Rich Logsdon

DESIGN

AngelFire

By Rich Logsdon

I. Of Dr. James Rostock. It is a grim spring day along the Oregon coast. The sun will continue to hide behind the clouds for another two months. Worse, my old friend Dr. James Rostock is dead.

In 1984, Dr. James Rostock, a professor of archeology from a university in Cairo, was very much alive, and it was then that he claimed that he had made a remarkable discovery in a dig south of the Dead Sea. It was a discovery that he would conceal up to his death.

To state his position briefly, Dr. Rostock asserted that he had found in an earthen jar a remarkably preserved document that he referred to as the " angel text." The "angel text" is an account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. According to Dr. Rostock’s dating, the this document was written around 2000 B.C. and originated from an area near the site of the legendary cities. Biblical scholars have placed the destruction of these two cities at around 2065 B. C.

A struggling scholar, I am somewhat skeptical of Rostock’s discovery. Who in the academic crowd would not be? Like most of my colleagues in the arts and sciences, I rejected the Bible even before I entered the university, where I first met the professor. Now, as a professor teaching a combination of religious studies and literature in a small but obscure Northwestern college, I labor even more to accept and attach my name to a narrative that theoretically was spoken by an angel to a priest named Zerach.

To put it more simply, if my own grandchildren, aged nine and thirteen, don’t believe in angels and would find anyone who claimed to do so a matter for laughter, then I can only with difficulty swallow the bait that the now deceased Dr. Rostock dangles before me.

Yet, reluctantly, I do at least take the bait. One reason for doing so is that I promised the professor, years ago, that the manuscript would be made public following his demise. Another reason is my wife, who alone kept any vestige of religious faith in my family, and so it is out of love for this now deceased woman that I release this letter, sent to me by Dr. Rostock shortly before his death in a Jerusalem hospital, as well as the so-called "angel text."

II. Professor Rostock’s Letter.

My dear Richard,

The air is foul in the Holy City. The moon has turned blood red, and I am close to death.

But I must push aside concerns for my eternal soul.

The last time we met, I promised when you and your wife dined with me in Cairo that I would send you this text when time came for me to depart this world. (With the text I send my own copious notes.) After years of painstaking thought and study, I can find no evidence that this document is (1) a copy of a pre-existing one, (2) a literary exercise, or (3) some kind of fabrication intended to delude the religious officials of the day.

Each point must be considered. (1)As for the "copy" theory--it would likely be impossible at all to give its composition an approximate date. Further, since religious documents written before the date of the "angel text," as I often call it, make no reference to the priest Zerach’s narrative whose composition frames the text, I must assume that it originated around the date that my research indicates: 2210 B. C. (2) As far as considering the narrative contained in the document an exercise in imagination--it is extremely difficult to establish the existence of a literary tradition, past or present, that religious figures transcribing something given to them by someone or something of a supposedly "supernatural" origin. Certainly, the history of literature contains examples of humans making contact with the supernatural—Marlow, Goethe, Shelly, and Stoker come to mind—but no one was asked to take seriously Faust’s encounter with Mephistopheles. Nonetheless, contemporary scholars (yourself included) have attempted to discredit the O.T. books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel (these are but examples) by claiming that these writings constituted a literary tradition, the existence of which is merely conjectural and has yet to be established. (3) The "fabrication" theory—As for this theory, there may be certain plausibility. But keep in mind that anyone found guilty of falsifying such a religious document around the time of the text’s composition would have been condemned to death by the courts of the day. Of course, the writers of such documents can be and have been accused of suffering from mental disorders, but this position depends upon establishing that the writers of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Habakuk, Zechariah and such were off their collective rockers.

Therefore, dear friend, I ask you to release this strange and most unsettling text posthumous to my own death. My desire to hang on to my own reputation has prevented me up to this point from even breathing a word about the "angel text." But when one faces death, reputation counts as no more than a fig. Further, I cannot prove that the "angel text" is anything but what it is. Considered within the context provided by Genesis 18, in which God and Abraham reach no agreement, it is just as plausible that the "angels" were sent into Sodom and Gomorrah (See Genesis 19) with the intention of sparing the city but removing Abraham’s brother.

I write this, knowing that I am approaching the end. I fear, dear friend, that I shall spend eternity in the "great outer darkness," as you call it. The very thought of this fills this old, dying body with icy fear.

Pray for my eternal soul.

--J. R.

Accordingly, out of affection for this man, I present both Genesis 18 (King James version, I am afraid) and the "angel text." The second cannot be understood apart from the first.

III. Genesis 18. And the men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom: and Abraham went with them to bring them on the way. And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know. And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the LORD. And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the LORD, which am but dust and ashes: Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it. And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty's sake. And he said unto him, Oh let not the LORD be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there. And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the LORD: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty's sake. And he said, Oh let not the LORD be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake. And the LORD went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place.

III. Angel Text: Zerach. The words of Zerach, priest of Oboth, located by the River Arabah, recorded in the fifth month of the thirty-third year of the third period since the great devastation that took the life of all the earth’s creatures but Noah.

The skies were filled with ash, and for two weeks the sun had been the color of blood. Visitors told us that a great explosion had occurred to the north: Sodom and Gomorrah were no more.

Fearing the end of days, I Zerach was drawing water from the river when I was approached by a man in white raiment so bright that I could not look in his direction. As I knelt, I put my hand in front of my eyes. The glow from his garments dimmed, and I could now look at him. I did not recognize him. The sun disappeared behind the gray canyon walls, and in the soft light filling the air around us I saw that he was uncommonly tall. He had a dark face and gold eyes that blazed like fire stones. His hair was thick and black, and he wore around his waist a sword.

"You are Zerach," he said. Three paces away he stopped and sat upon a rock and watched me.

"Yes," I spoke back, "I am Zerach."*

I felt faint.

"Do not be afraid," he spoke.

His words were soothing.

"Who are you?" I asked.

The day continued to darken.

"Are you [of the] Nephalim?" I asked. Nephalim are a race of giant men that have existed since the days of Noah.

"Are you then angel of the Lord?" I said.

"No, not Nephalim. I am as you think: an angel of God," he said. The day darkened, yet we were engulfed by light. As he sat on the stone, he leaned over and picked up from the ground several small stones. "I am Yonotai."

My heart quickened. My heart pounded and my lips quivered; decay crept into my bones, and my legs shook.

"What does the Most High want with me?" I asked.

His eyes blazed. "You are to record all that I tell you," he said.

I feared I was near death, for I could not refuse God.

"I have nothing to write with," I said.

I was sure that I was a dead man.

He told me, "You will remember." His eyes blazed.

And so it was. What follows are the words of Yonatai, the Angel of the Lord.

IV. Angel Text: Yonatai. I came with Michael. A golden-haired Michael dressed in red and white and carried the great gold sword [that brought him] fame in the battles with the Dark Prince, whose legions overrun the earth. I wore brown and white.**

We walked from Mamre, near Hebron, where God had spoken with Abraham. The desert we traveled was dangerous and desolate, known for wild animals and overrun by thieves. The sun burned in the sky. Nothing bothered us on our journey.

We had been sent to bring out of Sodom the man Lot, nephew to the great prince Abraham. Sodom was one of five cities in the Vale of Siddim. The others were Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar. Surrounded by sulfur pits, Gomorrah was like Sodom, a place of cruelty and wickedness. Because one of his daughters and her husband lived in Gomorrah, we were to give Lot time to call all his family to him before taking him away.

At close of day, we stood on the side of a mountain called Sodom that overlooked the fertile plain and the slime pits. Crouching in the terrain around us were the dark angels, wretched fallen things who feared light. We heard their laughter and whisperings.

We saw the great cities in the distance next to the Dead Sea. The land around the cities was fertile and green. Numerous points of light indicated fires set by travelers, who camped outside the cities and roamed the streets by day and night looking for young boys or females. From the cities, from the innocents who could not escape, cries of wailing and sorrow filled the air.

We walked the [next] day and came to Sodom an hour before sunset. Hundreds of people moved through the huge gate. The gate was like the mouth of a lion. Inside the city, through the gate, was the Black Temple of Bel Ziel, dedicated to Ashtoreth. Their priests were eunuchs, and their ceremonies required young boys be given to the priests.

As we passed through the gate, a small, round man in a green turban, a purple scarf, and garments striped in red and green came out of a chamber in the wall and walked toward us. He bowed before us with his face to the ground. This was Lot.

Lot rose and led us beyond the gate and into the city. "My Lords," he said, "please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and then go on your way early in the morning."

Michael looked at him. "We shall stay in the square of your city," he said.

"Oh, no, my Lords," Lot protested, "you must stay with me. I have a house that is ready and food that is prepared. My daughters and their husbands are with me."

"Let us stay with Lot," I said.

And Michael agreed.

Sodom was a bad place. A suffocating stench filled the air. Shouting, screaming, laughter, and weeping filled the air. The people that we saw behaved like animals. Many people were drunk and shouted obscenities, fighting among themselves and spilling blood. Many of the women looked like whores, particularly those gathered in front of the black temple. They wore no covering over their painted faces and dresses of the brightest colors. Some exposed their breasts. Two or three approached me, but when I looked at them they stopped and backed away.

In the square, I saw men and women kept in cages. Lot told us these people were captives from enemy tribes and were to be sold as slaves. All those in cages had been savagely beaten; some were blind, and others were missing limbs.

We came to a tavern before Lot’s house. Shouting and laughter drew me in, and through the darkness I saw young naked boys sitting on the laps of the men. Anger burned within me. From a room in the back, I heard the crying of a woman, and when I entered the room I noticed several men with her. She too was naked, blood ran from marks on her body, and the men had been assaulting her. I reached for my sword. It was then I heard Michael calling to me from the entrance, and I turned, walked out of the room and followed Lot and Michael to his house.

Lot’s family had already gathered and did not need to be called. Lot had two daughters, each one married, and an able wife, who washed our feet.

For dinner, we ate unleavened bread and drank of some wine.

After dinner, we heard loud banging on the door. Behind the pounding were the voices of a mob. "Send out the two beautiful men that are within," they shouted. "We want to have sex with them." I boiled with anger as Lot rose from the table, went to the door and opened it. His daughters went with him.

"Do not go out to these people, Lot," I said.

"These are friends," he said.

He stepped outside and shut the door. Though we remained seated, Michael and I heard what Lot said to the crowd.

"No, good people, friends," he said, "do not do this thing tonight. Look, I have two beautiful daughters, who are virgins. You can have them and do with them as you wish. But the two men are special guests, and you must not touch them."

But Lot’s words made the crowd angrier. "Who are you, Lot?" they shouted, speaking blasphemies against the most High. "You do not belong to this place, yet you rule over us and treat us as servants. If you don’t do what we say, we’ll do worse things to you."

"Please, take my daughters," Lot said.

And Lot continued to plead, and the men grew less angry.

"All right," they finally said, "but send them out right away."

Then Lot opened the door, seized his two daughters, and drew them out into the street. He handed over his two beautiful daughters to the men, walked back inside and closed the door. I could hear their screams over the yelling of the men.

I quickly rose, strode to the door, and stepped outside. Many men were gathered in the streets. The dark angels hovering over the people fled as soon as I came out. Lot’s daughters were crying, and one of them had been undressed and was being held by several men.

"I command you to release these women!" I shouted. My voice thundered. But the men who held them did not release either one of Lot’s daughters. I repeated my command but none heeded me. Some laughed and scorned me.

I raised my sword in my right hand, and a flame leapt from the sky. Then everyone in the crowd began to scream grew still and silent. The fire hung just above them; their eyes melted from heat, and all but Lot’s daughters fell to the ground where they crawled about like blind, grunting animals.

I took the daughters back into the house, and Michael told Lot that we must leave now.

"Time has run out for Sodom," Michael said. "Surely, the Lord will now destroy these two cities, Lot."

"But how can God do this?" Lot asked, afraid. "Is not God merciful and just?"

"You need to pack your belongings, you and your family, and leave with us now, so that you will not be destroyed, too," I said.

Lot could not move. Fear shook him.

"Do you not know what happened to the men in the street, Lot?" I asked.

"Yes, I know," Lot said.

"It shall be the same for this city and for Gomorrah," Michael said. "We must leave soon."

So Lot went into the back room and spoke to his sons-in-law, but they mocked him and called him a fool.

"God will not destroy this city," the young men said. "He will not harm his people. Besides, it has been this way in Sodom for over one hundred years."

Lot reminded them of the days of Noah, but they refused to go. So, under the covering of night, Michael and I left with Lot, his wife, and their two daughters.

And as we walked to the edge of the city, a group of angry men approached and addressed Lot. And Michael stepped in front of Lot….

[A part of the text is missing.]

…and I returned from Zoar, where we had taken Lot and his family. I stood on the side of the mountain. And as I looked down at the cities, I remembered Lot’s daughters and anger burned within me. And I raised my sword toward heaven. The moon overhead turned blood red, and four great stars began to burn and out of each came a river of fire. And the rivers of fire joined over the two cities, and at the place where they joined a greater flame burst forth, filling the sky over Sodom and Gomorrah and falling upon the two cities. The conflagration spread over the earth, and when the heat reached me I turned away. As I turned I saw Lot’s wife not far from me. She had been kneeling and weeping, praying for the two cities. And when the heat touched Lot’s wife, she became rock and ash. I had asked Lot, his wife, and his two daughters not to come back with me, but Lot’s wife had disobeyed.

I looked back, and I saw the earth split in two and swallow the cities. Sodom and Gomorrah sank into the bowels of the earth like ships into the sea.

And so I walked up the mountain and back to Zoar, and Lot’s wife was not with me. And so Lot and his daughters were saved but his wife perished….

