The Demon

'The Beast of Braunau' had been employed by Doctor Mueller to teach his wife and four daughters the fundamentals of modern art. At sentencing, the Judge asked ‘The Beast’ why he'd done such terrible, unnatural things. He replied, "Modsiw ot htap eurt ylno eht si nerdlihc dna nemow fo msilabinnac dna, redrum, erutrot eht taht em decnivnoc ev'yeht, gnol os rof sbir ym ta dewang ev'yeht dna star evil fo lluf os si ytivac tsehc ym."

After listening to the incoherent gibberish, the Judge passed down a verdict of guilty on all five counts of murder and then ordered the madman to be taken straight to the asylum. After the courthouse had emptied, the court recorder, who kept detailed longhand notes of all conversations at trial, and who just happened to be an amateur cryptologist realized the crazed man had been speaking backward. She showed the Judge what she believed the prisoner had said. "My chest cavity is so full of live rats and they've gnawed at my ribs for so long, they've convinced me that the torture, murder, and cannibalism of women and children is the only true path to wisdom." The Judge dismissed the recorder's notes and theory and told her the man must be possessed and that his soul was now in the hands of the hospital administrators and God almighty.

*

The basement dungeon in the Braunau hospital for the criminally insane housed the most dangerous and unpredictable of all the institution's incurables. The narrow claustrophobic corridor, dark and rank with the acrid smell of soot and human waste was lit by storm lanterns hanging from hooks in the low ceiling. The blackened lanterns, with their stubby yellow wicks’ barley protruding from dented oil reservoirs, emitted a low orange glow masking the filth that came from keeping unhinged humans locked up like farm animals.

The incident happened while the hospital staff was escorting their new-commit to his cell. Nurse Heckmier was on the corridor handing out sedatives. How ‘The Beast’ managed to free himself from his handlers is a mystery. But after snapping the thick leather straps binding his ankles and wrists, he flew at the defenseless Nurse. It took four orderlies close to a minute to choke him to death before he could kill again.

The Demon, who had recently been using the murderer as a host had been waiting for a moment like this for over a thousand years. During that prolonged period of inferior assignments, it became consumed with a lava-like loathing that flowed towards the human race like a boiling stream of sulfuric hatred. It was this unending volcanic malevolence that made its master most pleased and thus decided to let it loose. The demon entered the nurse’s body through her mouth while she was screaming.

For days after the attack, Nurse Heckmier hovered on the edge of death. Her doctor said it was a miracle she had survived the countless contusions, broken bones, and the bite marks all over her face and neck that looked like the work of a rabid dog. But after she regained consciousness, those close to her recognized that something in her mind had broken beyond the point of repair. Her sanity seemed to be teetering on the brink of a bottomless trough. And then one day, as if surrendering to the demands of gravity and madness, she plunged into a frightening, irreversible emotional free fall.

One snowy morning she walked barefoot into the kindergarten on Grubber Strassen, wearing only her nightgown, covered head to toe in blood. Understandably, the children became hysterical. The teachers were terrified too. When the police arrived, Nurse Heckmier calmly told them she had just killed her dogs because they wouldn't stop telling her to do "terrible things to the children." At night, her frightened neighbors could hear her howling and growling and smashing up the inside of her house. On Easter Sunday she ran naked in the town square, screaming that she was on fire.

*

As an ordained instrument of the Almighty, Father Kurtz had great power over his parishioners. Science, medicine, and the law could not compete with the rule of religion. Nurse Heckmier's frightening actions had set the fears of the faithful on fire. Talk of possession fanned those flames until they erupted into a kind of white-hot community hysteria. After days of deliberation, the church elders all agreed; Father Kurtz must draw the Demon out.

*

Dozens of large candles illuminated the interior of the church. The fragile white flames radiated outward, reaching the enormous stone pillars supporting the medieval building. An ancient handcrafted wooden cask containing holy water sat on the altar, full. And as Father Kurtz kneeled in prayer, preparing himself for what was to come, he felt the light from the candles petitioning the darkness, warning it to stay away, while outside, a spring storm began galloping and flapping its way through the evening sky.

Stephan Fritz and Joseph Schafer, the two men tasked by Father Kurtz to escort Nurse Heckmier to church were both in their mid-thirties, worked at the local foundry, and were immensely strong. The only thing matching their physical strength was their uncompromising commitment to the lord. It was this rare combination of faith and physical ability that prompted Father Kurtz to press both men into service.

