The Exorcism

I was, undoubtedly, a superstitious child. It was probably a result of paranoia and an overly active imagination. I thought clowns wee agents of pure evil. I not only believed in Santa Clause, I set up elaborate traps to catch him. I was convinced that bad things would happen to me if the total number of steps I took on a single slab of concrete did not equal an exponent of 2 (If I crossed the school oval on the way home I would sometimes mark time to reach 256). The most embarrassing of all of these was my mother’s university graduation, which I spent on the front steps of the all telling people there was a witch inside. My childhood was filled with invisible lasers, non-specific threatening forces and a need for me to act in eccentric ways to cope with the intricate and malevolent universe in my head.

However I remember the exact moment that this stopped for me. My final superstition of any note was one that had spread to me from my sister who got it from her friend. It was the belief that if someone did not hold their breath whole passing a graveyard. My sister and I dutifully carried this out for several months, even modifying it to include not touching the floor of the car. It was a rather ridiculous act to look at.

This came to a halt on a family holiday when we drove lengthwise along one of those giant country graveyards that take up a whole field. Immediately, my sister and I performed our strange ritual, and my parents looked back at their children who sat with limbs splayed and cheeks puffed. They decided to end this. They braked. The car sat in the middle of a country road as my parents patiently waited for us to give in. My sister shot me a quick look and I continued my pose until m sides hurt. But soon we spluttered and slammed our feet to the bottom of the car.

The next breath of oxygen brought with it a line of reasoning that I have continued to use to this present day. Namely, that all forms of superstition and magic are rubbish.

To this day, I do not touch wood when I tempt fate. There is no need and I feel no obligation. I do not read my astronomy charts though apparently I am a Scorpio. UFOlogists are bonkers as is anyone who predicts catastrophe based on the calendars of ancient civilizations. I do not consult psychics. I do not observe Friday the thirteenth. I do not believe in miracles. My mother’s back is in fine condition despite me regularly stepping on both lines and cracks. I do, however, allow myself to continue the exponent of two activity, however I fear no retribution if this is not achieved.

So you can imagine my reaction when Randy told me not to pack any red clothing for the junior retreat that I was supervising.
“Why?”
“We’re going to Udot, it’s famous for black magic.”
“And…”
“You can get cursed for wearing red.”
I felt the urge to ask him whether Udot was an island or a nightclub, but he had already left.

Micronesians are big on black magic. In my first week at St Cecilia’s a girl asked me if I believed in it and I replied ‘no’. This shocked the entire class and they spent the rest of the class pestering me about it. From my perspective it seemed more humourous than malicious. Most of the time it was discussed in the context of love spells like a failed joke in a Harry Potter book. Once or twice someone would attribute the state of the local nutjob to black magic. I would have liked to explain that it was, in fact, petrol sniffing that produced such a result but I tire of being culturally insensitive sometimes and just let it go.

However, it’s control over the students should not be underestimated. Approaching Udot by boat, there was an odd moment where the passengers, the vast majority of whom were sixteen-year-olds, all simultaneously sat down quietly. I wandered about for a little bit but was abruptly stopped when Mike, a second-year volunteer in charge of the retreat, asked me to sit down.
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to Udot, it’s famous for black magic.”
“And…”
“If you don’t sit down, the students will go beserk.”

Udot, for the record, was beautiful. Spectacular even. The water was transparent, the air was fresh and instead of roads they had precisely manicured grass stretching from the church to the school, a distance of about a hundred meters. The people were happy and friendly and they crowded at the shore to meet us. Tom and I made certain we pointed out people in red t-shirts if we saw them. For an island famous for black magic, it certainly was very lovely.

However, this was a school trip and any joy to be had by being there was soon siphoned off through the hectic schedule and the terrible burden of responsibility. It was exhausting, particularly monitoring students late at night. In addition there is the Chuukese penchant for, shall we say, marathon events. Four hours straight of what is known as an entertainment leaves one exasperated no matter how much goodwill or joy is behind it.

The students themselves helped to give the weekend a shambolic feel, particularly in the entertainment that they had planned for themselves. They delayed the start by two hours because of audio difficulties and ended every performance in a desperate rush to the back of the stage to avoid embarrassment. The evening ended with fire-dancing, which was performed so haphazardly that it actually set one of the audience members briefly on fire. It was all a little overwhelming.

So, later that night, Tom and I took some initiative and sat with a couple of locals our own age. Tom speaks Chuukese, I can’t, it didn’t seem to matter. One kid pulled out a ukulele and started playing; he was incredible. He just sat and played for us for about an hour, it seemed to go on forever. The night was cool; the sky went on forever as it can only do in the middle of the Pacific. It was a great moment and it was hard to turn back to the community hall were we all slept.

