Beautifully Dead - Chapter 30
An Immortal Affections serialized novel
Thomas Everett’s Personal Journal
Near Hall’s Hill, Virginia
March 8, 1862
The fever cases seems to multiply with each hospital visit I make. The physicians call it camp fever at first, but then—they fall silent. They exchange glances. “It transforms into something altogether different,” one surgeon told me yesterday, his voice low. “It is as though the devil himself takes residence within them.”
The afflicted become violent beyond all reason. They attack their own comrades—men who shared their tents, their rations, their prayers. Today a young private dragged me by the sleeve to his friend’s bedside, desperation plain in his eyes. “Please, Chaplain, cast out the demon that possesses him!”
The afflicted soldier had bitten him. Taken flesh from his arm with his teeth.
I have witnessed much horror in this war, but this—this defies comprehension. This is not of God. Cannot be of God. The darkness I sense in these men feels ancient and malevolent, yet when I invoked the Holy Spirit in fervent prayer, when I called upon the Lord’s power to cast out the demon, nothing changed. The afflicted man continued to thrash and bite, his eyes empty of all human recognition.
Wesley taught that through faith united with God’s grace, demons may be expelled. Here then is the measure of my failing faith. I was not strong enough. I could not muster sufficient spiritual authority to save Private Roberts. This is why Scripture commands us to wear the full armor of God—to remain ever vigilant. For we know not when we shall be called upon to stand firm against the powers of darkness.
I needed the Lord’s strength more than ever today, and I found myself wanting.
Four men held Private Roberts down while I prayed. I asked them to join their voices with mine, hoping that our combined spiritual strength might overcome the darkness. Five Christians united in prayer, calling upon the Almighty’s power. Yet still the demon would not release him.
Private Roberts remains alive in the flesh, but the man he was seems utterly consumed. Though we prayed with all the faith we could summon, though we invoked every promise of Scripture, he continued wanting to snap his teeth at anyone who approaches, making sounds no human throat ought produce.
God forgive me. I failed that boy today.
What manner of affliction resists the power of Christ’s name? What evil proves stronger than united Christian prayer?
I have no answers. Only questions that multiply like shadows as night falls.
© 2025 E.M.V. - writing as Morgan A. Drake & Joe Gillis. All rights reserved.