The Hyperion Chronicles

I have this peccadillo that I won’t sing songs in church if I don’t agree with the lyrics. There is also one other song I won’t sing, even though I have no problem with it: “Awesome God.” Here are the words:

Our God, is an Awesome God
He reigns, from Heaven above
With wisdom, power and love
Our God is an Awesome God.

Nothing all that earth shattering or controversial, but…there is a reason I don’t sing that song, one I don’t usually share. However, in the spirit of trying to be more honest with my Readers, I offer this story now.


The Timeframe: August of 1992, when I was 16.

The Setting: Camp Mayfield. Up in Washington, at least 5 hours from B.F.E. This place was out there. The camp was on this giant hill. At the bottom were the boys’ cabins, and up the long slow rise were the girls’ cabins, the cafeteria, the auditorium, and all the other facilities.

The Players: (All names have been changed except mine)

Samantha: This girl I knew growing up. Both being pastor’s kids, we’d see each other at various church functions for years. She used to make fun of me, but over time we became friends.

Randy: another kid who was always at these church functions. Randy was a complete loser, and I don’t mean that unkindly. He was a pathetic person. According to the story he told—every single time there was sharing—Randy’s dad had been murdered, and Randy had either witnessed it or come in right after (the story seemed to change each time Randy told it). Randy’s mom was also strung out on drugs or something, and Randy himself was unkempt, homely, and stuttered badly. He wasn’t a jerk, and no one hated him, but when I tell you Randy was pathetic and a loser I want you to understand what sense I say this in.

Jake: My best friend, who was at the camp with me.

Chris: The year before, Jake and I had been new to Camp Mayfield. We bunked with these two 12th-graders (who were by definition pretty cool to freshmen); Chris and Joe. They brought materials to set dry ice bombs. If you’ve never heard one, a dry ice bomb is the loudest thing in the universe, but relatively safe; if you know what you’re doing. You take an empty 2-Liter bottle, and put in X amount of dry ice, and Y amount of water, and seal the lid. The water sublimates the ice into its gaseous state, which expands until there is no more room and the 2-Liter bottle explodes. The year before we had set them all over the place, including the cabin next to us. Watching those kids dive out of that cabin in their pajamas and underwear is just about the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

The Speaker: the guy they got to speak at that camp was real hard-core. He was one of those who believed even Christian Rock music was evil, which led to some discomfort, since we sang a bunch of up-beat songs at our services. The camp director later privately told me they never should have brought this guy in. About as fundamentalist as you can get.

Those are the important people. You’ll catch the rest as we go.

About a month before Camp Mayfield, I saw Samantha and she told me she wasn’t going that year. I chivied her, at one point jokingly saying, “What do you mean you’re not going? Are you a Satanist?” Samantha eventually agreed to go.

What I didn’t know was Samantha’s situation. One of the kids in her youth group had been murdered, and Samantha herself had gotten involved with a guy who was heavily into the occult. The end result was that Samantha had reached her breaking point.

The camp ran from Sunday to Saturday, and on Wednesday night the Speaker talked about Demonic Possession—to a bunch of suggestible high school kids.

I remember like it was yesterday: after the service I was with Jake and Samantha, standing there outside the cafeteria talking about the service. Samantha was acting weird. The Speaker came up to us and said something. Samantha started getting hysterical and began hissing at him. The guy starts talking to her commandingly, and Samantha drops her food; bolting away. The guy runs after her with Jake and me in hot pursuit.

We catch up to Samantha and the Speaker. He’s on top of her holding her down, with a death grip on her wrists (you could see the welts for weeks), and she’s thrashing around trying to get away. The Speaker tells Jake and me to leave, because Samantha is demon-possessed.

I used to be a lot less skeptical about these things, but even then I didn’t quite believe him. Of course, I didn’t know about Samantha’s troubles, but I can’t say whether the guy was telling the truth or all the things Samantha had been through, combined with that sermon on possession, had filled her mind with guilt and she’d just snapped. I don’t even really think it matters. Either way, she was in emotional pain.

Which I couldn’t do anything about. But she was also in physical pain, caused by the Speaker, and I told him in no uncertain words that if he didn’t get off of her Jake and I were going to tear him apart.

