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The Exorcism of Little Billy Wagner (cont'd)

And then Fr. Leo appeared suddenly annoyed.
'Hey Joe, where were you in there?'
'I'm sorry,' the seminarian replied hesitantly.
'We were getting killed in there. Remember I said that we might need someone to help restrain this kid, and you said that you could help and that you knew Tae Kwon Doe.'
Joe considered this for moment before explaining, 'Tae Kwon Do can roughly be translated to mean, 'the way of the foot and the fist.' Sure I've been trained in all aspects of this discipline, sparring, turning, the various kicks - roundhouse kick, the 45 degree - half-moon, front, axe, and side as well as my signature jump or drop kicks. And I intended to engage Billy with my skills, but Billy was not adhering to the rules of engagement as set forth by the World Taekwondo Federation --'
Fr. Leo raised his hand, 'That's fine Joe, but next time help me hold him down.'
'You don't win points by holding someone down or grappling in Tae Kwon Do, rather you score points –'
'Fr. Waller, what was Billy saying in Latin when he was coming towards me?'
'I've been thinking about that,' Fr. Waller replied, 'My Latin has been a little bit rusty since Vatican II, but I think he was saying something like, 'it is hard to find good help,' but I think there were some errors in the choice of words.'
Ms. Wagner reappeared and gave Fr. Leo a cold compress to put over his eye.
The Archbishop put down that day's paper.
'It's all over the paper,' the Archbishop said, 'Has it made the local news?'
'It's supposed to be on the ten o'clock evening news,' Fr. Waller informed.
'Did you talk to the press?' the Archbishop inquired. 'You know are policy regarding that.'
'I believe it was the Wagner family or perhaps their neighbors that first talked to the media, and then the reporters went out and got the story firsthand from the Wagners.'
'Are they still outside?' the Archbishop asked.
'Yes,' Fr. Waller replied, 'they would like to have some sort of response or statement.'
The Archbishop took his knife and fork and carefully cut off a few pieces of the blood sausage. He put two pieces and some buttered potatoes on his fork and proceeded to eat the food with relish.
'Commend Monsignor Volmert on the sausage -- it's absolutely delicious.'
'I think it's important that we at least,' Fr. Waller began
The Archbishop raised his hand so as to silence his friend.
'Fr. Leo, I have read your report. Do you believe that the boy is possessed?'
Fr. Leo replied, 'Well, he's clearly possessed, by what I have no idea.'
'Fr. Waller?'
'We've got a live one here. He's most definitely possessed.'
'That's all I need to know,' the Archbishop said with his characteristic air of finality. 'Fr. Leo, I want you to perform the rite of exorcism. I know the Jesuits have offered to do it - they always have a few crackpots who are self-proclaimed experts on these matters, but this is serious business. We can't have some Jesuit jackass trying to expel the demon from Billy with his right hand, while his left hand is scribbling the screenplay about the whole event.'
'I think it might be prudent,' Fr. Leo said very respectfully, 'to have a psychiatrist look into this matter. Then only as a last resort I think should we resort to the rite of exorcism.'
'I believe that the family psychiatrist has already looked into the matter, isn't that correct Fr. Waller?'
'I believe that's correct, and if I remember correctly, he is at his wit's end on how to handle the situation.'
'No, no, no Fr. Leo,' the Archbishop said with sudden graveness; his lips pursed firmly and his gaze suddenly riveted as he looked off into the distance. He continued in the more pronounced voice of one of his sermons, 'in the world we live in today, we don't have the luxury to take lightly the very real and growing presence of evil in our families, our schools, our communities. Because if we take this threat lightly, it may be too late, and then God help us all.'
'Fr. Leo, Fr. Waller will answer all your questions about performing the rite of exorcism, and I have absolute confidence in your abilities in this matter.'
Fr. Leo appeared hesitant.
'I have a concern if I go back there, well I know that the boy is only twelve, but he's large for his age and very spry, and whatever's going on with him, I think it might be a dangerous situation.' He gestured to the bruise on his right cheek, 'This happened the last time I was there.'
'Well we have Joe Allen to help,' Fr. Waller reminded.
'He's the one trained in, what was it, the 'way of the foot and the fist'?' the Archbishop said recalling his lunch with Mr. Allen earlier last week. 'He seems very capable.'
'Very much so,' Fr. Waller agreed and then said to Fr. Leo in a helpful spirit, 'I think perhaps we can free up a priest or two from the north side.'
'We should try to do that,' the Archbishop said, and took a few more bites of his
food.
'Of course it won't be easy,' Fr. Waller continued. Vocations are so hard to come by, and we are just undermanned everywhere. Thank God for the infusion of Mexican vocations. Without them, I don't know how we would make do.'
The Archbishop stood up, gave Fr. Leo his blessing, and placed his hand on his shoulder and said a silent prayer. He then headed towards the door.
Fr. Waller called out, 'What should I tell the press?'
The Archbishop said, 'if they want to learn something about the situation, tell them to try going to mass' and then his eminence disappeared down the hallway.

