Blessed Are the Wicked Read online

  I had to walk away from trying to keep people from renting the house. It became clear to me it was a losing battle. No matter how hard I tried, there was always going to be some unsuspecting family that was going to find their way into the grasp of Mr. Winters and into the door of the Screaming House. It was one battle I was going to have to let go. Besides, we all had our own wounds and scars from the haunting, which needed attention. Things were still very ugly and about to get uglier.

  Helen had lived in the Screaming House. I met her in 2004 while she was living in the house. She came to me because she thought I might be able to help them stop the nightmare they were living through. The same horrible things were happening to her family just like what happened to mine. Their nightmare was not over.

  “Steven, I can’t find Kelly. No one will help me find her. Will you please help me find her?” Helen was frantic on the other end of the phone, asking me to help her find her daughter. She had just been out of the hospital for a few days, after her last episode, and was living with her older daughter, Patty. Her husband, Charlie, was living with some friends; at this point it appeared Helen and Charlie might be headed for a divorce.

  “Charlie put Kelly up in some fleabag motel and now she isn’t there, and no one knows where she is,” stated Helen, out of her mind with worry. I was shocked at the thought a father would actually put his 16-year-old daughter in a low-class motel and then desert her without even checking on her, but then again, we were talking about Charlie.

  “Steven, Juvenile Detention is looking for her and they want me to bring her to them.” The situation was getting worse the more Helen talked. “Steven, can you please help me find her?” What else could I say but yes? It was a kid we were talking about. She did not ask for the hand she had been dealt. Things were not going well for anyone at this point, and I could not help thinking this girl was at the center of the fallout. Besides, the last thing Helen told me before hanging up the phone was that it was Kelly’s birthday––one hell of a way to spend your sixteenth birthday.

  Helen picked me up about a half hour later and the search began. We started at all of Kelly’s friends’ houses; each friend had a different story about when they had seen her last, and each friend sent us on a different path of dead-ends until we reached the last house. Kelly’s friend Markie was a young mother of 16, one of those girls you just knew would have at least two kids by the age of 18. She was a beautiful girl, with a striking appearance and a bad upbringing. She was living life the way her mother had before her, and most likely her mother’s mother before her. It was hard not to feel sorry for Markie. “Kelly was here not too long ago, Mrs. March,” she said to Helen with a painted smile on her face and a drug-glazed twinkle in her eye. “Where did she go?” Helen asked her frantically. “She went to town to see if she could find Scottie,” Markie said, holding on to the door frame.

  I looked at her, hoping she wasn’t doing anything more than just pot. There was way too much meth going on in these parts, and Markie didn’t look like she was doing too well today. Helen was cussing under her breath as we headed back to the car, because Scottie was the last boy Helen wanted Kelly to be hanging around with. Kelly’s first love, Scottie was a good-looking boy with a bright smile and a bad side; he was the kind of bad boy that every mother feared her daughter would get mixed up with––good looks with bad habits.

  Helen drove way too fast back into town. We drove up and down streets, looking into gas stations and stores. That is when we saw her. She was walking down the street with a group of kids. Helen practically ran over a couple of them as she swerved the car over to the curb and jumped out. I stayed in the car. This was between mother and daughter.

  I am not sure what Helen said, but a few moments later Kelly was getting into the car with us and we were headed to the Juvenile Office. There was a small waiting room in the front. I sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the waiting room as they immediately took Helen and Kelly into the back. It seemed I read every magazine in the place as I waited. As I waited, the receptionist occasionally looked up at me and smiled. It seemed like I waited for two hours or more without anyone coming in or out. I was hoping I would be home before my kids got home from school and, at this point, I began to wonder. The glass front door opened and three police officers entered. They immediately went into the back and a moment later they came out with Kelly in handcuffs and Helen following.

  “What’s going on?’ I whispered to Helen. “She tested positive for pot, and they are going to lock her up in detention.” I could not believe what I was hearing. Can you imagine if we locked up every 16-year-old who tested positive for pot? “You have to be kidding me!” I was completely shocked. We were allowed to walk with her to detention, which was just down the street. It must have appeared to be some strange sort of procession as we walked down the street—three cops, Kelly in cuffs, with us following close behind.

  When we got to the detention center, we walked behind the building for intake, and two more police officers came out of the building. At this moment, Kelly decided to start fighting. Then Kelly decided to start screaming. “I want my mom! Don’t take me away from my mom!” She was desperately trying to get to Helen. She was fighting five grown men. She was fighting, biting, hitting, and scratching as they were trying to drag her physically into the building. Helen was screaming at them not to hurt her, as I was trying to hold her up. At the last moment, as they dragged her away, screaming, I saw Kelly’s eyes had turned completely black, and I knew exactly what we were dealing with. They took Kelly away from us and put her in a cell with nothing in it, and no one but herself. They took her shoes and her belt away from her and immediately put her on suicide watch. I had never seen anything like it in my life. When I sit here thinking about it today, I can’t help but relive those moments, as that child fought for the love of her mother to save her. Don’t get me wrong––I hold nothing against anyone. Everyone thought they were doing what was best for the girl. I do believe that. But how do you explain this type of spiritual situation to a system that is not built to understand gray areas? Later that night, I got a phone call from Helen. She was sobbing. For some reason, the night watch had left Kelly alone for a short period of time. When they came back, they found Kelly in a critical state. She had ripped the flesh off her own arms with her own fingers.