The next morning felt groggy. Most mornings feel like this for me, but this one in particular left me feeling disjointed and tired. I scrambled around the hall looking for privacy, a futile effort in any case. Students had begun to wander around in a similar haze; for some reason we let them drink coffee (coffee in Micronesia is consumed from preschool onwards). The staff that were up began methodically waking up the rest of the students. Most of the boys, considering that they had slept in the same room with a concrete floor, were up, but the girls who had stayed in tiny rooms to the side were only beginning to file out. Somehow, I managed to gain some privacy and got changed. Re-entering the hall, I was greeted with low, discomforting moans from one of the rooms. They seemed to echo out of the furthest to the left and stopped everybody in their stride. A few female staff leapt in to try and find out what was happening. The girl wasn’t waking up and was instead hyperventilating and moaning. A crowd of other girls sat around her, cradling her head, massaging her limbs and generally looking supportive. It didn’t seem to do much. She kept moaning and hyperventilating. The students stood around awkwardly in the hall for there was no other more adequate reaction. And then a different girl fainted.

At this point the local doctor was called. This sounds like the right decision, except that the local doctor was more of a magician than any Western concept of a medical professional. But he was, apparently, very good and well trusted by his community. And, if the students had suspected, it was the work of black magic than indeed it would be of some psychological support that he had been the first on the case. His first instruction upon seeing the two girls was to order all of the males out of the hall. The practical reasoning of this was beyond me. So, grabbing teenage boys as I went, I exited the hall as soon as possible.

What followed I can easily claim to being the strangest few hours of my life. We sat on the lawn in front of the hall and watched people filing in and out looking concerned and carrying strange objects. The sounds that came from the hall alternated between crying, moaning and chanting. Meanwhile the boys sat like stones on the manicured grass. I have never seen sixteen-year old boys sit like this. Amongst them there was barely a fidget of movement or a whisper of conversation.

The most dramatic moment came about forty-five minutes into the ritual, as a strange smelling smoke started to pour out the windows of the hall. It was accompanied by ear-splitting screaming, the most terrifying screaming I’ve ever heard. A few of the more composed boys formed a prayer circle and eevn managed a few lines of consolation. But it couldn’t stop that screaming, in my imagination, nothing could stop that screaming. It was a scream from the old ways, long before we came here with ou concrete and our crucifixes. A scream filled with the terror of the islands at night. A scream that curdled with extraordinary pain. It came from the hall, which was no longer of our world, but that of the local doctor. We were only sitting on its lawn.

The call came from Xavier to get the girls off island and into real medical care. The problem was that the ‘doctor’ disagreed. He said that a trip back to Weno would only exacerbate the problems. To the Chuukese, the spirits of the dead, like the ones that had apparently infected two of our students, live in the water. A water-borne voyage thus risked further infection. However, Mike was insistent. Medical help was needed. It’s a curious difference, that to us the problem was a medical one yet to the locals it was a mystical one.

The evacuation was a blur. We were allowed into the hall and we removed everything at a furious pace. The gear was loaded into small boats that were in turn loaded onto the larger boat moored off the reef. I remember only one thing distinctly. As we told the boys that we were to begin to pack, one gave me a look that stopped me dead. I’d previously heard him complaining to others that we were making the problem worse by leaving, that we weren’t respecting the judgment of the local doctor. When e looked at me, his eyes had a misted quality, a curious mix of fear and anguish. And a sense that this was not our world. I don’t think I will forget that look.

There have been many moments in my time here where I have genuinely entertained the thought that this is not real. Perhaps someone slipped something in my drink, that I’m really just sitting on my couch at home staring at the ceiling. Or perhaps, Fight Club style, I have invented my own reality that I have gradually slipped into to deal with stress from the HSC. I these moments, I appeal to the anonymous corner of my consciousness that knows, with certainty, that this is a lie.

And how I dug. Standing on the boat and looking back to that beautiful island, I scoured every millimeter of thought I had ever had. And I arrived, rather bluntly, at the moment by the cemetery that had abducted me from the bizarre fantasies of my childhood. I wondered if I could ever reconcile that cold breath of air, my relentless skepticism, with what I had just seen. And I decided that it was neither the malevolent universe of my childhood nor the firmament of logic that I was familiar with. It was not of my world. I had stumbled through someone else’s terrifying childhood. It was all very strange.