Mrs. Wagner was fretting terribly, as she took hurried sips of her hazelnut coffee. She looked up towards Billy's bedroom and wondered whether he or whatever had possessed he was getting hungry. She always worried terribly about Billy, that he would fall off the jungle gym and be paralyzed or that he would be kidnapped by one of those unregistered sex offenders and end up on the side of some milk carton or some other new-fangled way that kids end up hurt or missing that she hears about on the local news or through her sewing circle. But in many ways what had happened to her dear beloved little Billy was worse than all that and really any Mother's worst nightmare -- demonic possession of one's only child in the bedroom of their own home.

He was always rambunctious, but when he turned twelve, he was totally out of control. She recalled their visit with the school psychologist.
The school psychologist asked the Wagner's: 'Did you ever beat your child?'
'No - absolutely not.'
'Did you ever take a knot of a rope, soak it in warm water. Then take the bed sheets, tie your child to his bed, and then beat him with a rope regardless of whether he had been good or bad that day.'
Mrs. Wagner thought the level of detail of his question suggested that he had been told something that was entirely untrue. She was horrified.
'No - absolutely not!'
'The only thing we ever did,' Mrs. Wagner explained, 'Is when he was like three or four -years-old, he would have these tantrums that would last for about six hours, and he would throw stuff like cups and what not. So we would put him in the hall bathroom, partially close the door, and have what this parenting video called a 'timeout'. We would let him out when he had calmed down.'

The school psychologist became very quiet and then concluded gravely, 'That's quite possibly the worst thing that you could ever do to a child.' His cell phone then rang, and he got up and left the room
They tried bringing him to psychiatrists, and they had better success until Billy was sent home from school after the knife incident. Billy's weird and sometimes violent behavior followed.
Perhaps what made it so heartbreaking was that her own mother would call every day and suggest or hint that she had done something wrong (e.g. day care at a Methodist preschool, aren't Methodist into sorcery?) that had led or partly contributed to the demonic possession of one's only child in the bedroom of their own home.
Bill's mother was even worse; she had overheard her say to Bill, 'Well what did you expect, you know she smoked during the pregnancy?' She subsequently told Bill's mother that she had never smoked a cigarette in her life. Later she had overheard her say to Bill, 'Well what did you expect, you know she didn't smoke during the pregnancy?'
But she herself believed both with sadness and anxious regret that there was perhaps some grain of truth in the criticism of her parenting technique, and she had done something to contribute to the situation. She thought, you get married, then you're pregnant, then a child comes; your husband works late. Was she ready for the responsibility? Her own mother did not trust her to feed the fish in her fish tank when she went down to Florida. When she finally convinced her mother that she was up to the task, her mom left her in charge. The fish all died for reasons that were still unclear to her. At the time, she was 22 and to be married in two months. During the time she was nursing Billy, she overheard her mother at least two times reference the fish incident in responding to questions like, 'Your daughter is such a good mother.'
And now Billy was demonically possessed, and she had no doubt that her mother was in seventh heaven over this fact, no doubt telling all her friends, 'If she had only listened to me -'
So she had in minute detail analyzed almost every week of Billy's twelve years to ascertain what had gone wrong and when it had gone wrong.

