Drenched in sweat, Darius Swift awoke in terror, glanced frantically at the woman next to him in bed, wondered for an instant if she were dead. A chanting drummed through him, and he heard a voice muttering unintelligible words that struck him as obscene and profane.

His thoughts were crazy; he knew that. But he listened, eyes open, feeling as if he'd just been fired from a cannon into the darkest hell, heard the chant, searched his dark room for the source of the profane voice. His heart pounding furiously, he realized that the words -- the Lord's Prayer said backwards -- were pouring from his mouth like vomit. He commanded himself to stop.

Again, he glanced at the woman next to him, a gorgeous light-skinned black named Rhea to whom he had given himself five years ago. Pretty as an angel, she sighed, turned her back to him, assuring him that she was alive. It was then that he began to crave her flesh.

For the seventh night in a row, Darius had had the same terrifying dream. In the nightmare, he was chained to stones in a graveyard and possessed by devils. The dream always ended with the same man, dressed in white robes and blazing like the sun, trying to cast the devils out of him and into the swine feeding nearby. In the dream, there was always another man -- tall? pale? thin? -- that Darius could not quite see. Just before the dream ended, Darius would invariably begin reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards.

Now, heart beating insanely, Darius Swift forced himself to sit upright in bed and stare out the window at the full moon. He wondered if he actually were possessed by a devil. Or devils. His sister Agnes, a former porn queen turned Catholic nun who lived in a neighboring city, said so. She had said so ever since he had spent the night with Rhea Knight, the beautiful black stripper who had invited him years ago to give his soul to darkness.

Teeth chattering in the chilling darkness of his room, Darius had to wonder about himself. He knew he wasn't normal. For instance, two nights ago out in front of Beaming Benny's family restaurant, where he regularly met Agnes at 5:30 PM every Thursday for chicken and dumplings, he had beaten a man into a coma.

The red-headed guy with the beard was a biker, around 6'4", pig tattoos up and down his meaty arms, and he had made an obscene gesture with his tongue in Agnes' direction as Darius had escorted his sister into the restaurant. In public, his sister wore a nun's habit.

Darius had exploded like a powder keg and had seized the biker by the throat, bearing the man to the gravel with ease, then pounded the man's head against the earth until the man had lost consciousness. Darius had stopped only at the pleadings of his sister, who had fallen to her knees, right there in the parking lot, to pray for him. The police came shortly, but the only spectator -- a tall, pale, thin man, who smoked incessantly and seemed to exude darkness, actually enjoying the fight -- had claimed that Darius had fought in self defense. Darius was released instantly.

Jesus, it never used to be this way, thought Darius as he stretched out on his bed, speculating on the condition of his muddied soul. His head was propped up by two foam pillows, the golden light from the full moon spilling into the room. It was 2:33 in the morning, and he knew he wouldn't sleep. Again craving flesh, he thought about waking Rhea, having furious sex with her, and then....

Forcing his mind in a different direction, he wondered if he had merely imagined himself saying the Lord's Prayer backwards. In Puritan New England, he remembered reading somewhere, this phenomenon was a sure sign of demonic possession. The thought that he may be inhabited by demons sent an electric chill through his body.

Then Darius thought again of what Agnes had said two nights ago as he had driven her home from the restaurant (Agnes hadn't been able to eat after the fight.). A gorgeous brunette who had once taken on ten men in a single flick, Agnes had said, "Darius, I'm concerned about you, really quite concerned. I think, dear brother, that you have a distinctly evil side. Agnes was not joking as she normally did when she talked about the dark planet. "Yes, Darius," she said in a matronly voice that always made Darius cringe, "you are a bit evil."

For some reason, Darius had smiled hugely at what he had taken as a compliment. "Evil?" he had said, realizing that he was not the same nerdy Darius Swift who had graduated from high school with a 4.00 and gone on to study biophysics at one of the best universities in the West. Then, turning up the volume on the radio, now playing an AC/DC classic, he had chuckled, "I am not evil, Agnes. No one's evil. That's just shit they teach you in your church. I just got carried away is all. You've done the same." He would never let her forget that, not so many years ago, Sister Agnes, as she now called herself, had walked on the wild side a bit.