IV. Angel Text: Zerach. And when he had finished, the Angel of the Lord rose from the rock on which he sat and went his way. For a long time, I stood by the river and felt a great hollowness in my heart. "Is this how God treats those who do not do His will and seek to obey him?" I shouted. I had been to Sodom and Gomorrah many times and thought of my friends in those cities. I was now afraid of God and sought His forgiveness. I dropped to my knees and prayed, and when I finished, I picked up the stone vessel I had take down to the river to gather water and went back to the village. And there, I told the story Yonatai had told me to all the people, and they were amazed and fearful. "What if God should strike us for any little thing?" they cried. "What are we to do, Zerach?" And when I could not answer them, they grew very angry and threatened to kill me. They and the dark angels came against me. So I fled….

V. Final Thoughts. The rain continues. My bones feel damp. The "angel text," particularly the section told from the angel’s perspective, alarms me.

As I re-read it, I think of Jonathan Edward’s "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." When delivered by the soft-spoken Edwards, people came forward by the thousands to receive Christ. And I think of the ancient Biblical prophet Habbakuk. Around 700 B. C., Habakuk learned that God was going to unleash the Babylonians upon Israel and then turn right around and destroy the Babylonians. Interestingly, the Babylonian captivity did occur less than a century after the prophecies of this man. However, the most interesting aspect of Habakkuk’s prophecy is not just that it pre-dated the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians (or Chaldeans, whichever you prefer) but that the prophet questioned God’s judgment. At the end of this short book, Habakkuk quakes with fear as he accepts and awaits the God-orchestrated disaster.

* * * *

"What particularly fascinates me, Richard," Professor Rostock confided in me back in June of 1996 when my wife and I dined with him in a restaurant in Cairo, "is that only a lunatic would make up a God like this. Only a culture in the grips of severe psychosis would invent and then obey such a monstrous deity."

I had been watching the Egyptian sunset. In the desert environment, polluted by cars and industry, the sky was exploding with colors.

"Not sure I follow you," I said.

"I doubt the text is a fabrication; you know that. And, at this point in my life, I don’t think the God that sends the angels is a fabrication. You can’t seriously make up something, or someone, like that."

I looked at my wife, Andrea. She gave me a blank look, so I turned to the professor.

"How can you say that?" I asked. "You believe this God was or is real? How can you?" The professor’s lifestyle had never been a secret to me or to the larger academic community.

"What else can I say?" he asked, a look of near hopelessness on his face.

We didn’t say much for the rest of the evening.

But, then again, what can any of us say?

Uncertain myself, even a bit fearful that the document may contain a shred of truth, I offer you the "angel text."

May God have mercy on us all.

CONFESSION OF A DARK SAINT

By Rich Logsdon

I. Young traveler, I welcome you. I am Sebastian, and for many nights I have dreamt of your coming.

It’s a bad time to be out in this winter land of snow. The Alpine night air is death-cold. So walk with me next to the frozen river—it’s the way to my dwelling--as the sun disappears behind snow-capped mountains.

Indeed, we must move quickly, for the night air will freeze our lungs. My small warm place lies through these pine trees to your right. Look where I am pointing; you can see it from here. From the outside my dwelling is a dirty hut with a hole in the roof for smoke. Inside, however, my dwelling is clean. Ten years ago, during a spring storm, I erected the structure. With help from Brother Pietro, I cut and hewed the wood, and I broke and fit the stone. As you pause at my door—you can see it from here--run your hand over the wood. It is a special oak found only in this northern area. The golden cross on the door is a gift from the nearby monastery and has kept the dark prince from me.

Here: Allow me to open the door for you. Now, lower your head, come inside and approach the fire.

II. In Christ’s name, I welcome you to my sanctuary. Let my fire warm you. God is gracious, and we shall soon eat.

Of course, you must stay the night. You see, on cold winter nights, great wolves stalk the forest. As darkness thickens, they'll surround this dwelling. In the wind, you'll hear their howling; as you drift to sleep, they'll snarl a small measure from the door. But before we eat and sleep, allow me to tell you my story.

What you have heard is true: through me, God has healed the afflicted and demon-possessed. Once, the healings were as common as drinking water. I would preach in a small meadow beyond a mountain village. Hundreds came. I wandered among them, prayed and laid hands upon the sick. Lepers were cured, cancers removed, blindness and deafness taken away. I became so enamored of myself that for a time God denied me the privilege of bringing healing to anyone.

Then the exorcisms began; God is never idle. The crowds commonly had one or two possessed by demons. It was in a village east of here that God’s small, still voice told me to command Satan to leave a young woman—the village whore. She had green eyes and red hair. She stood in the back of the church and heckled me in an obscene tongue. Unafraid, I shouted to the demon in the name of Christ; I called its named and commanded it out.

When I spoke, the woman screamed, vomited, and collapsed like a bag of dirt. Others—two hundred were there--thought her dead. Then the dark thing inside her shrieked, cursed the Savior, and departed through an opening in the roof. Hours later, after most had departed, the woman awoke, and she was a new person, kind and gentle of disposition. To this day, she continues to serve the Savior.

Now to the beginning. I am the product of a relationship between a brother and sister who were burned for witchcraft when I was one year. I was raised by my uncle Donato, a carpenter and an educated man—he became the mayor of a small village hidden among the mountains to the south--and by my blessed, gentle aunt named Anna. This gaunt, dark-haired woman, for whom prayer was a second language, instructed me in the ways of God. Anna knew Latin and taught me to read and speak in several tongues. Often, she sang me to sleep.

Raised by these two kind people, I had a glorious life. Surrounded by the forest, mountains, rivers, and meadows, I played with the other children. We roamed the countryside and played children’s games.

I thought my village was a paradise.

Then, one spring morning, after the snows had melted off the lower mountains, soldiers from the north came like thieves in the night. I stood on a trunk in the pasture next to uncle’s house; the other children and I were playing, and I had become king. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flicker in the forest, then another, and then yet another. Focusing on a large swaying branch, I saw them: tall warriors, standing under the trees behind the far side of the village. Glancing around, I saw them standing next to the trees a short distance from us. We children watched them pour out of the forest like silent wolves. There were hundreds.

They swiftly moved forward and did not acknowledge us. At fourteen years, I should have been seized as an adult and died a brutal death.

I watched as they dragged my aunt and uncle from the house. My uncle was a large, strong, dark complexioned man, and it took several to subdue him. At the time, I knew that God would rescue my protectors. I waited for the sky to open, for a ball of flame to appear, but nothing happened.

I watched as the soldiers undressed my aunt Anna, and she screamed and called to me. My uncle, bound by rope to the great pine in front of our house, roared with rage. I ran towards Anna but, no more than twenty paces from her, I froze, as only a coward would do, and I could only observe as the soldiers took turns assaulting her. Then, they bound this good woman to the tree, next to my uncle, and burned them alive.

For a year I remained in the village, eating food left in the houses, hunting forests with packs of children a little younger than I, and managing to survive on deer, elk, and rabbit. My uncle had taught me to hunt and kill.

Many times, after the sun had gone down, I returned to my house and prayed that God would restore my aunt and uncle. I clung to the belief that they would one day emerge from the forest. A tall, sensitive young man, I was haunted most every night by the same dream: Anna and Donato screaming as huge red flames consumed them.

Finally, God sent me peace and urged me to leave the village. Packing my belongings and taking my uncle’s wealth, which he had buried in a wooden box behind the house, I left and traveled north and east, wearing my uncle’s clothes of forest green.

One early winter Alpine night, I encountered a band of rogues, the sort that live off the fair and innocent through cunning and craft. I saw them in a crowded tavern by a small lake on a clear and cloudless night, stars filling the sky, the air bitterly cold. In that tavern that night, I treasured my place by the roaring fire. Bunched around a thick table across the dimly lit room, they were drinking, cursing, and insulting the servers and patrons, both men and women. They had no respect for God.

I paused from my eating and studied them. I had never seen people so vile, and I could not help but wonder if any one of them had been among the soldiers who had murdered my aunt and uncle. They sensed intrusion and glared back at me. The entire tavern grew silent.

Finally, the biggest one—a heavy-set, bearded, one-eyed man with dirty jet-black hair that hung down his waist—rose, threw his chair against the wall, and walked over to me. He wore a red vest and shirt and dark brown breeches. "Fee, fi, fo, fum," he thundered as he moved. His drunken friends laughed and encouraged him to "teach the young dog to lick the feet of his master."

As the lummox towered over me, I remained sitting, head bowed, pretending to concentrate upon my meal. I slurped from a wooden spoon the lentil soup that I had ordered with roast pork, my favorite meat. Trembling seized me then, but it was not fear. Young traveler, I loathed this man and imagined the pleasure in slitting his throat.

I had never been in combat. Tormented, however, by my earlier failure of courage, I would not be afraid. As fury built, I fought to ignore the man. I ate. He watched. I took a sip of ale and glanced at the fire. Incensed that I did not acknowledge him, he lunged forward with a roar, grabbed my plate and bowl and threw them on the floor. And then he struck me a ringing blow to the side of the head.

"Are you the man for me, boy? Is that what you think? Are you the man for me? Or are you too green for one such as me?" he bellowed to the laughter of his friends and others too afraid to oppose him. At that moment, I wanted to strike the man, but I had been taught not to resist evil and to always turn the other cheek. So I sat still, staring at the door as he struck my face with the back of his hand several times until I bled from the mouth.

The fires of rage ignited, and I clenched my fists under the table. I slowly rose to my feet and placed my face inches from his. Our eyes met. We stood like this for some time. The place had gone silent again.

He said nothing, but when he blinked several times I knew that this man would be no match for me. I did not blink.

Stupidly, he looked back at his friends. One of them—a small, stooped man with trembling hands and eyes of the Devil—rose, walked crab-like toward the large man and handed him a club made of wood and metal. "Perhaps you have forgotten your favorite instrument, Lucio, the one that tears flesh from faces," the small man hissed.

In semi-darkness, the Lucio nodded and grunted. He took and looked at the weapon and then glanced at me. Anger now burned in his idiot eyes, and as he raised the weapon I quickly removed my blade from its sheathe and, in the blink of an eye, held it to his throat.

"Stand back, you great lug-wart, or I’ll slice your huge body, cut out your eyes, and spill your guts," I said. I laughed when I realized that my words I would certainly have earned my aunt’s disapproval.

He froze. Winter wind battered the walls. Wolves shrieked.

I could see he was daunted because one so young dared challenge him. We were like a picture: the giant Lucio trembling, a young man’s knife at his throat.

Things were looking very bad.

His friends shouted that he would prove himself a coward, calling him a woman, then coming forward and nudging him in the back. As the ape brought the weapon down I jumped sideways, and the blow glanced off and cracked my left shoulder. Dizzy with pain, I sank to one knee and bowed my head. I squeezed pain from my mind and prayed God would give me the power to strike this man and his friends dead.

Oafish, Lucio studied me. As I silently prayed, my pain retreated. God restored my strength; power swept from my feet to my head. When he raised the weapon for another blow, I sprang to my feet and, slicing upward, ran the blade diagonally across his face.

He roared and staggered back.

It was a deep cut. Men yelled and women screamed as Lucio’s blood spurted like a geyser. Some of it dabbled me. Releasing his weapon and clutching his face, he stumbled in a circle. Then, dropping his hands and gritting his teeth, he lunged and, as he seized my neck, I grabbed his arms and fell backward, pulling him on top of me.

Gathering around us, his friends and some of the patrons laughed drunkenly and encouraged him to kill me.

As Lucio tried to strangle me, I tensed the muscles of my neck and smiled, for his strength was not as great as mine. It was a splendid moment among the damned, young traveler, for quick as night, I thrust the knife into his side—like this--just below his ribs and up to the hilt. I did this three or four times. I had never killed a human before, but as Lucio’s hands fell away from me, and as he sat unsteadily on top of me, I rejoiced that life was leaving him. May God forgive me.

When Lucio toppled sideways, panting like a wounded beast, I rose and, standing in the slick of blood, faced his friends. I should have struck then as they trembled and slowly backed away. Once they reached the door, they quickly turned, opened it, and fled into the night.

My heart and brain feverish with excitement, I knelt over Lucio, wiped my blade on his clothes, then stood again. I looked around the room. Men and women cowered together, sure that I would butcher them, and in the flickering light from the fireplace I could read fear on their faces. That pleased me.

Finally, a woman whom I took to be the tavern keeper’s wife shuffled up to me. I admired her because she showed courage that few others in that room possessed. I also thought of killing her.

"Those who have left are friends of the sheriff," she said meekly, bowing her head and avoiding my eyes. "If you don’t flee, he and his men will find you, torture you publicly, and kill you for sport."

I hesitated.

"They are too many, young man," she said, stepping forward and gently placing a hand on my shoulder; "they’ll gut you like an ox." It was as if I had been briefly touched by God, and feeling bathed in the warm glow I once associated with my aunt and the stories about Jesus, I sheathed my weapon, thanked her, gathered my belongings from under my table, and left the tavern.

It was a full-moon night. Wolves prowled the area—I could hear them all about me as I walked in harsh wind through the forest--but they did not come near.

I walked a small path through the forest and towards mountains that loom not far from this dwelling and surround the monastery where Pietro lives and prays daily. As night wore on, I felt lifted out of myself, like a soul departing the body for the Eternal Kingdom.

* * * *

Days later, I arrived at a town not far from here. You may have come through it; it well known for its great red stone church. Never had I seen so many people in one place, and I spent a good part of the first day walking through the streets, where everything one can imagine is sold: kitchenware, great plumed hats, thick colorful scarves, boots, doves, chickens, turkey, every kind of food. Because I had my uncle’s treasure, I found lodging over a stable, and at the week’s end I began working at the shop of an old carpenter.

The old carpenter, who spoke as I did, was losing his sight and needed an assistant. For three years, I worked for the fellow, who daily read the scripture and prayed over each meal we shared.

At the end of the third year, desiring more than the carpenter’s preaching, I joined a group of soldiers passing through the village. They were looking for anyone who wished to make his living, as they did, fighting for the various armies throughout this northern land.

Within the year, as a foot soldier fighting in the service of the infamous hunch-backed prince Dominico, I learned I was a very good fighter. I relished taking lives. I relished hewing and hacking limbs. After a battle, I couldn’t wait to kill again.

Yes, young hunter, I was a splendid fighter.

