Out of the Devil’s Cauldron 5 page

I roamed the tombs. It was fresh graves I sought, not old ones—graves only weeks old. Directed by St. Ilia, I visited three graves that night—two that had committed suicide and

one that was shot to death. My assignment was to take those spirits home to use them against my enemies, and those people would die the same way the ones in the graves had died. It was cold. The ground of those tombs felt like ice as I knelt before each one and carried out the contract, using the pieces of white candles, a cigar, and white rum I had brought.

“John, is everything okay?” my godmother croaked in a hoarse voice from the cemetery gates.

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s okay. Just leave me alone . . .

I’m doing my thing,” I said, irritated that she might raise a disturbance.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she replied.

“What a stubborn person I brought with me tonight,” I muttered under my breath. But my irritation soon gave way to excitement as the demon spirit led me from grave to grave. I shivered. I didn’t know whether I was cold because of the weather or because I was surrounded by the dead that night. My veins pumped with adrenaline as I realized that in just a few days Halloween would be at my door; I was going to go out and have a good time with my boys—my enemies long forgotten.

Halloween Rendezvous

That weekend, on Halloween night, I catered to the demons at my home, set up all my witchcraft spells against

those I hated, and then got dressed up and went to meet my two friends at the neighborhood club in Parkchester.

We were too cool to be dressed in costumes. Instead I wore a nice pair of jeans, a white shirt, and had my hair slicked back to perfection. We could hear the music pumping loudly as we approached the club on foot.

“Hey, John, you gonna meet some cuties tonight?” my buddy Jose said, nudging me with his elbow. “I can feel it, bro. I can feel the vibes.”

“Oh yeah?” I grinned back at him. “Maybe I will—I’ll try to find one for both of you’s too.” We laughed as we paid the cover charge and stepped past the bouncer into the darkened club. Inside the scene was electric, with a few hundred people all dressed out in crazy costumes and the dance floor packed with bodies gyrating to the salsa beat. The atmosphere was right. I could feel the eerie Halloween chill in the air, and I knew the spirits wanted to communicate with me. I didn’t know whether to party that night or look for victims.

I saw her in the corner—a beautiful girl in a short, black, elegant witch costume with long black hair and pale skin. She had the face of an angel, and instantly I knew I had to have her. Whoever she was, she didn’t have a problem saying no, as I saw guy after guy get shot down when they asked her to dance. But somehow I knew it would be different for me, even though I was shy about approaching her.

Go to her, a voice in my head commanded. She’s yours.I sauntered across the room and stood right next to her at the bar. Her back was turned to me as she talked with her

girlfriend.

“Would you like to dance?” I asked over the music. She turned around, and a slow smile spread across her

beautiful face. “I would love to,” she said. As we danced on the dance floor, we kept gazing at each other and smiling.

“What’s your name?” I said, leaning my head down close to her ear.

“I’m Mari . . . I live in Brooklyn.”

“Well, you’re a long way from home, Mari, but I’m glad you decided to come to the Bronx tonight. I’m John. I hope we can get to know each other better.”

“We’ll see,” she said, tossing her hair with a coy smile. We kept dancing all night, and at one point I felt the spirits telling me to kiss her. Without warning I leaned over and

kissed her full on the mouth, and she went into shock—she even stopped dancing for a few seconds, at a loss for words. I did it for shock effect and it worked. As I leaned back I gave her a devilish smile.

When the club closed I walked Mari to her car. We stood there for a few moments, both caught up in the mysterious night and not wanting it to end.

“How can I stay in contact with you?” I asked her finally. She wrote her number on a piece of paper and gave it to me. I nodded, memorizing the numbers as soon as I read them. “I’ll stay in touch, and thanks for the evening. I had a wonderful night.”

As Mari got into her car, I closed the door for her and

watched her drive away. Walking on my way home into the night, I felt mystical, excited—and I was already planning my next move.

Chapter 7

Jekyll & Hyde

In the fall of 1987 Mari and I were geared up and looking forward to a Halloween wedding, but not just any wedding. The union of our souls on that witches’ holiday—exactly two years from the night we met—was the perfect night for this dark ceremony that would bind us together not in the sight of God but in the sight of Satan.

A fellow warlock in the religion offered the use of his basement for the ceremony, and as the calendar moved toward October 31 I felt excitement stirring in my veins. In twenty-five years, only two previous weddings had been performed like the one about to take place. That’s how diabolical the commitment of an espiritismo wedding was; most others didn’t dare to take those vows. Word spread about the evil nature of our upcoming wedding, and none of my family or Mari’s family attended, so we had a separate traditional ceremony for them to attend.

