I arrived home from the hospital.
How good it felt to breathe in the scent of home again.
My breasts ached from the surgery, and with great difficulty I made my way to the bedroom. I changed into my pajamas and lay down on the bed. Staring at the ceiling, I breathed slowly, trying to ease the pain. Then I looked down at my bandages.
They were stained with blood.
I'd needed many stitches.
The smell of anesthesia still lingered on them, mingling with the metallic scent of blood.
He came quickly.
It was as if he had stepped out of the wardrobe.
Standing beside my bed, he simply watched me.
It was the tall specter with the exposed teeth.
He seemed to hunger for something.
I felt like an offering laid upon an altar.
In that moment, I understood the meaning of animal sacrifice. For an entity like that to appear, wounds alone were not enough—it required pain and suffering as well.
Then I heard my mother and sister talking in the living room.
They had come to care for me during my recovery.
The specter continued watching me.
I was far too weak to defend myself.
It felt as though all my defenses in the spiritual realm had collapsed.
I called my mother and asked her to pray.
She saw him too and cast him out in the name of Jesus.
"I'll be back," he warned.
Then he retreated, but remained lurking in a region of the spiritual plane that overlapped with the wardrobe, hiding behind the mirror.
This was the specter I had been battling for months.
My mother went to the kitchen.
Lívia stepped into the bedroom.
"It's so dark in here!" she exclaimed.
"I feel better this way..." I explained weakly.
"No. We're opening the window and letting the light in."
"I wanted to sleep. I'm in so much pain..."
She opened the window, and sunlight flooded the room.
"He likes the darkness. He's making you think it's better to keep the window closed."
Night fell.
I have to admit—I was afraid.
"Lívia, will you sleep with me?"
"I'm afraid I'll hurt you by accident."
"Don't worry."
In the middle of the night, she woke up to pray.
She saw them standing beside my bed: the specter and several smaller ones.
The moment I woke up, she told me what she had seen.
"Ana, he was talking, and his voice was coming out of your body!" she said, visibly shaken.
"And what was he saying?"
"I couldn't understand him. It doesn't matter what a demon says. I cast him out in the name of Jesus. Oh—and he said he'd be back."
"He told Mom the same thing!"
"There seemed to be a hierarchy," she explained. "The larger specter was the leader, and the smaller ones obeyed him."
Why does he do this? Why does he keep staring at me? I wondered.
That afternoon, I walked into my room and stopped in front of the wardrobe.
I was furious.
I wanted to confront him.
So I called for him.
And he came.
"What do you want?" I asked with my mind.
He didn't answer.
He simply watched me.
"Why won't you say anything? What do you want?" I demanded.
My anger only grew.
I wanted to cross into the spiritual realm and fight him face-to-face.
Night came, and I fell asleep.
The next morning, I woke to the sensation of hands caressing my breasts.
My eyes were still closed.
Who is that?
They had only recently been operated on and were still extremely sensitive.
Suddenly, the hands squeezed hard.
"Ow! That hurts!" I cried out.
I opened my eyes, turned my head, and saw a specter lying beside me in bed.
It had taken the appearance of my ex-husband.
A sarcastic smile stretched across its face.
A thin mist seemed to envelop its entire body.
This had to be some kind of joke.
A cruel one.
For a moment, I considered projecting my spirit and fighting it, but I was afraid it might take possession of my body again.
Instead, I drove my elbow into it and shouted:
"Get out of here, you idiot!"
A violent wave of nausea hit me from having touched the specter.
I prayed the Lord's Prayer, and it left my bed.
This has gone too far, I thought furiously.
Lívia returned home, and my mother arrived, immediately opening the bedroom window.
"It's dark in here again!" she said angrily.
I told her everything that had happened, and she began to pray.
"Leave now, in the name of Jesus!" she commanded.
"She called me," the specter said to her.
"She did no such thing, you liar!" my mother shot back. "Pack your bags and leave, in the name of Jesus!"
My God, I thought. I did call him. I wanted to fight him. How am I supposed to confess that to my mother?
"Satan is a liar! How can he claim you called him? Liar!" she exclaimed.
"I don't know, Mom..." I replied, lowering my eyes.
She went into the living room and knelt down to pray.
Then the Lord spoke through her:
"Woe to you if you cross over to the other side! I will withdraw My hand. I will remove My protection from your life, and then you will see what it is like. I still have many blessings prepared for you, but if you cross over to the other side, I will not release them. Woe to you if you cross over to the other side!"
The warning carried the force of a divine rebuke.
God is angry with me, I thought, terrified. What would become of me without You, Lord? Without Your protection? Forgive me, God!
My mother stood, walked over to me, and fixed her eyes on mine.
"Ana, God said that if you cross over to the other side, He will take away all the blessings He has prepared for you!" she said, still upset.
"Mom, I'm not going over to the other side," I replied softly.
"God knows what He's saying! If He said it, it's because the danger is real!" she insisted.
I don't understand why God is angry with me. I don't know what I've done wrong, I thought.
"Everything you have came from Him," she continued, her voice gentler now. "God loves you very much."
"I know. I love Him too. I will never leave God," I said, fighting back tears.
We talked, prayed, shared coffee together, and eventually she left.
Alone, I wandered through the house, replaying everything that had happened.
Then an angel appeared.
"There's a difference between defending yourself when the enemy comes to you and calling the enemy to fight," the angel explained patiently. "And that's exactly what you did. You may only enter a spiritual battle with God's authorization. You're part of an organization."
The angel showed me countless angels moving quickly from one place to another, as if carrying out assignments.
Then he continued:
"You cannot launch an isolated attack. Spiritual battles are authorized by God."
"I understand my mistake now. Forgive me, God."
A few seconds of silence followed.
"I'm a lot of work, aren't I?" I asked sheepishly.
Then I saw at least six angels nodding in agreement.
Each one looked different.
Some were thin, others rounder. They wore different hairstyles.
Yet they all seemed to be dressed in the same robe.
"I still have so much to learn, Angel..."