* * * *

It was during one early winter campaign that my group was commanded to take a small river village known for harboring a witch. Witches were common in those days. The hunchback prince made it his mission to hunt down and execute all whom he suspected of practicing the dark crafts.

This river village lay some distance from here. It had a small church where St. Martin once spent the night.

The evening before, we camped next to the river down from the village. Fighting the cold and dreaming of carnage, I drank until I could not stand. When morning came, we ate and hastily equipped ourselves. Then, like wolves, we crept through the forest and concealed ourselves among the trees around the village.

A river ran through the village, which was surrounded by steep, snow-capped mountains. Spring and summer in this place would be beautiful. But I would not allow my mind to dwell on these thoughts, and when I signaled attack, I was seized by the rage had come to accompany my desire for blood.

Picture it, if you can: I Sebastian ran bellowing down the small road leading through the town and towards the dwelling that I knew belonged to the richest and most powerful family. With the help of several others, I broke down the house’s thick, wooden door and found within only a young raven-haired woman and her daughter, a small redheaded thing with large soft, terrified eyes and a heart-shaped birthmark on her cheek. It was warm inside the house, and a fire blazed in the grate.

"Where is your husband?" I demanded. I was struck by the woman’s beauty. She was dressed in a white and red dress, and had piercing blue eyes, full lips, soft gentle hands, and a thin shape.

"My husband is gone," she whimpered, extending thin arms in a gesture signifying that she was seeking mercy. Fear shook her. "Please, leave my daughter and me alone," the woman implored.

As I looked into the woman’s eyes, and as her daughter watched, I lowered my sword, turned, and told my companions to wait outside. "Kill the husband if he comes," I instructed them.

They smiled, then laughed and nodded their heads. They knew what I had in mind, and they knew that I was not willing to share with any of them. As my fellows stood outside and watched others of our small but cruel army slaughter the village’s adults and children, I raised my sword against her neck and commanded the woman to undress.

Too frightened to resist, she quickly removed all of her clothes. Long black hair flowed down her shoulders and onto her small breasts; her nipples were reddish-brown, her flesh white as snow. Breathing deeply to quell fear, she backed up and lay on her back on the table in the middle of the room. To me, she offered herself. For a time, I studied this treasure. She said nothing. I heard my fellows laughing outside.

Then, as her daughter wept, I mounted this woman. In those days, my appetites were insatiable. Perhaps I was possessed.

When I had finished, she lay exhausted on the table where no doubt she, her husband, and her child broke bread. It was then the lust for flesh became desire for blood. I removed my knife from its sheath, glanced at the daughter, and then strode forward, plunging my weapon into the woman’s stomach and slitting her throat. Blood sprayed everywhere: on the walls, on the floor, on the bed, even on the daughter. God forgive me, I derived pleasure from this act.

Next, I moved toward the daughter, my hand still gripping the sword handle. Seizing girl around her head, I pried open her mouth and, as I sang a song that my aunt had taught me, I cut out her tongue. I know neither why I did this nor why I did not murder the child. As I walked toward the door, I hesitated and looked up. It was as if I had just been struck by a rock, for placed on a crossbeam was an iron cross.

The woman I had just raped and killed was no witch.

* * * *

That was sixteen years ago. It was one year to the day after the event, as I slept with my regiment just outside the walls of the duke’s castle, that I had the first of many dreams in which I was haunted by the screams of that Christian woman. In my dreams, again and again, I plunged the knife deeply into her. At the end of the dream, bloodied and nearly decapitated, the woman always stood before me, pointed at me, and stated a prophecy that made my blood run cold.

Dreams are from God or Satan, young traveler, and so I often woke up yelling and delirious.

My men, those closest to me, thought I was losing my mind.

"These are dreams God has sent upon me from Hell," I remember telling them one very dark night. "God is punishing me." I trembled uncontrollably and wanted to weep but would not allow myself to do so in front of men who had always looked up to me in battle.

"These are the dreams caused by too much drink," laughed one of them, by daylight a broad-faced man whose name I forget but who had been recently accused by one of the men of cowardice. Normally, I would have killed him for making such a bold remark.

It was so dark not even the outline of my own hand placed before my face was visible.

"I have not drunk this night," I responded, weakly and hoarsely, sitting up in my bed. That much was true: that night, I had not consumed any wine or beer. In fact, I hadn’t drunk for months.

"Then you need to examine your soul," said another from across the room. I knew the voice to belong to a tall, thin man who had proved to be a tremendous fighter. "This is between you and God."

His words pierced me like a sword. For a long time, I said nothing.

"Yes," I finally murmured, "my eternal soul. Yes, I do need to examine my soul."

For six months after that night, at the advice of one who claimed to be a physician, I remained in the military encampment. Through winter and spring, he gave me herbs and medicines and told me to walk daily. Fears of judgment consumed me, and I wandered the infirmary like one of the dead. When the physician was away, I did little but walk and sleep. I had trouble eating and rarely kept anything down.

Alone, so no one could see me, I began to pray to the God my aunt and uncle had worshiped. In the weeks that followed, however, my condition worsened, and at times I broke into a feverish sweat and my heart beat erratically. During the day, as I often lay in bed, I was assailed by images of the bloodied woman and her daughter. I stopped eating.

I was wasting away. But one night, an unusual thing happened. Certain that I was dying, I lay a-bed. My candle burned low on the table next to me, and I was hoping for a peaceful end when I closed my eyes. In a flash, the darkness within me exploded into light, and opening my eyes I saw descending through the wooden roof a winged angel of God. Floating to the foot of my bed, he told me to leave the infirmary, to leave the camp, and promised that if I did so, and if I pledged myself to Christ, God would heal me.

When the angel left, I felt the power of God moving into me and enabling me to get out of bed. That night, as the other sick and dying slept, I returned to my barracks, packed my belongings and left soldiers whom I regarded as the only family I had on earth.

Desiring to end my torment, seeking union with the Savior of my aunt and uncle, I wandered as a crazed person in the dark green forests and high mountain meadows. My appetite gradually returned, and I ate whatever the forest provided. My black and dirty hair grew down to my waist, and my fingernails became black claws. I reeked. When I walked through a village, no one stayed in the streets long enough for me to speak to them; everyone fled, for I had become as a curse. In the villages, though I often begged from door to door, I was not given any food or drink, so I was forced to return to the forests, and there I found a cave and lived off small animals, roots, slugs, and spring water.

Sometimes my thinking would clear, particularly at night, and in those moments I wondered if God had sent a demon spirit to torment me. At night, before I struggled with sleep, which often stayed away, I knelt and wept in my cave that for a time served as my home. Nightly, on knees bloodied by the rough stone floor, I asked God to forgive me for raping and murdering the woman and for disfiguring her daughter. Weeping, I asked him to forgive me for killing Lucio in the tavern. I asked him to forgive me for the murderous life I had led as a soldier. God’s ways are beyond our knowing, young traveler, and for a long time the only answer I received was an occasional cold mountain wind whistling outside my cave.

But I learned during that year of my madness and exile that God does not abandon his children, even though He may sift them like wheat. Finally, the horrible dreams stopped and it was then that God flooded my soul with the message that He would never leave me. I began to sleep through the night. When I slept on the straw in the cave, angels often filled my dreams and I awoke knowing that the Kingdom filled the very air I breathed.

During spring, I moved out of the cave to an area not far from here—a meadow set in the middle of towering mountains--and there I was allowed to stay with an old couple. For three years, I did everything for them: I cut the wood, I hunted and prepared the meat, I nursed them in sickness, I protected them from robbers.

One day, just as the late fall rains began, I was walking through the forest looking for meat for the old couple, and it was then that I was captured by a group of four men and two women. A dirty, savage people, they threw a great net over me, and then, as I cried out and struggled to escape, they jumped out of the trees surrounding me and, with great sticks, beat me viciously. As I lay on the ground, bleeding freely and several bones broken, they dragged me in the thick net back to their camp.

In their camp down by the frozen river we walked beside today, these savages freed me from the net and then undressed me. As I tried to stagger to my feet the men kicked and struck me repeatedly. The two women hurled stones that cut.

Throughout the nights and through the next two days, they used forms of torture upon me. One of them enjoyed putting a flame on the soles of my feet so he could hear me scream in pain. I knew that the repeated agony would drive me back into madness, and silently I cried out to God, asking Him why he had turned me over to people of the Devil.

Then, one morning, as rain poured from the leaden sky, they bound naked me to a stake with a heavy wooden crossbar near the top. This was to be my end. One of the women—a tall, thin woman with short hair, who might have passed for a man--remembered me as soldier. Her name was Francesca. She stood a foot away from me and said I had been part of the group that had murdered her parents and brothers and sister.

"You are the one known as The Butcher," she said as she approached me with a large knife in her hand. "Do you have a heart?" she asked. She studied me. Her eyes were filled with the dark hate that I had seen in many whom I had enjoyed killing.

"Yes, I have a heart," I said, my voice broken. I breathed with difficulty. "Everyone has a heart."

The rain increased and I felt chilled to my soul.

"The devil has no heart," she yelled. The rest stood behind her. I thought of the tavern where I had learned the pleasure of killing human beings. Dank, disheveled, the woman grinned. Her teeth were perfect and she paused and put the blade to my chest, just below my heart.

I had never seen it rain so hard.

"No," I mumbled, not sure if my words were clear, "he certainly does not. But I am not the devil."

From deep inside, I could feel fear move to the surface.

"Are you the devil?" Francesco asked, grinning with contempt. She did not seem to notice the rain.

Icy panic swept through me.

"No," I whispered, "I said that I am not the devil."

She nodded, a wry smile on her face. "Then, if you are not the devil, you must have a heart. "

Silently weeping, I begged God’s forgiveness and wondered if He would abandon me as he had my aunt and uncle.

"I am going to find out if you have a heart," she said.

As she pushed, the sharp blade slowly entered my flesh between my ribs. The scent of my own blood filled the damp air.

I looked away, turning my eyes and thoughts onto the pines. Shrouded in dark clouds, the mountains were no longer visible. As Francesco shoved the blade more deeply and began cutting the flesh around my heart, something extraordinary happened.

The air around me became uncommonly bright, and I squinted and looked up for the source. My eyes scanned the sky as the damp air grew brighter and brighter, and looking up, I saw the clouds lifting from the mountains; the rain stopped. Just over the largest mountain, I saw a parting of the clouds, and then a golden glow. I could feel heat from the glow. Risking blindness, I looked into the brilliant glow, and as I did I saw another cloud that looked as if it had been made of spun gold.

I heard a beautiful singing; it was heaven.

I continued to look up. I shall go blind, I told myself.

In the midst of the cloud was a throbbing radiance, and in the radiance one clothed in pure white garments, a crown of stars on His brow. His arms clothed in white raiment were raised, and His hands and feet had been pierced. His voice filled the heavens and the earth, and my soul knew the words. A shaft of light burst from the man and fell upon me.

I felt no fear. Pain had temporarily left me, and I felt my bones melting, my heart quaking. I opened my mouth to praise God. No sound came out, and slowly I looked down at my enemies. All of them, Francesca included, had dropped to their knees. Bathed in light, some looked at the vision, hands shielding their eyes, while others turned away. None could rise, nor could I move, as I watched the Savior fade, saw the cloud turn from gold to gray, and waited until the skies were once again dark.

I looked at those who had tortured me. Their eyes were upon me and held only fear and confusion. Francesca gazed up with her mouth open. The knife lay on the ground next to her, and looking down at my chest, I saw that there was no wound.

I took deep breaths and closed my eyes.

No rain fell.

It was then I felt warm fluid slowly flowing from my forehead onto my beard, a warm, tickling fluid streaking from my hands down my arms; I felt the blood on my feet and, in the eye of my mind, I saw the bloodied Jesus hanging from the cross.

I was bleeding from my forehead, my hands, my side, and my feet. I had heard stories of men bearing the wounds of Christ but had never believed. But now His blood poured out of me and spilled onto the muddied ground.

Then I felt the Spirit was flowing into me, and I felt lifted beyond myself on that gray, rain-drenched day.

I looked to my enemies but no longer saw them as my enemies. Francesca fell prostrate to the ground, her face in the mud and her arms spread before her. One of the men, a great fat fellow who later became a monk, kept to his knees and bowed his head. His name was Pietro. As the rain began again, Pietro wept and prayed aloud.

The others seemed untouched. In the angry shouts, they rose growling, slowly backed away, then turned and falling and tumbling in the mud ran into the forest.

I hung through the afternoon, consumed by the chill that comes from rainy autumn cold. Francesca and Pietro remained kneeling, their hands clasped in front of them and raised above their heads.

As darkness fell, they unbound me and lifted me from the cross. I barely had the strength to move, so they took me back to their camp and, in the great tent, wrapped me in blankets. In the weeks to come, they moved me to a dwelling outside a nearby village where I became ill unto death. I would remain at the door of death through the harsh winter. These two daily cared for me. They gave me food and drink, and I slowly recovered.

We stayed together until late autumn. When the first snow fell, Francesca left for the nunnery to the north, and it is there that she lives to this day. Having taken a vow of silence, she speaks to no one but God. Pietro took me to his brother’s dwelling just on the other side of the ice-river you walked down today. We spent another cruel winter together in a small, warm lodge where we prayed and sang.

That Spring, before leaving me to live in the monastery just not half a day from here, Pietro helped me build this lodging, which I have joyfully inhabited since that time, more than ten years ago. It was from this small lodging that I began my earthly mission, wandering the forests and countryside, teaching, preaching, healing, and casting out demons.

For the last two weeks, God has spoken to me in a dream, and what he has shown me makes my blood freeze. Sometimes, I think of venturing outside in the snow and taking my chances with the wolves. One cannot, however, tempt God.

