Leo Franklin became a household name when he represented the US at two Olympic Games, once as a middle heavyweight, and then as a heavyweight. Franklin retired in his mid thirties and he devoted a considerable amount of his time to improving impoverished communities. He started first in the small NC town where he was born. He not only gave money to help the poor, he built a gym in the city and he gave boxing lessons to interested children. Then he focused his efforts on the Gullah population in the SC low country where both his parents had been born. Leo was always disconnected from his ancestry, but after spending time among the Gullah community, he realized that he wanted to be closer to it and he delved deeper into his African roots. He traveled with his wife and their four children to Sierra Leone when his youngest son was just seven years old. Leo spent a lot of money in small villages to fund things like schools and clinics.
While in Sierra Leone, his youngest son, Clay, encountered a Nomoli figurine and the woman at the market selling them, grabbed his hand tightly and told him that he would be a man like the ones the statues had been fashioned after. She told Clay that he was the descendent of a fallen angel, but a special one who had retained heavenly gifts to help the world. Clay always kept his Nomoli close to him after that.
When the family was back in the US, Leo agreed to open a gym with an old friend in the city of Guadalajara, Mexico. The friend, also a former boxer, had a similar goal that Leo had, to do what he could to uplift downtrodden people in a world that was packed to the brim with horrors that were impossible to escape.
Clay traveled with his father to Guadalajara the summer after his tenth birthday. His mother and siblings stayed in Charleston, SC where the family lived. Clay was always excited to travel with his father no matter where they went. Not only did he enjoy seeing new things, he loved being his father’s son. Everyone seemed to love the man and they would fawn over him, wondering if he planned to follow in his father’s footsteps.
In Guadalajara, Clay did start boxing. He was big for his age and he was strong. He spent a lot of time with local children, learning Spanish and falling in love with the city, while his father tended to humanitarian efforts.
One day Clay was at the home of a friend he had made, he overheard a conversation between his friend’s mother and one of her relatives. His Spanish was not good enough for him to follow, but he knew they spoke earnestly and they both crossed themselves multiple times. He asked his friend what they talked about and the boy was hesitant to tell him.
“It’s stupid religious stuff.”
Clay pressed him, “You think religion is stupid?”
“They think some people are possessed by demons,” the boy said. “Do you believe in that? I’ve never seen it. My abuela thinks everyone she hates is possessed by demons.”
“Where are these people?” Clay asks.
“Oh, you going to save them from the devil?” The boy laughed. “Let’s get back to the gym.”
The two went back to the gym where Leo was. He could see that Clay was concerned about something.
“What’s on your mind, son?” he asked and then listened as Clay told him the story about the possessed people.
Leo asked one of the men at the gym if they had heard about it, and the man crossed himself.
“Si, senor. I have heard about the devil in the town of Borges. He is torturing people there as we speak.”
“Do they have religious leaders helping?” Leo asked. He had grown up devoutly Christian and had never wavered in his faith. Despite all of the horrors of the world, he had always felt his family was protected by God because they prayed and went to church.
The man shrugged. Leo wanted to help and he went to the local church near the gym in Guadalajara.
“What you have to understand,” the local priest explained, trying to convince Leo that the affliction of those people was none of his concern, “is that the town of Borges is filled with Wixaritari, native people with backward customs. They do drugs in the name of God. They are beyond the help of the spirit realm. They need only abandon their peyote to find real peace.”
This infuriated Leo who heard the criticism of the native town as similar to discrimination his Gullah family had faced back in the states. He got a group together and he took Clay with him to the small, rural town of Borges, hoping to show his son that no one was ever beyond help. Clay was sure to grab his Nomoli that always made him feel safe.
As they drove, they passed a lot of barren land, desert that was devoid of trees. Except for the trees that were not real trees. The things existed everywhere and were still very much a mystery, but they looked like leafless trees with few branches, and as black and night. They gave Clay the creeps no matter where he saw them and he gripped the Nomoli tighter. He had asked his father why no one ever removed them, and it was common knowledge that they could not be moved. No chainsaw was strong enough to penetrate the trunks. No truck was strong enough to pull them up from the root.
When they arrived at the village, the man who drove them, took Clay and Leo to the church where his brother worked. He assisted the local priest at the town’s small Catholic Church. He met the group of men on the church steps. Clay clutched the Nomoli close to his chest.
“The father is busy in prayer,” the man explained. “He has not slept in days.”
“Can we see someone who is possessed?” Leo asked. “We can give them a ride to a hospital or something.”
The man on the church steps shook his head severely.
“You can’t take them anywhere. They are dangerous.”
But Leo insisted on seeing this for himself. The men drove to the home of a woman who had been waiting for the priest for two days. When they knocked on the door of her home, she answered with rosary beads wrapping her hands. When she wasn’t talking to them, her lips moved like she mumbled something under her breath.
“Senora Anabel,” the man who drove said to the woman before introducing Leo and his son Clay. Anabel looked down at Clay and she stopped her silent prayer. She smiled at him. She had not smiled in days. She didn’t listen to anything the man said to her, but she stood back from the door and said to the boy, “Pasa.”
Clay looked to his father, who looked to the man that was with them. “She said to come in.”
Leo nodded down at Clay and he followed her into the dark home that was small. Clay had seen houses like the woman’s when the family visited poor people in Sierra Leone. It looked like the family had built it themselves. Clay walked with the woman to the doorway of her son’s bedroom.
“Ayuda mi Ismael,” she said to Clay.
Clay did not understand, but he was drawn to the bed where the boy looked emaciated. He snarled, growled and spit at Clay, who still held his Nomoli at his chest.
And when Clay was at the bedside, the boy took a deep breath and his body seized one last time before it fell slack. The boy was silent for the first time in days.
Anabel moved to the bedside just as Ismael opened his eyes and she could see instantly that the boy was alright.
Clay looked at his father. His father and the man that had brought them to the town, were on their knees, both awed by the Clay’s apparent ability to chase demons out of the possessed.
On the outskirts of Borges, there was a poorly built shack in a clearing of desert that was not accessible from local roads. When people drove to it, they did so because they knew that the house was there and they would curse the homeowner for not moving closer to civilization.
The owner of the home was an old man with many names, Don Luis Manuel Santana Nieto, and he was an avid gardener. He had many colorful and fragrant flowers that he grew in pots in his home, alongside the peyote that he cultivated in pots and around the outside of the home. He hardly ever used the peyote by that point, though, and it mostly grew uncontrollably.
The man was in his home just as the boy Ismael was released from his possession and the event made Don Santana very angry. He was not close enough to the town of Borges to see what had happened, but Don Santana was a very special man with special abilities and he had been monitoring the people of the town. When Ismael was released from his affliction, Don Santana stood from the wooden rocking chair in his living room and he went to the room in the back of the house where his grandson Ivan had been meditating for two days.
Ivan was just ten years old at the time, and he looked gaunt and tired sitting on the floor with his legs crossed.
Don Santana did not say a word but slapped the boy out of his meditation. Ivan tumbled over and hit by head hard on the floor. He sat up slowly, rubbing his head and wincing.
“You are slipping. Why did you leave the boy?”
“I… I didn’t,” Ivan stammered. “There’s something else…” before he could finish, Don Santana slapped him again. And then he beat and kicked Ivan until there was a loud clap of thunder that shook the small house, and a flash of lightning that whited the area for a split second.
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