THE WILD SIDETRUE STORY OF BETRAYAL, GRIEF,

METH-ADDICTION, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

AND REDEMPTION

JANET BALCOMBE

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C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

Prologue: The vision

1 Crossroads2 Goodbyes

3 Psychosis 101

4 The visitor

5 S.O.S.

6 Crash

7 Busted

8 Paradox

9 Déjà vu

10 Rock bottom

11 The wild side

12 Miracles

13 Restoration

14 Mission possible

15 The Kaimais

16 The shofar

Epilogue: The reason

Photo Gallery

More from WSP

T H E W I L D S I D E

Prologue: the vision2 0 0 1I opened the door and saw it. Like a scene straight out of The Exorcist, the portable cot defied gravity; floating in mid-air, like a sailing ship without the sea. It was moving up and down while the sides pulsated, in and out, in and out, like some macabre horror movie prop.

The scream lost traction halfway up my throat. Sweat popped along my forehead. Electricity charged the air, dragging the hair on my neck to attention. Fear over-rode maternal instinct. I fled, terror at my heels, leaving my son in the cot. I knew I had witnessed evil. I could feel its icy caress. I could smell its charcoal hide. I could hear the white-cold whisper of its promises.

Turning my back on its velvet voice, I went to Mum’s bedroom. “Mum,” my voice fought for freedom. Mum slept with one eye

open these days. “There’s something wrong in Roq’s room.”It remained unspoken, but we both knew. It was ungodly. I turned

to go to Roq’s room with her, but Mum’s hand stayed my wrist.“No Jan, I’ll handle this. Wait here.”She began praying as she headed toward Roq’s room. Her voice

firmed slightly as she neared his door. I heard the door open and then, silence, as the door swung shut behind her in a quiet click.

My feet took me to the kitchen, unconsciously seeking comfort from the hub of the house. I stared numbly out of the window, striving to make sense of this craziness. My surroundings had faded to grey, but the after-image was still etched on my retinas. The chill of evil clung to my skin and touched my bones. If that was a nightmare, I hoped it was over.

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Slowly returning from orbit, my eyes adjusted to the darkness outside. I was seeking normalcy, but there was something different about the garden. I moved closer to the window and pushed my face against the glass. I couldn’t grasp what I was seeing. It was bizarre. There was a new path winding through our lawn. In places, it was doubling back on itself like a never-ending figure of eight. Oh, God! I’m still in it. Wake up!

The path’s edges were neatly finished with a brick border. An attempt had been made to pave the middle, but it was just a collection of broken pieces of brick lying on the surface. At first glance, the path looked smooth, but when you looked closely it was very rough. This was an illusion that had no end. It contained promises it couldn’t deliver. My feet turned me around and took me to my room, automatically trying to distance me from the inconvenient truth, this metaphor for my life.

The static in the air made me jump, and an icy breeze touched my skin. A knowing, and a fear of the unknown curled into one. Even the hair on my face stood on end. New speakers morphed into the ceiling corners, and a chilling monotone spewed out like thick lava. The low, gravelly voice described all manner of unspeakable horrors, freezing the marrow in my bones. Everything went black. My nervous system was shutting down. My mind frantically checked every corner, looking for the escape, for some defense mechanism in which to hide.

Mounds of rubbish burned in piles by the path. I blinked again and again trying to process what I was seeing, as if my eyelids could somehow power a cognitive process. Those piles of rubbish — they weren’t rubbish at all. Those were our things. Mark’s and my belongings from the life we were living. From the lie I was living. The best money could buy fuelled the flames to reach higher and further into the darkness. Super-charged sparks spiraled high into the air like fiery messengers.

I’d stopped breathing. The only movement in my chest was my

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heart slamming into my ribs. I absorbed it all in an instant; then my eyes were drawn to him. The beast. Looking like a man, he was evil in the flesh. He had four thick, curved horns on his head. Two in front, two in the back, like giant hippo tusks. Tattooed sleeves adorned his arms. He stood too close for comfort, calmly prodding the fire. My fire.

