At 4:30 p.m. my mobile rang. It was Edward. We were supposed to be travelling to Pskov later that night, so I could see my first exorcism in Father Miron’s church. Father Miron was the priest in the first film on the videotape Edward had given me, the one who had cast out the demon of alcoholism and cured cancer. Edward reassured me that his exorcisms were very dramatic. There was just one problem:
‘What day is it today?’ he asked.
‘Friday.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not Thursday?’
‘No.’
We went back and forth on the subject until he decided to check the calendar on his watch. There was a moment’s silence, then he came back on the phone, laughing: ‘Right you are, Daniel, right you are! Except …’
‘It’s now too late to buy tickets for Pskov.’
‘Yes.’
We discussed the possibilities: there was another church outside the city where a different priest performed exorcisms every Sunday. Pskov was a hotbed of occult activity. We could attend this other service.
But the train ride was more than twelve hours long. And I knew Edward, ever mindful of economic pressures, was going to insist on travelling in the dirt-cheap open platskartny section. I had travelled that way a few times, but always found it difficult to sleep due to the heat and stench of sixty-odd sweaty carcasses stewing in their own juices. I knew some people who found these carriages quaint and picturesque, a pleasing piece of Russian exotica. I was not one of them.
‘It’s a long way to go for just one day,’ I said.
‘Well, we could stay until Monday and perhaps explore Pskov a little … they have a krom! Do you know what a krom is?’
‘A kremlin. I’ve seen pictures. I’d like to, but I need to be back in Moscow on Monday.’
‘So we have a problem.’
‘Yes.’
‘Hm.’
The next morning Edward called again with a different idea. A world expert on the occult in Russia was going to be present at VDNKh, an exhibition centre in the north of Moscow. Here was an excellent opportunity for me to broaden my knowledge of exorcism, to wade deeper into that world, and also establish a useful contact, should I wish to write a magazine article at some point.
After the collapse of the Pskov trip I had consoled myself by watching Godzilla: Final Wars, an update of Godzilla for the twenty-first century that mixed the traditional men in rubber monster suits with state-of-the-art computer graphics and Matrix-style acrobatics. Godzilla had destroyed all the other monsters in his universe in one eye-popping final showdown. I switched off the film at 3 a.m., drained by all the excitement. I wasn’t feeling too fresh.
But I knew Edward felt guilty for messing up the Pskov dates and he was trying to substitute our trip with something else interesting. In the end I agreed. I had nothing else planned, and I had never met an expert on the occult before. I am a firm believer that when a strange door is lying open in front of you, it is always better to step through, even if you think it will probably lead to nowhere and nothingness.
I stood deep below the surface of the earth, listening to the screams of metal on metal until finally Edward appeared, stumbling out of a carriage at the far end of the metro platform. He was forty-five minutes late. He apologised, but didn’t say what had kept him. Then, stepping onto the metro he pressed a thick tome on demons into my hands. ‘It’s in Russian,’ he said, ‘but I think you’ll manage, yes?’
I looked at the book. It was a translation from German. I doubted I’d make it past the first three pages, but slipped it into my jacket pocket anyway. Then I looked up at Edward. He wasn’t saying much, just standing there, hanging on to the railing. His dark eyes looked troubled; it was one of those days when he looked as though he was on the edge of a precipice.
The night before I had had a dream, my first dream about demons in all the time I had known him. I decided to tell him about it, to break the strange, heavy silence.
‘I was in a cold and draughty church in Pskov,’ I said, ‘with a crowd that had gathered for an exorcism. Father Miron was there, and he started swinging his censer and chanting. He was exorcising a possessed woman, but she wasn’t reacting. Suddenly though the man next to me fell to the ground, howling and barking. He started emitting smoke. And then I realised that I was breathing it in, and suddenly I wondered if the smoke was the demon, if indeed I was inhaling a demon. I’d only breathed in a little, but the panic was real. I started crossing myself furiously, over and over, in the hope that the holy sign would make it too uncomfortable for the demon. But while I was doing that I remembered reading in some of the books you gave me that the more powerful ones aren’t affected by all that stuff … I was terrified, really terrified.’
Edward was listening closely. Once I was finished he nodded and asked: ‘What did the smoke smell of?’ He smiled a strange smile. ‘Because it has a very, how shall we say, pungent odour.’
‘It was odourless,’ I replied.
‘Oh.’
It was as if it wasn’t a dream, and my answer proved that what I had seen was crap, not a real case of possession at all. He pulled out a copy of Sport Express and started reading.
‘I see Arsenal are doing well,’ he said.
VDNKh was the former All-Union Exhibition of Economic Achievements. The complex had a new name and new acronym now, VVTs, but nobody I knew used it, and the nearby metro station still went by the Soviet-era name also. It was a huge park full of Stalinist neo-classical pavilions that had at one time housed displays on the agricultural and industrial might of the Soviet Union, from achievements in aeronautics to advanced beekeeping.
