Burning Flesh

Fueled by the strange but powerful dreams, I started attending even more occult gatherings, including parties at the centros to honor the demons who gave us our powers. These festive celebrations resembled birthday parties, except there was nothing innocent about them. What went on in these gatherings was pure evil. One of the most demonic initiations used by espiritismo was the cigar burning.

One Friday evening after midnight, Aunt Maria got demon-possessed by a spirit who called herself the mother of Haiti—the principality that guards Haiti. Speaking through my aunt, the demon spirit requested dark rum and a cigar. Somebody brought the liquor to her in a coconut shell, and I watched as my aunt lit the cigar and puffed on it until the coal turned red-hot. Her eyes dark with purpose, Aunt Maria called three of us to the front, including me. Speaking in her demonic language, she said, “We’re going to see tonight who truly belongs to us, and this ceremony will determine that.”

The cigar kept turning redder and redder. The other two, a man and an older woman, went first. The man was told to lift up the back of his shirt. As he kneeled on the floor in front of my aunt, she plunged the lit cigar into the bare skin on his back. He screamed like someone trapped in hell as she branded him in different parts of his back. Finally, he passed out.

Quivering with fear, the woman came forward next. Aunt Maria commanded her to close her eyes and extend her arm. When my aunt plunged the cigar into the woman’s wrist, she too screamed and fainted.

At last she approached me and told me to hold out my arm and close my eyes. As I stuck out my arm, I felt the heat of the cigar approaching my skin like a flaming torch. She pressed the red-hot coal into my arm and held it there, searing my flesh. I locked my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut tight, allowing the cigar to remain on my skin, because I knew I was called to do this. I overcame the pain and the smell of my own burning flesh—and that night I knew I was one of them.

“John,” Aunt Maria called as I started to head for home later that night. She gestured for me to step into the hallway apart from the others. “There’s a secret meeting Monday night, and I want you to be a part of it,” she said, her voice lowered. “Only the proven ones can be there, and tonight you proved yourself.”

“What’s the meeting about?”

“This is for high-ranked mediums in the religion, and we’re gathering to map out the coming year, to find out which principalities are going to run which regions. We’re also going to punish those that dared to come against us,” she said, a devilish smile painted across her face. I knew it was time for war.

I went about my business over the next few days in high expectations for what Monday night would bring. We gathered at Aunt Maria’s house in the basement. Glancing around the candlelit room, I realized I was standing among a select group of mediums who had ominous powers. The meeting’s purpose: to settle the score and counter-attack our enemies, a group of people who wanted to make a name for themselves and tried to do witchcraft on one of our people. But we caught it, and it was time

to teach them a lesson.

Earlier that day my aunt had purchased a dozen dark-colored roosters for the purpose of sacrificing—we needed their blood to do the witchcraft. That night, we all gathered together prepared to do war. As the conga players started beating the drums near the front of the gathering, the atmosphere was set and I felt the spirits of espiritismo enter the room to receive the sacrifices. The presence grew heavy; thick darkness hovered over the basement as the smell of cigars and rum perfumed the air. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up as I felt shadows passing by.

We chanted as the conga players beat the drums harder. Some sang, some danced to the demons, others lit up cigars and blew smoke while still others sprayed rum on the four corners of the basement floor, with the symbols of espiritismo in the center of it. Every now and then a small explosion lit the room as somebody poured alcohol on the concrete floor and threw a burning match on it. In time we felt hell arrive in that basement. Even the roosters, squawking from their cages, knew that evil danced in the air. You could see terror in their eyes, as if they knew they were going to die.

As the music played the energy in the room got heavier and heavier, and I knew that in just a matter of days our enemies would pay. Aunt Maria distributed the voodoo recipe of what we needed to do to chasten those who betrayed us. I had a taste for blood that night—my heart was pumping fast and my knife was sharp, ready to behead a few roosters. I was excited to be one of those chosen to kill the roosters. Grabbing one after another by its feet, I plunged the knife into the roosters’ necks and drained their blood. When I was done, claws and feet and beheaded necks were scattered all over the basement floor. The demons cackled with delight through the mediums who lent them their bodies for the ritual, their demonic laughter mingling with the screams of the birds. Blood dripped from my hands, and if I’d had the chance to lick my hands I would have, but what would the others think? As we came down to the last rooster I opened its mouth and stuck the sharp edge of the blade right down its throat with hate and anger, knowing that the blood was a contract and the killing would destroy someone else’s life.

I came out of that secret meeting feeling giddy with power—wicked energy all over me—and celebrating the victory that was about to take place. Sometime later we heard that the house of our enemies caught fire and burned to the ground. They became homeless and had nowhere to stay. I knew they learned a hard lesson not to mess with fire, because we were fire.

The drawing to the dark side seemed to be getting stronger. All this made me hang out more with my friends and brought on more drinking, more women, more clubbing, and now sex. I started to get a hunger for the club scene. I was living like my dad without realizing it. The life that I hated him for had now become my life. The curse upon my father had not only reached me but was now taking over my brothers as well. My mother couldn’t do anything to stop it. We were out of control and headed in the direction my father had once lived. Now she had four sons that reminded her of the abusive-drinking husband she had lost. Old doors and wounds had been reopened.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 623