SEAL Team 666

43

It’s day three of the exorcism. My heart has broken so many times in the last seventy-two hours I can’t begin to tell you how much I hurt inside. One day you’ll read this and know that all your pain, all of your agony, is my fault.

Sometimes I wish that it was your brother they did this to. He’s older and stronger. I think he would have taken it better. Although I have to admit, you have absorbed so much self-mutilation and punishment to your flesh that I am amazed at what is survivable.

I don’t know how damaged you will be because of this. But if you survive, I know you’re going to hate me. So I leave this to you. After all, if you’re going to hate me, I want you to hate me for the right reasons.

Your mother called me an asshole. Not because I wasn’t a good provider, but because I was never there for her. I didn’t change after her death, either. I was an asshole to Brian and I was an asshole to you. My defense, if I’m even allowed one, is that there was only one way I knew how to provide a future for my family. Sure, I could have stayed like the other Navy chiefs and lived hand to mouth until I retired. But that’s no kind of life. That’s subsistence living. That’s one step above the poverty line and it isn’t fair that you kids should have to live a life like that.

So I made deals.

Some people say I stole. I never did. Everything I dealt I bought from the DRMO at auction. I have the receipts for everything if anyone ever asks. I’d buy a surplus of chairs from DRMO, sell them to a guy in Subic for a hundred cases of beer, then sell those to resorts in Mindanao who were having trouble getting local vendors because of all the Muslim separatists. I’d triple my initial investment this way and a hundred other ways.

Making deals wasn’t about what you were selling. It was always about who you were selling it to. It’s a personality game. You have to know people who know people, and I knew everyone.

Maybe that was the problem.

See, in order to make money, you have to take advantage of someone. To make a lot of money, you take a lot of advantage of someone. Most of the times people realize it. After all, they’re still making a profit. Their problem was they didn’t have the means or know the right people to make the kind of profit that I did. And that usually left them feeling pissed.

But I wasn’t a good guy all the time.

There were the occasions when I took advantage of a situation if I didn’t like the people. And this is where you come in. I made a mistake in Corregidor. I was hired to trade for some penicillin. I got the penicillin, but got a better offer in Manila. A bar owner wanted to corner the market on the drug, knowing that the girls had to have clean bills of health on their red cards. He paid me triple what I was going to get from the Malay doctor on Corregidor.

I figured I’d be able to take the cash, buy some more penicillin, and get it to Corregidor after only a few days’ delay. But I hadn’t anticipated the supply would dry up. When I realized that I couldn’t get any more, I tried to buy back what I’d sold at a loss, but the bar owner just laughed at me.

I wired my contact in Corregidor. The reply I got back told the rest of the horrifying story. The drug was to be used to halt an outbreak of meningitis at a local orphanage. They had to have it. Without it they’d all die. And they did.

Forty-seven children.

Dead.

Because of me.

The last line of the telegram I received in return said that I’d pay for this.

Two weeks later I noticed the change in you. I don’t know how it got in you. I don’t know who did it. All I knew was that one minute you were a happy-go-lucky kid having a great life in the P.I., and the next you were like a ravenous dog with the mouth of a sailor.

Then I lost you for four months.

I’m still trying to figure out what exactly happened to you. According to the woman who convinced the priest to rescue you from the garbage dump, you are possessed by a Hantu Kabor. Turns out that’s some sort of Malaysian grave demon. It sucks out the souls of the dead, but can be harnessed to do the same with the living. As it was explained to me, as if this were something logical, the demon possesses you for as long as it takes to break down your internal defenses. Once that happens, it eats your soul and moves on. I’ve seen the sort of people they claim have been its victims. And Jackie, they scare me. They scare me worse than anything because I don’t want you to end up that way.

They just sit there, staring at the world.

No, that’s not right. That would entail some sort of interaction. They sit there with the world staring at them. They’re like rocks. Or clay. Or a hill. They are nothing. There’s nothing left inside except for the elements that made them.

They’re empty.

But you were strong.

You kept it at bay. Through whatever hell you were in, you kept it from consuming you.

And you are still holding on.

You have more scars than any child should ever have. You have been bleeding from your eyes and ears for a full day now. Your arms have been trying to dislocate, so we’ve put you in a straitjacket. Your heart has been at a steady two hundred beats per minute. Your breathing is rapid-fire. Your eyes shine with the heat of the beast.

But I think whatever the priest is doing is working. Amidst your screams of terror and agony, I think the shine in your eyes is beginning to dim.

That has to be good, right?

That means you’re getting better, right?

Oh Lord, please make it so.