Nowadays though, the pavilions were put to other uses. Usually they were just warehouses flogging TVs, sewing machines and electronics, but I had also seen the complex host raves, an international arms fair and ‘Sexpo 2000’, a rather dismal display of skin magazines and live ‘body art’ (most of the exhibits had been compounded at customs). But holding an expo on religious life in Russia here: now that was a particularly leaden irony.
Edward led me to the pavilion dedicated to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. The wine stands and the small art gallery that usually filled the halls were gone, and in their place stood a strange bazaar offering faiths for sale. Russian Orthodox Christians, Seventh Day Adventists, Evangelicals, Tatar Muslims and Jews had all staked out their little corners and were standing behind stalls in their respective religious uniforms, all of them pointedly not talking to each other.
Edward stopped a nun and asked if the expert on the occult had spoken yet, but she didn’t know who he was talking about. I, meanwhile, wondered about the smell of meat that permeated the halls. I looked around for the source and saw stands for a halal butcher, a kosher deli and some other guy selling special Russian Orthodox sausages. I went up to have a look at the sausages, to find out what was so Orthodox about them. But there was no information, and I didn’t care enough to ask the butcher in question, a big man in spotless white overalls.
Edward, meanwhile, was now standing by a Muslim stall studying something closely. I walked up to him and saw that it was a video on djinns, evil spirits of the Islamic tradition. ‘Very interesting,’ he said. ‘Very interesting.’ He was lost in reflection; he seemed to have forgotten about the expert on the occult.
With all this wonderful diversity on display I started walking around, looking for signs of conflict. But I have to admit, there wasn’t much. Some Muslim children were doing a little play on why Mohammed was the best. Round the corner, Evangelicals were handing out free Gideon Bibles, but discreetly. Evangelicals are a much-persecuted group in Russia, and the young boy and girl, dressed in jeans and T-shirts were glancing about nervously, as though they expected to be harassed any second and told to pack up their leaflets on the sinfulness of pre-marital sex and move on.
Is this it? I thought. Is no one willing to punch someone else on the nose in the name of Religious Truth? Are they all just going to sit here and … ignore each other? But just then I heard the sound of raised voices coming from the next hall. I went through and saw a straggly bearded Russian Orthodox Christian with greasy hair and dirty specs haranguing some Jews in yarmulkes. Walking closer I listened and realised he was angry with them for crucifying Our Saviour. The subjects of his ire, however, listened patiently, even attempting to debate with him. He didn’t really want that, though. He just kept repeating himself, ever louder, goading them, pushing them, and generally making a nuisance of himself. But it didn’t work. No one laid a finger on him.
Later I saw him haranguing the Seventh Day Adventists for attempting to spread their pernicious sect on Holy Russian soil. The Seventh Day Adventists’ stall was directly opposite a Muslim bookstand, staffed by big ladies wearing headscarves and long black dresses. Curiously, he left them alone. How strange. Maybe he was worried they would declare a jihad on his ass. And if they did that, then how would he be able to enjoy himself shouting at Jews?
Oh, and one other thing: Edward’s expert on the occult hadn’t turned up.
We went outside. Edward bought me a Pepsi from a drinks machine and then we wandered aimlessly for a few minutes, until we stopped to sit on a bench facing the Ostankino TV tower. Edward seemed exhausted, the darkness I sometimes saw behind his eyes suddenly darker. He was silent and sullen. He looked hounded.
I had seen him in low spirits before, but never as bad as this. He started talking about the difficulty of his mission, but he was expressing himself so vaguely it was hard to grasp with any precision what he meant – and yet I could easily imagine the enormous pressure he was under. He dedicated himself to the study of supernatural evil; he was at war with it; and he was alone. What he did took not only courage but an epic quantity of faith, much more than was available to most believers. Then he told me he had spent the previous day on the sofa, lying around, unable to motivate himself. Of course, it sounded like depression – he had no job, no wife and the future of his film, which was his entire reason for existing, was always in jeopardy. Continuing in the face of these grim facts required a monumental act of will that was hard to sustain, and it was only natural to collapse in exhaustion, to cave in, from time to time. Edward, however, did not even consider this explanation long enough to dismiss it. This lethargy, he hinted, was not purely human in origin. This evil knew that it was under study and didn’t like the attention. It didn’t like being exposed.
‘When did it start?’ I asked.
He sighed. ‘Remember that audio file I gave you to listen to?’
‘Which one?’
‘The girl.’
I remembered. Edward had been present at this exorcism a few months earlier. The subject was just a teenager, a mere slip of a thing, he said, and yet this slow, gravelly growl had come scraping out of her throat. It was obscene. It sounded almost as if there was something living in her, some slithering eyeless thing, deep, deep in her gut. Close your eyes and you could almost see a black tentacle come worming out of the girl’s pale throat. How could I forget it?
‘I posted it on the internet,’ said Edward. ‘It got ten thousand hits in one week. I thought: this is great, my message is getting out there, you know? But then I started to receive emails. People were asking me if I had more “stuff like that”. Now what do they mean by stuff like that? This isn’t a game. And one of them even signed his email with a “Hail Satan!”’
