Susan Howatch - Mystical Paths

‘Our Father,’ I recited silently, ‘Which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us; lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from –’

Katie moaned just as the word ‘evil’ was projected from my brain, and at once my concentration snapped. It was an odd moan, not right, by which I mean off-key, not the kind of moan you would expect from a contralto like Katie. It was high-pitched, soul-less, abnormal.

‘Lead us not into temptation,’ I repeated aloud, automatically trying to will her back on course, ‘but deliver us from evil –’

Above the mantelshelf the engraving of Starbridge Cathedral fell with a crash to the floor.

As Marina screamed I thought: bloody hell! Not the best of expletives for an ordinand, but I was very rattled. However I knew what was happening. It wasn’t King Tut muscling in on the action. It wasn’t even an anonymous discarnate shred. It was Katie’s disturbed psyche generating a level of energy that I hadn’t anticipated. I’d been prepared for the odd breeze or two, but only a hurricane could have driven that carefully-adjusted picture clean off the wall. Obviously she was too far under and I had to yank her upwards in order to put her back in control of her mind.

‘It’s okay,’ I said swiftly to Marina, ‘nothing to worry about, just a bit of energy on the loose.’ And to Katie I said: ‘Up – you’re coming up – you’re waking up – up – up –’ I paused but nothing happened. She merely moaned again and her eyes remained closed. Instantly I thought of Debbie sunk in that trance I had been unable to break. But that had been in my younger days. Flexing my will, I steeled my psyche and tried again, doing my best to ignore the fright that was now crawling around the pit of my stomach.

‘Katie, open your eyes. Wake up. Katie, I say to you in the name of Jesus Christ, open your eyes and –’ She opened them. Thank God. ‘Katie, you’re all right, you’re fine, you just got diverted. Now think hard of Christian again –’

‘Christian,’ she whispered. ‘Christian.’ Her lips were almost bloodless and her skin had a greyish tinge.

‘Yes, that’s it, think of Christian and I’ll say the next prayer,’ I said, curtailing the allotted five minutes of contemplative silence, but then I found myself distracted by the wall where the fallen engraving had been hanging. The picture-nail, though still attached to the wall, was pointing downwards. Maybe the incident had had nothing to do with an explosion of kinetic energy but had been caused instead by the collapse of the nail, an event which would have happened anyway, no matter what was going on in the room. Glancing at the engraving on the floor I was astounded to see that the glass in the frame was intact, and at once this survival seemed far more freakish than the fall of the picture.

‘Let us pray,’ I said, recalling my attention with an effort, but then Katie started to weep and immediately I broke off the prayer because I knew I had to put her under again. If I didn’t she’d never experience peace and then the whole healing session would have been a failure.

‘It’s all right, Katie,’ I said. ‘You’re all right now, Christian’s at peace, you’re at peace, you’re both at peace, both of you …’ She was under. Instantly I wrapped my psyche around hers to stop it sinking too far through her subconscious mind, but this was a mistake. I should have been concentrating on the prayer to God, not taking time out to play the hypnotist, and the result was we had now reached a stage where no one was praying; I was channelling my power in another direction, Katie was too unbalanced to focus and Marina was too worried about Katie to remember what she was supposed to be doing. Then the inevitable happened. I suddenly became aware of a discarnate shred elbowing its way into our circle, and it certainly wasn’t King Tut turning up for tea. I experienced the shred as a strong, sinister pressure on the psyche.

Automatically I said: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

The pressure eased, but I had relaxed my psychic grip on Katie and she was giving that eerie moan again. Hell. Had to control Katie, had to control the shred, had to control Marina who was now on the brink of panic, had to control, control, control –

The table started to rock.

Marina screamed again.

Bloody hell, what was happening – Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God – ‘It’s okay, Marina!’ – have mercy on me, a – yes, that was better, I’d got the table back on its four legs and now all I had to do was calm down. Katie had been shooting off a gale-force blast of energy again, that was all, it was just an inconvenience, no reason for panic, but why couldn’t I imprint the words PEACE and LOVE on her mind, why could I now make no contact with her whatsoever? It was as if during that moment of chaos someone had bolted and barred her psyche against mine – as if the sinister discarnate shred, repelled from my mind by the Jesus prayer, had slid sideways into hers and –

I suddenly realised the shred was closing in on me for another attack.

I could feel the pressure mounting, I could feel the power behind the pressure, and the next moment I knew that beyond the power, blasting it forward, was –

I leapt to my feet, my chair flew backwards and simultaneously the glass shattered to pieces in the frame of the fallen engraving. I had a fleeting glimpse of Marina’s terrified face, and then as I slammed my psyche shut against the Dark by a colossal act of will I heard myself shout out: ‘IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST, SATAN, BE GONE FROM THIS ROOM!’

The curtains billowed violently by the open window and Katie slumped forward across the table in a dead faint.

‘Marina, get some water – bathroom across the passage – tooth-mug by the basin –’

She obeyed me instantly. No idiotic questions. Admirable. Gathering Katie in my arms I tried to revive her by patting her cheeks and calling her name, but I was so frightened that I might have driven her over the edge of the abyss into insanity that I hardly knew what I was doing.

Marina rushed back with the mug of water. I pressed it to Katie’s lips but she was still unconscious. ‘Throw it over her,’ said Marina tersely. That too was admirable. Nothing’s more helpful than a strong dose of common sense when one’s scared out of one’s wits. I threw the water. Katie moaned and her eyelashes fluttered. Thank God.

‘Wake up, Katie,’ I repeated, trying to wipe out both the hypnosis and the mental disturbance. ‘You’re all right now. Wake up.’

She murmured our names.

‘Yes, I’m here, darling,’ said Marina, grabbing her hand. ‘It’s all right – it’s over.’

‘What happened?’ Her voice was louder, clearer, almost normal. I felt sick with relief.

‘We made contact with a hostile force,’ I said glibly, ‘but that had nothing to do with Christian. He’s at peace with God, Katie, I promise you, and now that you know he’s at peace you’re at peace too.’

‘I don’t feel at peace,’ she whispered.

That disturbed me very much. She was supposed to wind up calm, serene and strengthened, not shattered, shocked and more tormented than ever. My attempt at healing by hypnosis coupled with prayer seemed to have been a complete failure, but the hypnosis should at least have had a temporary calming effect even if the prayer had failed to produce a permanent improvement. ‘Marina, fetch some more water,’ I said, trying not to sound as baffled as I felt, ‘and bring a towel from the bathroom so that she can mop herself up. Katie, you must lie down on my bed in the next room. No, don’t try and get up – I’ll carry you.’