When Marlena was Possessed by Kristin Gallagher

                    Lei Han CC



When Marlena was Possessed


   When Marlena Evans, the beloved matronly character on Days of Our Lives, was kidnapped by the evil Stefano and hidden on a remote island, it seemed to be the start of another crazy daytime television storyline. I don’t think anyone was prepared when the mind-altering drugs that Stefano was giving Marlena caused her to become possessed by the devil. This had never been done before in American soap opera land. 
   As a result of the possession, Marlena’s sweet demeanor disappeared and was replaced by a completely different, dark personality. My five siblings and I were transfixed by the story line and gathered in front of the television, eager to find out what would happen next. Day after day, we were delighted to watch her vomit pea-soup all over the place and shoot laser beams from her eyes. 

   Around the same time, Dad started sending us letters in the mail. It had been about six months since he moved out of our home in Rhode Island.  I was twelve years old and the eldest, so I got to open the letters addressed in his boxy scrawl and read them aloud to my siblings. I ripped one open and greedily unfolded the paper. Your mother’s boyfriend Keith is the devil. Pray to God to remove him from our lives. I laughed and my siblings laughed with me. 
   He wrote letters to my mother, too. I’m thinking about moving to Arizona. I hear the dry heat is good for allergies. She showed them to me as she cried at the dining room table. I hated to see her upset over his mind games but I knew I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if he moved to Arizona or Moscow or Mars. 

   While the devil managed to find a home in Marlena, he couldn’t possess her fully at the outset. It was a gradual battle of good versus evil with Marlena’s soul as the ultimate prize. In scenes when the devil took over, Marlena’s eyes changed to an eerie, unnatural yellow. When he was dormant, Marlena appeared confused and weak, unaware of the evil presence in her body.
   Under the devil’s influence, Marlena committed acts of mischief and evil all over the town of Salem. As the rest of the residents gathered together to sing Christmas carols, Marlena set fire to the church and destroyed the building. No one in town knew that the perpetrator was Marlena.

   Dad’s departure coincided with the birth of my youngest brother, Johnny. After he was born with a seizure disorder and mental retardation, my mother dedicated everything she had to his treatment. We took frequent trips to Boston where Mom met with specialists and I was tasked with making sure my siblings didn’t kill one another in the waiting rooms. Dad wanted to put Johnny in an institution and Mom responded to this suggestion by trying to run him over with the family station wagon. Not long after, Johnny was admitted to the hospital while they tried to get his seizures under control. He was only two years old but already many of the most common medications for epilepsy had proven ineffective. Diazepam. Phenobarbital. Depakote. Dilantin. Mom had been hopeful for the latest treatment, but after six weeks it clearly wasn’t working.
   When the hospital called the house, she must have been expecting a routine check in. 
I hovered near the doorway to eavesdrop. The conversation sounded pretty routine until Mom started to yell into the receiver.
   “What are you talking about? You can’t take my son away from me!”
   She screamed the most horrifying noise I’d ever heard to come from my mother and tossed the phone across the room. 
   Before I could find my voice to ask her what happened, she grabbed the broom and aimed it at our family portraits that lined the walls of the living room. Photo frame after photo frame fell off the walls and crashed to the ground. Holiday pictures of all of us wearing red and green. Annual school photos. Infant portraits. The glass smashed and shattered all over the floor and the couches. My siblings gathered to watch but none of us made a move to stop her as she continued to scream and cry. 
   “Fuck this,” she yelled over and over. 
   I picked up the phone and dialed Nana’s number.
   “Nana, they took Johnny away and Mom’s really upset and she’s destroying the living room,” I explained when she answered
   “Put her on the phone.”
   I handed the phone to Mom.
   “Ma, they said I messed up his medication but I didn’t. They can’t fucking do this to me!”
   I couldn’t hear Nana’s response but apparently it wasn’t pleasing to Mom because she hung up and tossed the phone aside.
   Without another word, she grabbed her purse, slung it over her shoulder, and stormed out of the house, not turning around as my siblings called after her to ask where she was going. Jess and I gathered up the photos and stacked them against the wall. We cleaned up the broken glass and sat down to stare at the television.

   The first person to discover Marlena’s secret was Celeste, a Days character known for her psychic abilities. She argued with the devil, demanding to know why he didn’t just take Marlena’s soul and get it over with to avoid further suffering by Marlena.
   “It pleases me to feel the life of this once-good woman slipping away,” he responded. 

   Johnny returned home after a couple of weeks.
   “Where’s mom?” I asked Keith as he fed my brother at the dining room table. While I didn’t particularly care for my mother’s boyfriend, he did take care of Johnny in Mom’s absence. My brother couldn’t sit up, crawl, or feed himself like other toddlers his age. 
   “Don’t know,” he said but he looked at the basement door as he said it.
   Over his protests, I reached up to unlock the door and flung it open.  I ran down the stairs, rounding the corner after jumping down the last few steps. My mother and some guy I had never seen before stood in front of the washer and dryer, my mother’s right arm extended in front of her. I watched the man pull a needle out of her arm. 
   “What the hell are you doing?” I yelled at her, ignoring the stranger. 
   “Stop making love to my mother!” Liam shouted. I hadn’t noticed my nine year old brother follow us into the basement. I felt a pang of guilt, having wanted to shield him from this ugliness. 
   “Making love to your mother?” The stranger laughed at my brother’s innocence. 
   “You’re doing drugs?” I had my suspicions, but I could no longer deny what was right in front of me. 
   She didn’t respond. Nothing registered in her face. 
   I began to cry, disgusted with myself for doing so. I turned and ran out of the basement and to my room.
   After about ten minutes, Mom came and stood in my doorway.
   “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” She spoke without conviction.
   I refused to look at her. 
   “Fine. Call the cops on me if you want.” 