As the two huge soldiers of Christ approached the Nurse's run-down house, the wind and rain turned from blustery to gale force. To their surprise, they found Nurse Heckmier standing outside her front door, wearing only a thin sleeveless dress and a shawl over her shoulders. She was soaked to the skin but appeared not in the least bit affected by the dreadful weather. Both men were shocked by the Nurse’s appearance. In the past few months, she had lost a great deal of weight, becoming emaciated and gaunt. And in the dying light of the day, the pale skin of her neck and face had contracted around the maze of purple and blue scars, contorting, and deforming her ruined features. As Fritz and Schafer drew close, she said in a soft unassuming voice, "I’m glad you’re here. I've been waiting all day for you." The two big men were amazed to hear this. As far as they knew, only Father Kurtz and an elite inner circle of church elders had any knowledge of their errand and its dark spiritual implications.

Escorting Nurse Heckmier away from her home, through the cold driving rain, she walked freely and offered no resistance. As they were about to take a turn in the road and head directly into town, she stopped abruptly. "Is everything OK?" asked Shafer. Responding in a neutral, unemotional voice, the nurse said, "yes, everything is fine, thank you. It's my house. I was born there. I just want to look at it one more time".

*

While evening fell, and the high winds and heavy rains hurtled across the tiled rooftops of the old town, Alois paced across the broad sawdust-covered floorboards of the smoky barroom with his head down and hands plunged deep into his trouser pockets. Alois bit his bottom lip and made pained expressions each time he heard Klara screaming in the rented room above the bar. The other customers sitting around the fire talked sympathetically through clouds of pipe smoke about the expectant father and the laboring mother and were all hoping that this time, things would work out.

Klara was a dozen hours into the delivery of her fourth child. The couple’s first three children, Gustav, Ida, and Otto had not survived past the age of three. After the death of little Otto, Klara, heartbroken and inconsolable turned in on herself, unable to bear the scrutiny of the other mothers' low whispers and fierce judgmental looks.

Alois, practical and diligent, threw himself into his job as a customs official. He shut out the uncontrolled family failure by engaging in his work to the fullest measure of service and seriousness. He became addicted to the duty of it, work as an anesthetic, a sedative from domestic disappointment. But as time crawled by, he became increasingly angry at Klara. In his proud, masculine mind, Klara's inability to produce healthy, resilient children made him look weak and unmanly and the subject of cruel humor.

But beneath Klara's feelings of maternal failure and Alois's simmering ego-fueled anger, a dark bond bound the two together in a way that was never openly talked about. This secretive thing made both parents equally responsible for the deaths of their three young children. Although Alois and Klara's union was legal, it was beyond the finely balanced laws of nature. Alois was the youngest brother of Klara's Grandfather. As a child, Klara had always called him Great Uncle. Now, she called him husband.

*

The sparsely furnished rented room was silent except for Klara's shallow uneven breathing. Sitting in the deeply recessed windowsill, staring out into the storm-raked town square, the midwife waited. Catching a glimpse of her reflection, arms, and apron, stained with the burgundy notification of impending tragedy, the midwife thought that perhaps Klara was too weak to continue. The baby was stubborn. It was refusing to rotate. All the old tricks had failed. Placing clothespins on the mother's toes, making her drink a glass of cold orange juice, cat stretches on all fours, and the ridiculous headstands. All had amounted to naught. The midwife hated breech births, so often, either mother or child did not survive. There were occasions when both infant and parent perished. There came a point where two such raw, tender bodies could no longer endure the countless hours of blunt trauma and blood loss.

*

As the war of elements thrashed through the sky, making the enormous poplar tree in the center of the empty town square look like a giant claw reaching up into the drenched charcoal night, the midwife stared at the two large lanterns swinging around either side of the open church door. Beyond the church’s broad stone steps, the flickering lamplight on wet cobbles made the ground look alive, as if it was swarming with wet pestilent river rats. Klara began to moan and bite down on a fistful of linen. The midwife turned towards her patient while the wind dashed a stormy mix of leaves and rain against the glass.