These dreams have not let me sleep. For fourteen nights, I have watched the growth of the little girl whose mother I raped and murdered. Her name is Gabriella. In dreams, I watched Gabriella grow into a beautiful young woman, one who cannot speak and whose one desire is to avenge her mother’s death. Her hatred of me drove her nearly mad, and at fifteen, she left the home of her cousin, who had taken upon himself the job of raising her. Eager to shed my blood, Gabriella prowled the woods and villages, luring men to dark spots. Each time, she waited for the man to begin enjoying her before removing a knife she had concealed under a bed or directly beneath her and slitting his throat from ear to ear.

Each murder was more hideous than the one before it, and soon Gabriella was dismembering her victims; once, in the dreams, she tore out the intestines of a young, strong blonde man whose wife had just died of smallpox.

The final dream came three nights ago. I shall tell you every detail. It was a year ago, on a day marking her mother’s murder, that in a tavern Gabriella offered herself to a young university student from Denmark. The Danes are a proud and warring people, and one winter night this youth was telling of his country’s exploits. A harsh winter storm had kept all residents inside their houses, and few visitors left the inn. It was, I believe, around midnight, as the young man and his fellows were drinking and conversing, that a young woman with flaming red hair and an unusual birthmark on her cheek walked past them. Her blouse hung open, and when this youth saw her, greatly aroused, he took her by the hand, stood, and asked her to his room. His room was on the third floor of this wooden building.

Gabriella agreed, and the young man carried his mistress up the stairs and over the room’s threshold, barring the door behind him, and began undressing himself. In all this the woman never spoke. The youth turned away from his catch as he removed his shirt and his breaches. It was time enough for the woman to take from her person a great sharp knife that she had strapped to one of her legs, swiftly move to the young man and shove the blade into his back.

The young man screamed weakly—one can barely speak with a blade in the back--but the storm outside muffled his sounds. As he fell bleeding to the floor, Gabriella seized his ankles, turned him over, and dragged him back to the bed. She was enormously strong and, with little effort, lifted the young man onto the bed, bound his wrists and ankles to the bedposts. Though severely wounded, the young man was awake, and he watched as she pierced his stomach with the knife. Then she stood back, smiled and watched the young man, still conscious, bleed to death.

The young man’s body was discovered in the afternoon three days later. The walls had been streaked in his blood. There was no sign of the woman Gabriella. She had left the tavern and wandered back out into the storm. Though the young man’s friends could remember what she looked like, the sheriff and his men could not find the beautiful young woman.

And now, here, this woman Gabriella crouches in front of the fire and looks at me. Her eyes, your eyes, are two blackened dots.

My child, I have done you a great wrong. But bound to Christ, I am no longer the soldier who raped your mother, cut out your tongue, and watched outside as others hacked your frantic father to death. Your mother and father are safely in Heaven.

Nonetheless, I offer myself to you. I stand now and remove my thick robe. I do not resist. Take my life. It is just retribution.

I see you stand and walk around the fire to approach me.

End my years of torment, and bring your knife to my throat. Drive the blade through my neck, and do not be deterred when you see that Christ’s wounds have become, somehow, my wounds. To the end of my days, I must bear His grief. These are my hands and feet; they bleed. My forehead bears the scars of the crown. I bleed; I bleed; and so, with one cut, I am with Christ.

Your blade quivers, Gabriella. You hesitate. Do you know why? Perhaps you have been moved by my story. Perhaps you see that I have already suffered. Perhaps, you will stay with me and offer yourself to the One who promises to break you, mould you, and shape you.

Your blade is at my neck. It pricks; it cuts; do I die? What you must do, Gabriella, do quickly.

Why, child, do you hesitate?

Milan, Italy. Summer, 2001. RL

I. A beautiful girl in the prime of life, Misty Reynolds should have known better than to walk to the corner store after midnight. Especially on a full-moon night in October.

It was on full-moon nights, the metropolitan police department reported a year ago, that crazies crawled out of every nook and cranny. This was when children disappeared, carried away by the unrelenting tide of evil, their faces appearing on the back of milk cartons months later. This was when bodies filled with bullets were found in the desert of southern Nevada.

Crime had washed through the city for as long as Misty could remember. Born twenty-four years ago, Misty had attended the city’s schools, was elected prom queen her senior year, played youth soccer in the inner-city leagues, and even won a starting position on the community college’s team. Yet, always, even in the safety of her parents’ home, she sensed something or someone dark awaiting her in the bushes along her street or in her dreams at night, and occasionally sensed death’s dark wings brush her before she woke.

II. Hours before her walk to the corner store, she told her boy friend Jason that, contrary to what many claimed, evil was tangible, real as molten lava. She wondered what she would do face-to-face with darkness. "I think I’d run," she speculated aloud, throwing herself onto her bed next to Jason, who was lying on his back and glumly staring at the ceiling. "Then, who knows? Maybe I’d fight? What would you do, boyfriend?"

"Hell if I know," muttered Jason, attempting nonchalance. Jesus, thought Jason, still studying the ceiling; here we go again. It was not the first time he had listened to Misty’s inanely incoherent ramblings. A Bible college dropout with a cross tattooed on his upper left arm, Jason locked his fingers behind his head as he lay on the bed, cigarette dangling from his mouth, squinting and blowing smoke that eventually carried out the open window into the cold night. He tried to listen to the Beethoven CD he’d inserted in Misty’s player. A young man with a shaved head who generally carried a hand gun, Jason didn’t want to believe in much of anything right now except Misty, who sat against him, wondering where the passion of their relationship had gone.

"You been filling your brain with idle thoughts again?" asked Jason, glancing sideways at his girl. Tonight, as every night, Jason wore a black T-shirt with no printing. "And where the fuck does this question—‘What would I do if the devil came calling?’--come from? Where does it come from?" At twenty-eight, Jason had had his fill of superstitions, knew he didn’t want to marry and have children with this woman, even wondered if she were doing crack. "And who the hell cares anyway? Evil belongs in Star Wars," he added, taking the cigarette from his mouth, sitting up and looking at Misty. A man capable of deep thinking, Jason knew Misty’s views would be classified by current intellectuals as medieval or psychotic.

"No, boyfriend, I’m not making anything up. I believe this stuff. My grandma says she believes in devils, ghosts, vampires, witches, and horrible things like that, so I do, too, " Misty replied, jumping up from the bed and walking to the window, suddenly feeling chilled. She had just remembered that her grandmother had died in her sleep just last month.

Jason took the cigarette from his mouth, examined the tip, smiled, thought about forcing a laugh and then decided not to. "Misty, my best advice to you is to try not to think about this crap. Don’t fucking think, okay? At least don’t fill your mind with that rubbish better confined to the junk heap with Augustine, Aquinas, and Abelard. When you think," Jason added, looking down at Misty, who huddled in the blanket up against him, "when anyone thinks twisted thoughts, they often get in some kind of trouble. Now come one over here with me on the bed."

Misty had heard of Augustine, Aquinas, and Abelard, all brilliant theologians, but said nothing. She was used to men who insulted her intelligence, thinking she was stupid; teachers and coaches had done it for years, probably because of her good looks. She had learned that, to get along, she had to get over the insults. So she sighed, turned from the window and look at Jason, smiled, and said nothing.

Dragging deeply on his cigarette, Jason went on, his eyes focused on an invisible spot on the floor. "Next thing you know, you’ll be having visions, a regular St. Teresa of Avila. You’ll wake up claiming to have seen the Virgin Mary, the Prince of Darkness, or the many rooms in the Kingdom of Heaven. You know what I mean?" Jason figured the best way to handle Misty’s fancies was through obscure allusions and mild humiliation. His father, a professor at a local university, had used it on him and his mother many times. Besides, since leaving Bible college, Jason didn’t want to have a discussion touching upon theology.

"No, I don’t know what you mean, Jason. And, anyway, I’ve been having visions, if that’s what you wanna call them," Misty insisted, walking over to the bed, sitting next to Jason, and pulling the top blanket around her. "I’ve read about them in class at college. I bought this book on Western Mysticism last week at the college bookstore. Evelyn Underhill is the author. Creepy, creepy shit, but real. You know what I mean?" At that moment, an extraordinarily cold wind blew through the window, touching both, and Jason wondered if he had passed into an old Twilight Zone rerun.

"Get that nonsense out of your mind, Misty," Jason responded, not wanting to venture into the territory of dreams and the supernatural, having come to believe nonetheless that dreams were often supernatural manifestations. He looked at Misty, put his arm around her shoulders and drew her closer to him. "No one believes that superstitious horse shit anymore. I sure don’t."

"Well, I do believe in that horse shit," Misty replied, pulling away, looking at Jason, flinging her head back. "I do. I have to. I don’t care if you or anyone else thinks I’m nuts."

"OK, babe," muttered Jason, reaching his arm out and pulling her closer again, "you’re not crazy. You’re all right. Sane as a jackrabbit. So go ahead and tell me about it. Your dream or your vision. Whatever. Tell me about it. I wanna hear it, as a former theology student gone wild. I really do. And then, I’m gonna jump your bones." He began stroking her hair.

Misty paused for a moment, aware that she was being patronized, thought of hitting Jason in the mouth, then closed her eyes, let the smile drop from her face, and thought. As she did so, she seemed to Jason to withdraw, something she had done in the past and something that always made Jason nervous. He remembered that she’d withdrawn in restaurants, in movie theaters, at drive-ins, and even at the mall, that when she did she stopped communicating for hours, that it happened only when he wasn’t listening to her ramble about vampires, witches, and warlocks.

"Just tell me about it," said Jason, kissing Misty on the forehead, then leaning over her and the foot of the bed and dropping his cigarette in a Pepsi can on the floor. On his way back he reached inside the blanket and under Misty’s sweater. "C’mon, I’m listening." Sometimes, Jason’s father told him some time ago, you gotta play along with the women before you get what you want. Jason at the time knew exactly what his father had meant, and now the advice came back to him and he decided that he would wait this one out.

"It’s happened several times," Misty began, growing colder, "always at a certain time during the month, and it always scares the piss outa me." Misty shivered, glanced to the door, and Jason, knowing she couldn’t see it, rolled his eyes in mock credulity.

"The first time," she continued, looking straight ahead at the open window, "was about six months ago. I remember the moon was full and bloody, and a silvery blimp hung suspended over our bright city. When I began to drift off to sleep, I heard the whisper of a breeze, felt the touch of the wind upon my face, then saw a vivid blue light—like a star--glowing at the foot of my bead and filling my room, and in the light I could see the figure of a man."

Jason did not want to hear this, would rather have been down on the Strip with his buddies, but gently squeezing one of her breasts he let Misty continue. "Wasn’t me in the vision, was it?" he asked, hopeful, knowing full well Who it was that stood in the center of the vision. Feeling the mysterious hand of judgment move over the bed, Jason trembled and wondered if he should leave.

Caught up in vivid recollection, Misty turned and looked in to Jason’s eyes, gave Jason the look he would have died a thousand times for, and said, "No, Jason, it wasn’t you. Some man. Older than you. Bleeding and hanging from the wooden cross. It was Jesus, I think. Suffering, weeping, he looked up and spoke to me, told me not to be afraid, that He would be with me until the end of the age. Or something like that. Didn’t make sense. I thought I was gonna die. I’m sure it was Jesus."

Jason knew then that Misty, starting to exude warmth, was telling a truth—at least as far as she was capable--and possibly, though an occasional bimbo, had the mystic capacity to apprehend what lay beyond David Hume’s natural world in which everything could and must be explained in terms of natural cause and effects. At least, he recognized, she had seen something—or thought she had seen something.

Misty continued, now putting her head on Jason’s shoulder, both moving back on the bed to lean against the wall. "Every month, about the same time, I have a similar vision, just when I drift off. This blue light, like a small sun blazing at the foot of my bed, and always the man inside the blue. A first I screamed my head off—Goddamn, did I scream--and that brought both mom and dad running into my room, who told me that I had just had a bad dream and not to worry, to go back to sleep. ‘It’s the full moon,’ my mom said, and I tried to believe her but couldn’t. It was my grandmother told me the next week that the dream was real, maybe from God, maybe the spirit world. Said it meant something bad might happen. Or something good. I dunno."

Exasperated, Jason thought: this really is getting too weird; it was like what he had read in the textbooks about crazed medieval Christian mystics. It was giving him the creeps. He wondered if his girl friend had gone too far over the deep end and hoped she wouldn’t soon start speaking in tongues.

"It’s just a damned dream," he said, trying to assure himself as well as his girl that the vision could not be true but knowing better and desperately wanting to move on. He pulled Misty over onto him. "Or," he added jokingly, "a dream of the damned."

"I think it’s God in that dream," said Misty, allowing Jason to lightly kiss her on the mouth. Smelling of smoke, Jason always kissed gently at first.

Holding her head in her hands, kissing him on the mouth and allowing him to run his hands over her body, she grew warm under Jason’s touch and purred, "Yes, Jason, I think it’s God."

"I think you’re right, girl," Jason whispered, now fully aroused, feeling Beethoven fill him, loosening Misty’s pants and sliding his hands down onto her bare ass.

3. After Jason left around ten, walking down the stairs and saying good night to her sickly parents(Her father was recovering from a heart attack, following his mother’s death), Misty stayed in her room, turned on the television, and thought about the wonderful time she had just had. Making love, she had decided, was like going to heaven. She had heard of St. Teresa of Avila, about the vision God had given her of the crystal castle with infinite rooms, and wondered if as a nun Teresa had ever known human passion. Misty was thankful she had.

Sleepily, she reached over to the table next to her bed, saw Jason’s gun, realized he had accidentally left it behind and would therefore likely return for it, reached out, and held and caressed the small pocket-sized weapon. Always, when making love with her, Jason would take the gun from his jacket and place it where he could see it. This time, he had forgotten it. On the cable station, an old Lana Turner movie was playing, and as she relaxed and let herself drift off she wondered what it would have been like to be Lana Turner.

IV. When she awoke, it was after one. The television was still on, and she recognized Robert Mitchum in the 1950’s film version of the Raymond Chandler classic Fair Well, My Lovely. It was a good movie, almost better than the book, which Misty had read several years ago. She wondered, for an instant, if she could kill a man like Philip Marlow, the detective-hero of Chandler’s novels.

