission in life was determining what happened to my head to cause my condition.
Three likely possibilities came to mind — three incidents that each left me with tremendous headaches. Perhaps one or more injured my brain.
Possible Cause #1: That previous summer I left my eye glasses, thick as bulletproof glass, at home rather than risk ridicule wearing them at week-long camp. I walked off the trail several times into thick brush, but at least I wasn't called "four eyes." By the time my parents picked up my siblings and me, abrasions covered my arms and legs. And I was vomiting from the eyestrain.
Possible Cause #2: While exploring the innards of an electric alarm clock — which I had failed to unplug — my metal screwdriver touched the power coil. A heavy jolt shot up my arm, dropping my skinny body, then topped with long, brown hair, to the floor. I lost a good five minutes of my life to that clock.
Possible Cause #3: In an attempt to understand how a light bulb works, I stared into one that was illuminated for fifteen minutes. The burning sensation in the back of my eyes and the headache that lasted for hours were a small price to pay for the pursuit of scientific truth.
I dismissed these possible causes. Each had happened at least three months prior, a long time ago, and there had been no immediate side effects.
The disturbing hallucinations and eerie sensations would return several times during the next couple of months. Through devotion to my science project (a papier-mâché volcano powered by vinegar and baking soda) as well as overdoses of board games, I managed for those few months to mostly ignore my troubled condition, whatever its sorry cause. I did come close to saying something once or twice, but as with before, I struggled to find the right words. I feared it was something bad. Real bad. I knew for sure when the hallucinations began happening in God's house.
CHAPTER 2Murder and Mayhem
My stomach felt queasy as I trudged out of the pew and toward the door with the rest of my class. That day would forever change things. I would divide my life in two parts: BD and AD. Before Devil and After Devil.
Each week, the students at St. William's Elementary attended Mass. I did my best to make sense of what I saw and heard, creating my own interpretations to fill in any blanks. For me, the Bible symbolized God, the crucifixes represented Jesus, and the puffs of smoke from burning candles or incense were a reminder of the Holy Ghost, perfectly named because he was the hardest of the Trinity to imagine.
Though the words — let alone the theology — of the Mass were largely beyond our understanding, we welcomed the mandatory weekday worship, because the hour that Mass required shortened all of our classes. Ten minutes subtracted from math class was a blessing in its own right, one appreciated by us kids as much as, if not more than, the opportunity to partake in God's meal.
There was much to enjoy inside St. William, a large, sandstone church reminiscent of the great European cathedrals, not to mention the Vatican's Basilica of St. Peter, which I had seen in encyclopedias. St. William's Church featured massive Italian marble pillars, always cool to the touch, even in August; one-hundred-foot ceilings, way taller than any tree my friends and I had ever climbed; and angels painted high above the main altar, right where you would expect the real ones to be fluttering about.
I also enjoyed the statues inside St. William. There was one of Jesus, of course, his sacred heart exposed, a sword through it with a flame coming out of the top. There were also statues of Mary and Joseph. I especially liked how the banks of votive candles at the base of these religious replicas cast flickering shadows on their ceramic faces, which usually made them look as if they were crying for our sins. But every now and then, they looked as if they were laughing at us.
What Jesus and his parents found so funny, I wasn't absolutely sure. Maybe it was seventh-grade teacher Mrs. Lauderman's tie-dyed dress. Or the fact that you could see Frank Lucinda's underwear when he genuflected before stepping into the pew.
I especially liked all the textures and colors of the Mass: the priest's silky purple robes, the smooth gold chalices, and the waxy wooden pews polished to a glorious shine. Mass was always a good show.
I felt safe inside St. William, too. Only one place compared: my parents' bed. As a younger child, I sought refuge between Mom and Dad when evening thunderstorms rocked our house and my nerves. I was invincible when between parents or pews. Or so I thought.
