The Dragon in the Dragon Slayer

The Dragon in the Dragon Slayer

Gilroy California is about thirty miles southeast of San Jose, and we pridefully call our community the Garlic Capitol of the World, even though we know growth output from China, India, and Korea is over ninety percent of the World’s garlic. The heat from the afternoon sun carries the scent from the fields in waves and travelers on Highway 101 can smell the garlic for two miles downwind, in which case they usually wrinkle up their noses and drive through Gilroy as quickly as possible. Most of us who live in or around Gilroy no longer notice the odor.

In July of 2019, crowds of people were celebrating at the annual garlic festival, and a deranged man with a gun fired into them injuring seventeen and killing three, two of whom were children. When asked about a motive for the shooting: the Sheriff said the vagrant was likely mentally unbalanced, instead, though, some of us think he was probably possessed.

People say the Devil came to Gilroy that day, but it was more likely one of his demons. Anyone who grew up in this part of the Santa Clara Valley knows the demons have always been here imprisoned under the ground, and every now and then one manages to escape from its binds and claw its way to the surface. I was ten years old the year I learned about them.

           Back in the sixties, when not in school we children helped in the fields and orchards. Additionally, many of the farmers let us keep some of the fruits and vegetables to sell. Now, don’t get me wrong, this was not child labor, and we were always allowed the freedom to be kids, but we came from working families, and weekly allowances, if any, might be only a quarter. So, we earned extra cash by working the fields and setting up produce stands by the road.

On most days Tim Reyes and I set up our stands next to each other, and although we were in the same grade, we really didn’t know each other well; in little time, however, we became fast friends. The Reyes family was one of the most tenured clans around providing labor for the farms, vineyards, and orchards, and Alex Reyes was its patriarch and Tim’s grandfather. One day I was helping Tim’s family tend to one of the garlic fields, and I noticed several times that Grandpa Alex would scoop up a little soil with his hands, pour it into a small cloth bag, and then put the sack in the cart with the hoes and shovels.

           “Why does your grandfather collect that dirt?” I asked Tim. “What does he do with it?”

           “It’s a long story, but he collects the dirt and scatters it around to keep the demons from escaping. They live in the soil and because Grandpa spreads their parts around in all the places he goes, the demons can’t surface and cause us harm.”

           “Tim,” I said, “your grandfather is crazy. Everyone knows that story was meant to scare us when we were little and keep us out of the fields at night.”

           “My grandfather is not crazy. I believe him if he says the story is true.”

           “Then, tell it to me and I’ll decide what I believe.”

           “Tonight,” Tim replied, “come to our house for dinner.”

           The work continued that day and by early evening I was ready to hear about the demons. We all knew the stories about people who went missing and were found later half buried in the sandy soil. We kids always wanted to believe these were just plain cases of murder, but sometimes we did wonder if the demons got them. Anyway, after dinner that night all the Reyes family members gathered to listen to Alex’s story, even though they had heard it many times before. Alex sat at the head of the table, and because I was a guest, I sat in the chair to his right. None of the children even thought to leave as Grandpa Reyes stood up from his chair and, with well-rehearsed facial expressions and sweeping arm gestures, acted out his tale.

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           When God created the world, he also created angels to help him take care of it. One of God’s closest angels was Lucifer, but Lucifer’s pride caused his head to swell until he thought he was equal to God.

God also created Man, and Lucifer came to God with his plan for ruling humanity, not at all understanding that God had plans of his own.

           God and Lucifer argued about whose plan was better, and in a moment of quick and loose temper, God ordered Lucifer and all the angels to bow down to Man. Lucifer filled himself with air until he was very large, spread his arms like wings, and vowed he would never lower himself.

“I will sit higher than you!” Lucifer shouted at God. “I will place a golden throne above the stars. I will have my own heaven and my own angels, and we will always look down on yours.”

           Well, as you know, this started the war between God’s angels, with the warrior Michael on one side and Lucifer on the other. It is said that Lucifer and Michael would each take stars from the skies, almost like drawing cards in a game. Michael would change his stars into guardian angels and Lucifer’s stars became demon angels. Before the war ended, Lucifer had as many as one-third of Heaven’s stars on his side.

           Like generals, Lucifer and Michael commanded from on high; the angels and demons fought for millions of years, and the planets became battlegrounds. Here on Earth, there were also violent storms that shook the heavens with lightning, and except for the Garden of Eden, heavy rains flooded the land.

           The angels and demons were killed by striking each other in the heart with the lightning, and when an angel died, its body returned to the stars. The lights we see at night are angels’ souls looking down on you from heaven.

           But demons were not allowed back into the sky when they were killed, and their bodies exploded into millions of pieces of brimstone which settled over Earth like ash from a volcano. The brimstone, we now call it sulfur, was so heavy that it settled to the bottom of the sea and would not dissolve, and today there are still burning sulfur pits on the ocean floor that even the water can’t extinguish.

           As I said earlier, the war went on for lifetimes, and at one point, it appeared to Lucifer that he might lose. Michael’s angel forces eventually outnumbered the demons two-to-one. In desperation, Lucifer took the form of a great dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and he attacked Michael face on. This individual battle lasted many years, but in the end, Michael defeated the dragon and cast him down into a deep cave where he was imprisoned below the soil.

