Beware the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

receding, making his broad forehead and large, hawklike nose even more prominent. He was dressed entirely in black and wore a gold earring on his left ear. Reaching in the pocket of his rather tight jeans, he took out a Swiss Army knife and carefully trimmed the offending string.
    “What are you doing? Now it’s too short!”
    As Luciana looked on peevishly, Carl cut more string from the ball we’d brought. “Is this okay?”
    She grabbed the necklace and pulled it over her hair, taking care not to snag it on her thick ponytail. “I guess so,” she reluctantly allowed. Suddenly embarrassed by her display of bad temper, she added, “I’m sorry to be such a bitch, but I only got a half hour of sleep last night.”
    “Forget it,” advised Joe. “I know you’re very upset and scared. Let’s bring Ralph up to speed about the problems you’ve been having.”
    No longer animated by anger, she slumped back in her chair, as if she were carrying a very heavy weight on her thin shoulders. “Several weeks ago, around 2:00 A.M. , I was reading in my room. I had a glass of water by my bed, and when I got up to turn on the hall light for my sister, who was out at a party, the glass flew at me and just missed my head.”
    This was the first attack on her person—and her screams brought the whole family running. Afraid to sleep alone, she spent the next night in her sister’s room. In the middle of the night, the bunk bed the two girls were sharing began shaking violently, actually jumping up and down off the floor. Again the family was jolted from sleep by screams, but as soon as they turned on the light, the shaking instantly ceased.
    This is characteristic of infestation; scary things happen in the dark and stop when the light goes on. It’s a typical demonic head game, where the goal is to create fear and bewilderment, as the victims ask themselves “Was the bed really shaking, or was it just a nightmare? Did we both imagine it?” Although the evil spirit operated covertly at first, it became more brazen each day. Infestation quickly progressed to outright oppression: No longer did the evil force flee at the flick of a light switch—in fact, it even began attacking during broad daylight.
    Each time the demon picked on the same person: Luciana. “I get scratched every day,” she told us. “Usually I get wide red marks up and down my arms that go away very fast, sometimes in minutes. One night, around two in the morning, I felt a very painful burning on my skin and woke up with a pentagram scratched into my stomach. Another time my arm started burning and stinging like it was on fire. When I looked in the mirror, I saw the number of the Beast—666—written on my arm in huge red welts.”
    Why the bride-to-be became the focal person is rather puzzling: Her two teenaged sisters both said she was the strong one, their beautiful, high-spirited, and rather willful leader. Yet, in the Work, I’ve found there’s no predictable pattern that explains why one family member is singled out for diabolical abuse, except that people are attacked through weaknesses the demonic are quick to exploit. Very often the focal person is a child, since these bullying spirits love to pick on kids. It’s a cruel but effective tactic: While the evil spirit was clearly out to get the mother, what better way to break down a parent’s will—and reduce her resistance to possession—than by brutalizing her child?
    Although the dark power could have accomplished the same thing by going after any of Gabby’s four children, I had a theory why Luciana bore the brunt of the abuse. Since the force of doom was posing as a pitiful ghost of a woman who was murdered on her wedding day, it may have reasoned, with perverse logic, that a mother would be most empathetic with its alleged anguish if her daughter, a genuine bride-to-be, was also suffering.
    If so, the plan worked: Gabby immediately asked “Virginia” what other spirits were in the house.