On this particular day, about two months after my initial hallucination, the drama of Mass took on new proportions when, right after Communion, reality contorted like the horribly disfigured fingers of ninety-five-year-old Sister Mary James. Without warning, it was as if I had been beamed to another planet where things looked just as they did on earth, but meant something else altogether.
In this new and bizarre world — one I would visit often in the coming years — if you looked up "altar," for example, in the dictionary, the definition would read exactly as it did back on earth, but the accompanying picture would be a cougar or a doorknob or a piece of apple pie. During this particular visit, the Blessed Virgin still looked like the Blessed Virgin, but my mind convinced me she was a refrigerator. The organ looked like an organ, but my mind told me it was mailbox. And, strangest of all, Father Kennedy, our beloved pastor, looked as he usually did, but my mind convinced me he was Abraham Lincoln.
The sensation in my head returned. The flesh and blood in my skull felt like a piece of machinery, its gears grinding, its base vibrating, steam hissing out its sides. The sounds of the Mass — the music, the priests' pronouncements, kids sneezing — were alternately sped up and slowed down, just as if I spun a portion of a 45 rpm record at 33 rpm's and then 78 rpm's.
After regaining control of my mind, I was frightened like I had never been before or since. And then — right then — is when I, with a predisposition toward the fanciful and imaginary, leapt to a conclusion that would set off a crazy chain of events and alter the way I looked at myself, the world, everything.
I concluded that only one being could possibly have the power to penetrate the protective force field of St. William's Church and play pranks upon the faithful in God's own home. It was then — right then — when I realized that I was possessed by the Devil himself.
God have mercy on my poor soul!
Who other than Satan could cause such nerve-wracking, stomach-churning experiences? Who else would dare interfere with the beauty, pageantry, and mystery of the Holy Mass? Who else would dare mess with Father Kennedy, President Lincoln, and especially the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin herself? Only Satan had that kind of nerve.
The Devil wasn't some figment of my imagination. Nor was he a symbolic representation of evil and eternal damnation that the church concocted to keep us kids in line. Sure, he had that effect on us, at least most of the time, but he was a real being, capable of interfering in human affairs, capable of turning most anyone into his plaything.
The fact that Satan would target me was, unfortunately, not hard to grasp. I'd been asking for trouble. "Do bad things and you befriend the Devil," Sister Lucy had told us. She was one of our teachers who belonged to the Sisters of Charity, a dozen of whom lived in a convent on school grounds. Sister Lucy was always smiling, the gold crucifix around her neck always shining, even on cloudy days. Some sort of miracle, I supposed.
The nuns were women beyond reproach. So Sister Lucy was right about the Devil. She was right about everything.
And I had been a naughty boy. No doubt about that.
I shoplifted candy bars from the neighborhood pharmacy and convenience stores. I stole coins from the lunch money jar Mom kept atop the refrigerator. I made gunpowder with Lou Bella after being told by Mom that if she ever caught me with the banned substance, she'd rip my limbs off. One by one.