I searched the files in my fractured brain, trying to find something to help, but I knew there was nothing. My sanity strained at its tethers. I was in hell. The remnants of a prayer wafted up on the dust from a childhood file. I picked up its trail as a drowning person clings to his rescuer. The chances of remembering it were small under the best conditions, but right now shock was setting in. On some level, I knew this was my only hope. It was the key.

“Our Father who is in Heaven…”Mum had hung a mirror on the wall with a scripture on it. Hope

found a voice and my eyes searched the wall, confident I could find it. It’d been the only thing there, after all. Incredibly, the wall was now covered with irrelevant, inconsequential sayings and beliefs I’d picked up over the years and blindly held to be true.

“Better the devil you know.” “Cleanliness is next to godliness.”“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” “It’s ok if you’re not hurting anyone else.”“Do it to them before they do it to you.”“God helps those who help themselves.”“The power comes from within.”“You create your own reality.”“Whoever dies with the most toys wins.”“The end justifies the means.”Pictures of things I held dear that had no eternal value also crowded

the wall, more useless crap, things that would turn to chaff and be blown away in the coming fire. What you put into the mind comes out in a life. There was no trace of the scripture.

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Desperate, I strained to remember the rest of the prayer. It was all I had. Standing in the face of obscenity, I was flooded with the knowledge that God’s power is the ultimate power. But I still felt God wasn’t listening, and I was unworthy of his help. I stood on the edge of the abyss between God and me, with no idea how to cross, evil snapping at my heels. I remained grasping at straws in the darkness, my mouth ajar as I stared into the flames.

I awoke, my scream unborn, in a pool of cold sweat. Terror-induced rigor mortis stopped me from pulling the blankets over my head. Was it a dream, or had it happened? Had it come from outside or inside of me? And what was that stuff about God? I didn’t want God. Anything but God!

Eventually, my feet responded to the command. Move! They reluctantly covered the familiar path to Roq’s room. I stopped in front of his door, wondering what I’d see when I opened it. My hand stretched out and pushed it slowly open. I forced myself to breathe. The cot was on the floor. Good. I snatched my sleeping child by the scruff of the neck and dived back into bed like a rugby player over the line. I’d experienced something unnatural, but very real. I was shaken to the core. Unable to turn the light off and give heed to another reign of darkness, it was a long time before my eyes closed.

Morning arrived. The frosting on the lawn ignored the weak winter sun. I dragged my weary bones to the kitchen and fell into a dining room chair, and as I stared vacantly out the window, I frowned as something had nudged my consciousness. The new path was gone. The night came flooding back. Memory laden with the filth that I’d met last night was harsh in the cold light of day. Filth that Mum had confronted in my stead, without question. Adrenaline rudely unleashed for such an early hour left me trembling. Mum was standing at the sink, savoring the last of the morning peace before the day slowly but surely picked up its pace.

“I had a dream last night,” I said tonelessly.“Mmm?” Mum said, cool green eyes scanning my face.

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“I dreamed Roq’s cot was going up and down in the air, and the sides were breathing in and out. There was such a feeling of menace. I’ve never felt such terror. Such despair.”

Mum slowly placed her bone china mug on the bench and turned towards me. Her quiet authority filled the kitchen.

“When I got up this morning I didn’t know you’d taken Roq to your bed in the night. I went in to check on him and was struck by the chill in the room. When I rested my hands on the cot it felt so cold I thought it was wet, but it wasn’t. Something had been in the room, and I think that maybe... ”

Mum’s voice drifted off, and she turned her gaze to the window. The remnants of heaviness fled, and my senses stood to attention.

“Maybe what, Mum?”“A presence. I’ll bless the room tonight.” My toes curled. Tonight? But we have to be here all day, I thought.“I think that maybe you weren’t dreaming. That God pulled back

the spiritual curtain and showed you something. I think that maybe, you had a vision.”

The hair on my scalp reached for height, once again.

In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings, to turn them from wrongdoing and keep them from pride, to preserve them from the pit, their lives from perishing by the sword. Job 33:15-18

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You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honour.

Aristotle

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