decapolis – Johann Quisumbing

FAITHFUL ENCOUNTERS – Part 031

DEMACLI, THE LEGION DEMONIAC
31 AD – Hippus, Decapolis (Southeast shore of the Sea of Galilee)

Demacli abruptly shouted a language that was unrecognizable to him. He started to dash down the slope, insanely screaming, towards the glowing person. As he came closer, the glowing one and the others turned toward him when they heard his maniacal tirade. Some of them were about to protect the glowing one, but he held them off. He took two steps forward and in a commanding voice, Demacli was commanded to stop. It was so commanding that he stopped like he was thunderstruck and fell to ground. The voices in his head were screaming in excruciating pain so much so, he was screaming out loud.

Then, the glowing one approached even closer. He spoke again in a language that he didnot know. It was the language of the Jews but yet older. Though he didnot know what he said, the effect on the voices sounded like they were being tortured.

Then he spoke but it was not his voice. “Why are you interfering with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Please, I beg you, don’t torture me!” [Luke 8:28]

Then, Demacli’s vision clears. The man standing before him was no longer glowing. He was of average height. He had the dark hair that was about shoulder length and short beard and mustache. His appearance was plain and ordinary. To Demacli, he would not look twice at him, but yet the voice was clearly afraid of him and he called him the Son of the Most High God. Then, there was his eyes, which were deeply penetrating. He looked at Demacli for some time.

“What is your name?” he commanded with such authority and in Greek.

Then all the voices in him spoke out in a desperate shriek, “Legion!” The sound was so ominous that the man’s companions stepped back.

But the man, Jesus, stood his ground and said, “Legion, I command you to come out of this man!”

Demacli inadvertently doubled over in intense pain and screamed, “It hurts!” But this time it was in his own voice. Then again, the voices took over and pleaded, “Lord! We beseeched Thee! Do not cast us into the bottomless pit.”

Demacli painfully got up on his haunches and gestured to the distant herd of pigs feeding on the hill. He cried out, “Let us, instead, enter into those pigs on the hill.”

“Go!” Jesus said.

Demacli convulsed one more time, then it stopped. For the first time in six years, there was peaceful silence in his head. It was so quiet, it was deafening. He stood up blinking in surprise. Then everybody’s attention were riveted to a commotion on the nearby hill. When he turned to look, he saw the swineherds chasing the large herd of pigs racing uncontrollably into the lake. They all watched in fascination as everyone of the pigs went into the lake and under water. Soon, there are hundreds of floating carcasses being washed ashore.

“I… ah… I am free,” Demacli said almost not believing. “You have healed me. Are you a God?”

The man Jesus smiled and said, “Come, let us get you all cleaned up.”

Demacli was helped to the water where some of Jesus’ companions washed the grime away. After which they clothe and fed him.

When Jesus approached him, Demacli bowed to the ground. Jesus reached down and helped him to get up. Then, they started to walk along the shore and talk. Demacli filled with emotion was telling him all that he experienced. The more he told his story, the more his heart lightened and felt more free. By that time they both returned to the camp there was a gathering of people that came from the city. Apparently, the men who were herding the drowned pigs panicked, fled to the city and reported the strange event to the city magistrate. They made such a ruckus that a lot more people came along with the city guard to see what was happening.

When the magistrate saw Demacli walking calmly with Jesus, he asked in amazement, “Is that you, Demacli? You look calm and sane! What has happened here?”

Demacli told him how Jesus commanded the demons in him to come out and they went into the pigs that drowned. The town people started to mubble among themselves and referred to Jesus as being some kind of sorcerer. They started to back away in fear.

Seeing his people backing away, the magistrate said, “Nothing like this has ever been seen or heard of. I know not how this really happened, but you have powers that we do not want around here! We beg you, sorcerer, take your magic elsewhere and leave us in peace.”