Stepping into the basement that night was like stepping into hell, with the atmosphere on fire—not only from the

people attending but from the different spirits gathered there to witness the diabolical wedding taking place that night. The basement was decorated with twenty-one colorful handkerchiefs representing the twenty-one paths of the dark side. An altar made out of leaves and tree branches stood at the front and center of the room. As we waited for the ceremony to begin, my heart pounded as I knew what was about to take place really was a ceremony of “till death do us part.”

Aunt Maria, possessed by the demon principality that ruled Haiti, stood in front of the altar and leveled her dark eyes at us. “The ceremony is about to begin—there’s no turning back!” the demon inside her shouted, her voice guttural-sounding.

Mari and I both wore the protective colors of our main demon spirits—she in a blue and white cape, and I in a red cape. Aunt Maria sprayed rum and blew cigar smoke on the wedding bands, lit them on fire, then turned to me and said, “Do you agree with the contract?” I said yes. Then she turned to Mari and said, “Do you agree with the contract?” and she said yes. In that moment the contract was sealed. After the ceremony two candles—male and female figures in white— were united face to face, tied up with red and white thread, and buried under the ground at the back of the house.

Twenty-one people with different ranks of powers stood on either side of the altar to bless the wedding. It was a wedding of demons, congos, negros, madamas, indios, and gypsies that came down that night to celebrate and prophesy

about our marriage. We celebrated until five in the morning.

A Date with the Unknown

As I stared into the eyes of Mari, my new bride, I remembered the first tarot card reading I took her to two years earlier—her first encounter with espiritismo. That night I had taken her through the first door, and she didn’t realize the magnitude of what she was getting involved with. Like most people, Mari did not know that card reading was one of the twenty-one paths to the occult. My father’s side of the family had been sold out to the religion, something that looked spiritual on the outside, but in reality they were all devil worshippers who claimed to be living for God.

The tarot card reading came about easily, naturally, not long after Mari and I met on Halloween night at the club. One day as we grabbed lunch at a diner, Mari’s sister Carmen sighed loudly across the table, catching our attention.

“What’s wrong?” Mari asked.

“I just don’t know what to do,” Carmen said, shaking her head. “I’m going crazy—it’s been three days since he called, Mari! Three days!”

“Give it time. He’ll come around,” Mari said nonchalantly.

“Who’ll come around,” I asked.

“Miguel, that guy she met at the club the same night we met,” Mari said, smiling up at me. “Don’t you remember her

dancing all night with that one guy?”

“Nah, my eyes were only on you.” I reached over and kissed her cheek, and she nestled closer against my chest.

I looked across the table at Carmen. “I know a way you can find out how it’s going to end up. My aunt does card readings, and she can tell you whether you’re wasting your time with this guy or not.”

“For real?” Carmen stared at me, her eyes round with interest. “Are you serious? ’Cause if you mean it, sign me up. I can’t stand not knowing any longer.”

“I can take you there in the next couple of days if you want to go.”

“I want to go too!” Mari said, her voice filled with excitement. I smiled at her, pleased to see how eager she was to enter my world.

“Yeah, yeah, sure . . . I can get both of you’s appointments for a card reading. It will be good for both of you —you’ll see.”

The night I brought Mari and Carmen for their tarot card reading, they came with lighthearted spirits, expecting answers for Carmen and a good time for Mari. But what they thought was going to be fun turned bad when they both were exposed for lies they had told me.

At my aunt’s house that evening, we all sat on the sofa anticipating who was going to go first with the card reading. They kept giggling and saying, “You go first” . . . “no, you go first,” because although they were excited, they were also very

nervous.

“I bet my card reading is going to be better than yours,” Mari teased.

“Oh, yeah?” Carmen shot back. “No, listen, mine’s going to be better than yours . . . mine’s going to be peaches and cream. I know that for a fact. And yours is gonna be rough!”

I jumped into the conversation. “What if you both are in for a big surprise tonight?” They turned and stared at me, their dark brown eyes serious and troubled for a minute before they burst into giggles again. Eventually Aunt Maria called Mari into the back room to do her reading. I stayed out front, but Mari shared the details later about what went on in the back room.

As Mari looked on intently, she watched Aunt Maria prepare herself for the tarot card reading. She reached for her bottle of perfume and ceremoniously cleaned herself then turned her dark, lifeless eyes onto Mari and held out the perfume bottle with a dim grin. “Now it’s your turn.”