At that point three of the camp directors arrived—who were all from my old church and I knew personally. They took Samantha and held her securely, but not hurting her. Jake and I were told to go back to our cabins. As I left I heard the speaker begin the exorcism. I later saw The Exorcist, and it sounded exactly the same. To this day I wonder if he believed what he was doing or was just copying what he heard was and putting on a show.

They ended up sending everyone to their cabins while they dealt with the aftermath. Except for Jake and I, no one had seen what happened, and rumors were everywhere. Fueled by the service we had been to, people started talking about how some girl had been exorcised, and there were demons running around at the top of the hill. The whole camp was in shambles.

And then, the evening got a whole lot stranger.

Of all the people on this Earth—even more than Madeline O’Hare—the most unlikely leader emerged: Randy. This was the guy who could never say two words without convulsions, and couldn’t go half an hour without a major breakdown of some kind. Randy starts yelling at everyone about how they weren’t going to stand idly by while the forces of evil walked among us. The counselors who were down with the guys tried to quiet him but were ineffectual. Randy was like Mel Gibson in Braveheart. He got the crowd of boys whipped into an absolute frenzy. From somewhere he got a torch and led the boys up the hill to do spiritual battle. If you’re a believer you may be thinking this was the LORD, but if you think that I’m telling it wrong.

This was the most chilling thing I’ve ever seen. The speaker had talked about people getting emotional and excited, and being more susceptible to demonic possession. I remember thinking if there was demonic possession that night it wasn’t Samantha, it was Randy. And if there were demons up at the top of that hill, Randy was leading a group of half-mad frenzied boys straight up into it.

And as they marched up that hill, the song they were singing? “Our God is an Awesome God.”

I could end the story here, but there is one more piece to the puzzle. Chris and Joe were too old to come back to Mayfield, but weeks before I made a plan with Chris to come up there with dry ice (I couldn’t bring it myself since they now checked baggage upon arrival). As luck would have it, Chris was supposed to come up on that same Wednesday night. This was, of course, the worst time for Chris to come, but with no phones and Chris making an 8 hour drive, there was no way to call it off.

I was able to meet Chris because I was part of the security team at night. (They got tired of chasing me the year before so they just gave me a giant flashlight and let me chase others.) I met Chris about a quarter-mile away and tried to explain to him why it was a bad idea, but after 8 hours of lonely roads, Chris wanted some action. He set 22 dry ice bombs, timed so that 2-3 would go off every 15-20 minutes.

After everything that happened that night the camp was in an uproar, and it took every ounce of energy we had to corral people and get them to bed. Then came the bombs, which were so loud that surrounding farms called the sheriff. The camp directors and I were running around the rest of the night trying to catch the perpetrators. (When the camp Director asked me if I had seen anyone from the camp set the bombs, I could honestly tell him no.)

In a strange way, it might have been the best thing that could have happened. The next morning they called us all together and the sheriff threatened us, and they told us if someone didn’t confess they weren’t going to let our group back next year. I was even on the Questioning Committee, and we got a lot of kids to confess to wrongdoing, but no one to the dry ice.

Kids being kids, the bombs became the major topic of conversation, at least until our Boys vs. Girls Olympics that afternoon. The whole thing with Samantha got pushed away like it never happened, and Randy acted just like he always did.

I never really got a chance to talk to Samantha after that. I know I felt very guilty about jokingly calling her a Satanist, but every time I tried to apologize the enormity of that night stopped all meaningful dialogue.

And ‘til this day I’m unsure what exactly happened that night. I’m more inclined to believe Samantha was under a great deal of stress than she was demon-possessed, but I honestly will never be quite sure. As for Randy, I still don’t know what to make of that.

Maybe I’ll change my mind one day, but for now, you’ll forgive me if there are some songs I just don’t sing.


Hyperion
September 15, 2003

Credits
Thanks to Q-Dawg
Thanks to Tootsie
Thanks to Kimbo
Thanks to Abigail
Thanks to Camp Mayfield, and all the people who helped make this memory

@2003 the Hyperion Chronicles