The magistrate and the people backed away and fled back to the city. Only a few stayed and watched from a distance. Jesus looked at his companion and nodded. They proceeded to break camp and load up the boats.

“Lord, may I come with you?” Asked Demacli. “I have so much to ask and to learn. The voices that were in me said you are the ‘Son of the Most High God’. For years, as a Greek I always believed in the many gods of our beliefs. Now, standing here before you, I have serious doubts. Please Lord.”

“No, Demacli, go back to your family,” Jesus said smiling. “And tell them everything God has done for you.”

Jesus then led him away from the disciples as they continued to load the boats. He quietly said, “I will come this way again and I shall speak of my Father on High. Look for me in a years time.”

Demacli watched Jesus climb into the boat and sail away. He climbed up the hill and watched for a long while as both boats faded in the distance. He sighed deeply. Then, he walked back to the city of Hippus; back to his father’s house and told a most fascinating story.
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Greeting friends…

I hope you are enjoying the 31th segment of my ebook, FAITHFUL ENCOUNTERS.

Feel free to leave your comments below. I look forward to read your comments and constructive inputs that will help me direct my creative thoughts.

Thank you.

Until the next post.

Johann Q.

PS… If you want to support my writing, please purchase my ebook, THE CENTURION’S GOSPEL, in Amazon.com for only $1.99. The Centurion’s Gospel is the story of Cornelius Metellus, the Roman Centurion who almost saved Jesus Christ from the cross. Just click the link below.

FAITHFUL ENCOUNTERS – Part 010

DEMACLI, THE LEGION DEMONIAC
24 A.D. in the region of the Decapolis

Three nights later, he returned to the villa disheveled and dirty. He tiredly lowered himself to the ground next to the gate. A servant saw him and quickly brought Habbi.

“Master, we searched for you for days.” Seeing that he was aslpeep, Habbi shook him. “Master… master!”

Like waking up from a bad dream, Demacli sat up straight, looking around in confusion. He grasped Habbi’s sleeve and croaked in a parch voice, “Wha… what happened to me?” After drinking some water that a servant hastily brought, he said, “I woke up in a cave some miles from here. I don’t recall anything.”

“We are bringing you home,” his father said. “Habbi will stay to continue the business. My son, according to the priestess, you have been fooled by Ate, the goddess of mischief. I have heard that she had been casting her spells among the Jews lately. But I have heard of a prophetess of Hermes hiding in Cadasa in the region of Phoenicia that may free you. We must go there.”

“I hate to leave father but…”

“I know, my son. You have built so much, but I think you need not fret for I think you’ll return.”

But deep in his mind, Demacli heard a thousand laughters.

24 A.D. in the region of the Sidon, Phoenicia

“Can this hovel be the place?” The father asked their guide. The house was no more than a dilapidated shack in the edge of a forest miles from the nearest village. Though it was in shambles, there were signs of habitation.

“Oh yes, witch be there! But me no go near. You go… you go.”

Demacli was feeling a little better. The voices were not so overwhelming since they left the village they were lodging in for almost three weeks looking for this elusive prophetess.

He and his father got off the horses they were riding. The guide took the reins of the horses and rode a short distance away to wait for them. Together, they approached the shack and when they got close enough. His father placed a hand on Demacli’s arm to signal a halt.

Then, he called out, “We seek the prophetess of Hermes. We seek her aid.”

No answer came but Demacli noticed at a window a torn curtain move. Clearly, someone was in there.

“My son needs your help. I have silver to offer.”

They waited outside for about an hour, then suddenly the door opened and a feminine voice said, “Come in.”

Demacli was expecting to see an old chrone but to his surprise, they were met by a beautiful woman. She was not young but still held the beauty of her youth.

“I am Elpida. What makes you seek me? I am no longer a prophetess. Since I was cast out of Greece and returned home here where I was born, I have been branded a witch because I heal the poor with my poltices and potions.”

“Then, it is your healing that we seek,” said the father. He told her all of Demacli’s condition.