I said nothing, just listened. This was a problem he was going to have to face, and I had thought so for a long time. As I saw it, the actual audience for Edward’s film was not repentant sinners turning from the path of darkness so much as kids in black clothes and face paint, dripping with Gothic jewellery, dabbling with Ouija boards and satanic iconography. And among the casual devotees of the arcane arts seeking to piss off their parents, there would also be a smaller, hardcore group of genuine nut-jobs.
Edward continued: ‘I wrote back, telling them not to play with these things, that this is a serious business. But since then, well … I’ve been under attack. Spiritually, I mean. I just find it hard to get motivated. And you know –’ He paused. ‘The Enemy enters through the spine.’
‘The spine?’
‘Yes. In the form of a miasma, a vapour. You hear it first, a hissing, and then, there’s a cool sensation, as it enters –’ Edward twisted round, indicating a spot on his back, right in between his shoulder blades.
‘That’s where the demon enters. Right there.’ He paused. A long silence hung in the air. ‘I want to be prayed over. But I can’t ask any of the Orthodox priests I know. I can’t do anything that might disturb them. It would be bad for my film. I must always be cheerful, solid … I can’t show weakness.’
Then suddenly he switched to talking about the possibility of mass possession – that not merely individuals, but whole races or ideological groups might be controlled by evil powers. After all, if Christ had exorcised one man who contained many demons … why not consider the possibility of many people controlled by one vast, powerful evil force? ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Do you think the evil Russia witnessed under Stalin, with his persecution of the Church – can it be explained in merely human terms?’
Edward was picking himself up, switching himself back on. Slowly the darkness in his eyes receded, the slump in his posture lifted and as we walked back to the metro he was once again aflame with possibilities. He continued pursuing this idea of mass possession, not only of the leadership of a nation, but of entire transnational ideological groups. The question was purely hypothetical, of course. Edward, as he himself had told me, enjoyed all manner of intellectual speculation. But it was too much for me. I felt as though he had my brain in his fist, and he was slowly squeezing the juice out of it.
I didn’t answer.
I had my own opinions about what Edward told me, of course. I just wasn’t very interested in them. Neither will there be any discussion of the truth or falsity of his ideas in this book. I am not writing to persuade you for or against belief in the existence of ‘the supernatural’. You will have your own conclusions about that; you don’t need mine.
What I was very interested in, however, was the experience of living in a world where the reality of demons was already beyond dispute, and not just that, but one where they were the major enemy of humanity. That world is real, regardless of whether demons exist or not. Edward lived in it, and not just him, but many others.
I wanted to travel inside that world. And if I started challenging him every time he opened his mouth I wouldn’t get very far. And what would have been the point anyway? Edward had seen the man producing smoke from his flesh in the northern church; he had seen a little girl so strong she had to be held down by several grown men; he had heard the rasping demonic voice, uttering blasphemies and curses, over and over again.
He knew that Satan was real.
Back on the metro Edward tried to resurrect our Pskov trip. He wanted to go to Leningradsky Vokzal, buy some train tickets and just take a chance. But I didn’t feel like another failure, and I knew it would be a failure. We were on a roll, as far as fiascos were concerned. Besides, even if we pulled it off, I would need a lot of energy if I was to meet Father Miron or any other exorcist, and at that moment I was exhausted. I wanted to go home. Maybe I’d watch Godzilla: Final Wars again.
My instincts, it turned out, were correct. Later Edward found out that Father Miron had had a heart attack that very weekend; and as for the other priest he had suggested going to see, well he had been ordered to stop performing exorcisms by his bishop.
I was disturbed by the air of catastrophe around Edward. The deeper I entered his world, the more I saw how frequently he had to wrestle with obstacles and disappointment. Though his career as a music producer had been a sudden and surprising success, as far as the film was concerned, nothing ever worked out for him quite the way it should have. People vanished, leads fell through, old supporters backed away from him suddenly. Money he was promised was withheld. He saw this as proof of an opposition to his plans that was more than coincidental: these matters I am investigating … they do not want to be investigated, if you understand my meaning.
Maybe. As for me, I was reminded of the chaos and disorder that had surrounded my dealings with the Digger. It was easy to believe it was a natural consequence of living for your obsession, in the face of general indifference.
I could have walked away. But I didn’t want to. My satanic education was not complete. I had read books, watched films, listened to discourses. But that wasn’t enough: I wanted to see the smoking man Edward had told me about. I wanted to hear inhuman screams, devilish growls. I wanted to stand witness as a three-year-old was held down by a team of ten professional wrestlers. I still wanted to cross into that reality.
And so, in a strange way, the more things went wrong, the more people vanished or withdrew, the more reasons, in fact, that I was given to forget about Edward’s world, the more I was lured forward, deeper into it.
I knew I was expending energy on what could well be a quixotic quest. I knew that maybe I would see nothing. But I kept going forward, regardless. In fact, I started to get involved in the actual organisation of Edward’s film. And so I was already inside his reality, whether I had planned it or not.
There was no way I could step back from it now.