Agnes had quickly, gently replied to that remark. "Carried away? Carried away? Ha! That's a good one. Yes, you certainly did get carried away, little brother. You were like a pit bull tearing into a cocker spaniel. It was, well, Satanic, clearly Satanic. Your actions, Darius, were evil. Even your words are profane."

His head spinning euphorically from statements that he should have perceived as a reprimand but took as compliments, Darius had sighed, "Guess so," ran his long bony fingers though his wavy brown hair, then added, "I did lose control. But, hell's bells, it felt kinda good, in a devilish sort of way." He remembered that in high school, his class mates had considered him a wimp. Late in his junior year, he had found himself corned in the high school parking lot by Butch Husker, one of the class bullies; just as he was in the process of getting beaten to a pulp, Agnes had run through the crowd of jeering spectators and hit Butch in the back of the head with a crowbar. Butch had fallen like a tree.

"My God, Darius, you think this is funny, don't you? You're actually gloating." Agnes continued. "If you had a knife, you would have chopped up the big fellow and eaten him for snacks. I saw the look on your face. It wasn't you. You looked for an instant like some hideous beast, like one of those gargoyles they used to put on medieval churches to ward off demons." Darius had felt stunned but mostly amused by his sister's words. A gentle soul ever since her conversion, Agnes usually was not so blunt, he thought to himself as another part of his mind entertaining an oddly appealing image of eating human flesh.

"Darius," Agnes had concluded, "you need a priest. You need something. Until you find one, I shall pray for you constantly." At this, Darius had turned the radio on full blast, hoping that the sound would blast his sister into oblivion.

Angrily clearing her throat, Agnes had turned off the radio and followed up her statement with what she had referred to as an accurate account of the way things are: life is really an ongoing battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. He had wondered when Agnes (who had always been there for him, regardless of whether she were a slut or a saint) was going to let him grow up.

Now, at this moment, in his own room with his girl beside him, terror abating, having woken up reciting the Lord's prayer backwards, Darius had to admit that Agnes possibly knew what she was taking about, though Agnes' views seemed hopelessly out of date. Then Darius thought back to the time in his life when he had actually asked a dark spirit to enter him. He had not told Agnes about it at the time, for he feared and respected her.

It was in '87, six years out of Gadarenes High School in Connecticut, when he'd gone with his friends Mark and David to a nightclub in the industrial section of Las Vegas. He'd never been to the place, called Netherworld, but in the reddish glow of the lights he had had the time of his life.

Around eleven, sitting alone at a table in the rear of the room, watching the girls dressed in black leathers pass by, and drinking a Bloody Mary, he'd been approached by a tall, thin, young black woman with hair cascading sensuously down her back. It was the woman Darius had been studying all evening. He had never seen anyone so beautiful and secretly had prayed in his heart that he might have that girl before the evening was over.

Now his prayer was to be answered. Even in the dark, as he stood to welcome her, he could see that she had green eyes and a beautiful mouth. Her blouse was a flimsy white net that revealed perfectly shaped tits and gorgeous, pierced nipples. When the woman, Rhea, had put her mouth over his mouth and had gently placed her hands between his legs and massaged his hardness, he had felt he was in heaven.

Filled with passion, he had sat down and motioned her to sit on his lap, her back towards him. When she lowered herself onto him, he realized she had nothing on under her small black dress and, pushing a finger inside her, that she was wet. Thus, asking her to lift up for a minute, he had unzipped his pants and shoved himself inside of her as far as he could, again and again, a piston throbbing in delicious darkness.

Indifferent to the reactions of others, she had squealed with delight. Later, after they left the club, he had driven her home (She lived on the east side of town), spent most of the night having incredible sex with this woman. She had let him do anything to her, and he had responded. Then, just before dawn, a crazy look in her eyes as she faced him, she had suggested that they make a pact with the devil and ask a spirit to enter their souls, making the two of them one. While it was an absolutely crazy idea, it appealed to Darius.

"C'mon, Darius, honey," she had pleaded in a musical voice, "let's go all the fuckin' way. Let the dark spirit of the night bloodily bind us into one. To hell with your sister Agnes." It had never occurred to Darius to ask how she knew about Agnes.

