MIKE HOVERED OUTSIDE Christina Corrigan’s window, listening to her and Olivia chat about boys and school. In spite of the innocuous conversations, he felt spiritual tension in the cool night air.
He worried about his charge’s close relationship with this girl. Christina wasn’t a believer. Her fascination with the supernatural and her sexual activities with Tommy Larson could pose a peer-pressure threat to Olivia.
Christina leapt off her bed. “I’m bored. Let’s go on an adventure.” She grabbed Olivia’s coat off the back of her desk chair and tossed it to her.
“Where are we going?”
“I read something on the Internet about people who record graves.”
Before Olivia could respond, Christina ran to her parents’ room and came out with a tape recorder. “I suppose a cell phone or camcorder might work just as well, but this is what the person I read about used.”
Olivia lingered in Christina’s doorway. “I don’t know about this. It sounds . . . weird.”
“Come on. It’ll be fun. And my parents won’t be back for at least an hour, so they won’t even know we left.”
To Mike’s disappointment, the two girls walked out of the house and headed for the cemetery adjacent to Christina’s home. He followed them.
“I’ve always been fascinated by this place,” Christina said in a low voice as she crept up to the old iron gate at the back entrance. “I know almost every gravestone by heart.” The gate gave an eerie squeak as she rolled it back. “Sometimes I imagine the lives that must have been lived by the people whose names are engraved in stone here. I wonder what they looked like. Where they lived. How they died.”
Mike cringed. This place was a sacred location where people grieved for loved ones, not a place for teenagers who had no clue what they were getting into playing stupid, dangerous games.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” Olivia suggested.
Great idea.
But Christina marched through the gate, and Olivia followed. Fog swirled around the graves, and a light mist fell from the sky.
The girls walked down a narrow path and stopped at a grave under an oak tree. Mike perched on the limb of a hundred-year-old cedar.
Christina shone her flashlight on the gravestone. “Check out this one.
‘Jonathan Pincher. Born 1880. Died 1886.’”
“I wonder what happened to him.” Olivia pulled up her coat collar.
Mike wondered if she was chilled by the cool night air or a sense of trepidation and foreboding.
“Probably some kind of sickness. Medicine and doctors were hard to come by then. A lot of people died young.” Christina pointed the microphone of her tape recorder toward the gravestone and pushed a button.
“What’s supposed to happen?” Olivia asked.
“When we play it back later, we’ll hear voices.”
“This is giving me the creeps. Let’s go back and get some hot chocolate.”
“Not yet. Now, be quiet.” Christina knelt and placed the mic closer to the grave.
Olivia hugged her arms tight around her middle and looked around, as if she hoped someone would see them and shoo them away. Mike wished he could appear and talk her into leaving this place. But his instructions for tonight were to observe, not to interact.
Christina stopped the recorder. “That should do it.”
“Can we leave now?”
She shrugged. “Sure. I want to listen to this anyway.”
They headed back toward the iron gate.
Once they were back inside the house, Christina lit a small candle on her bedside table. She rewound the tape and pushed Play. A strong hissing escaped from the speaker.
“Sounds like static to me,” Olivia said.
“Sh.” After the recording of the girls’ brief conversation in the grave-yard, a moaning sound came out of the tiny speaker. Olivia shuddered.
Then a child’s scream ripped the air.
The girls’ eyes widened.
“Turn it off,” Olivia shrieked.
Christina pushed the Stop button with a shaky finger.
Olivia grabbed her book bag. “I’m going home. This is too creepy for me.”
“Wait.” Christina grabbed her friend’s arm. “I know this seems crazy.
But Olivia, the occult is real.”
“Why? Because you heard a weird scream on a tape recorder?”
Christina pulled Olivia onto the bed beside her. “About a week ago, as I was getting into my car to go to a party, I heard a muffled voice coming from the backseat. It sounded like it said, ‘I’m here.’ I figured my little brother was playing a practical joke. But when I turned around, ready to smack Timmy on the head for scaring me, I saw the face of a young boy about six years old. He had long dark hair pulled back in a leather tie, and his clothes looked like those pictures in our history books from the nineteenth century.”
“I suppose you think that was the kid in the grave you just recorded.”
“I’m sure it was. I believe Jonathan’s trying to communicate with me.”
“That’s crazy.” Olivia’s face looked as white as the painted headboard.
Mike tilted his head toward heaven and spoke to the Father in a heavenly language on behalf of his charge.
Christina crossed her legs under her on the bed. “Greg and I have been dabbling with this kind of stuff since eighth grade. One year we tried astral projection.”
“What’s that?”
“We jump into each other’s dreams and travel together. We’ve been to Disneyland, Hawaii, all kinds of places. We compare notes each morning to make sure each of us saw the same details.
Mike’s hands curled into fists. Demonic games. Deadly games.
“Greg and I have also tried chanting spells.”
“You know magic spells?”
“There are several on the Internet.”
Olivia was shaking so hard, Mike thought she might fall off the bed.
“Christina, the occult isn’t a game. It’s scary.”
Mike grimaced at the word game.
“No, it’s not. It’s fun.” Her eyes clouded. “Most of the time.”
“What do you mean?”