That night Mari’s life would never be the same as my aunt told her to cut the deck of cards in three—past, present, and future. As the first deck was laid out, the nightmare began for Mari, with Aunt Maria telling her about her childhood, her broken home, and the dysfunctional family she was brought up in. As Mari heard my aunt speak these words, not knowing a thing about her past, she choked and tried to hold back her tears. Aunt Maria went into the second deck of cards, and that’s when the gypsy spirit dug deeper into Mari’s soul and

exposed the charade she had going with Carmen.

“You and your so-called sister Carmen, you aren’t really sisters are you?” Aunt Maria said, her black eyes penetrating through Mari like she was transparent.

Mari looked at her in despair, swallowed hard, and with a small voice said, “No, we aren’t.”

“And you also have a live-in boyfriend,” Aunt Maria continued, smirking. “You’re a pretty good liar. Does my nephew know about this?”

Mari looked down, not daring to look Aunt Maria straight in the eye, and with a small whisper she said, “No.”

Suddenly my aunt stood up from the chair, glared down at Mari, and pointed her long finger at her face. “I am a high-ranked witch. If anything were to happen to my nephew, if even a hair is missing from his head, I will destroy you piece by piece and your family one by one with my powers, and I will send you straight to hell,” she said, her voice low and cunning. “So we’re going to call John into the room right now. This card reading has come to an end, and you will tell him everything.”

And that’s exactly what they did. Before that night was over, I learned everything there was to know about Mari, her secret boyfriend, and the girl who claimed to be her sister. From that point on, Aunt Maria and I formed a tight relationship because that was the night I made a pact with the devil and the power of espiritismo.

I loved having the power to control and the idea of pretending to be one person, yet being another. It was like leading a double life. It drew me closer and more involved in a

relationship with the devil and his demons. That night Mari decided she would break up with her live-in boyfriend, but only if I forgave her and was willing to commit myself to a serious relationship with her. I said yes to both. Mari’s first decision was to move in with her mother, and her friend Carmen supported the idea.

Mari stayed with her mom for awhile and sometime later moved in with me and my family in the housing projects. She and I stayed there for a short time until we saved enough money for our own apartment. We went out in the evenings and worked hard by day, fixing up our new apartment with style. Between the furniture, the freshly painted walls, and the artwork we had chosen, our place became one-of-a-kind. Friends and family loved it every time they came to visit.

Things were going so well we knew we were destined to be together. After dating for awhile, Mari came out one day and said, “John, I think we should get married on Halloween.” We had talked about it back and forth but never made serious plans before. “We met on Halloween, so it’s a perfect day to tie the knot. What do you think?”

I didn’t hesitate a second. “Wow, that sounds like a great idea. That’s the day we’ll get married then.”

Later, Mari and I also attended secret ceremonies and witchcraft parties held in people’s basements or apartment houses. She got pulled into the religion gradually, over time, because of the excitement it had to offer. Here was something totally different in her life—different from being Catholic. In her mind it was just white magic; black magic was only used when

she needed to defend herself—at least that’s how she justified it. This demonic world of espiritismo and Santeria is very much like the military, which consists of ranks. From a very young age I already had a high rank in the religion. Now it was my wife’s turn to climb the ranks.

Recruiting newcomers intrigued us because we used the power of evil to do it. My aunt and I knew hundreds of people who became members of the occult: doctors, nurses, police officers, lawyers, judges, school principals—the list was endless. Anyone who wanted to join was invited, blue-and white-collar workers alike. Recruiting people was my second stage into the dark side.

A Precious Gift

My wife and I were happily married, and in 1988 she became pregnant. It was a great year for both of us. I was so thrilled I was going to be a father, and my family too was happy to hear that a child was on the way.

Throughout that year things went pretty normal for Mari and me. We both had jobs, and so every morning I would drive her to work and pick her up at the end of the day because of her condition. She was a great wife and I was a good husband. We managed very well in our marriage and our everyday life.

Before I knew it, in June 1989, Mari gave birth to a twenty-two-inch-long, six-pound baby girl. Being in the

delivery room was a great experience for me, and our daughter, whom we named Amanda, was a gift to my wife and me. While Mari stayed home to take care of the baby, I kept working to cover the expenses of the home. But later, when she felt it was time to go back to work, a conflict arose as to who would take care of our daughter. We had two choices: It would either be my mother, who lived near us in the Bronx, or her mother, who lived far away in Brooklyn. Mari decided her mother would be the babysitter, which made it difficult because of the commute I would have to make every day back and forth to Brooklyn. But despite that, our marriage was good day in and day out.

With our work schedules, we made a lot of money and saved a lot too, because I knew from the moment our relationship got serious that as soon as the holidays came around there would be strong disagreements between us about buying expensive gifts for our families. And that’s exactly what happened.

