Authors: Robert Swartwood
I wondered briefly how many times the pastor had told this story. For as long as he’d been here, he was no doubt asked about the beam. Did the story change slightly every time he told it—did he add something new? Or did he have the thing memorized and got so bored with the telling after so long that it was like saying one of the many Bible verses they make children learn in Sunday school?
“The only way for what?” I asked.
“Forgiveness. Redemption, maybe.” He shrugged. “Who really knows?”
We continued walking again, down another hallway, and seconds later we were in his office, Pastor James Young behind his large oak desk, me in one of the two chairs facing him.
“Now,” he said, “what is it I can help you with?”
“To be honest, I’m not really sure you can help me at all.”
He forced a smile. “I can always try.”
Despite the church’s size—its attendance for both morning services was close to one thousand on any given Sunday—his office was tiny. Besides the desk, which took up a good quarter of the room, there were three filing cabinets huddled in one corner, and a large bookcase that covered nearly an entire wall. Books mostly on theology filled the shelves. A bonsai tree sat on a table behind his desk, and while it was positioned to receive sunlight from one of the two opened windows, it looked as if a few of its tiny branches had begun to wither.
“How much do you know about what happened last week?”
He looked down at his desk, moved a stack of papers from one side to the other, and sighed. “Just that your parents were murdered. That you found their bodies. That the police first suspected you of doing it but then cleared you.”
“That’s it?”
He nodded.
So that sounded about right. Those were the key facts, the essential information, that was put in the papers. Not about what was painted on my bedroom door. Not about how it was supposedly a calling card from the killer saying I was next.
“I’m going away for a little,” I said. “For a week or a month, I don’t know how long. Steve ... well, he wanted me to talk to a psychiatrist before I left. Wanted to make sure I’m okay in the head.”
The frown appeared on the pastor’s face again. “So then why did Police Chief Carpenter ask that I speak with you?”
“Because I told him I’d rather see you instead.”
“Why?”
I glanced away, toward the wall that had random pictures of different sizes scattered all over a large corkboard. Many were of Pastor James Young and his family—his wife and two sons—while others showed him together with various church families. One of those church families was my parents. Taken at what looked like a church picnic, the pastor standing between my father and mother, all three of them with their arms around their shoulders, smiling at the camera.
“Christopher? Why did you want to see me instead?”
I leaned forward in my seat. Opened my mouth but didn’t say anything.
“Are feeling okay?” James Young asked. “You look pale. Do you want something to drink? I can get you a bottle of water. Or—” His eyes shifted to something on his desk. “How about a lollipop?”
It was then that I noticed the jar of lollipops on his desk. Together they created the color of the rainbow. I remembered it was one of Pastor Young’s trademarks, to always have a lollipop or two in his suit jacket every Sunday morning. Oftentimes a child might start acting up, begin crying, and while he was in the lobby he would hold out a lollipop and say, “Hey now, no need to be sad.” It was the same thing he’d said to me the day I was baptized. I had been five years old. I was nervous, having to go out in front of a full congregation of strangers, and began crying. And James Young, the good pastor that he was, pulled out a red lollipop, leaned down, and with a smile said, “Hey now, Christopher, no need to be sad.”
It had been true then, but now, thirteen years later, my life had been turned upside down. Family that I’d hardly even known existed was now a part of my life, and I would soon be traveling with them to New York to hide away from what could only be called a sociopath.
“What’s that?” I said, pointing past the jar of rainbow-colored lollipops at something else on his desk. “You’re not recording this, are you?”
He gave me a peculiar look, then glanced down at the tape recorder resting beside his telephone. He placed a hand on it, shaking his head. “No, of course not. Before you came I was listening to a tape Matt Hatfield sent me yesterday. They had a speaker over at Trinity last weekend he wanted me to hear. The man travels around the country with his—”
“Do demons exist?”
A breeze came through the opened windows, causing the bonsai tree to shiver.
Pastor James Young said, “I’m sorry?”
“Demons,” I said. “Do they exist?”
“That’s why you wanted to see me? To ask me about”—he cleared his throat—“demons?”
“Actually, I’d originally wanted to discuss the indifference of God. You know, that whole why-does-bad-stuff-happen-to-good-people debate.”
“And you don’t want to discuss that anymore?”
“Not really. Pardon my French, but I figure if we did discuss that, you’d give me one long line of bullshit, and I really don’t have the patience for that right now.”
“So instead you’d rather ask me about demons.”
“That’s right.”
“Any particular reason why?”
“Just curious.”
He was silent for a moment, just watching me, before speaking. “Why, yes, of course they exist.”
“Can you prove it?”
“They’re mentioned in the Bible.”
“No, I mean something more substantial.”
“I baptized you when you were very young. If you don’t mind my asking, Christopher, are you still a believer?”
“That doesn’t pertain to my question.”
“But it does. Because if you believe that God exists, then you believe that Satan exists. And if you believe that they exist, then you must also believe that angels and demons exist.”
“But how do you
know
?”
He opened his mouth, started to say something, then shut it. Seemed to think for a few seconds, before saying, “Faith.”
I shook my head. “That’s not good enough.”
“Okay, then what about ghosts? Do you believe that ghosts exist?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You know it’s funny, but people around the world are more apt to believe in the existence of ghosts than they are in demons. Maybe that’s because through the ages people have come to think of demons as these little red creatures with horns and tails and pitchforks. But they’re nothing like that. They ... they’re just like angels in a way, but no longer good.”
He leaned forward in his chair, setting his hands on the desktop.