Sitting up in bed, she felt empty and hungry and knew that she wouldn’t go back to sleep for at least an hour, and, since tomorrow was Friday and she had only one class early in the afternoon, she decided to get dressed and walk down to the corner convenience store to buy some soda and anything else that looked appetizing. She arose, put on her jeans, her blue sweater with an LA Lakers logo on the front, and then her black leather jacket that had her name written across the back in bold red letters.

Finally, to feel what it was like, just once, she decided to take the gun, which she put into one of the deep pockets of the jacket. Although she had gone with Jason to target practice and had reeled off a few rounds herself(never missing her target), Misty had not carried a gun with her before. Then she turned off her TV.

Stepping softly down the carpeted stairs, she knew her parents, now in their early sixties had probably been in bed for three hours at least and so she gently opened the door to let herself out into the cool October night, softly shutting the door behind her. Outside, she felt strangely different, even more alive. She felt in her pocket for the cold barrel and knew the surge of power that she had heard often comes from carrying a weapon.

As she walked down the short sidewalk towards the street, thinking about Jason’s gun, she looked overhead at the enormous full moon, beautifully illuminating the night sky, and felt thankful that she had worn her leather jacket. Fingering the gun, she felt good as she walked the empty street, conscious of all the lives in the houses lining the block, glad she was Misty Reynolds and not the dentist’s daughter who lived on the corner, and thought about her class the next day. Taught by Dr. Wilbur Frost, Introduction to Western Religions had become her favorite class, Frost’s lectures frequently touching upon rituals, customs, and belief that she wished were still part of a society that seemed more intent on monitoring the sales of drugs and the spread of violent crime than upon providing for itself a framework that could, possibly, give meaning to her own confusing life.

She walked two more blocks. It was just as she was walking across the parking lot toward the store entrance, the sign shining brightly above her, the full moon beyond bathing the night in nocturnal splendor, that she saw the primer gray Oldsmobile parked in front of the store. Instinctively, she tensed. The body of the car was dented from bumper to bumper, and she noticed a spider-web crack in the passenger window on the driver’s side and a black pentagram on the door below. She observed that no one was inside the car and that the driver’s window was rolled down or missing.

When she pushed open the glass door and stepped inside the store, she was struck by total silence. Usually, at all hours of the day and night in the store, a radio or a television was blaring, filling the air with music or the sound of people talking. But the TV situated behind the counter to her left was not on; the radio, where ever it was kept, was also silent. Glancing around the store, she could not see Miguel, the old clerk who generally took the night shift. Looking up and down the aisles, she suddenly saw in her mind’s eye the image of Miguel being shot in the forehead. The revelation hit her like a crow bar.

Sick to her soul, she froze in the middle of the store, no longer interested in buying something to eat or drink, knowing something was wrong, trying to reassure herself that Miguel had simply gone to the restroom, felt in her gut that she must get out of the store. Then she remembered that she was armed, and stood her ground.

Buried in the deadly silence, muffled voices came from the back. It was like listening to people talk under water. "Anyone here?" she asked, apprehensive, her stomach tightening. As she awaited a reply, she could no longer hear the muffled voices, so she called again, this time more loudly, "Is anyone here? Anyone back there?" She felt herself going numb as she heard a muffled shout coming from the back followed by two popping sounds. She thought first of fireworks and knew Miguel had been shot.

Frightened, now moving to the door, she heard someone coming from the back, the sound of heavy footsteps running to the front. It was just as she pushed open the door that she looked back, saw a heavy-set man wearing a beard and a hunting cap come out of the back and yell at her to stop. She noticed the man was missing his front teeth and carried a handgun. Misty knew there would be another man as well and so ran out of the store, sprinting in the direction of her house as the two men pushed through the glass door and yelled at her to stop.

Unable to help herself, she stopped just at the corner, turned, and looked. "Hey, little girl; hey, Misty," one of them bellowed; Misty could see him clear as day as she stopped and looked back, saw that the speaker was taller than the other man, bald like Jason, and had a silver tooth in the front of his mouth. As the tall man smiled and nodded at his grinning heavy-set companion, Misty knew, somehow, that she was possibly facing her last night; certainly, this was the end of something. She turned and began running as the men jumped in the car, started it noisily, backed up screeching, and pulled out of the store parking lot after her.

Misty ran for her life, moving like the wind up the sidewalk that led to her house three blocks away, but she was no match for the car. The two men caught her within seconds, the car pulling into the driveway immediately in front of her and blocking her way and the two men jumping out and pursuing her, the tall one immediately on her, grabbing her by the shoulder, throwing an arm around her neck, telling her "Relax, Misty baby," bearing her to the pavement under the weight of his body. Wondering if she were dreaming, she screamed wildly, asking herself why no one responded, crying out finally to Jesus, feeling a blow to the back of her head and closing her eyes and yelling "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" as she sensed herself engulfed in swirling, muddy darkness.

Then, she saw in her mind’s eye a blue phosphorescent glow, the man from the visions in the center, watching her, his eyes sorrowful, reaching out to her and touching her, filling her with strength to endure, as suddenly full consciousness returned and she felt herself being dragged along the street, someone holding one of her arms, felt herself dropped, and opened her eyes.

The short, heavy-set man stood over her, pointing a shot gun at her face. She was going to end her life in the middle of her own street, late at night. "Say your last, Misty, you little bitch," the man growled, as Misty heard the tall man shuffling up and saw him too staring down at her. Both men laughed and paused, and the stocky man lowered the shotgun.

Something is wrong with their eyes, Misty thought to herself, and looking more closely saw that the irises of the men’s eyes looked like fragments of broken glass, each piece reflecting darkness. She watched the short man turn his head for an instant and grin wickedly at his taller companion. She knew then she had just met the Devil.

As if given a second chance, Misty remembered Jason’s gun, slipped her hand into her pocket, felt cold steel, felt for and released the safety(as Jason had told her to do when, weeks ago, at the firing range, he had explained the workings of the gun), withdrew the piece, pointed it at the chest of the bearded man just as he turned back towards her.

It was like a freeze-frame, all three figures immobilized at the point of action, beautiful background music provided. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear Beethoven’s "Moonlight Sonata." Not blinking, suddenly realizing that she was not afraid to take the life of another, not afraid to die, she pulled the trigger.

Blood banging furiously in her brain, numbed by rage and fright, she did not hear the weapon’s explosion, did feel the gun nearly leap out of her hand, and searching for the bullet hole in the bearded man’s chest turned Jason’s gun on the taller man and without looking directly fired once, twice, three times. As the larger man fell backwards, the crack of the gun now audible, she smiled at the bearded man, who stood dazed before her, holding the shotgun to his side; without giving it a second thought, she pointed Jason’s weapon at the man’s head, and fired once, sure that she had hit the mark. The man spun, the top of his head taken off, spun again and fell three feet from Misty.

Temporarily ecstatic, the sonata still playing in her mind, Misty stood, pointed the gun at the stocky man’s twitching body, pulled the trigger again, watched the body jump as the bullet penetrated the body, and then stopped and waited. Now towering over the bodies of the men who would surely have raped her and taken her life, Misty waited and waited, for what she was not sure, saw the pools of blood gathering under the bodies, saw out of the corner of her eye lights in the houses across the street go on, heard sirens in the distance, tossed the gun into a thick hedge that grew in the yard next to the driveway where the car had stopped, and stepping over the two bodies ran the remaining two blocks to her home.

When she entered her house, Misty’s mind cleared. She figured that, shortly, the police would be banging on her door, then hauling her away for questioning. As she walked numbly into the dark kitchen to call Jason on the phone, she heard movement upstairs, knew that one or both of her parents were out of bed, inwardly gave thanks that her parents were all right, then heard her mother shout frantically form the top of the stairs, "Misty??? Misty? Is that you honey? Is that you?" She knew the fear in her mother’s voice, had heard it before, and instinctively responded to calm her mother.

"It’s just me, Mom," Misty said, exhausted now, forcing herself to sound normal while, her hand now trembling, she reached for the phone. "Everything’s fine, Mom, just fine," she said in a voice that she knew sounded cold as steel, and she wondered, as she knew her mother listened at the top of the stairs, how her parents could not know something dreadful had just happened.

"Honey," came the voice, "there’s two police cars down the street. At least, I think it’s two. Lights are flashing everywhere. Your father thought he heard some shots." As she had done before, Misty’s occasionally hysterical mother was asking her daughter for directions.

"Go back to bed, Mom," Misty replied, not sure why she didn’t tell her mother that she had just shot two men in cold blood, almost without blinking, and was now waiting for the police to take her away. "Mom, I’m all right. Everything is all right, " she added, even calmer this time as she heard her mother respond, "OK, honey, just so long as you’re here. Your dad and me were worried. Just worried is all. You know how we are." For Misty, preserving her parents’ safety and peace of mind meant protecting those same elements in her.

"Nothing to worry about, folks," Misty said, fighting to remain calm, not wanting to upset her mother or make her father sicker, then lifting the phone and punching Jason’s number.

Sure that her mother would go back to bed, Misty heard the phone ring four times before she got the recording: "Hello, world, this is Jason. I’m away from my desk right now, but at the beep if you could be so kind...." She could hear the Beethoven piece in the background.

When the recording finished and signaled for her to leave her message, she spoke: "Jason, you need to come and get your gun. You left it with me. Something bad has happened."

She waited for an instant, hoping Jason would pick up the phone, sure that he was lying in bed next to the phone, listening to the message.

Putting the phone gently back in place, Misty remembered that she had thrown the gun away, knew the weapon would be found soon, and wondered what was taking the police so long. Glancing out a side window, she saw that the moon was setting.

She waited through the night, sitting next to the phone, gazing out the living room window at the street, watching night slowly give way to dawn. Around 6:30, sure that her usually peaceful existence would not be disrupted for at least another day, she arose and walked slowly upstairs, not certain what would happen, wondering what she would learn in religion class today, knew that eventually she would become front page headlines, suspected that her life from this point on would never be the same.

V. Jason rolled over in bed, listened, froze when he heard Misty say something bad had happened.

Sitting up in bed in his one-room apartment, Jason reached for the pack of cigarettes on his night stand. Always, it seemed, he needed a smoke. Now was no exception. He wondered if he should pray for Misty, thought better of it, then lit up. Inhaling deeply, he pressed the button on his CD player and waited for Beethoven’s "Moonlight Sonata" to fill the room and lull him back to sleep and forgetfulness.

In the darkness, wrapped in soft sounds, he remembered what Misty had said hours before as he had impatiently listened in her bedroom, one thing on his mind. He recalled thinking, as he had dressed in Misty’s room after the sex, that he should pick up his gun and take it with him. But something in his girl friend’s voice had set off an alarm, and he knew even then, inexplicably, that something wicked was coming Misty’s way. And he knew she would have to face it alone, perhaps soon, so he had left the weapon, fully loaded, next to her bed.

Since leaving Bible college, Jason had fought the frequent intuitions of evil that, once again, he had felt that evening with Misty. All his life, he’d had haunting premonitions, and if they were from God, he thought as he inhaled more smoke, he wished God would just leave him the hell alone. If God were real, he knew, then he was indeed Misty’s keeper; hell, he was everyone’s keeper. Jason knew from the tone of her voice—numbed, as if spoken by a dead person—that something terrible had happened, that he was supposed to know about it and do something about it, and that he, somehow, was now permanently part of it.

Forcefully, even angrily exhaling smoke out his open window, looking at the moon sinking towards the horizon, he realized that his inaction, his failure to remain with Misty when he sensed disaster, had permanently complicated his life. Flipping his cigarette out the window and lying back to resume sleep, letting Beethoven’s sounds drown thought, he had no idea where to go from here. His mind and soul churning within him, he wasn’t sure if he should even care about Misty. Wondering if he would eventually have to marry her, he didn’t want to care.

[4956]

by rich logsdon

Driving through the Nevada desert at 2:30 on a cold March night reminded Nick of journeys into the underworld. He had read about these mythic journeys in college literature classes. Nick imagined that he was guiding a ship down a river into the driest region of hell where the dark sky was like soft black lead, almost palpable.

Nick’s reverie was broken by harsh winds. Typical of early spring in the high desert, cold winds buffeted Nick’s car, occasionally causing him to grip the steering wheel to prevent the car from jumping off the road. A half-moon hung suspended overhead, a scythe in the night sky. Nick forced his thoughts away from death.

It was spring break, and Nick and his wife Stephanie had been driving since early morning from Eugene, Oregon, where both attended the graduate school at the university. Stephanie, originally from Minnesota, had never met Nick’s parents. She especially wanted to meet Nick’s father, a pastor in a Full Gospel church in Las Vegas.

Now somewhere between Tonopah and Beatty, Nick figured that they’d arrive at his parents’ house in Sumerlin, in the northwest part of Las Vegas, around six in the morning. Innocent and beautiful as an angel, Stephanie slept in the passenger seat.

The highway stretched endlessly beyond the headlights, set on bright. Peering into the sandy darkness, Nick barely made out the red tail lights of the car that had passed them half an hour ago. A native of Las Vegas, Nicky hated driving the Nevada desert.

Edgy because of the gusting wind, Nicky slowed to fifty-five, pushed the radio button, and found a Christian broadcast. The speaker was talking of God’s judgment. "It’ll come upon you like a thief in the night," proclaimed the evangelist in a gravely drawl that Nicky recognized as belonging to Preacher Mike Woodrow. Now in his sixties, Preacher Mike had baptized Nicky when he was entering junior high. Nicky loved Mike, felt peace descending like a quilt, and turned the radio up.

Preacher Mike rolled on. "It might be today, it might be tomorrow, it might be next week, and it might be next year. Or it just might be next hour. But we’re all gonna be called to reckoning sooner or later, and we’re gonna hafta stand before the throne of God and when He asks what we done with our lives we gotta tell him. Oh, yes we do. We gotta give account, everyone of us, sooner or later. Some of us it’s sooner. Why, I feel the Spirit of God right now tellin’ me, tellin’ me right now that somewhere out there in radio land, someone, someone—he might be workin’ in a casino, he might be home, he might be drivin’ the desert at night--someone out there is gonna be called this very night to judgment. Oh, glory Hallelujah, praise God, let’s pray, let’s pray right now for that person, let’s pray right now for that person who this hour will be called to eternity to meet the Master."