  Kelly was institutionalized for a period of time after that incident. During that time, we found out the reason that Kelly had been hurting herself. The voices, which had started in the house, were telling her to kill her mother and father. Kelly thought if she hurt herself, she could save herself and others from harm. How innocent we were to think that once we walked away from the house, all of a sudden it would all be over. This was its way of telling us that it was far from over. This was its way of letting us know that there was plenty more to come. I could feel my knees weaken as I held the phone to my ear. This was different. This was not one of the adults it had just attacked. This was one of our children.

  The downside to putting someone into therapy is that sometimes all kinds of nasty, dirty things come to the surface. That is exactly what happened when Kelly decided she wanted to talk. Whatever was in the house had done its share of damage. Kelly talked about standing in her parents’ bedroom with a butcher knife in her hand, trying to make the decision whether she should use it on them or not. Can you imagine? That is when she made the decision to start using knives on herself instead. That is when the cutting started, causing the weird series of scars on her arms, which she would later rip away with her own nails. Her reasoning for this was to try and subdue the voices by sacrificing her own flesh.

  Then sexual attacks began to happen. Kelly would wake up to find her bra had been removed from beneath her shirt. The first time she was confused; she thought she must have removed it in her sleep, but it began to happen over and over again. Then a picture was taken in her room, which showed what appeared to be a penis coming out of her
wall. Everyone laughed and made jokes about the ghost penis and ghost porn. This just caused Kelly to become more anxious and extremely confused. What would you expect from a young, teenage girl? Then the rape happened. One boy, three girls. No one screamed, no one moved, no one could do anything as he raped all three girls in Kelly’s bedroom. Not the type of boy you would have expected to do such a thing either. Not one of the three girls could fight or call for help, but all three remember the entire rape in detail. If drugs had been used, the girls would not have been able to remember anything at all, but all three remember every moment, but could do nothing to stop it from happening. The boy claims not to remember anything, and he was never convicted.

  Yes, strange things come out when you put one of the haunted into therapy, and this was the case with Kelly. It became clear that while we were busy helping Helen, we lost Kelly in the storm. Kelly was moved from a hospital to a Group Home. With each move, we were asking ourselves how was each place going to be able to help a girl with Kelly’s type of problem? How were each of these places going to help a girl who was haunted? We needed to find a way to bring her back to us. It was obvious the damage was done and could never be fixed, but there had to be a way to make her whole again. We had to try.

  Thanksgiving 2005

  Thanksgiving came quickly that year and was a blessing. There was a tremendous amount to be thankful for, and there was also a feeling we needed to be strong for whatever lay before us. There was a sense of closeness between myself and the children, and it felt good. The oppression had been lifted and left me feeling clearer and almost as if I could give myself permission to be happy for a moment or two. We spent the day at my parents’ house and there was the usual bantering of politics that went with the day of football and food. My mom and dad struggled getting the turkey in and out of the oven because, as usual, it was the size of an ostrich. Life seemed good and I was content, at least for the moment.

  But later that evening, my brother Josh pulled me and our mother to the side with a worried look on his face. “I have some bad news,” he said with a sense of seriousness. I could feel my contentment being sucked out of the room as I braced myself for whatever he had to say. I knew it was going to change things forever. I could feel it in my gut. “Your ex-wife is pregnant,” he said without pausing.

  It hit me like a punch in the stomach. This was the woman who had left me years before because, she told me, she didn’t want to be a mother. I could feel the room begin to spin. “Are you sure?” I asked, choking back the lump in my throat. “Yes, I am sure,” he said, looking me directly in the eye. I didn’t know how to feel or even how to react. I looked around the room and that is when I saw Lydia’s face, with tears streaming down her cheeks. She had overheard the conversation. Before I could say anything, she raced for the back door, with me after her.

  “How could she, Dad?” she said, screaming at me. “How could she? She didn’t want us!” She was completely out of control. I tried to hold her, but she pushed me away. “I don’t know, Lydia. You are asking me something that I can’t answer,” I said, trying to get my arms around her, but she wouldn’t let me near her. At that moment, I felt my mother’s hand on my back and I heard her say, “Go back inside.”

  • • •

  I was at a loss. Never before in my life had I not been able to say the right words to Lydia to make it all right. Never before had I not been able to hold her until the pain, caused by something her mother had done, subsided. At that moment, I went back inside, feeling defeated and kicking myself because I could not make the pain go away. Once again, I was feeling that anger toward my ex-wife rise in me. Then the thought hit me: We had never been officially divorced. I had been waiting until the children were older, to keep the courts out of it, but at that moment, all I could think was, “Oh my God.” This news was going to change everything, and I knew it. I knew she would never want the children. That had always been perfectly clear since the day she left and threw Michael on the ground as he begged her not to leave. Besides, she was afraid of the child abuse charges I could bring down upon her. But this woman was capable of anything. This is the woman who tried to kill me before she left.