She had Demacli sit before her. She took his head and cupped his face with her hands. She looked into his eyes for what seem the longest time.

“I have come across this before,” she sadly said as she sat back rubbing her face like she was tired.

“This is not the work of the goddess of mischief. This is much older… even older than our gods.”

“What can we do?” asked the father.

“I cannot help you. All I can say is that in time, the spirits that dwell in you will eventually take control of you. You will be capable of doing despicable things but it will not be you. It will be them. There is more. These spirits are evil and they are spiteful toward us who walk this world. Legend says they were once favored but then, because of the evil done by their leader, they were cast down here on the earth never to return. They will torment you. Those evil things that you will do, you will be aware of it and it will drive you mad.”

Again the father asked, “Is there no hope for my son, ever?”

“I have traveled the earth seeking wisdom. Knowledge I have collected from Greece, Egypt, Sidon, Phoenicea, Persia and even the lost religion of ancient Mesopotamia. In every one, I have gleaned the existance of one God who is the god of all gods. It is to this God that these evil spirits fear the most. If there is any hope, seek those who worship the one God. Go to the Jews.”

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Greeting friends…

I hope you are enjoying the 10th segment of my ebook, FAITHFUL ENCOUNTERS. Here we pause the story of Demacli. We will see him again 7 years later. Meanwhile, we jump forward in time to 30AD to the story of Andrew, the first disciple.

Feel free to leave your comments below. I look forward to read your comments and constructive inputs that will help me direct my creative thoughts.

If you want to support my writing, please use my Go-Fund-Me site below.

Thank you.

Until the next post.

Johann Q.

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FAITHFUL ENCOUNTERS – Part 009

DEMACLI, THE LEGION DEMONIAC
24 A.D. in the region of the Decapolis

A year had passed. Demacli was riding on a carriage carried by six slaves down a wide boulevard being hailed by people of different classes. When they got back to the villa, Habbi was there waiting for him.

“I take it, Master, your meeting with the Roman was fruitful.”

“It wasn’t but then it was. The Roman was no help but the Egyptian I talked to will aid us to double our profits for the next year or so.”

“That is good, Master. Your father would be proud.”

“Yes… it is too bad he wasn’t here.”

“As a matter of fact, I just recieved a message from your father. Your entire family will be here in three days.”

“Three days, you say.” Inside Demacli was concerned.

“What is wrong, Master? Why the frown?”

“Ah…” He shook his head. “Nothing that concerns you, Habbi. I am going up and I am not to be disturbed.”
He went up straight to his room.

“Why is my father coming? Why now?” Demacli asked himself.

“He is coming because he wants to take away from your success!” It was his voice he heard but harsher. “He is jealous of you!” His voice again but more weaselly. Other voices in his head began to intrude by suggestting other things about his father.

“Enough! You’re all too much again,” he said clutching his head. “Speak to me one at a time.”

Echoing deep inside his mind, he thought he heard many laughters as if from a jest fading away. One voice came out but more authoritative.

“So, your father is arriving. What will you do?”

“What is there for me to do?” Demacli whined.

“Stop your whining. You be the man! Face up to your father, if need be.”

“Yes… if need be.”

Then, the other voices returned.

“Greetings, my son,” said a portly man, as he slowly alighted out of a horse driven carriage. Following him was his mother who was slightly taller.

“Hail to you, father and mother,” Demacli said as he first embrace his mother then grasped the forearm of his father, Roman style. Looking around, he asked, “Where are my sisters?”

“Oh, we left them in Hippus,” his mother said.

“Ah yes, Hippus. I miss our home. I miss the hills that overlook the Sea of Galilee. Come. You must be hungry.” He led them to the covered patio where lunch was being laidout for them.

After an hour, the table was being cleared by the servants. They were lounging around on big plush cushions under a canopy of vines and fragrant flora. What fronted them was a garden of palm trees and circular pond with a statuate of Dionysus holding up a stalk of grapes.