Same old same old, Nicky thought, smiled, and relaxed, recalling numerous sermons in which Pastor Mike had spoken like that. Nick couldn’t wait to get home to see his parents and call on Preacher Mike.

Nicky listened to Preacher Mike explain how the prince of this dark world prowls the earth like a beast, looking for souls to devour, when he felt and heard, through the wind, something hit against the front right bumper. Fear shot through Nick’s soul, and the night seemed to become darker. In the instant, Nicky had also heard a screech, something in pain. Then, Nick remembered seeing something dark along the side of the road—two shapes, really--a split-second before the impact.

Nicky wondered what he had hit. A wild dog or coyote, some animal walking across the desert highway. Something large. It could not have been a rabbit, Nicky thought as he pulled to the side of the road and stopped. For a moment, Nicky sat, looked through the wind at the dark night sky, and wondered why he felt compelled to stop and see what he had hit. Wouldn’t it be better just to drive on? Nick asked himself.

Nick resigned himself to fulfilling what his father would likely call a moral obligation. "Back in a minute, sweetheart," he said quietly to his sleeping wife, putting the car in neutral and leaving the engine running. Stephanie smiled, her eyes still closed, and adjusted herself in the seat, which she had slightly reclined. Reassuring himself that his wife would be fine, that God carefully watched over his flock, Nicky left the radio on as he opened the door against the violent wind and stepped from the car.

About a hundred yards back, Nicky said to himself, walking with the wind at his back; that’s where the impact occurred. In the cold darkness along the desert highway, the peace that he had felt moments before gave way to sickening unease. The darkness palpable, visibility intermittent, Nicky was thankful for the light of the half-moon. As he trudged along the highway, not another soul in sight, Nick remembered his mother telling him long ago, on dark haunting nights, that the light of the moon meant God was watching.

Suddenly, he stumbled against something big and nearly fell forward. What the hell is this? Nicky asked himself, realizing that whatever he had fallen over was much larger than a rabbit or a coyote. Fighting the wind, Nicky gained his balance, turned back, saw the dark form and knelt down.

It was a huge dog, a Rotweiler, Nicky thought, one of the largest dogs he had ever seen. The side of the dog’s head was a mass of blood and its left leg was attached by a tendon to its body. His car had nearly taken the dog apart. This is death, thought Nicky. It is lying before me. Then Nick saw the leash attached to the dog’s neck. Jesus Christ, thought Nick, Jesus H. Christ, looking around for another body but seeing nothing on the road or in the desert.

Slightly sickened, Nicky wondered what the dog had been doing in the desert at 2:30 in the morning. No one walks a dog after midnight in the desert. He wondered what had happened to the person holding the leash, if indeed there had been a person. Nick shook his head, looked at the moon, and decided to leave the dog along the side of the road. It was just as Nicky was rising that he heard the muffled scream through the howling wind. Ice sticks entering his heart, Nicky stood, frozen to the spot, just able to make out the shape of his car in the distance, the light inside the car on. This alarmed Nick, for the light came on only when the door was open, and Nicky had made sure both doors were closed.

Feeling darkness caving in around him, Nick knew in his heart that something had gone terribly amiss. Intuitively, he knew he and Stephanie were now involved. Stunned, his mind spinning, Nick heard another scream, this one louder, something a wounded animal would make. The sound came from the direction of his car. Instantly, as if experiencing a vision, he recalled seeing as a youngster a film of a mountain lion killing a deer. Just before its death, the deer had screamed, and Nick had been surprised at how human the deer’s death wail seemed. Then, the deer’s throat torn open by the predator’s powerful teeth, the lion had emitted a roar, this one deep, primordial.

His legs nearly buckling from fear, Nicky forced himself to run against the powerful wind to his car. He knew he should never have left his wife alone. Ten yards from the car, panting and wheezing, he saw through the sand gust that the passenger door was ajar and the passenger seat was empty.

"Steph!!" he frantically called, stumbling to his knees on the asphalt. "Steph!! Steph!! Steph!!" he bellowed, his mind dizzy from fear, "answer me! Honey, honey, honey, answer me! Are you all right? Where are you!!??" Nick listened to the howling wind, felt sand blown into his face, and waited, crouching on the pavement. Sensing the worst, he picked himself up and moved on.

When he reached the passenger door, he saw the car was empty. Nick stood, pressed his hand against the sides of his head, screamed in rage, cursed himself, and tried to collect his thoughts. I’m being an idiot, Nick to himself. Shit like this does not happen out of movies and Stephen King novels. Shit like this just does not happen. He hoped that Stephanie had stepped out of the car to relieve herself in the desert. In his heart, he knew better.

Telling himself to stay put, Nick looked across the desert where he knew Stephanie must have gone and in the light of the half moon he could just make out a fence about forty feet off the road. Peering into darkness, he noticed that the ground between his car and the fence had been furrowed in the direction of the fence and imagined something huge dragging his wife through the desert. Fuck this, thought Nick, trying to ward off the dark thoughts. Fuck this; Stephanie must be on the other side of the road. But as he gazed through to the point where the furrows led, Nick saw a shape at the base of one of the fence posts, a dead animal perhaps.

Nick felt ice on his soul as he plodded across the desert to the shape. Five feet away, he knew for sure. He could smell it. He could feel it. The left side of her face a bloody pulp, Stephanie’s clothes--she had worn a gray University of Oregon sweater and gray jogging pants--were soaked in blood. Nick’s scream tore the night sky, temporarily silencing the wind. Holding his head between his hands, sure that he had stepped into a nightmare from which he had to awaken, Nick dropped retching to the ground. Kneeling over the most beautiful woman he had ever known, Nick checked for signs of life.

He leaned down and put his ear close to her smashed nose and mouth to check for breathing. Nothing. He felt the neck artery for a heartbeat. Nothing. Frantic, he took Stephanie’s wrist in his hands and checked for a sign of life. Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. In the chilling emptiness of the Nevada desert, Nick put his arms around the limp body, embraced the body, prayed silently to his Savior, wondered what the Savior was thinking, and wept.

It was just as he heard her weakly moan and realized that Stephanie was still alive that he felt it. He had felt it before: the sure sensation of the presence of evil, and he could feel it at his back. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled, and his mouth went dry. Wishing that he and Stephanie had never left Eugene, wondering why they were not still in Eugene, snuggled against each other beneath the covers, Nick knew he had to turn. Sickened by the deadening presence, carrying his wife like a baby, Nick rose, turned around, and looked behind him.

Nick strained to see a huge man standing ten feet from him.

Well over six feet tall, wearing a long black coat that hung to his black boots, the hairy bearded man stood silent, his hateful glare hitting Nick like a fist, and Nick felt out of breath. Nick knew that he was powerless before this stranger, who stood between himself and the car.

Hands in his coat pockets, the man made no movement and said nothing. He simply glared at Nick. For a minute, Nick stared at the man, feeling light-headed, as if he had been transported into darker, insane world. His heart pounding wildly in his throat, he sensed that he had come face-to-face with the devil. He felt trapped and mortally afraid.

"Please," pleaded Nick, whimpering, clutching the limp body of his wife next to him, "mister, I gotta get my wife to the car. She’s been hurt. Bad. Real bad. But she’s alive. She may not have long."

The tall dark man continued to glare at Nick. A dark, primeval thing, the man didn’t move, didn’t talk. A man without a soul was the thought that crazily went flying through Nick’s mind, the incarnation of Satan.

"Hey, mister, it’s Stephanie, my wife. She nearly got killed, somehow, I don’t know how." But even as Nick spoke, as he worked to talk himself out of the situation, Nick knew the story: the dog had belonged to the man, and the man retaliated. In response, the man grinned hugely, maliciously.

Knowing that he stood before something he could not defeat, Nick tried again. "Please, mister, please, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, oh please," he whimpered, "please let me take my wife to the car. Please, please allow me and my wife to live."

The wind blew harder, kicking up an enormous sandy gust that seemed to block the stranger from Nick’s sight, and as Nick squinted through the impenetrable sandy darkness, he could no longer see the man. The wind died and in the light of the half-moon Nick felt the chill of death. He saw the man standing in front of him, two or three feet closer. Then the man reached into his pocket, took out a cigarette, lit it with a lighter in the impossible wind, and inhaled deeply. Finally, he spoke, very slowly, his low voice emanating from his own darkness: "Son, don’t you ever use the Lord’s name around me. Don’t ever say that name. Anyway, let’s just fuckin’ see what the score is. First, that was my dog you killed. That was my fuckin’ dog. That was my only fuckin’ dog. Used to be my daddy’s dog, and when I was little I used to ride that hound like a horse. But it seems people always kill what belongs to me." There was no emotion, no feeling to the man’s voice. It was a voice made of steel. The man looked straight at Nick, then at his wife, and for an instant Nick thought he could detect mercy in the man’s movements.

"I’m sorry about your dog, mister," Nick began, seeking the right words. "I’m sorry, truly, truly sorry. God, I am sorry. But, mister," Nick added, beginning to tremble uncontrollably, "this is a woman you injured. A woman. My wife. This is a flesh and blood human being. We have to get her help." Nick felt dizzy, insubstantial, as he temporarily did not have a body.

The man sucked on his cigarette, the tip glowing like the pit of hell. "You’re right, boy," the big man began, cigarette still dangling from his mouth, "that is a human being that needs help. So was my mother, so was my daddy, so was my wife, so was my baby girl, my baby boy, and they was all killed by a train up in Missoula. Last year I think it was."

Nick dimly recalled reading about an incident in Missoula about a year ago. It had made evening news for one week straight. As Nick recalled, however, the people had been shot as they slept. The suspected murderer, some one named Jack or Jax, had not been found. A recent series of prostitute murders in the desert around Las Vegas had also been attributed to the Missoula killer, who had been spotted three weeks ago in a nude bar in North Las Vegas. His mother had kept Nick informed.

The wind died down, giving Nick’s head time to clear. "I am very sorry about that. That’s awful. I remember reading about it. My God, my God, my God, I..., I... I’m sorry for you. You have a right to be mad."

"I dunno," said the man, running the fingers of one bony hand through his dirty dark brown hair. "I just don’t fuckin’ know no more. Maybe nobody’s got a right to anything."

Then the man paused, never taking his eyes off Nick.

"But you know what, boy?" the man asked, defiance in his voice.

"What?" Nick asked, wishing that God would intervene and stop this conversation and let him and his wife go. Where the hell are you, God? Nick shouted inside his mind.

"I don’t give a shit. I don’t give a shit about anything no more. All the time, I feel dead inside, a walking dead man, wondering where his soul has gone. So, fuck me, kid, all I’m doin’ is gonna even the score. As many ways as I can. I got that comin’."

Nick stood still, clasping his wife to him, frozen in fear. Something wicked this way comes, thought Nick. For five minutes, the two men studied each other in the wind.

"Don’t I got that comin’?" the man asked, and Nick could hear the pain in the voice. "God Almighty Himself, he knows I got that comin’!" The man’s voice had built to a roar, and Nick quaked inside.

"I don’t know," Nick responded, his mouth going numb from fear. And Nick realized that maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t know anything. Maybe there was no God. Maybe there were no absolutes. Maybe his Dad and Preacher Mike were dead wrong. Nick shuddered and, for the first time in his life, saw a cold dark empty universe. Death would be final, Nick thought. His mind spun out of control.

"Ever been to church, boy?" the man growled, his eyes riveted to Nick. "I think church is a good thing." The man’s voice went right through Nick.

"Sure," Nick wheezed, gasping for breath, feeling like he was suffocating, "my dad’s a Holiness preacher. How about you?" Nick asked desperately, his voice shaking.

"Myself," said the man, inhaling and exhaling deeply on the cigarette. Smoked flowed like water from the man’s mouth. "I was born and raised Pentecostal. Even wanted to be a preacher once, goin’ about the country preachin’ the gospel and bringin’ folks to the Lord. Goddamn, I use to pray to God to let me be a preacher. ‘God!’ i would say when I prayed alone in my bedroom at night. ‘God. Lemme serve you as a preacher. I got a heart for you, God. I wanna serve—and pardon me for sayin’ His name—I wanted to serve Jesus.’ Hell, boy, people woulda called me Preacher Ray Jax and I woulda a been somebody. A regular Billy Fuckin’ Graham. But know what? You know what? I wound up working the rails. Just like my old man. Workin’ the goddamned rails. No fuckin’ sense to it. No fuckin’ sense to anything. I remember goin’ to prison outa high school—I got blamed for some shit I never done--then I got out and went to work with Daddy. Did kill a couple men in prison, I gotta admit, but it’s dog eat dog in there. Anyway, I went back to the rails. Don’t matter. I this dark world it don’t seem to have made a lick of difference whether you’re the guy that cleans shit outa animal cages in the zoo or the President of the United Sates. No difference at all. Rails was fine."

Then, the man stood slowly, almost graciously, like a dark prince, thought Nick. He is going to let me pass, Nick assured himself, relieved, feeling returning to his brain. He is going to let me live. Stephanie will be all right. All he wanted was to talk. Talking saved my ass, Nick assured himself silently; this guy just wants someone to talk to.

"You believe in God?" Nick stuttered, not sure why he asked this particular question, not sure why he didn’t use that instant to dash to his car.

The man savagely snapped back. "’Course I believe in God. Hell, devils believe in God. Problem is, God don’t believe in me." The wind died, as if in response to this remark. Nick again felt the darkness caving in around him.

"No, no, no," Nicky replied, trying to summon courage and belief if only to save himself. "God is for everyone. Everyone. We can all go to heaven. You. Me. My wife. Your daddy. We all got a chance." Nick was not sure he believed what he said.