Spending holiday time with Mari’s family was okay with me. I always enjoyed myself and they treated me well. But later when I wanted to spend the holidays with my relatives, Mari did not understand. Neither did she want to share her life with my side of the family. So because of this we had strong disagreements whenever any of the major holidays came around, and no one was to blame but me. From the very beginning I had agreed to do every Christmas and Thanksgiving with her family, and that took away from our marriage, even though we still loved each other. We gave Amanda the very best: good clothes, private schools, and a

good upbringing. And every year, whether it was Easter, Christmas, or her birthday, we gave her many gifts. But we kept that “other” thing we did as a couple very private from our families.

Dancing with Demons

The endless round of underworld parties and feasts and spiritual celebrations we took part in as members of the religion filled our lives to the brim, but we loved every minute of it— being part of something bigger than ourselves. Sometimes Mari and I attended meetings to summon dead relatives. In other gatherings, demons showed up and would speak of themselves: their birthdays, their favorite foods, what colors they liked, how they lived, and what part of the world they inhabited in their past life. They required special celebrations in their honor, and like obedient pawns we did their every bidding.

Late one evening, Mari and I received an invitation to go to a spiritual feast to celebrate the birthday of a particular demon who claimed to be born as a gypsy in the mid-1700s in Spain. She was very rich, very beautiful, and very powerful when she walked the earth, she claimed. Men adored her, and she was beheaded at the hands of a jealous man at the age of thirty-two. The gathering took place at my aunt’s basement. A string quartet dressed in Spanish garb had been hired to play classical music, and the basement was decked out with flowers

and eighteenth-century decorations.

Champagne flowed all night long at this classy black-tie event, but despite the refined music and fancy clothing, debauchery and promiscuity studded the atmosphere because that’s what this particular demon spirit was all about. This feast, which only came around once a year, was a time to dance promiscuously, touch lasciviously, and cross boundaries.

I glanced around the room and noticed the mirrors were left uncovered. Normally, whenever we had demonic parties, the host covered the mirrors because the demon spirits could not look at themselves (or rather the reflection of the human they possessed that night) in the mirrors. But this spirit—the beautiful Spanish gypsy—earned the privilege of staring at herself in the mirror.

The demon had so completely taken possession of Aunt Maria that night that her features changed to the likeness of the Spanish woman from the mid-1700s. My aunt wore a costume gown from the era the demon spirit lived in, made particularly for that feast and only to be worn that night and never again. When she smiled at her reflection in the mirror, it was no longer Aunt Maria looking back from the glass—I saw the features of another woman from another time. Immersed though I was in this dark underworld of espiritismo, even I felt a chill run down my spine.

Trouble in Paradise

Often as I lay in my bedroom watching TV, Amanda would come and crawl into bed next to me, curl up against my side as a little two-year-old, and we would watch TV together. In her toddler mind she would ask me silly questions that would make me laugh and bring joy to my life.

“Daddy, what cartoon is coming up next?” she would

ask.

“The Power Rangers are coming on next.”

“The red one is my favorite,” she said. “Daddy, which one do you like?”

“I like the blue one,” I said, grinning down at her.

“No, Daddy, you have to like the red one, that’s the one

I like.”

And I would say, just to tease her, “No, you like the red one, I like the blue one.”

“Then we’re not watching the Power Rangers ’cause you don’t like the red one!” she would say, and then burst into giggles.

I grabbed her and tickled her and said, “Okay, I like the red one . . . we’ll watch the Power Rangers.”

I often wonder in the back of my mind if my dad ever took time out and sat with me and did the same things I stopped to do with my daughter—because I have no memory of such things.

When Amanda was two years old, I got a tattoo on my arm of an angel with her name on it. But my daughter disliked the picture on my arm.

“Daddy, the angel is naked,” she said one day, pointing her finger at my arm. “Please put clothes on it.”

“It’s supposed to be that way, Amanda,” I said.

And she said, “No, Daddy, take it back to the man that did it. Tell him to put some clothes on the angel.”

I burst out laughing, because all her sayings were cute and innocent to me. She made a pouty face, and I just grabbed her and kissed her and told her, “One day you will understand why Daddy got the tattoo, because this is how much he loves you.”

Apart from our nighttime round of demonic activities, my wife and I lived a normal life with our daughter. We looked like the all-American young couple, living the high life and destined for good things. But already cracks were forming in the foundation of our marriage.

There were many weekends that Mari and I did great things together, but other times she started going out with her friends while I stayed home with Amanda. We had an agreement that some weekends she would go out with her friends and I would stay home with Amanda. But when I wanted to go out with the guys, she would start a fight because she didn’t want to be left home by herself with our daughter. To solve this, we got a babysitter, but now when we went out we went our separate ways—she with her friends and I with the guys. We agreed to get home by the same time, no later than four in the morning, which worked out very well for a while.