Overcome by the melody of her words, by his insatiable desire for her, Darius had agreed, and thus following steps outlined in some book on black magic that she pulled off the bookshelf over her bed, Rhea had lit some candles, the apartment glowing a hideous dark red. Next, after she had place the candles around them in a circle on the floor, Darius had taken the huge kitchen knife she had given him, slit his palm with it, just as she slit her palm. Then, his bloodied hand clutching her bloodied hand they had pledged themselves to the prince of the underworld, asking that a dark spirit be allowed to bind them. Aside from a glass shattering in the bathroom and the light bulb in the kitchen exploding, the ceremony went without a hitch.

Darius had felt nothing even when he was saying the words with Rhea, even as the two of them recited the Lord's Prayer backwards, and when he left Rhea's apartment Darius felt merely drained of energy.

It was only a few days later, however, that he noticed a change in himself. He'd gone to a Spud's Irish Green Tavern with Mark and Dave to talk about the weekend and sports. When Dave had asked, "Who was that witch you were with the other night, the bitch with the white net blouse?" Darius had sensed insult, and without thinking, he had leapt across the table like a rabid dog, grabbed Dave by the throat, and thrown his larger friend onto the saw-dust covered floor. Fury building to frenzy, he had kicked Dave in the head and side several times before jumping on him and taking his adversary's throat in both bony hands. Darius was in the process of squeezing the life out of his friend when a bouncer, a huge pig of a man with gold rings in both ears and a shaven head, had hit him over the head with a beer mug. At that, the lights went out.

Minutes later, dazed, rolling on the floor, hearing the incessant chanting from the spirit world (It was always there, the chanting, just beyond the veil), imagining Rhea naked and dancing beautifully, sensuously in front of him, Darius began to sense that he was seriously flawed.

This was only the first such incident. Darius experienced outbursts of rage time and again -- at a baseball game, while driving on the street, in a grocery store, you name it. At times, Darius had growled and howled like a beast as he attacked victim after victim. Once, in a department store elevator and with his sister Agnes at his side, he had done some kind of savage prowling dance around the bloodied, broken body of a middle-aged man, whose only crime was to ask him the time. He had stopped, once again, in answer to the prayers and pleadings of his sister. He had never received the expected call from the police. Perhaps, Darius imagined, he was protected.

Worried about his violent disposition, he finally told Agnes one evening a short time ago that he had been living with Rhea for five years and that he and Rhea, in a moment of passion, had made perfect love as well as a pact with the devil. Agnes had blanched, leaned over in the car, and nearly retched onto the floor. "You're a fool, Darius," she had wept, choking the words out. "You're a fool, my brother. You should have nothing to do with that woman. A day of evil will come upon you, brother, yes, it surely will. Amen." At the time, Darius had laughed at his sister and simply turned on the radio to drown out her sobs.

A week and a half later, he had beaten the biker into a coma, and tonight, in bed, the sheets sticking to his body, fear freezing him, he was certain that the pit of hell had opened directly beneath him and was ready to swallow him whole, body, soul, and spirit.

It was of his imminent damnation that Darius thought of now as he lay in his bed next to Rhea. No doubt about it, he concluded, something is definitely wrong with me. He felt sick, sick, sick at heart, as if gray clouds suffocated him.

For the first time in many years, he tried to pray to the God that Agnes prayed to. As he did, attempting to begin with the Lord's Prayer, he felt dark pressure growing within; he realized that he could not remember the words, and panic seized him. He then struggled to remember the words to Agnes' favorite Psalm, fought with himself, strained, and then began to whisper, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...." As he fought to mouth the words, he felt the tempest within his heart explode into a storm, and he became aware that the battle inside of him did not proceed from his own heart.

For the next thirty minutes, his heart racing towards bursting, Darius' mind flooded with dark images of decapitation, dismemberment, drinking blood, eating Rhea's flesh. The last thought stuck in his mind. He smelled a foul, dark odor, knew it came from nothing in the room, and realized that he was losing his mind and soul.