  The devil taunted Marlena as her soul weakened under his continued presence. While she is lying in a hospital bed, he said in his distorted voice, “You’re getting weaker, Marlena. Give up the fight.” 
   My siblings and I screamed words of encouragement to Marlena as she struggled to make it to a church in a final attempt to save her soul.

   Over the next several months, we spent many days waiting for Mom to come home from wherever she went when she left that house. One afternoon, Liam went to the window and announced that Mom was outside and we all rushed out and stood on the front stoop.
   She was on the sidewalk with some toothless guy in a dirty tank top. They smiled at one another like two kids in love and swayed together to music that only reached their ears.
   We stared. Mom didn’t seem to notice her children in front of her. 
   Keith joined us on the stoop. “I’ve been waiting here for you all day. It’s time to go.”
   She looked at him, her pupils tiny as a period at the end of a sentence. “You watch the kids. I’ll get a ride myself.”
   “No, come on. We’ll drop you off.” 
   Mom let go of the man’s hand for a moment. “No, I want to get high one last time before I go to rehab.”
   So that’s what was going on. I should have been happy, buoyed by this news. All my praying and bargaining and worrying and now finally she was going to get clean. I wasn’t happy though. I had given up hope. I doubted rehab would do anything but keep her clean while she was in there. When she got back, the house would still be in foreclosure, Johnny would still be sick, Mom would still have more children than she could possibly provide for, even with welfare. With no hope in sight, I was waiting for her to die. 
   Mom went to rehab. Less than a week following her return, I saw a single hypodermic needle in the linen closet on top of some cloth napkins. Liquid filled up about half the barrel. I took the needle and turned to go upstairs and hide it.
   I don’t know where she even came from, but she was behind me before I made it out of the dining room.
   “Give it back.” 
   I turned my body to hide the needle. “Give what back?”
   “I’m not fucking around.”
   I turned and ran toward the stairs as fast as I could, but my mother was right behind me. I tried to make it to my room quickly enough to lock her out. I’d figure out what to do with the needle later.
   Before I could shut my bedroom door, she was on top of me as she grabbed for my hand. As we fell onto my bed, she pinned me down with her knee and twisted my arm until I let go of the syringe.
   She smiled in triumph, hopped off my bed, and headed out of the room. 
   “Don’t fuck with me, Kristin.” 
   I slammed my door shut, pounded the shit out of my pillow, and cried tears of rage. 


   Marlena’s former lover John (who turned out also to be a priest), performed an exorcism but she was too weak and did not survive. My siblings and I, along with millions of other viewers, were left shocked and grief stricken. How could evil win over good? 

   Mom’s boyfriend rushed in while my siblings and I passed the time making prank calls.
   “Get off the line, your mother’s very sick.” 
   “She’s probably dead,” Liam replied sarcastically. 
   We waited. For what, we didn’t know. Mom was sick and our lives were suspended until someone decided to tell us what was going on. Keith took the phone into the bedroom and closed the door. 
   I was sleeping when Nana arrived the next afternoon. I threw on clothes and went down to the living room where she sat on the edge of the couch. My siblings gathered around the living room on chairs and on the floor like it was story hour and Nana was about to read to us. 
   “Kids, I have bad news. Your mother is gone. She’s gone.” She collapsed into tears. 
   Although I thought I was prepared for this news, it felt like someone tore a giant hole in the center of my body. I turned and ran out of the room. I could hear sobbing as I ran back upstairs but my pain was too great to offer my siblings comfort. 
   Nana came into my room and embraced me as I curled into the fetal position and sobbed. I detested the feel of her bony arms around me and I ached to thrust an elbow at her and tell her to get the fuck off of me. Instead, I listened to her cry and repeat I know, I know, I know, over and over again.
   The day after, Mom’s sober friend Betty came to the house. An older woman, Betty got around with the help of crutches, and when I refused to come downstairs to speak to her, she struggled up the stairs and settled into my desk chair, her breath ragged from the effort. 
   “Can you look at me sweetie?”
   I refused.
   “I came by to give you a message.”
   I sat up in my bed as hope swelled in me. She was going to tell me there had been a mistake, that Mom wasn’t really dead.
   “Your mother really loved you. I want you to know that. She told me that if anything ever happened to her that I should come by and tell you that everything was going to be alright.”
   “Are you fucking serious, Betty?” I turned my back from her and buried myself under my blankets. 
   “I know it’s hard honey, but I promise your mother loved you and she only wanted the best for you and your siblings.”
   She sat there for a while. I felt terrible for being rude to her but I couldn’t see past my own pain and disappointment. Finally, she got up and left the room.

   In true soap opera style, a subsequent Days episode revealed that Marlena had not actually died, but rather that the exorcism had so severely weakened her body that it mimicked signs of death. Marlena was alive and devil-free. Order was restored to Salem (for a few moments at least). My siblings and I lost interest in the show after that. 

Kristin is a writer from Massachusetts who currently resides in Miami Beach. She previously practiced law in New York City and is a former Forest Beach Fellow with the South Chatham Writers Workshop.

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