*

Emerging from the church's open doorway, both hands busy with a rosary and silver crucifix, Father Kurtz stared into the storm and saw three dark figures approaching. Behind him, deep inside the sanctuary, the quivering light from the votive candles bathed the Alter in a soft golden glow.

Kicking and convulsing, and with her eyes rolling around in her head like she was being electrocuted, Fritz and Schaffer dragged the fighting, biting, Nurse Heckmier towards the church.

*

"Push Klara, push!" yelled the midwife. Klara dug her heels into the mattress, gripped the sheets on either side of her hips, and screamed out in agony. The unborn infant had flipped. The top of its head was now visible. Placing her hands between Klara's knees, the midwife again shouted, "Push, push; you're almost there!"

Klara screamed as if she were being lowered onto an impaling post. Using all her remaining strength, pushing past the pain, moaning in agony, she bore down again and again and again - her howling filtering through the floorboards into the barroom below.

Alois hunched his shoulders, clenched his teeth, and squeezed his eyes shut. The bar owner poured a colossal brandy into a fishbowl snifter and handed it to him, on the house.

*

Father Kurtz ran out into the torrential whiplash rain. It felt like the black sin-soaked sky was teeming with scorpions and snakes. Gripping his crucifix and rosary in his right fist, he ran behind Fritz and Shafer and began pushing Nurse Heckmier towards the open church door. Fritz grabbed the nurse around the waist, lifting her off the ground, carrying her up the church steps. Shafer pushed the church doors wide open. Fighting with all the instinct and strength of a feral animal, Nurse Heckmier grabbed the huge oak door frame. Shafer tried to peel her fingers away from the wood but could not. Nurse Heckmier began shuddering violently and making swine-like grunting noises.

"We have to get her inside," yelled Father Kurtz.

Fritz and Shafer pounded on the woman's frail bony hands with their big meaty fists. Still, Nurse Heckmier held fast to the door frame. Father Kurtz ran inside to the altar, grabbed the wooden cask, and then sprinted back to the doorway, panting and desperate, sloshing holy water over his long black robes and simple leather shoes.

At first, Father Kurtz thought the lamplight was playing a trick on him. Fritz and Shafer lay at the nurse’s feet, their lifeless eyes wide open, their mouths agape, and their thick muscular necks twisted unnaturally. Nurse Heckmier released a deep guttural growl. Father Kurtz looked up to see her towering over him.

“Ye are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father ye will do.” bellowed Father Kurtz “I command thee in the name of Christ to come out of her” His words flew through the air along with almost a gallon of holy water, hitting Nurse Heckmier square in the chest. Holding up his crucifix, defending himself in the doorway of the church, Father Kurtz watched Nurse Heckmier clawing madly at her unrecognizable face. "I command thee in the name of Jesus to come out of her.” screamed, Father Kurtz “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, I command thee to flee".

Throughout the town trees, chimneys, and fences fell, doors flew open, thousands of roof tiles peeled away from the timbers they were attached to and scattered into the darkness like playing cards thrown from a speeding train. Windows left open in unattended rooms, ripped away from their hinges, and sailed through the night before smashing onto wet cobbled streets below.

Against the sound of screeching wind and torrential, driving rain, a discordant rumbling, like the bass notes of a broken pipe organ rose from somewhere deep within Nurse Heckmier's body. The awful noise erupted out of her throat and mouth with such volume and force; it tore out her tongue and front teeth. Her howling was taken up into the storm. Nurse Heckmier fell to the ground, dead. Father Kurtz dropped to his knees, exhausted. The full force of the storm smashed into the town. The huge poplar tree in the square went crashing into the outside wall of the tavern, breaking many of the upstairs windows. The midwife screamed. Klara wailed like she was being torn in two. Alois sprinted up the stairs, ran along the dark landing, and then burst into the rented room. The scene was a nightmare. A withered tree limb reaching through the broken window was clawing at the air. Leaves and rain were blasting into the room through the jagged glass opening. Klara, legs akimbo, lay naked on a blood-soaked bed, drenched in sweat and gasping for breath. Alois dropped the big brandy glass. It shattered at his feet. Waah!!! The black-haired baby screeched its first orders to the waiting world. With her hands and wrists still covered in blood and slithering oils, the exhausted midwife held up the shrieking infant and shouted, "Herr Hitler, it's a baby boy."