Struggling to keep hold of himself, he prayed. "Oh, God, God, God, help me, help me, please," he sobbed, soaked in sweat, engulfed by a dark unmentionable presence, and suddenly the image of the man in the graveyard, the one in white flowing robes who blazed like the sun, appeared vividly in his conscious mind.

But as he relaxed, thinking the worst was past, a more disturbing image rushed into his mind. He saw himself, huge knife in hand, butchering and dismembering Rhea as she lay in bed, saw the sheets and floor around the bed turn crimson, saw blood dripping down the walls of his bedroom, saw himself consuming her flesh. Feeling it was useless to fight the image or its source, he gave in, darkness flowing over and into him like waves pounding the crumbling boulders along the rocky shore.

Now, wondering where Rhea had put the butcher knife in the kitchen, feeling a lust for flesh, he knew also at that moment that some dark ravenous creature, crawling within the dark cage of his own soul, had suddenly sprung free, unleashing dark poison throughout his body. And he knew he had to find the knife. Finding the knife was the most important thing in his life.

Thus, thoughts and actions willed by a power beyond his control, he found himself rapidly skipping across the cold hardwood towards the kitchen, obsessed with the bloody deed . In the kitchen, incapable by then of resisting the darkness, he went through all the drawers, unable for some reason to remember where Rhea kept the knives, and finally found what he was looking for on the counter next to the refrigerator. It was an entire set of Chicago cutlery, most of the knives large and sharp. Quickly, he grabbed the largest, holding it vertical to him, running his finger down the sharp blade, steel easily slicing his flesh. The knife, rarely used for anything besides roast pork, trembled in his grasp. Unable to resist, the blood from his own cut finger running down his hand and arm, he turned, growled deeply, and spotted Rhea, turning restlessly in her sleep, innocent as a lamb fit for slaughter.

He had just started to walk to the bed, knife in hand, when his phone rang, and suddenly he stopped, frozen in place. It was as if a gigantic hand was holding him back from doing the evil deed. He could not move forward, and as he stood he felt the obsession to slice and dice Rhea into a thousand little pieces decreasing in size like a deflated balloon and the sense of his old self returning. He dropped the knife at his feet and picked up the phone, his heart still thundering in his ears. Darius listened, saying nothing.

Minutes later he heard, "Darius?" It was Agnes, and he nearly cried as the heard her still, small voice.

"Darius?" came the voice again, and as Darius dropped to his knees on the floor, he could see in his mind's eye his sister, praying for him, surrounded by a glow, the white robed man from his dream standing over her, and he felt for the first time in a long time that he was delivered temporarily from the darkness that had consumed him.

"Darius?" came the voice a third time, and this time it was like a knocking at the door of his heart.

"Hey, sis," he breathed, gasping a bit for breath. His voice sounded guttural. "It's sure good to hear from you."

"Are you all right, Darius?" she asked, the tenderness in her voice making him wonder why he had ever gone to the night club years ago, why he had ever made the pact with Rhea, why he had stayed with the woman.

"Yeah. No. Hell, I dunno," Darius responded. Taking several deep breaths, he then told Agnes about the dream, about waking up saying the Lord's Prayer backwards, about rushing to the kitchen to find a butcher knife. "Agnes, I been goin' crazy. Goin' totally nuts. I don't want this anymore."

He could hear Agnes' breathing, could hear her gently crying, probably from joy, and then she told him. In her sleep, she had had a dream in which she saw Darius as the demonic of the Gadarenes, the possessed man who was chained to stones and whom Jesus had delivered by casting demons out of him and into a herd of swine. She stated that, somewhere in the dream, there was another man -- "a tall, pale, evil man" -- that she couldn't quite see. At the moment of deliverance in this dream, Agnes had awakened, terrified, knowing the significance of the dream, had gotten out of bed, dropped to her knees and began praying. And after a period of time, she had reached over to the table at the side of her bed, picked up the phone and called.

Darius was stunned. Suddenly, a dark light exploding in his mind, he knew that darkness was not a metaphor, and if the devil was no fiction, then the texts out of which the devil was supposedly born were true. Everything was true, at least possible, certainly the continual spiritual warfare that his sister had warned him about, and he knew that his day of evil had come. He knew he was in trouble.

