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.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 633