He Heard My Prayers

He Heard My Prayers

Personal Experience by Samantha

When I was about 13-14 years old my mother, brother and I went to live in Texas. This was a big deal because I also have two half-siblings from a stepfather that my mother was leaving, and I missed them and our big house very much. My mother never got a divorce though; I guess my step dad (being a very godly man) didn't want to break their union. So even though they weren't legally divorced at the time my mother separated them by distance. And the only place she knew to go was back to her home town.

Cotulla, Texas is a seemingly regular small Texas town. It's got its dirt roads, unfinished foods, pot holes, old houses, and a train track running right through the middle of it separating the poor people from the wealthy.

They have a McDonald's , a Dairy Queen, Wendy's, Dollar General, Family Dollar, Speedway and Valero gas stations, a grocery store, and some locally owned stores that were my favorite places to stop in for snacks or drinks with my friends.

On the poor side of town was a store ran by my friend's dad. The original name of the store is Botanica Vasquez, but everyone there in town knows it as the brujería store. Brujería means witchcraft in Spanish and I guess that's where I began my interest in it.

Well having been new in town and all alone I was very sad...all of the time. Mom worked 12 hours and in her free time she went out and partied with her friends (new and old). She returned home drunk and I had to make her eat something and put her to bed. My brother, who is two years younger than me, often was over at his friends’ houses playing video games and crashing there whenever he pleased.

I was always on my own.

I used to pray to god to bring people around, make my mom be more of a mom, make me feel less lonely. And after so many prayers and nothing at all I began praying to him to show me in some way that he was there and that he was at least listening. Still I got nothing.

So the small, seemingly unfinished house we lived in grew bigger and lonelier until I couldn't take it anymore. My depression carried me over the line. I would sit in my room with a candle or incense burning, play loud "emo" music, and cut myself to feel something more than silence. When that was no longer enough, I began to pray again. But to someone else.

Being the overly dramatic- chronically depressed mess that I was I started praying for a dark angel to be sent to me, to watch over me, and love me, make me feel less alone, and fill the void that was there in my chest. I used my eyeliner to draw symbols and cutely-disturbing voodoo dolls, patched up hearts, and candles on my bedroom door. Every day I prayed and now and then I would even do it as I cut myself.

I was friends with another girl who kinda played the emo scene too. She had me meet some of her friends there at school. Two of them gave me a weird look and bolted, the others gave me a hateful glare and another seemed intrigued.

Later we all ended up being friends, and I was able to ask them about their first reactions to me. Turns out a lot of them (the ones with the hateful glares) thought I would be stuck up and so it was just misplaced judgment. But the three others said there was a black mass above and behind me. They said it told them to stay away because I belonged to it.

This probably should have freaked me out but instead I was so happy. It also explained a lot. I would get chills up my spine at random times of the day, sometimes I would wake up from sleeping because it felt like something was holding me, watching me, and sometimes just a simple sweep of a chilly hand brushing the hair from my face or trailing down my arm.

When I found these weren't just drafts from nowhere in the 120 degree weather I became so happy. Someone heard me, and answered my prayer. I had my dark angel.

I kept praying and spilling my blood. Time passed and I gained more friends and even a boyfriend... and I stopped cutting and my praying. My dark angel was no longer on my mind.

My boyfriend took up a lot of my time, I was out of the house more often, and had a weekly date with my chick friend, her boyfriend, and my cousin every Wednesday.

I was fine for about five months, nothing happened anymore like it used to. Sometimes my stepdad would call and we'd talk about God for a while and he'd tell me he was praying for me. He even sent me two Christian music CD's.

Then one night everything started getting out of hand.

My friend and I had been watching a bootleg copy of twilight before it was even in theaters. And we'd passed out on the spare mattresses that were on my brother’s floor. In the middle of my dead sleep my eye lids snapped open and I found I couldn't move! Couldn't speak, couldn't do anything but see. I looked at the clock as voices began to fill my head. The digital lights told me it was 3:17 AM And the voices in my head added to my frozen body told me something was very wrong.

With my eyes darting around the room in panic I saw that everyone was sleeping and I wondered what was happening to me. Millions of voices were in my head. They got louder and louder and I grew more and more panicked, then my vision started to go, filled with horrible pictures of terrible things that would have given a grown man nightmares for weeks. With some voices screaming or laughing or crying I couldn't pick out a single word, I just knew it all was bad. They were so different! But all demonic. You could hear the voices of men, women, and children of all ages. They grew so loud my eyes began to cry though I could only see ugly things. And in the midst of it a clear thought came to me.