As he waited, his eyes closed, telephone pressed to his ear, he could see his sister kneeling, a sun blazing around her. He thought he heard the singing of angels, and he hoped the darkness would not return. He wanted out, wanted to begin again, even become a priest, if that's what it took.

"What do I do now?" he asked her, his voice almost calm, his mind wondering where darkness had fled.

"I think you know what to do, Darius. You must renounce the works of the Devil," she softly intoned, the last remark briefly bringing forth an image of a tall thin, very pale man standing at the end of a hallway in the midst of flames. He now recognized the man immediately as the other person in his nightmare and once again sensed panic. But the panic gave was to a gentle peace as he turned his mind towards Agnes, forced himself to mentally reconstruct his sister, to create in his mind's eye in fact a graphic picture of himself kneeling next to Agnes in what could only be described as a gothic cathedral, the reds, blues, and greens of the paintings on the stained glass windows depicting the Son of Man marching towards the cross. Locked in the vision, he suddenly realized that the figure in the stained glass windows was identical to the man in white robes who kept appearing in his dreams, attempting to cast the demons out of him.

"I'm comin' to see you. Now. I have to go, Sister Agnes," he said, knowing that while the gates to the convent closed at nine they could be opened any time by one of the sisters. He knew if he could reach his sister, and the evil that had absorbed him kept permanently at bay. If he could just manages to get out of the apartment, out of the building, and into his car, and then drive as fast as he could to his waiting sister, his five years of darkness would be past.

"I'll be waiting inside the church," she said, joy evident in her voice, and he knew she was referring to the old cathedral that had stood next to the convent for at least two hundred years, the interior decorated in a fashion reminiscent of the medieval European churches. "Come quickly," she beckoned and then hung up.

Rising, he set the phone in its cradle, gave one look to the sleeping Rhea. Then, silently, he dressed, packed his clothes and other belongings in an old black battered suitcase that his parents had given him when he graduated from high school, and walked to the door. Time to renounce the devil, he thought.

He opened the door and felt the dark presence immediately. A black indescribable thing in hiding, it had been waiting for him. As he stepped trembling out of the apartment, he saw a tall, thin, very pallid man standing alone at the end of the hallway, smoking a cigarette, radiating a dark glow, looking right at him, flames leaping about him. Then, as if on cue, the dimly glowing light-bulbs placed over the entrance of each apartment burst, one by one, and Darius found himself immersed in nearly total terrifying darkness. He couldn't see the hand in front of his face; but he could see the tall man standing at the end of the hallway, smoking furiously, and he suddenly knew the dark man's identity. He knew too that the only way out was past, even through this man who had cheered him on nights ago as he had beaten another human being unconscious.

Madness threatened to return, and evil -- tall, pale, thin intruder -- was apparently going to stand its ground.. As he stood in the thickening darkness of the hallway, Darius heard the shattering of glass, the windows inside each apartment, beginning at the far end of the hall and working towards him, and he felt the howling of the damned in the wind suddenly and mysteriously blowing through the hallway. The effect was briefly terrifying. He looked at the tall thin man, who smiled and took another drag on his cigarette. Then, the darkness whirling around him as tangible as ice, Darius gritted his teeth, closed his eyes brought forth into the temple of his own imagination that image of himself praying with Agnes, focused on one stained-glass window in which the Savior of Mankind, the "servant king" Agnes liked to call him, hung bleeding and drawing him nearer.

When he opened his eyes and looked down the hallway, he could see that the tall thin man, exuding pale darkness was waiting. But standing behind the evil figure stood the man from the dream, dressed in white robes, blazing like the sun, his immensity filling the universe.

Taking a deep breath, Darius stepped forward, toward the waiting figures, up to and then right through the tall, thin, man, who vanished in a flash as soon as Darius reached him.

Boldly, confidently, Darius ran down the stairs, not missing a step, bounded in a leap on to the ground floor, pushed open the dark glass doors that formed the entrance to the building, and strode brilliantly into the parking lot towards his car. Climbing in his car and starting the engine, he couldn't wait to get to Agnes. Darius knew he had moved into the light and that there would be no turning back now.