           After the war, Earth’s flood waters eventually became our oceans and seas, and the Garden of Eden flourished. In time, however, Lucifer, still being the strongest of the defeated angels, changed from the dragon to a serpent, escaped his prison, and entered the Garden of Eden. In his warped mind, he hated us humans and wanted revenge, and this became Lucifer’s only reason for living.

           I don’t need to tell again the story of Lucifer tempting Adam and Eve, but what is not well known is when God came to Earth and cast the serpent out of Eden, Lucifer again changed his form and became the red-winged, horned Devil we know today. Once outside the Garden, Lucifer traveled the world and terrorized humans, but wherever he walked garlic began to grow. The strong smell and taste from these plants is the sulfur left over from Lucifer’s cloven footprints in the soil.

           I could no longer hold in my curiosity, and I interrupted with “Why the sulfur?” Alex Reyes explained.

           God marked Lucifer with the sulfur to make him easier to detect. Humans were also getting wise to Lucifer’s ways and people began to fear him less, although they still feared his demons. In one last show of power, Lucifer removed himself from Earth and returned to the heavens, although he never reached a level as high as God’s. Lucifer’s name came to mean “Morning Star,” and it’s him we sometimes see shining bright in the sky before the sun rises. He thinks he is watching over his demons while waiting for his chance to return to Heaven and defeat Michael, but God likes Lucifer right where he is because it’s easier for people to see him and remain on their guard.

           Lucifer wasn’t finished, however, and because his demons were still trapped in the soil, Lucifer created another form of demon that could escape the soil and terrorize us. This demon is the vampire.

           A thousand years ago, when the Church was young, there was an evil priest who became rich by taking gold and silver from his people. He didn’t care whether the people starved or died. He also had many wives and mistresses, which, of course, was forbidden. Some of these women he tortured and killed, and he made slaves of their children.

           Lucifer watched this priest from the sky. He knew he could use the priest’s evil ways against him and turn him even more against God.

           If you listen to the mass when the priest turns the wine and the bread into the body and blood of Christ, you will hear him say, “This wine is the Blood of Christ, drink of it and you will be fulfilled. This bread is the body of Christ, eat of it and you will be made whole.” Well, Lucifer cast a spell over the ceremony so the words would actually come true.

           The next time the evil priest said the mass, the wine became real blood and the bread, real flesh. The priest drank and ate, and he became drunk with power as energy from the liquid flowed through his veins. But, as the people in the church watched, the priest became violently ill, screamed out in pain, and died. The people took his body to the churchyard and buried him.

           Now, what the parishioners did not see later that night was the priest clawing his way to the surface and out of his grave. From there on, he prowled the countryside where, upon finding people alone, he pounced on them and drank their blood. At daybreak, he would return to his grave and sleep until night when he would again leave his resting place to hunt.

The vampire priest later discovered that if he stopped just short of killing his victims and made them drink his blood, they, too, became vampires. In just a few years, the vampire evil spread to all parts of the world.

           God, watching all of this from a distance, decided he should intervene at least a little. Whereas he would not completely remove the threat of the vampires, he did strike them with vulnerabilities that would allow humans to fight back.

           First, unlike the other demons, even though the vampires could leave the earth, God made it such that they had to return to the same soil in which they were originally buried.

           Second, because the first vampire, the priest, was partly driven evil by a love for precious metals, God made silver into something that would burn vampires if it was touched.

           Finally, to spite Lucifer, God made vampires allergic not only to religious articles, like holy water and crosses, but also to garlic.

           Now back to the demons who keep trying to escape the earth. The sulfur from their pieces is what we smell in the garlic fields. The demons are not whole and they can’t get out if their remains are scattered about. I collect the dirt and spread it to prevent the demons from ever becoming complete again and also to keep the vampires from finding their original soil resting places. I think I’m helping Michael by doing this.

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           We all sat quietly for a while, and then I asked another question. “Mr. Reyes, I mean no disrespect, but if a demon is the sulfur smell in garlic, why do we eat it?”

           “Well,” Grandpa Alex said, “by eating the very plants that grow in Lucifer’s footprints, we show him we are not afraid and that he can’t hurt us. So, he may as well stay up there in the sky and leave us alone.

           “God even reversed the evil associated with the garlic, by giving it both medicinal and spiritual properties.

           “Probably most important though, the garlic is to remind us that there is always a small bit of Lucifer in everyone. Remember, mortals and angels were all made the same, and at one time there was no difference between Michael and Lucifer. It is pride that separates them, and we should all know that if the angels can fall from the heavens, so can we. Each bite of garlic tells us to beware of our own pride and self-righteousness and warns us to keep God in our hearts.”

           I got up from the table and shook Grandpa Alex’s hand. “Please forgive me for being a non-believer, but I can tell you that each time I use garlic I will certainly remember this story. I also appreciate you letting me shar your family’s dinner. It’s time for me to get home.” I headed out the front door and Tim walked with me for a little bit.

           “Tim, do you really believe Lucifer is the Morning Star?”

           “I know not to question my grandfather’s belief in the story, which is good enough for me.”

           “Well, I trust you, so maybe I’d better pay more attention to these things. Thanks for dinner. I’ll see you in the morning.”

That night I headed towards my own house on the other side of the fields. I couldn’t help but sniff the garlic as I walked through the warm and quiet night, and at one point, I thought I heard small, scraping sounds coming from the dirt somewhere around the plants.

Sixty years later, and miles from Gilmore, I still hear those sounds in my sleep.