My step father had told me that in times of crisis or you feel something unholy around you, you have the power to make it leave with the help of Jesus Christ. So in my mind I began chanting "in Jesus name I rebuke you, in Jesus name I rebuke you! Leave me alone, go away!" louder and louder and louder I tried to scream it in my head above the nasty voices. And slowly, VERY slowly they began to fade. So I kept on chanting until my lips started to quiver and I became overjoyed. I kept on chanting louder and louder until I could actually whisper it, and from there I tried to get louder and louder. My fingers stated to twitch, louder and louder and louder I chanted those words. Finally whatever it was was gone! I went into my room and turned on the lights, put a christen music CD on and went back to bed. When my mom asked me why I left the lights on the next morning when she got back from work, I told her and she brushed it off.

Thinking I was fine and in the clear I was scared and annoyed the next time it happened a week later. The clock read 3:15 and I had school that morning. I immediately started chanting those golden words but still it seemed to be a long time before I was in control of myself again. I quickly hopped out of bed, flipped on the lights, and tried to sleep until my alarm went off.

This happened repeatedly for the following month, so I just started leaving the lights on in my room when I went to bed. Mom thought I was staying up too late studying and that’s why the lights were on when I got home. When I told her again about the strange occurrences she looked me in the eyes and said "what did you do?" I couldn't tell her I cut myself and prayed to the devil. She would have lost it. So I just said I think I angered a demon and left it at that.

More time passed and I forgot about leaving my lights on at night. My boyfriend and I had broken up because he was moving to New Hampshire and again I was alone in my house all the time. I began to see who I called "the boy in white" every time I turned a corner in our home. He never said a word, just appeared in my way and vanished after I’d jump. Somehow I managed to get used to him and I wouldn't get startled as I walked from room to room.

It was weird things like that which happened quite often from week to week. I started feeling cold hands on me in my sleep and eventually those "frozen awake" moments came back too. Only somehow stronger, because it wouldn't be once a night, it had doubled with the occasional three times a night. I felt drained from the strain that was put on me from expanding my minds power and willing the demons be gone from my body. It’s like an inner tug of war if you can imagine it. You get pains in your neck, shoulders, back and headaches. But this was more preferable to the dangers I was put in one day.

It was about 11:30 at night. I was getting out of the shower when I heard a weird noise. I was home alone (like I always was) so I figured it was just paranoia. I often head sounds of stray cats, armadillos, or small rodents so I filed it away at the back of my mind and opened the bathroom door and walked into my room.

I was turning the corner where my door met my large sharp edged dresser when I felt a shove from behind, everything was in slow motion and I could see that my head was going to make contact with the pointed corner of the massive block of wood, but I was frozen stiff! Then from the direction that I was falling I felt another shove. I fell backwards away from the dresser, hit my back on the bed and ended up crashing to the floor. The wind was knocked out of me and I gasped for breath, choking out sobs in fear and pain.

When I got up I dressed quickly and went to the living room. I anchored myself on the couch, covered myself with the throw blanket, and watched the TV at high volume till my mother got home.

As soon as she unlocked the door and came in I jumped at her and cried the whole story out before she could even take her shoes off. She told me to wait a minute, take deep breaths, and tell me it all from the beginning.

When I was finished my mom’s face was red and she was crying. "I’m sick of this!!" she yelled at the top of her lungs. She grabbed the rosary my friend had given me on my 15th birthday, a bible, and some water and went through every room in the house trying to cleanse it herself. It was quite funny to witness, but she was serious.

After that morning I didn't have any problems and stopped feeling the need to wear my rosary as a precaution. But as soon as I did, nightmares began to run through my head. And when I told my mother about it she'd tell me she had the same dreams too. We also had a cousin come stay with us. He was 20 at the time and usually was home with me.

One day he came into my room and asked me if I had witnessed any freaky stuff like ghosts around the house or anything. I let him know I preferred to call them demons and told him all about the past troubles there in the house. He then told me that he was sleeping on the couch yesterday and then all of a sudden he jolted awake but couldn't move. He told me he saw shadows on the wall that wear scary enough to make him pee himself and that when he was finally able to move again he went and looked at everybody and found that we were all sound asleep in our beds like nothing had happened.

It was around that time when my mom started missing her two kids back with our step dad and I decided it was okay for us to go back with them. We packed up out things and moved back to Indiana with them.

I haven't encountered anything like that ever since. It seems my demon didn't follow us, but my aunt who lives there now says weird stuff happens from time to time. Mostly she thinks my three year old baby cousin Ashlynn is possessed.

I'm now 17 years old, an agnostic, my mother and step dad divorced just this year, but I still live in Indiana. I don't cut myself, and I don't pray to the devil. Because now I know he'll give you what you ask for and then... a little more. But he doesn't give you things for free.