One night it was my turn to go out; Mari had gone out

the night before.

As I sat on the living room sofa channel-surfing, she came and stood right in front of me, her hands on her hips. “You need to drive me to the grocery store today so I can buy some things for the house,” she stated flatly.

I leaned around her and continued staring at the TV screen. “You know how to drive, so drive yourself. I want to rest up a bit so I can go out with the guys tonight.”

“So the guys are more important than our marriage? Is that how it is now?”

“You know that’s not so!” I shot back. “But you also know it’s my turn to go out tonight. I’m going to rest, so if you want to buy some stuff you go out and get it yourself.”

“You know what, I change my mind. I’m not gonna get anything for the house. You can get it yourself.”

“What do I care?” I said, rising from the couch and throwing the remote on the sofa. “Leave it the way it is. It makes no difference to me.” I turned around, went into the bedroom, and slammed the door shut.

That night I stepped out with my friends, and even though I had a good time, I still had Mari and Amanda on my mind. I couldn’t be at ease knowing they were at home alone, because I loved them both. These thoughts rushed through my mind: You’re just like your dad . So that night, instead of coming home at four in the morning, I walked into the house at 2:30 a.m. As I turned into the room, both of them were sound asleep. I kissed them both and went to sleep on the couch.

The holidays were upon us, and Mari and I agreed that on the weekend we would take some time out to go Christmas shopping to buy some gifts for our families. She chose items for her relatives, and I started to pick out gifts for my family. But she thought my family should get gifts for half the price of her family.

“Why should your family get the better gifts?” I said, trying not to make a scene.

Mari rolled her eyes. “Because my family is better than your family, that’s why.”

“Whoever told you that? They’re both the same.” “Well, my family’s done more things for our marriage

than your family.”

By now my voice was getting louder. “Well, the reason why is because you don’t allow my family to do anything for our marriage!” A store clerk glanced at us as she straightened the shelves. Embarrassed, I muttered, “Here, whatever . . . I don’t care what you buy.” I put the items I had selected back on the shelf. So we left the store that day upset, and we decided to shop on our own different schedules for our respective families.

We came to a point in our marriage where we disagreed about anything and everything. We were exhausted in our marriage, and it wore us out to the point where we stopped trying. In the end we decided to go our separate ways. I came home from work one Friday evening after twelve hours of work, exhausted, and we weren’t talking to each other.

Mari walked into the living room, her face devoid of

expression, and uttered these words: “I’m leaving you and moving to my mother’s tomorrow. You can stay with the apartment. I’m taking Amanda with me, and I think we should get a divorce.”

I was dumbfounded, speechless, too tired to fight. I sat at the TV, channel-surfing, no words coming out of my mouth. The next evening, I sat in my living room with a beer in my hand staring around at the four walls, hitting the rewind button of my life, and wondering how I had ended up here in this situation—not only losing my wife, but losing my daughter. Tears flowed down my face, a pain you couldn’t describe ripping my heart. I finally understood that there is no difference between a divorce and the death of a beloved relative. The pain is the same.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that I needed to take full responsibility for my marriage, because as a young man, not having a father figure or a person with a good marriage to coach me, I allowed my marriage to get to the point that it got. And maybe that’s one of the reasons why Mari and I are not married today.

Haunted by Memories

The next day I found myself alone in the apartment in the Bronx we had once shared so happily. Now it had become a place of torment. Day after day and night after night accusing thoughts bombarded my mind. I felt like a loser after the

divorce, just like my dad. I would miss the precious moments of watching my daughter grow. I wondered what my ex-wife would say when Amanda asked, “Where is my daddy?” “Why isn’t he home?” “Why isn’t he putting me to bed?”

My mind was in turmoil. I kept hearing my daughter’s voice repeatedly asking questions. “When I wake up in the morning, why is my daddy not here?” “Why did my daddy leave me?” “I guess he doesn’t love me anymore.” “Will he ever come back?” and most of all, “I miss my daddy!”

I could imagine her mom’s response. Mari would probably say, “He won’t be coming home anymore, for you or for me, Amanda.” Suddenly I hated witchcraft because it had robbed me of precious time with my daughter. I hated the world, I hated everything, but I loved my Amanda. If she only knew how much I loved her, and still do to this very day, more than I love myself. I would give my life for her anytime. I have all our memories treasured in my heart. Her being a little girl, carrying her in my arms, holding her hand everywhere we went. Amanda knew that every time she was with her daddy, she was well protected, even though at times I counted myself as a failure in her life. My love for her was always the same.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 545