When Ed got his first big promotion at the insurance company, they bought the house they live in now. It was hectic with the move, but eventually they got situated and she believed that they were a very happy family. Billy was around two years old at the time. They had gotten basic cable, which she never had either growing out or in her early twenties working at the factory. At first she didn't think much of it, but then that day came when she stumbled across the Lifetime channel and saw her first Lifetime movie: ABDUCTED: A FATHER'S LOVE, with her secret TV boyfriend Chris Noth when he was still a nice young man. ABDUCTED: A FATHER'S LOVE told the timeless story of a father who used an 'underground mother' network to help him abduct his baby girl in order to protect her from his neglectful, skankwhore, meanie wife. Based on a true story. She watched the movie seven times that month, and each time she felt the drama and heartbreak all anew. Then there was: INNOCENCE LOST: the Judy Dylan story: a battered wife and mother (who is mute) attempts to escape from an irrational and violent husband who has poor listening skills, his homicidal rage intensifies, and he holds her hostage until she freed by the All-American, squared-jawed, blue-eyed policeman who had secretly loved the battered wife since they were in junior high and recently was widowed because his wife fell through a sinkhole while vacationing on an island that had lots of sinkholes. Based on a true story. Then there was: LOVE, LIES AND LULLABIES, Christina's life was spiraling downward at a fast pace; she uses cocaine and perhaps more distressing, has a destructive relationship with her mother. Tragedy strikes when her daughter is born prematurely with blood coming out of her very little nostrils. Based on a true story. A ROOM IN THE INN: A struggling single mom brings a charming drifter into her home. She begins to fall for this mysterious stranger, but her kids suspect he may be a murderer or even worse, a freeloader. Did she meet Mr. Right or Mr. Very Very Wrong? Then there was: STALKERS DAY OUT: the Laura Roger story: a battered wife and mother (incapacitated by stroke - only can communicate by writing on a little chalkboard) attempts to escape from an irrational and violent husband who never got over the fact that his wife and not he was the star; his homicidal rage intensifies, and he holds her hostage until she freed by the All-American, squared-jawed, blue-eyed emergency room doctor who had secretly loved the battered wife since they were in junior high and recently was widowed because his wife died in a helicopter crash over the Grand Canyon. Based on a true story.

And it was during one of these movies that Billy was lying on the couch, crying and reaching over to her, but she was so enthralled with the climatic finale of SEDUCED AND BETRAYED, that she shushed him quiet and kept her focus squarely on the television. When the show was over, she picked up Billy and when she was about to give him a big kiss on his cheek, he had an angry expression on his face and he appeared distant and disinterested in her. Whenever Billy would act up in grade school or have some problem with someone in the neighborhood, she would always remember that afternoon -- his coldness, his flash of anger, and she would fill both guilty and sick to her stomach, feeling she had been the cause of it all. Monsignor Volmert, in one of his sermons, had said that the absence of love was the fuel that made Satan possible. Had she denied Billy a mother's love?
Mrs. Wagner turned off the television, having finished another one of her movies and headed into the kitchen to begin cooking Billy's dinner. She set her coffee cup in front of the picture of her and Bill and little Billy at the lake on one of their first family trips when Billy was old enough to travel. Bill had his arm around her, and they both had their arms around Billy. Her eyes watered over as she considered again, 'the absence of love.' As warm tears broke from her glazed over eyes and almost cooled as they fell from her cheeks, she regarded the picture fondly. Bill had always been so good to her, got her out of that factory and out of her parent's small town of Miskuda.

He was always talking to her, telling her these fantastic stories that he was going to build his empire, their empire. Life, auto, casualty insurance was his ticket; it was a growth industry - everyone needed insurance. He wanted to be known as the top insurance salesman of policies that rarely paid out; he would be a legend in the industry.
He wanted to build their second home on a lot down by the Lake. He promised to buy her whatever car she wanted, and she said that she would love to have a Jeep Cherokee, and, with a wave of his stand, he said, 'Say no more - all get her done.'

Then something happened. He began working late; she knew less and less what he did at work or even the people he interacted with. He began to travel allegedly for business. He claimed that he needed to work more to climb the corporate ladder, said he would earn more money and have a larger bonus. But they only seemed to have less money and his larger bonus never materialized. He would get the new company car; she drove his old car - a Dodge Neon (her mother said to her, 'Poor people don't even do Dodge Neons.') One day she asked whether it would still be possible for her to get a Jeep Cherokee SUV, and he said it was a great idea. Of course, he was drunk when he said it, but she hoped that he meant it. Two weeks later, he called her at the Tupperware Exchange Lunch Club and said that he had a surprise for her waiting at home. She was ecstatic. She rushed home as much as of the rusty and old Dodge Neon could rush home.

Mrs. Wagner looked into the driveway and noticed that the garage door was close; it had to be in there. Bill directed her into the house and into the living room, and as she was poised to leave the living room, he asked, 'Well what do you think?'
Mrs. Wagner, somewhat confused, looked over to the floor where his hand was gesturing and saw to her astonishment a cheap Cherokee rug. Bill explained, 'It's a Cherokee rug, what do you think?' She thought it was a very pretty and a colorful rug, but she couldn't help but thinking that it looked cheap. Did he misunderstand her or was it a joke? His listening skills were never that good. Even in the early days of their relationship when he was intently into her and trying to sleep with her, he would routinely not hear or mishear things that she said.

And he was drunk at the time, but when wasn't he drinking? She hoped when they got married he would cut back on his drinking; little did she realize that he was just getting started. She wondered whether the distance and coolness in their marriage in some way contributed to what had happened to her little bundle of joy. She began to chew on the already worn nail of her thumb as she heard the disconcerting noise from Billy's room reverberate through the vent above.

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