“Some people also believe that when you die, you become either an angel or a demon. This is untrue. Angels and demons, they’re completely different species than us. They were here close to the beginning of time and they’ll be here toward the end of time, but we humans ... our existence lasts only in a blink of God’s eye.”
He paused.
“Christopher, I’d really like to help you here, but I can’t do that unless you tell me what’s going on. Why are you asking about demons?”
I glanced at the wall of pictures again. “Last week,” I started to say, but then faltered, lost my voice. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Last week, after what happened, I remembered a dream I had about a year ago. In the dream I was walking around a massive store, like a Walmart, and it was completely deserted. Eventually I needed to take a piss so I went into the bathroom. It was really bright inside and silent, so much so when the door shut it echoed.”
My eyes had focused on the picture of my parents.
“So then I’m standing there at the urinal, just minding my own business, when someone comes out of one of the stalls. He doesn’t flush the toilet or anything, he just opens the door and comes out. And ... and somehow I’m seeing all of this, like from a third person point of view. I see myself standing at the urinal, and I see this man walking from the stalls toward the sinks. To get there, he needs to pass me, and I don’t really think too much about it, because why should I? But it’s right when he passes me, his shoes echoing off the floor, that he suddenly steps forward, wraps his hands around my neck, and starts choking me.”
I blinked, looked back at the pastor.
“And at that same moment I woke up and I ... I couldn’t breathe. It was like someone was standing right over me, trying to choke the life out of me. I couldn’t move. I tried waving my arms around but I just couldn’t move. And it was still dark in my room but I could have sworn I saw someone leaning over me, right there in front of me with his hands around my neck. And ... well, I eventually managed to fall off the bed. Once I hit the floor I could breathe again. And I looked around, trying to catch my breath, and in every corner I expected to see someone there, someone ... you know, the person who had just tried choking me. It was still early in the morning, both my parents were asleep, so I went back to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there and watched the corners, figuring that the moment I closed my eyes, the shadows would move and the person hiding there would come back out and finish the job.”
I paused, cleared my throat, and said, “You know, I think I could go for a bottle of water after all.”
Pastor James Young swiveled in his chair and opened a mini-fridge underneath the table behind his desk. He pulled out a bottle of Deer Park and handed it to me.
I uncapped it and took a few sips of the water, then wiped my mouth and set the bottle aside.
“Okay,” Pastor James Young said after a moment, when it was clear I wasn’t going to speak. “So you think ... it was a demon that tried attacking you?”
“I didn’t. I thought it was just one of those dreams that was really real. Like when you dream you’re playing baseball and the ball comes right at your head and you jerk up out of sleep the moment it almost hits you. But I told my parents about it the next day, and my mom”—glancing once again at the corkboard—“
she
put the idea in my head. She said that I was being oppressed.”
“Do you think you were being oppressed?”
“I don’t know. But after last week, after ... after finding my parents like I did, I’ve been thinking a lot about that dream. Because you know how you asked me earlier how I’m feeling? I’m exhausted, yeah, but ever since last week, I’ve felt just like I did that morning a year ago. Just lying in bed and watching for one of the shadows in the corner to move. Because I know what this guy is waiting for, the bastard who killed my parents.”
The pastor looked even more uncomfortable than before. He glanced down at his desk, started to move that stack of papers but then thought better of it, took a deep breath. “What do you think he’s waiting for?”
“He’s waiting for me to close my eyes. He’s waiting for me to go back to sleep so he can come and finish what he started.”
Chapter 2
H
ere is how the police reconstructed the last couple hours of my parents’ lives:
After the Lanton High School graduation Friday night, after hearing their only son’s name announced and then watching him receive his diploma, after tracking him down through the sea of students and parents afterward so they could give him a hug, so they could get a few pictures of him in his maroon gown and mortarboard, they told him they were very proud of him and then got ignored when their son spotted some friends and said he had to leave, that he’d see them later.
Somewhere then in the gymnasium lobby they met up with Jack and Celia Murphy, whose older daughter, Melanie, I had dated for nearly two years. We had since broken up, but over those two years the Murphys had become close friends with my parents. So my parents met them there and engaged in some small talk, before deciding to meet at the Friendly’s along the highway. There they ordered ice cream sundaes and the men talked about hunting while the women talked about books. According to their waitress, whom the police only identified as Bethany, they spent nearly two hours at their table, taking their time with their desserts, getting their water glasses refilled every half hour. Then, around ten o’clock, my father and Jack Murphy argued over who was going to pay the check. Neither of them agreed to split it. They actually ended up playing a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, and then got into a heated debated on whether it was one two three go, or one two and then go on three.
“It was kind of cute,” Bethany told police. “They sort of acted like brothers.”
In the end, my father came out victorious, his Rock beating Jack Murphy’s Scissors.
At ten-fifteen, in the Friendly’s parking lot, my parents said their goodbyes. My mother and Celia Murphy hugged, my father and Jack Murphy shook hands, Jack promising that he was going to beat my father next time, and then my parents left. They stopped at a gas station on the way home, my father filling up the tank of his Volvo, then going inside to purchase a quart of milk and a fresh loaf of bread. This the police confirmed from credit card receipts and the gas station surveillance video and the night clerk. My parents drove directly home, where they arrived at somewhere between ten-forty and ten-fifty. This was confirmed by Bud Donnelly, a forty-two-year-old investment banker who lived next door with his wife. He had just gotten back from taking his cocker spaniel for a walk when my parents pulled into the driveway.