The big man inhaled deeply on his cigarette, looked away from Nick and up at the half-moon, and then said, "No sir. You are wrong there. You are dead, fuckin' wrong. God has cursed me to the ends of the earth, I do believe. I am like Cain though I sure as hell ain’t Cain. That's why shit keeps happenin' to me." Nick heard sorrow and grief in the man’s voice and started to walk to the car. Nick knew this would be his only opportunity.

Nick’s movement triggered a lightening response; and the man, seeming to grow even larger than before, quickly stepped in front of him. "Not so goddamned fast, boy," growled the man, using his arm to push Nick back about a foot and then reaching under his coat and slowly drawing forth a small handgun. "Not so goddamned fast. Not so fast. Not until you I give to you the prize you won tonight. Hell, boy, I do believe it is high time for you to meet your executioner, to go spinning into that great beyond that makes cowards of us all." Slowly, the man raised the gun and pointed it at Nick’s forehead.

Fear came rushing back like a freight train, and Nick dropped to his knees, as if pushed, still clutching his wife. He could no longer feel, so he closed his eyes, told himself to pray, sought God’s forgiveness for his sins, wondered if there was a God, felt himself screaming inside, and saw only endless darkness, pure and absolute.

"God...." Nicky sobbed, terrified, losing all hope. "God, God, God...."

His soul breaking into a thousand pieces, peering into the

abyss, he suddenly saw a gentle explosion of light in his mind, felt the

light fill the universe and push away the darkness, and saw himself

and his wife.

In his mind’s eye, eternally young, he and Stephanie sat together in a boat on a lake just north of Eugene. Stephanie was pouring him some hot tea, his favorite beverage, and Nick could not recall ever having seen the water and the sky so blue. Nor could he recall feeling so happy, and he looked at the sun rising over the eastern horizon as a fish jumped nearby. Nick looked into Stephanie’s vivid blue eyes, smiled, and felt a dull pain coming from somewhere he could not identify. He and Stephanie would be on this lake forever. Nick wondered if he were in heaven.

The man fired once, the force of the blast pushing Nick backward as the bullet entered the young man’s brain. The tall man lowered the gun, walked over to the still-twitching body and looked down. He noted that Nick’s legs were bent underneath him and that he was almost smiling, and the tall man from Missoula hated Nick for that. There was a small blackened hole in the middle of the kid’s forehead. The man looked up at the moon and thought of the moons he had grown up seeing in Missoula. Then, still burning with cold rage, he looked down at Stephanie, whose body was sprawled awkwardly and face-down on top of her husband, wondered if she had been beautiful, raised the gun, pointed and fired two bullets into the back of her skull. When the woman jerked and gasped, the man knew he had killed another human being. Ecstasy temporarily filled his soul, and he felt like flying.

"This don’t mean shit," he finally muttered to himself, sensing his own empty darkness return and wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t pulled the trigger on the boy. In his heart, the man believed it didn’t matter what would have happened. It was all the same.

Putting his gun back inside his coat, the man took the cigarette from his mouth and flicked it into the wind. No need for this shit, he thought, walking towards the road. No need for this shit at all. No need for anything. No sense to anything.

It had been a hard night, but it would be morning soon. And that would bring another hard day for the man, who walked past the still idling car and in the direction of Las Vegas.

I. Stephanie Thrush slouched on the metal bench in the darkened corner of the night club dressing room. She rested her back against the faded chipped green metal locker in which she had kept her dance outfits for the past four years. In a moment of dark confusion, her career as a dancer had ended that night, and so, a floppy brown Bible open next to her on the bench, she had spent the last fifteen minutes trying to meditate upon scripture, seeking promises she’d once heard shouted from the pulpit. The words on the page, however, swam muddily before her, and thus she closed the book. The words seemed as dead to her as her own soul.

Silently cursing, Stephanie couldn’t pray either. Half an hour before, eyes closed, head bowed, she had tried, words bouncing back like a rubber darts off a brick wall and wondered what had become of her soul. Surely, she knew what she was: a gorgeous blonde nude dancer with blue eyes, a nearly perfect figure, and a blue star beautifully tattooed over her left breast, who had nearly drained the bottle of Scotch, sitting upright at her feet. She wasn’t sure of much beyond that and certainly did not know where she was going.

Music boomed steadily from the other side of the wall, and she sensed the dark addictive energy that had once fed her, heard the muffled laughter of men and women simulating sex, and now wanted no part of it. That dark world, partially illuminated by reddish stage lights, had been her world, one she had chosen as years ago she had angrily rejected her sister Rhonda, the unwavering self-appointed saint, cursing her sister violently one evening as the two had fought in the front room the night before Stephanie’s departure. Having bloodied her sister’s nose, Stephanie had rejected Rhonda’s beautiful but oppressive stained-glass medieval world, according to which the devil prowled like a beast, looking to devour the innocent.

II. Now, feeling devoured, empty and inebriated in the back room of the night club, Stephanie wanted to turn back the clock, desperately wished she were sitting at home back in rainy and cloudy Seattle, watching TV with her sister, discussing scripture, going to church, anything. She felt dead inside and realized that she had felt that way for years. At that moment, sitting alone in the dressing room of the Vegas night club, absorbed in her sorrows, she would have given the family fortune to be with Rhonda.

Glancing almost resentfully at the closed Bible, Stephanie had seen her career derailed that night, hurtling suddenly like a speeding car off the freeway of success. For four years, she had performed nightly, stripping in front of hundreds of gawking, yelling men, doing dirty lap dances for favored customers. The most popular stripper at the Blue Star, situated on Industrial Road behind Al’s 24-Hour Towing Service, Stephanie Thrush had been making up to $500 per night, four nights a week. But now she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her career had burnt out like a comet entering the atmosphere, extinguished by a visit from one whose bold voice had never left her dreams. Her thoughts clouded by the alcohol, she felt dimly afraid, yet knew she had to move on.

III. Nearly five years ago, she had moved out of the Seattle apartment she had shared with her sister. Sadly, Stephanie remembered that, a week before the fight and the move, she had just taken a job stripping in a club north of Seattle, and when she had excitedly told Rhonda the next morning, her sister had grabbed the old family Bible that generally stayed unopened on the coffee table in the middle of the room, and had reminded Stephanie again and again that the judgment of God was at hand for the entire world. "Check your watch, Steph, and check your soul," Rhonda would warn her, using her favorite expression, always adding, "Time’s running out." Rhonda would then launch into one of her sermons, and rather than give in to temptation and hit her sister, Stephanie usually left the apartment.

One night that week, however, as Rhonda read from Jonathan Edward’s "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Stephanie had lost it and attacked her sister with both fists. They had fought like wild cats, Rhonda the eventual loser. Later that night, at 3:00 in the morning, hours after the fight, still furious with her sister, Stephanie Thrush had moved out without saying a word and driven her dark blue Chevy Nova to Las Vegas in two days.

IV. With one hundred forty-seven dollars and fifty cents to her name, she had taken up lodgings in a battered sickly green and white trailer north east of the community college in North Las Vegas and had gone looking for a job the next day. Finding a job in Vegas was simple as pie. By evening, she had been taken on as a stripper at the Blue Star. After two years, she had earned enough money to move into an expensive townhouse situated just west of the city, on a small hill overlooking Las Vegas and affording a breathtaking view of dazzle and glitter. She had bought a top-of-the-line Infinity, a baby blue, to match her eyes. She had had several breast implants, which took her up to a size 38 D, and the much anticipated requests to pose nude for the magazines like Boob and Rear End had quickly followed. Her wardrobe consisted of the most expensive and most fashionable dresses on the market, Stephanie’s preference running to sheer outfits that showed off her beautiful figure and photogenic breasts. She had, in fact, appeared in adult films put out by a fledgling adult industry entitled Pornworld. The thought of having sex on screen had thrilled her and had succeeded, she had hoped, in putting an unbridgeable distance between her and her sister. In fact, she enjoyed doing the films a bit high. High was all right, since we was already mainlining speed and alcohol. Anyway, being high hid from her the growing emptiness that she had felt about a year after leaving Seattle, that engulfed her like a black hole, and that now, at times when she was alone and straight, threatened to devour her like some dark beast.

Yet, feeling somewhat triumphant with her new life, she had hoped never, never to see her sister again. At twenty-eight years of age, free of Rhonda and Seattle, Stephanie figured she had it made.

V. She now sat in the dressing room at the back of the club, wondering how the alcohol would affect her, wondering why the evening had turned out as it did. This evening had begun as any other. She had walked through the dark glass doors around six PM, inebriated but satisfied, having just allowed her boyfriend’s cousin Alex the Werewolf to screw her brains out in the restaurant down the street. After strutting into the back room and changing into a red and black string outfit that barely covered her nipples and crotch and putting on her high-heels, Stephanie had spent the first hour of the evening not dancing, just walking through the darkly lit joint, feeling her body wrapped in cigarette smoke and alcohol fumes, occasionally stopping to sit with a familiar customer, going into Guest Lounge for several dances and whatever else her customer wanted. By the time she had taken the stage at 7:30, she was smashed but already $246 richer than when she had come in. No doubt, she’d told herself as she began removing her clothes on the stage to the beat of "Welcome to the Jungle," this is going to be another extraordinary evening.

Then, dancing sensuously, imagining a giant snake wrapped around her, she had noticed a stooped gray-haired old black man wearing sunglasses and making his way to a table just below the stage as she danced, using his white-tipped cane to find his way. She had immediately turned away from the man, turned back, turned away, then turned back. "Holy shit," she had gasped. She knew this man.

She had nearly frozen as knowledge came like a bolt of lightening shattering the darkness of her life: it was the one she and Rhonda had called Blind Preacher Ray, who sat like one who could see, put the floppy brown Bible on the small round table in front of him, and turned his face up toward Stephanie (dancing without a stitch on) through sunglasses whose wire, circular rims had become his trademark when, years ago, he had gone from church to church in the Seattle-Tacoma region, delivering sermons of such fire and brimstone that hundreds of sinners were reportedly saved each night.

Even as she had danced, the image of the snake retreating rapidly from her imagination, Stephanie had quickly remembered, in almost a visionary flash (a picture vividly expanding in her brain) that she along with her sister Rhonda, and her mother and father had attended Ray’s Pentecostal church in the low-rent section of Seattle years ago. Those had been good years, growing up in a church that rocked with gospel, that transcended racial and economic boundaries. It was a church that took care of its elderly and comforted the sick.

For an instant, now pushing herself to continue dancing, she had moved away to the other end of the stage, peering through smoky darkness of the club for familiar faces, tried to locate Dr. Burns, the devious, screwy-eyed college political science professor who always paid her well, then felt her head jerked forcibly around so that she had to look at the preacher, who blindly gazed up at her. It was as if two invisible hands had taken hold of her head and forced her to look towards the blind man.

Slowing her routine, still attempting to move with the music, unable to take her eyes off the blind man, she had felt like an insect under a telescope, a spider caught in the middle of its web, with an enormous eye watching her from above; she had recognized the sensation as marginally psychotic, and sensed her own guilt and failure melting in her guts like a huge block of ice. She had felt the eye before as she danced and had thought nothing of it. But now, she sensed that something was almost upon her, refused to look up, fearing she would be looking into the eye of God.

Going numb yet still mobile, fighting panic as the icy fear coursed like electricity through her, she had looked through the hazy glowing dark light, tried to lock eyes with the man behind the shades, the man who once knew her like a book, the one man apparently still capable of looking into the torn spider-web of her soul. Desperately, feeling the dark energy that had sustained her for four years flowing out of her, she had struggled to move numbly, slowly to the music, her routine dead, the audience losing interest as if on cue, all sound fading but the thumping of her own heart, and she almost screamed, "So, God, what am I supposed to do now?"

Now barely moving to the beat of the music, having run down like a wind-up toy, Stephanie had also remembered that she had had a Technicolor dream the night before about Ray singing in heaven with a choir of saints. She had clearly recalled that her sister Rhonda had been in the dream, standing next to Ray, who wore no sun glasses in the kingdom of Stephanie’s dream. Rhonda had been dressed in a gorgeous flowing white robe. The dream had struck her, as she awoke in the middle of the night, as both oddly comforting, certainly wonderful, and a bit frightening. She had wondered if she were going to die soon.

On the stage now, she had stopped, stood, and stared. And as she had gazed down at Preacher Ray, she had sought for rage to somehow sustain her dancing but felt only the compassionate soul beckoning her to come down and sit.

As the song stopped and she nervously stepped down from the stage and down the stairs, she had thought of Rhonda, knew this had to do with her sister, and walked to the Preacher’s table.

V. Clothed in her string outfit, feeling very much found out, Stephanie had sat in the stuffy worn chair next to the one occupied by Blind Preacher Ray, hoping this moment would pass, that she was having a terrible dream, knowing that his words would come, flowing like a river that poured from a source she no longer drank from. He had, after all, come for her. She was quite sure of that.

Sitting in the red felt chair, trying to watch the tall heavy blonde Magic go through her routine, Boston playing steadily in the background, Stephanie had felt her head throb with pain, her insides crumpling within her, and as she turned to the old man she knew that he would turn to her. He did, and she saw that he wore the same old huge gold cross that members of his congregation had given him as a Christmas present almost twenty years ago. (It was the year her father had been diagnosed with cancer and, prepared to die, had been prayed over by Blind Preacher Ray and some of the elders one evening in a Denny’s restaurant just south of the church, where she, Rhonda, her mom and dad used to go for evening meals. A month later doctors could find no trace of her father’s cancer.) The effect had been instantaneous, as if she had suddenly pushed through the dark walls that had kept her locked in some dark dream of her own creation.

"Hey, daddy," she had called to him weakly, feeling like the little girl who had come to know Ray at church school over twenty years ago. She had hoped for mercy, felt like weeping, wanted to reach out and touch the blind man’s face.

"Hello, Blue Button," the preacher had responded, using the name he had given her years ago when she had sung her heart out in the bathroom just behind the pulpit in the tiny hardware store where the mission congregation had gathered. Though she had no recollection of the event, she had been reminded of it until she graduated high school of the time that she had interrupted one of Preacher’s sermons with a song she had made up about blue buttons and angels.

