• This is not my story. In this tale, I am only a bystander. I make no promise to tell you the events as they happened. I swear only to tell you the events as I remember them. I was only a child when I witnessed the following. Not everyone I remember at this time and place can recall or agree upon what I will honestly describe to you. There is even the faintest chance that it did not even happen at all.
    I was 10 years old when these events befell my home. It was a small home, being within an apartment complex, as it was. There began a day very similar to any other day. But this day lay the framework for the most unusual time of my life. Are you sure you're ready to begin? I was just checking.
    During a long weekend, I was coming home after assisting with groceries. As we were unloading the minivan, my elder sister suddenly began leaning over and complaining of lightness and pain in her head. We thought she would be alright, until she staggered while carrying two bags. I sat down the bags I was carrying and took hers from her. She was then promptly sent to bed, regardless of the early afternoon hours. She slept off the rest of the afternoon. It’s what happened that night that really started the strangeness.
    That night, at the exact moment mother went in to check on her, I walked in on her snacking in the kitchen. Mother engaged her in conversation in the bedroom, as she conversed with me over cereal. We had just shifted topics from school to summer plans, when Dad came in and exclaimed in shock "Helena! Why are you out of bed?"
    This puzzled us to no end. Helena had simply been exhausted. Now that she had rested, why should it be strange that she was out of bed and eating? That question was answered before it was asked. "I just passed your room, and you were still in there talking to your mother!"
    This sounding impossible, I promptly ran up to Helena’s room, and startled her in conversation with my mother. This seemed to confirm that she was indeed in two places at once. I ran back to the kitchen and burst out my discovery. This irritated my father to no end. He had just been grilling her about this phenomenon when I interrupted him. All but dragging them to my sister’s bedside, we startled my sister and mother as they were in mid-conversation. As my father was flabbergasted to hear that Helena had not left the bedroom, he turned behind him to see that no one was there. He asked me “We were just talking to her in the kitchen, weren’t we?”
    When I agreed, he was deeply troubled. Perhaps he thought he was hallucinating. He shouldn’t have. After all, I had corroborated his witness. But nevertheless, he kept an eye on my sister for days after that. As he kept watching for …something, he grew more tense. The more tense he grew, the more her slightest out of character comments and movements alarmed him. Finally, on the eighth day, he made a call. I walked in on him in conversation as he was growing more and more impatient with whoever he was talking to. At the risk of becoming irate, he just wouldn’t quit… whatever he was trying to accomplish. Sensing that it was better to leave as I came, I snuck out before he saw me. To this day, I cannot truly recall what I heard that afternoon. But what darkened our doorstep the next week might have had something to do with it. On a Saturday night more dreary than most, I was immersed in homework, not paying much attention to the goings on into the house, when the doorbell rang. I hurried to the door. I thought only of hurrying back to my homework so I could finish it in time for prime time. So I can honestly say I was very surprised to greet a Catholic Priest that night. Father came to the door, greeting him like an expected guest, which it turns out he was. Father Bertolini had been called to perform an exorcism upon my sister. That surprised me.
    I suppose I should explain some things about my family’s beliefs. My father is a Staunch Catholic, who married Hebrew. Consequently, my family has a diverse religious background, and a lot of ways to deal with these situations, but while my father never expressed doubt or ridicule about my mother’s faith or heritage, he was always anxious if we did not try his way first. But he always voiced some degree of skepticism regarding exorcisms, so what happened that night showed how severe he considered the matter at hand to be.
    I was sent to my room, to protect me from the sight of the battle for my elder sister’s soul. 3 hours later I quietly left to relieve myself. Being discreet enough not to flush in our one bathroom apartment, I hurried back to my apartment, and was surprised to see Helena there. She was tied to her bedposts being grilled by a holy man. How was she here, unrestrained, with no one noticing? As soon as she noticed me enter, she started demanding answers to her situation from me.