  Flashback, May 1996

  The last married night of my life. Walking into the house, I noticed something lying on the floor. Looking closely, I saw that it was a snake skin. I figured that Michael had picked it up from outside and brought it in. He was always bringing in weird things to show me. With everything that was going on, most likely he hadn’t had the chance to do so. I went to turn on the TV and there was no power. The electricity had already been shut off. I called my mom and checked on the kids. They were doing fine. Every time I thought of them, I would choke up. It was one thing to do this to me, but to do this to them was beyond anything that I could imagine.

  My now ex-wife arrived home shortly after dark. “They already shut the power off ?” she asked, seemingly without guilt.

  “That is generally what happens when you don’t pay the fucking bill,” I said, trying not to start a fight. She had not paid our bills for six months, and now she was taking the money from our account to start her new life. She had moved the funds, and I had no way of getting my hands on them.

  “True,” she said.

  “I found a flashlight,” I said, sitting down on the couch.

  “Good,” she said, sitting across from me in a chair. There was a brief moment of awkward silence; neither one of us knew what to say. “I’m borrowing a truck from a friend to help move,” she said.

  “You can have everything. I have my children. That’s all that matters to me,” I said.

  “Well, I will keep some stuff until you guys are ready for it,” she said, and she lit another smoke. It seemed strange to me that the woman sitting in front of me, whom I called my wife, was acting like someone I had never met before. She even smoked differently. This person in front of me seemed like a stranger.

  That is when I felt a thump on my back. At first I just ignored it. “I don’t know how long it will be,” I said, playing with the flashlight in my hands. I felt the thump on my back again.

  “I understand, but you guys will be okay at your parents’,” she said smugly.

  “Why don’t you live with your parents and see how you like it?” I asked, getting pissed off. That is when I felt the thump on my back a third time. This time it was hard enough for me to take notice.

  “What the hell is that?” I asked, getting up.

  “What is what?” she said, not moving.

  I turned the couch over and, to my shock, I saw in the lining of the couch a huge snake. It uncoiled, the light from the flashlight catching its eye, which was the size of a cat’s. “Aw fuck, no! I’m outta here! Forget it! I’m gone before the locusts set in!” I said, heading toward the front door.

  “What am I supposed to do with it?” she was pleading at the door.

  “You were the one that wanted to be on your own. Well, sweetheart, you are on your own. I am outta here,” I said, heading to the car.

  I drove away, feeling a sense of relief that it was finally over. I couldn’t handle it anymore. Then the questions began to form in my mind. How did a snake that size get up the stairs and into the house? Why didn’t it go for the cat? The cat was fine; I saw it in the bedroom when I went in to change clothes. I was going to sleep on the couch that night. And that was when a chill went down my spine. That was where I would have been sleeping. It was obviously a python of some sort, to be that large. I mean, not the sort of thing you find in your couch every day. What are the odds of something like that? It could have wrapped itself around my neck while I was sleeping. And there it was. You know that gut feeling you get when you know you are on to something? She was going to leave the kids at the grocery store, and that sinking feeling in my gut told me she had other plans for me . . .

  Thanksgiving 2005, Continued

  After a whil
e, my mother came back inside with Lydia, who seemed quite a bit calmer. I immediately went over to her and put my arms around her. “I love you, and we will get through this like we have gotten through everything else she has ever thrown at us. Okay?” Lydia looked up at me, nodding her head, and then hugged me even tighter. I never knew what my mother said to her that night. That was and is between them, and it should stay that way. Sometimes it takes a grandmother’s love when there is no mother.

  A few days later, I heard Lydia yelling into the phone from the other room. When I went into the room, I saw her slamming the phone down. “What was that all about?” I asked.

  “I got it off of my chest, Dad,” she said as she marched defiantly back into her room. Later I would find out she had called her mother. Again, I never knew what she had said, but I know my daughter, and from the look on her face, I would not have wanted to have been on the other end of that phone line. Sometimes it is better to let a child have their say. Let them get it off their chest. They need to be able to say what they need to say, and that is what Lydia did on that day. She got it off her chest.

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  Chapter 5

  December 2005

  I am standing at the end of a long, dark hall. I don’t want to move because I know whatever is on the other side is something I should fear. I can feel my heart beating faster and faster within my chest. A voice rings down the hall, wanting me to come closer. “Come here and see what gift I bring.” I take the first step slowly, almost involuntarily, but I know even if I wanted to stop, my legs have already betrayed me. With each step closer I can feel my pulse race faster. I know the voice waiting for me is not a friend. “Come here and see what gift I bring.” I feel like a caged animal with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, like cattle being led to the slaughter. I reach the end of the hall.