Stephanie had breathed deeply, wished for a coat or something warmer to clothe her, felt chilled in the stuffy darkness of the nightclub. As always when she talked to this man, something stirred within her and, as she smiled, she felt that her soul was actually coming alive within her, that in time it could blossom as it once had. In the cold darkness of the club, she had felt the powerful warming presence of the man, and she sensed she was on the verge of beginning something new, though she didn’t know what.

"What you doin’ here, Daddy," Stephanie had asked weakly, even compliantly, seeking strength but finding only a submissive spirit that gave way, as it had years ago, to the words of the one man who had always inspired within her a reverence for that which she now could not name. "You’re a long ways from home, Daddy." She had smiled weakly, hoping for a reaffirming response.

"Lookin’ for you, little one," had come the gentle answer, and the blind man had looked her way, seeing but not seeing, knowing immediately (she knew) the condition of her soul. She had felt him gazing into her with the eyes of his own soul and wondered if he could see anything.

"Lookin’ for me? Why?" she had asked, suddenly a child seeking assurance that everything was all right. An image of Rhonda, covered in blood, one arm having been bloodily blown away, had suddenly flashed through her mind, and chilled to the bone she wondered if she should get a drink. Instead, she had looked to Ray.

"’Cause you need to come with me now, this night that you are called." Ray’s words, deep and tonal, had reverberated right through her, and it had made her think of the Old Testament, of how God spoke through his prophets.

Stephanie had felt as she were swimming in swirling dark water. Now just what is this all about, she had asked herself, unable to make sense of this encounter and thinking, This man I haven’t seen for years comes in my place and tells me it’s time to go, and I haven’t seen Preacher for years; haven’t seen anyone from home in years; don’t want to. Then she had begun cautiously, testing the waters beneath the icy veneer of her own cultivated facade. "Thought you were dead, Daddy," she had laughed in a soft, timid voice that she hadn’t used for years. She wasn’t sure why she’d said that.

"Whaddya see, child? Do I look dead to you? Besides, Lord got lots for me to do. Which is why I am here." Ray had laughed at this, a deep laugh from down in the spirit that as a young girl Stephanie had loved to hear. Now, however, her world moving towards transformation, Stephanie had to be careful. Hardened by the lessons of life, she intuitively knew she had to proceed gradually.

"Like, what? Get me away from here, take me home?" had come the question, Stephanie hoping briefly for one final evening on the stage. But in her heart, somehow, Stephanie had known that it was time to return, time to go back.

The Preacher had paused, looked up into the darkness above the stage, rubbed his right hand over his short-cropped gray hair, then turned again to look Stephanie’s way, and the slow urgency with which he moved told her, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that something was wrong, that this was an emergency, the end of something, and panic grew quickly in her. Stephanie shivered, hesitated, tried not to ask, then asked.

"It’s Rhonda, isn’t it?" she whispered, fearfully. Again, the bloody image of her sister flashed through Stephanie’s mind, her sister Rhonda, the only remaining member of her family. Stephanie’s parents had been killed three years ago as, driving from Seattle to Vegas, her own father at the wheel, both parents insisting on the visit, her parents’ car had collided head-on with a semi barreling down the wrong lane at two in the morning. An evil thing, both parents had died instantly, her mother decapitated, her father crushed almost beyond recognition. She had seen Rhonda at the funeral and afterwards had fought verbally with her sister, the two nearly coming to blows again.

Stephanie had remembered this now as the Preacher raised his head, looked at the stage, set his jaw and pursed his lips as he had always done when he was near tears. Stephanie knew the man’s emotions, recognized them now as her own, felt anguish for her sister.

"What happened to Rhonda?" Stephanie had gently demanded, sitting upright, facing the Preacher. Realizing she did not hate her sister, she was near tears. "Is Rhonda all right?" She felt the freezing iron chords of fear unravel and continue to melt in her stomach.

The Preacher had slowly turned his face toward her, the sounds fading, and said, "Rhonda’s dead, Blue Button. Rhonda’s dead. Died three nights ago. Time for you to come on home."

Stunned and shamed into silence, Stephanie had looked up at the darkness hovering over the tables and stages, wondered who or what might be up there, allowed a bloodied image of bats and demons to pass through her brain, realized she was losing touch with the world around her and then shivered slightly. She didn’t want to hear that Rhonda was dead. She wished Ray had stayed away.

"Happened late at night in a supermarket parking lot, honey, a truly evil thing," the Preacher began in a slow drawl that he always used in moments of tenderness, "when she was walking out of the store to her car. Pack of kids, wild things, drive by, hang a shot-gun out a back window, and shot your sister dead. Blast nearly tore her apart some people say. Some woman won’t give her name seen it from her car; says Rhonda must have died instantly."

Stephanie’s mind reeling, she had thought for an instant of getting sick and wondered if somehow she had wandered out of one nightmare and into someone else’s nightmare. Just twenty-four hours ago, she had recalled, she had been dancing happily on this stage, knowing that at 2:30 her boyfriend Carl the Jinx would pick her up in the parking lot out front and take her home. Tomorrow she was supposed to visit her agent and the company’s new producer, always looking for easy chicks. Now this horrible thing.

"It happened three nights ago?" Stephanie had asked, slowly turning to face the Preacher. "I didn’t know. I should know. I shoulda known. You or some one shoulda called. Shit." Stephanie had felt suddenly dizzy, light-headed, a bit panicked, as if the floor of the universe had dropped out below her. "Shit, shit, shit."

Wondering if she should cry, wondering why she didn’t cry, Stephanie could still feel the ice in her heart melt, old feelings return, knew again the agonizing guilt she had experienced after hurting her sister and then leaving Rhonda in the dead of night. And she realized that, in the back of her mind, she had never considered a reconciliation with her sister an impossibility. Indeed, in her heart, she had counted upon some kind of reconciliation at a future point in time, perhaps just before one of them died. Now, it was too, too late, and Stephanie felt very much alone.

She had put her head in her hands, closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and tried to pray. She had not expected this in the darkly crowded night club.

As she had known he would, Ray had leaned over toward her, almost as if he could see her, bent low towards her, put his arm around her shoulder. "Got somethin’ for you, Blue Button. I want you to take it. It’s here with me. Here it is; here’s a vision," Ray had whispered now, as he had always done when speaking of something truly sacred. "Get ready to see something, little Button. Just lean back, relax, close your eyes. It’s all right, honey. Just close your eyes, nobody gonna hurt you, and listen and you’ll see."

What in the hell is this, Stephanie had thought to herself, opening her eyes for an instant and glancing at Ray, now inches from her, hearing the constant music but no longer feeling it. What the hell is this? She had trusted the man, knew he would never harm her, but this request was unsettling

"What’s that, Daddy? Close my eyes and get ready for what?" Stephanie was more confused than defiant. She had looked hard at Preacher Ray, and he turned his head in her direction, and she knew he could see her. She wanted his direction.

"Just relax and close those beautiful blue eyes. Lemme give this to you," was all he said, his voice soothing as a summer shower after a heat wave. And, without questioning the Preacher again, she had muttered, "Oh, what the hell?", leaned back, rested her head on the soft back of the chair and closed her eyes. "Shoot, Daddy," she had said. "Lemme have this vision," she stated, not quite believing what was about to occur.

Then, waiting, Stephanie had remembered, years ago, that several members of the congregation had from time to time experienced visions in the form of dreams. Visions were always from God, not a manifestation of deeply buried and unresolved conflicts. Let it come, she told herself; let it come, oh, please let it come my way.

"I’m ready," Stephanie had finally said, bracing herself as the old man leaned over and, very gently, placed his hand on her forehead.

"In the dream," Ray had begun, his voice slightly rising, the words flowing through her like warm milk and honey, "I am standing on a mountains, clothed in a white robe, the greenest trees surrounding us, the sky so blue it hurts to look. This place is Eternity. And on that mountain side I stand with Jesus, your momma, your daddy, and Rhonda. They are all together, happy, like we all used to be, singing, swaying , holding hands, and between songs Rhonda asks about you, about how she and her parents missed you and look forward to seeing you. Then we all kneel and sing, the breeze whipping through the tires a sure reminder of the presence of the spirit of God."

Before Stephanie had had time to comment, she had felt the sensation of warmth flowing around and through her and was reminded of how she had sometimes felt during Ray’s sermons years ago. And then, almost without having to think, a picture had formed itself in her mind, like a movie on a screen, and she could see the mountains, huge, towering, and green, waterfalls beautifully cascading down the sides through the trees that were the greenest that Stephanie had ever seen. Relaxing, eyes shut, Stephanie had let the vivid blue sky surround her, enfold her, and felt the ground under her feet and the breeze moving through the trees, realizing that somehow she had entered this place that Ray had given her in the form of a vision, saw her father, her mother, and her sister standing not twenty feet from her, dressed in glorious colors of red, green, yellow, and white. Behind them stood a tall wiry handsome black man, smiling at her knowingly, and she knew it had to be the Preacher. And next to the Preacher stood one whom she had seen and known before, light emanating gloriously from him....

The vision had ended abruptly, and Stephanie was left in total darkness. Am I dead, or am I dreaming? she had asked herself. Afraid, she struggled to sit up, terrified, opened her eyes, heard the music and smelled the smoke and alcohol, and realized that she was still in the night club, seated next to the Preacher. Her ears buzzing, feeling indescribably different, she had asked, "What was that?"

The Preacher looked at her, smiled, said, "That was the vision."

Struggling to gain her bearings, her sense of reality, Stephanie had sat back, sighed, and wondered if someone had laced her drinks earlier in the evening with some hallucinogenic wonder-drug and realized that was not likely. She had fought to regain that which she had lost in the last few minutes. "People don’t have visions, Ray, and I sure as hell don’t know what that was. Wasn’t any damn vision." Yet, she did not doubt that she had seen something.

Finally, "What you want with me?" she had asked, yielding. The music was pounding in the background again, and one of her closest friends in the club, a black girl named Rhea, had taken the stage.

"I want you to come back with me is all," had been the answer, a small still voice calling to her through the hazy darkness of the club.

"Preacher, Daddy, " Stephanie had begun, "I got nothing to go back to if you’ve come to take me home. My home’s here now, Daddy. Please try to understand that." She had known arguing would be futile, knew that she now had no home, but had to try anyway even though, at this moment, she had felt certain that she would be leaving Las Vegas.

"Huh-uh, no it’s not here, your home, Baby Blue," the Preacher had corrected her. "The Lord says it is time to leave this place. So you come with me. I’ve come to take you, honey." Again, Stephanie had felt the pull of the still silent voice, sensed she was being pulled out of some kind of cave.

Fighting to resist the Preacher’s words, Stephanie had known she had already lost the battle, felt within herself a caving in, an acquiescence to the Preacher’s words, like some force both inside and outside of her was not letting her make up her own mind, pushing her to consent to go with the Preacher.

Stephanie had sat there, alone, for an hour, the Preacher right next to her. This, she told herself over and over, was totally fucking impossible. A Preacher comes into where I work, touches my forehead when I have my eyes closed, and I have a fuckin’ dream or vision?? No, this was impossible, she silently reminded herself. This is stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Yet, finally, sensing something inevitable, Stephanie had given in. She could not fight this.

Time had come. She had opened her eyes and looked square at the Preacher. "I’ll meet you outside the front door, Daddy," she had said, slowly rising from her chair, her legs weak and trembling, feeling no longer an attraction to the bar, only a deep, dark emptiness that she feared but that she knew would be filled if she followed Ray. In her heart, she had known she had to go.

As she began her walk to the back dressing room, Ray had risen from his seat, and tapping with his cane on the ground, made his way in the direction of the two glass entrance doors. As soon as she got into the back, she would open her locker and take out the floppy brown Bible that she had carried with her ever since she had left Seattle. It was the Bible that had belonged to Rhonda.

VI. Slamming her Bible shut and looking up at the dark patch brooding above her, Stephanie stood groggily from the bench. She was fully clothed with her New York Yankees baseball cap on her head, a Detroit Red Wings sweater, blue faded jeans, and sandals, all gifts from Carl the Jinx. Time to go, she thought to herself. Time to leave this fuckin’ place, start over, she told herself, rising from the bench, kicking the bottle aside and walking through the door into the club, then walking through the dark club to the big glass door that led to the outside world.

It was just as she put her right hand against one of the glass doors and pushed outwards that she remembered, as if someone had just struck her to the side of the head with a two-by-four, that Preacher Ray had been dead for three years or so. She remembered with the astounding clarity of a new church bell the morning of her parents’ call as she had sat in front of the tube, watching Jackie Gleason reruns late one afternoon. "Preacher Ray is dead, honey," Stephanie remembered her mother saying, tearfully, over the phone. "He died in his sleep a couple nights ago, God bless the man. One of the elders just found his body in his bed." It was at that moment in her life that Stephanie had felt something die inside, a light go out. She had wept briefly over the death of the one adult in this world who could love and forgive her, and by afternoon was watching her soaps.

She thought now, this night, of the announcement of Ray’s death, confused, stunned, as she opened the glass doors and strode into the parking lot at 2:15 AM., a sliver of a moon overhead. Looking around, she did not see Ray, knew in fact that Ray would not be there, then suddenly understood Ray’s message, his words "Time for you to go home" making complete sense as she looked up, startled by the screech of car tires close to her, the blazing headlights nearly blinding her, saw the dark blue Chevy Nova boring down on her at top speed, saw, heard and felt the dull thudding and bloody impact of her body against the car’s front end as, spraying blood, she flew into the air, free as a bird in flight, lifted off the earth, aware that she had just left this world, feeling no pain, joyful about seeing Rhonda and her mom and dad. It’s where she belonged.

She knew too that Ray was waiting for her on the mountain side, standing in a sea of the bluest sky imaginable, a place with an eternally blazing sun, and she swore she could hear the singing of heavenly hosts. Now, floating in a beautiful haze of blue, she couldn’t wait to get there.

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