Christina stared at a corner of her room to the left of the window that Mike’s eyes peered into. “The last time Greg and I chanted some spells, I saw a dark figure in a trench coat and top hat standing right there.” She pointed to the corner. “I freaked out and sent Greg home, told him I didn’t want to do this anymore.”
“That’s good.”
“That . . . apparition has come back every night since, always standing in the same spot. He never speaks or touches me. He just stares at me with these piercing green eyes.” She shuddered.
Mike had encountered this kind of dark spirit before. They loved to appear in black, stalking and tormenting individuals. He seethed at how they especially preyed on the young and innocent.
Is . . . is he there right now?” Olivia’s voice trembled.
“No. But it’s not midnight yet. I try to go to sleep before that, but I never seem to be able to.”
Olivia checked her watch. It was eleven forty-five. “I don’t want to see anything like that. I gotta go.”
Christina clutched her friend’s arm. “Please stay. Please?”
Olivia hesitated. Mike hoped she’d leave. But he couldn’t intervene.
Not yet.
“I’ll only stay if . . . ”
“If what?”
“If you’ll pray with me.”
Atta girl!
“OK.”
Olivia took her friend’s hands in hers, and they bowed their heads across the bed from each other.
Another presence entered the room. It was Mike’s fellow guardian angel, Gideon.
“Knew you’d be here,” Mike said, winking at his friend.
“Good to see you, Mike. Wish it was under more peaceful circumstances. This is the first time I’ve seen my Christina pray.” Gideon shifted his gaze to the wall behind the girls. “Here they come,” he murmured.
Two black forms came through the walls of Christina’s bedroom and settled in the corner right behind where the two were praying, the same cloaked figures he’d encountered many times before. They hated showing their faces. The tattered hems of their cloaks fluttered as they hovered up and down beside the wall next to the two praying girls. Typical spirits of confusion and fear.
Cloaking himself to not be seen by the spirits, he called for backup. Dozens of glowing orbs descended around the house, morphing into forms that resembled ancient Vikings. Among them was Gideon, Christina’s guardian angel, having left the room and joining the new arrivals. They all nodded at each other on the lawn outside the house.
The warring angels who appeared stood in the front of the house, heads facing the window of Christina’s room. They had shields, helmets, and shin guards. They raised their glowing swords above their heads and waited in silence.
The two black forms that had been in the bedroom fluttered onto the lawn, facing their opponents, pressing toward the warriors, their figures swelling to ten times their original size, hissing. Mike knew the dark spirits were outnumbered, and they would back off quickly. But suddenly, ten other black cloaked figures appeared and descended on his comrades.
Behind him, the clang of swords being removed from their sheaths reassured him.
Mike sounded a war cry, being the lead guardian angel here, signaling the charge. “For the chosen of God and for Jesus the Lamb!”
“For the chosen of God and for Jesus the Lamb,” the angels responded.
With wails and screams of rage, the demons scattered in all directions, bouncing off the sides of the house and the trees in the nearby graveyard, ricocheting like shrapnel, dispersing in all directions around the neighborhood.
The name—Jesus—was all it took to make them flee. Mike knew it.
Not every battle was this easy, but the prayer of his charge had strengthened their side immensely.
The screeches of their foes rent the air, ringing over the town like a hundred fire truck sirens.
When Mike and Gideon’s comrades had disappeared, the two angels returned to Christina’s window.
Olivia opened her eyes and said, “Amen.”
“Let’s listen to some music.” Christina turned on the radio. Blaring rhythms filled the room, the bass pounding the walls.
Olivia changed the station. Christian praise songs replaced the rock band.
Olivia had accessed one of the greatest weapons in spiritual warfare. Praise. Mike winked at Gideon. “She’s learning.”
Gideon nodded. “What a pleasant charge you have. I hope yours rubs off on mine a little.”
Mike held his hand out toward Gideon, palm out. “All in good time.”
Christina placed her hand on Olivia’s shoulder and smiled. “Thanks, Liv. I feel . . . I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like I’m lighter. Inside.
I’ve never felt so much . . . ”
“Peace?” Olivia offered.
“Yeah.” Christina inhaled deeply. “Peace.”
“Prayer and praise have that effect on me too.”
“I’ve been obsessed with the occult for years. But I want nothing to do with it anymore. I have to stop before one of these ghosts actually hurts me.”
Olivia hugged her friend. “I’m glad I didn’t leave after all.”
“Me too.”
“But I’m really tired. Let’s get some sleep.”
“OK. But . . . ”
“What?”
“Can we leave the radio on?”
Olivia grinned. “Absolutely.”
Mike glanced at Gideon and gave a “two thumbs up” sign, and Gideon returned the gesture.
The girls changed into their night clothes in the bathroom, Olivia settled down on the futon, and Christina crawled into her bed.
The backup warriors had made a great showing tonight. But the evil ones still had dominion there. Those tormentors would come again. And Mike’s comrades would be powerless to step in unless someone invited them.
It was time to teach his charge about spiritual warfare. Olivia needed to learn how to use her position in Christ to command unclean spirits to flee.
If he could train her to effectively use the weapons she already had in her arsenal, there might be hope for her friend Christina as well.