    “What’s going on? Why are they doing this to me? What have I done to be treated like I’m possessed by a demon?” It was readily apparent she was lacking awareness of her situation, or that she was suddenly somewhere beyond where she’d just been. I tried to quiet her to make sense of what was happening, as I couldn’t miss the noises in the next room. They were getting quieter, like the rites were in endgame. The last thing they needed to see was me talking to someone who was in two places at once. It scared them so very badly the first time. Finally shutting up Helena for a few minutes (shoving a pillow over her mouth and sitting on it, being careful to lift it from her nose so she could breathe) I eavesdropped on the proceedings.
    “Do not fall asleep under the strain, dear Helena. You will only grant the wretched creature more sway over you.” Father Bertolini seemed to be on the verge of quelling the beast. I waited on baited breath for the results, being cautious to allow Helena to breath. At last there seemed to be a great whooping. Father burst into my room, triumph smeared from one side of his face to the other.
    “Tony, your sister has been delivered from the beast’s clutches. At last we can get back to our lives.” It struck me as odd that he would say such a thing, given that in the prior two (was it three?) weeks there had been only subtle incidents of supernatural behavior. He has since denied saying this. This is partly because it sounds very silly, even to him. But mostly it’s because no sooner was the outburst declared than he saw the two of us together, one of us he had just left in another room.
    “Alas Father,” he bemoaned, “it has not worked.”
    “What are you saying” demanded Father Bertolini as he came into the room. After looking about our room he asked “is your faith so wanton? There was only the boy here.”
    “What?” Father was hesitant to believe his eyes, but there was nothing to contradict the preacher in the room. I had been separated from my sister in the blink of an eye. If I’d not also been confused, he would have begun to look positively mad.
    “Is the mischief not passed yet?” I wondered aloud. With this witness, I may have saved my father’s image as a sane man. The Pastor stared me dead in the eye, and made me swear to him that I was not just saying these things to protect my father’s image. I swore to him, but he still did not believe us.
    “A child’s imagination will often mislead his awareness and memories, no less than a distressed man’s.” With this he expressed doubts not of our honesty or sanity, only the reality of our claims. He left shortly afterwards, having found no trace of a demon. If only that’s when this tale ended.
    Even after a priest failed to find anything out of the ordinary, our troubles increased, reaching an undeniable level. First came worsening behavior. It was only at school first, then almost everywhere else. Slacking off on chores, tripping skaters passing by, and putting her homeroom teacher’s cell phone number around town in graffiti. The tags mentioned something about a good time. But it was at its worst at school. It was there that other people cited her multiplications. When she was giving a report in class, she was seen by the hall monitor kissing a boy. While she was in gym class, she was caught smoking in the bathroom. We found out years later that the security cameras also cited her in two places at any one time. Things had to change.
    When the weekend came that she was completely absent, our parents decided to try a different kind of exorcism. Bear in mind that each one embraced the other’s faith, but still held dearly to the doctrine’s they’d been raised by, respectively. This meant we were raised to hold dear Saturday and Sunday. That she would leave unannounced Saturday Morning, and not return until late Sunday Evening was shocking, to say the least. The Catholic Priest had failed to even detect anything supernatural, so they needed to try another tack. Even though asking spiritual questions had not born answers, no shrink on Earth could explain her simultaneous sightings. And so they consulted a rabbi.
    I cannot vouch much for what happened next. I was at a sleepover at a friend’s house. What convenient timing. Maybe they thought they were protecting me, maybe they thought they were protecting Helena. Who knows?
    All I can really tell you is that when I got back, the holy man was shaking his head, and my mother and father were beside themselves. Mother was trying to stifle her tears, and father looked like a helpless person who had been betrayed by the only person who had offered him hope. Rabbi Bachman was in apologies and turning to leave as I entered the small space I called home. Before he breached the doorframe, he stopped and turned around. I don’t remember well what he said, but I don’t think he remembered well the subject he was describing either. I’ve needed to ask what he was explaining since that day, but it seems one of the young people in his prayer group was a designated driver. As such the young man was very sober when he heard one of his more inebriated friends speak of a man who had led a demon from a house it was afflicting. Rabbi Bachman promised to look into the matter, and return to us with his findings.