But as I quickly inventoried these and my other sins, while acting as if I was paying attention to the Mass, my biggest transgression leapt out of my subconscious. It stood before me like a teacher expecting an answer to her question while I chewed on my lip and twisted my pencil, one eye on her, the other on the floor.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Running from the Devil by Steve Kissing. Copyright © 2003 Steve Kissing. Excerpted by permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR,Chapter 1: A Day to Remember,
Chapter 2: Murder and Mayhem,
Chapter 3: Brown-Nosing Jesus,
Chapter 4: Parental Pleasures,
Chapter 5: A Sporting Chance,
Chapter 6: Heavy Artillery,
Chapter 7: False Gods,
Chapter 8: Triple the Fun,
Chapter 9: The Thrill of Victory,
Chapter 10: Media Attention,
Chapter 11: The Fires Within,
Chapter 12: Marian Miracles,
Chapter 13: A Trophy Life,
Chapter 14: Let 'Em In,
Chapter 15: Dance Lessons,
Chapter 16: Bottoms Up,
Chapter 17: A Ladder to Rome,
Chapter 18: Popularity Bank,
Chapter 19: Wet Kisses,
Chapter 20: An Altar-ed State,
Chapter 21: Sinister Plan,
Chapter 22: Outdoor Stories,
Chapter 23: A Fork in the Road,
Chapter 24: The Clash of Titans,
Chapter 25: Chariot of the Gods,
Chapter 26: Bumbling Idiot,
Chapter 27: A River of Lies,
Chapter 28: A Backseat Calling,
Chapter 29: Losing Face,
Chapter 30: Coming Undone,
Chapter 31: Nervous Laughter,
EPILOGUE,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
ABOUT THE AUTHOR,
Interviews
Looking (and Laughing) at Life
I'm a big fan of memoirs. I love reading about ordinary people who have had unusual experiences or who can write about the everyday in a fresh and engaging way. After reading dozens of memoirs, I found myself asking, "What stories do I have to tell?" I think that's a hallmark of a powerful memoir: Does it inspire you to think about your own life and share a story or two, even if just at the office water cooler?
When I began thinking about interesting stories from my life, my mind went immediately to my childhood. I suppose that's because I am so fond of it, even though there were some tough moments and plenty of my own behavior that makes me cringe today.
My instincts told me that others would enjoy hearing about how I convinced myself as a fifth-grade student that I was possessed by the devil. (What scarier antagonist than the Prince of Darkness himself?) The lengths I underwent to hide my condition and "purify" myself were rather silly, as was the awkward way in which I engaged the world. (What goofier protagonist than the Prince of "Dorkness"?)
I assumed that there weren't many out there who grew up thinking Satan was trying to steal their mind or soul, but I did believe that many could relate to keeping secrets. At one time or another, most of us have hoped and prayed that someone wouldn't discover something that would expose us as weak or different or strange.
My initial motivation for writing the book was to make people laugh. We could all use a few more chuckles, right?
But I'm also hoping that my humble little book finds its way into the right hands. I don't know whose hands those are. (My next-door neighbor's? Your aunt's? Yours?) I don't know how many sets of hands those are. (One? Five? Ten thousand?) Nor am I sure where those hands are? (Florida? Montana? Alaska?) Yet despite all this not knowing, I hope that the book finds those people and sheds some light, however dim, on their life. Maybe it's a teacher who is struggling with a student. Maybe it's a daughter who worries about her mother's drinking. Maybe it's a young person who wonders if the world will accept him as he truly is.
Some wise person once said that if we dive down deeply enough into ourselves, we ultimately emerge in other people. I've tried to go as deep as I could. I hope you find something of yourself in my book. Steve Kissing
Preface
What follows is a true story about my thoroughly weird, though oddly wonderful, childhood. You should know, however, that the tale is driven almost entirely by imagination and memory. MY imagination and MY memory. Though I relied some on letters, journals, and other mementos, I did not place my recollections before friends and family for a vote. To borrow a phrase from Tobias Wolff, "memory has its own story to tell."
I have also deliberately altered some facts. The reasons for this are both legal and literary. For instance, I have changed most people's names. Some events are presented out of order. And I did create a couple of composite characters.
In short, this is not a work of journalism. But while certain details in this story may not be precisely factual, the sense of what was in my mind and my heart is absolutely true. As is the fact that, while growing up, I somehow managed to keep a big and scary secret all to myself. At first, it's a hard thing to believe. I know. But, on closer inspection, mine is but one of countless cases in which children go to great leangths to hide, disguise, or even intentionally misinterpret what troubles and bewilders them. What child doesn't enjoy imagining a world that is somehow better, be it more safe or sensitive, more friendly or fantastic?
Finally, I wish to emphasize that I am not a physician. Or a theologican. Nor were any consulted in the preparation of this book. I hope you enjoy my story.
Steve Kissing
Sincinnati, Ohio
Fall 2002