“You have done well for yourself, my son,” his father said looking around. “We are pleased at your accom…”

The voices in Demacli’s mind intruded again with many suggestions that his father was less than sincere and also that his mother seem secretive. He had to struggle to keep his mind focused.

“Demacli! Are you listening?”

“Ah, ummm… yes… I mean, I am sorry, father… mother. I am a little distracted, today.” He stood up quickly and agitated. Not waiting for them to ask anything, he said, “You must be tired. Habbi will lead you to your room. I… I must go!” Then, he dashed out the doors of his villa and was walking fast down the street. The whole time, hundred of voices were laughing and jabbering away mostly about why his father was here. It was so distracting that Demacli didn’t realize that he was already a mile outside the city, running up a hill .

When he got to the top, he collapsed to his knees and screamed in anguish, startling a nearby flock of goats.

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Greeting friends…

I hope you are enjoying the 9th segment of my 2nd ebook, FAITHFUL ENCOUNTERS.

Feel free to leave your comments below. I look forward to read your comments and constructive inputs that will help me direct my creative thoughts.

If you want to support my writing, please use my Go-Fund-Me site below.

Thank you.

Until the next post.

Johann Q.

Please help me go mobile, donate at or share this link to others: https://www.gofundme.com/quadriplegic-needs-mobility

FAITHFUL ENCOUNTERS – Part 008

DEMACLI, THE LEGION DEMONIAC
25 A.D. in the region of the Decapolis

“Master! The caravan has arrived!” A voice shouted from below.

“That makes your third investment in four months coming in with no mishap,” said Habbi. “Luck is finally with you.”

“Yes, it has,” Demacli said yawning.

“Master, what ails you? In some nights, we can hear you talking in your sleep. Sometimes, we hear screaming.”

“Bad dreams,” Demacli said almost hauntingly as he stood up and went to the window. “It is always the same dream.”

“What dream haunts you so?”

“I… I am in my room and hundreds of… shadows are trying to break in! Some nights, I can here them beckoning me to let them in. When I awaken, I am drenched in sweat. I try to stay awake but… my eyes become heavy. Then, the dream comes again.”

“Master, since you have gone to the temple of Dionysus, your businesses have done well. But now you are haunted by this. You must return to the priestess.”

“What is it that you seek of the gods?” asked the priestess in the center.

“I have these dreams…”

“Have your business improved?” asked the priest on the right.

“Are you not debt free?” asked the one on the left.

“Do you want… more? …fame? …power?” asked the priestess in an alluring voice.

“Yes… but the dreams?”

“Let them in,” said all three together.

Demacli was in the same room of his dream. The room was bare, devoid of any objects. There were no windows. The walls were lacking of decor and the ceiling was domed. Against one wall, there were double doors with a wooden bar across them keeping closed. Outside, he can hear the wind blowing and something that sounds like thousands of footsteps circling the room.

The doors rattled. Demacli’s heart raced and he rushed to the doors to make sure the bar was secured. He rested his forehead against the doors to calm his heart down. Then, there was a knock and a female voice.

“Remember the wealth… remember what we can give you. Let us in!” Those three words rung out again very slowly, but with the voices of thousands. “Let… us… in…”

Demacli started to tremble and shake all over. He wanted what the voices were offering but yet he was desperately scared. But as the voices continued, his resolve weakened. He straightened himself and slowly lifted the bar. He swung the doors wide open. Then, he woke up.

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Greeting friends…

I hope you are enjoying the 8th segment of my 2nd ebook, FAITHFUL ENCOUNTERS. In my next posting, we will follow Demacli’s story a year later.

Feel free to leave your comments below. I look forward to read your comments and constructive inputs that will help me direct my creative thoughts.

If you want to support my writing, please use my Go-Fund-Me site below.

Thank you.

Until the next post.

Johann Q.