    I wondered what “findings” referred to, but my parents would not hear my questions. Being both inquisitive and uninformed, I decided to produce some “findings” of my own. That is, I decided to look into these matters and see what the fuss was about with my sister. If anything was going on with her that was within my comprehension, I was determined to know it.
    Part 2
    I used a basic code from my Code Master book and kept a log of everything I observed in a very private journal that I hid under my mattress. Ultimately, I observed nothing about her that seemed conspicuous or incriminating. Ultimately the answers to what was going on would beggar my imagination, and very soon.
    The night the messenger of those answers came to our door is still seared into my mind. His visage is distorted in my mind’s eye after all of these years, and sometimes all I recall of his face is a cryptic shadow. The evening sky was almost blotted with dark clouds, pregnant with so much storm water they could not yet release. I’ve long since forgotten what did he said to my father. This is because I’ve seen this person only once in my life. I will never forget though, what his visit meant for my family. To this day, things with my sister have never been the same.
    I can never remember his name until I get to the following moments. As he laid out his designs for this process, my father objected to the first step in his initiative. When he demanded to know what rationale justified it, the correct response seemed to be a very loud “Because I’m Shimi Cardozo, Fool!” With a response like that, it’s no wonder I need to recall it to remember the name after all of this time. The first thing he did was arrange us all, priest and rabbi included, outside of her room. He was alone with Helena, doing various probes and inquisitions as she lay tied to the bed. He had frowned at this precaution, but Father Bertolini and Rabbi Bachman agreed that if whatever was inside her was going to get violent, he would do well to have protection. Once alone with her, he removed her bonds. I don’t know how quickly he had deduced that what she carried would not bring her harm. Maybe he knew it before he set foot in the door. If I am to tell you this night as I remember it, I can bring you no information about what happened to her beside what she told me later, and according to her there is not much to tell.
    When they emerged, she was without restraints and in good spirits (so to speak). Helena related to the rest of us that Senior Cardozo had explained the nature of her malady, and presented her the means to live the remainder of her life under her own influence. This was a great relief to my mother, whereas my father was cautiously optimistic. The holy men we’d gathered to expel a demon were flabbergasted that the matter had been resolved so quietly and without conflict. So imagine everyone’s surprise when we were told the creature was still there.
    My dad was outraged and before anyone else could say anything, he belted out words I’ve never heard from him before or since. When the ragegasm had subsided, Senior Cardozo explained that the spirit was not a demon. It was something he had not seen outside of Asia. He called it a Phi Phu. He said that there were intelligent, sober people who coveted a Phi Phu of their own. It was a spirit that one possessed, no one had ever been possessed by one. He laid down the his knowledge about the spirit as follows:
    • The Phi Phu imbues several strange abilities, including beauty, vitality, various mystical abilities. I can’t name most of them to save my own life, but we had witnessed several times the ability to be in 2 places at once.
    • A Phi Phu can be shared with another person by sharing a meal together, living together.
    • A phi phu does not necessarily beget a malignant influence, but a stern adherence to social moors can maintain full autonomy of their mental, physical, and supernatural function.
    I don’t think Father Bertolini has ever really trusted Senior Cardozo to this day, but he was thankful that some air of resolution had been achieved that night. We’ve always kept an eye on Helena, and thus far, none of us have contracted her symptoms. Father has been strict with all of us since then, himself held to no exception. Helena’s treatment has always reflected the rules and warnings we received regarding the Phi Phu in the time since that night. She hasn’t minded at all.
    As for the man who brought us answers, Senior Shimi Cardozo was never seen again by my eyes. I hope he is still out there, helping people. And I hope to someday do the same work, aiding people the same way, so I have some way to give the same peace and relief that my family received. And I want to see him again, sharing my exploits. That is my wish for my future.