Please help me go mobile, donate at or share this link to others: https://www.gofundme.com/quadriplegic-needs-mobility

FAITHFUL ENCOUNTERS – Part 007

DEMACLI, THE LEGION DEMONIAC
25 A.D. in the region of the Decapolis

“Demacli! We have heard about you,” cried a voice in the crowd of laughing partiers.

“True! All of it, true!” said Demacli who raised his glass up, laughing. “Here is to Dionysus, our god of wine!”

“You Greeks always get it wrong. It is to Bacchus, the Roman god of grape that you should praise,” said a fat man whom Demacli didnot know. Some in the party roared in approval while most jeered in laughter.
Demacli, wildly laughing with the group, drunkenly walked out to a balcony. He looked up at the starry night. Then he up-ended his drink, some spilling down the side of his beard. There was a divan nearby and Demacli fell unto it and lost consciousness.

The next day, he was rudely awaken by a cold splash of water.

“Well, master,” said an old man amusingly. “Last night’s party seem to be your most loudest ever. We’ve cast out thirty seven this time, only seven we recognized.”

“Aaarrrgh… Please Habbi,” growned Demacli, as he slowly and painfully sat up on the divan he collapsed on the night before. “You are too loud for this early morn.”

“Originally, master, it is the seventh hour since the sun came up.”

“Food… I need food.”

Habbi clapped his hands and a female slave came in with a tray of food. As Demacli wolfed down his food. From the balcony, he looked out upon the desert city of Canatha.

Canatha was one of the free cities of the Decapolis, a grouping of Greco-Roman centers located on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire. Some three hundred years before, these ten cities were founded during the Hellenistic period after the untimely death of Alexander the Great. Canatha was located fifty or so miles east of the Sea of Galilee in the deserts of Syria. It was on a major caravan route with Damascus in the north and an untold number of Persian cities in the far east.

Habbi pulled up an overturned stool and sat on it.

“Master, the rate you are going, you will lose the wealth of your father in two years. Six caravans of your investments were lost to marauders. Those shipments that you entrusted to that lying Phoenician are gone. And the parties you hold practically every night… well, let me put it this way. One day, you will awaken to find everything in this villa gone, stolen by your so called drinking friends.

He pauses. Then, in a softer voice, “Demacli… my dear boy… I have watched you grow up. Your father commanded me to take care of you as you go out into the world to make something of yourself. There is no shame returning home to Hippus and admitting to your father that you were not ready.”

“Enough, Habbi!” Demacli stood up and walked into the house. With Habbi following, he went downstairs, walked across the patio to a garden pond. Then he jumped right in. When he came out dripping wet, he was wide awake. “Habbi, no more lectures. You forget your place. Now, I am going up to change and then I am going out to meet someone who promises that I can gain more wealth.”

The room he entered was smoky and dark except for a lit oil lamp on the floor. There was another light source coming from above that emitted a circle of light around the lamp. The light was so bright, he could not see the walls.

“Come and sit in the circle,” said a deep feminine voice.

Demacli sat on the floor with the lamp before him. Then three cowled persons slowly walked in and sat down before him. Their faces were hidden in the shadows with only a slight glint reflecting from their eyes. The feeling was somewhat erie.

“What do you ask of the gods?”

“I seek wealth. All my ventures have failed and I would give anything to be lucky.”

Together, all three of them asked, “What would you give to the gods?”

“What can I give? Gold or silver?”

“Those things are nothing to them.” It was the feminine voice that spoke.

“Then what?”

“You!”

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Greeting friends…

I hope you are enjoying the 7th segment of my 2nd ebook, FAITHFUL ENCOUNTERS.

Feel free to leave your comments below. I look forward to read your comments and constructive inputs that will help me direct my creative thoughts.

If you want to support my writing, please use my Go-Fund-Me site below.

Until the next post.

Johann Q.

Please help me go mobile, donate at or share this link to others: https://www.gofundme.com/quadriplegic-needs-mobility