The Second Coming (31 page)

“Like what?” James asked as he turned and wiped his hands dry with a small towel. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

Mike raised the dark bottle to his mouth and tilted the bottom up and took a large gulp. “Do you know about the Sterling Killer?”

“Sure, who doesn’t?” James said sarcastically as he walked over and leaned on the counter with both arms, staring at Father John with his dark eyes and neatly parted hair. James was his elder brother by one year and looked distinguished like their father, with sharp features. “You’d have to have been living in a cave not to know about him.”

“What do you know about him?” Father John asked curious as to what the public knew compared to what he knew from his dreams.

“I know that he is a serial killer that is raping and stabbing young lady bartenders in the heart with a sterling silver knife shaped like a cross and leaving their disemboweled bodies to be found on altars,” James replied with an obvious tone. “Do you know something else?”

Father John took another slug from his beer and then set it on the granite counter. He held it with both hands as he fiddled with the label, staring distantly at the bottle. The public knew the details that were released by the police, but they did not know the lust and anger that drove the Sterling Killer and they didn’t know the gory details of his twisted mind that Father John glimpsed in his dreams. Every time he thought about the perverse nature of the Sterling Killer’s thoughts it made him feel like someone had taken his purity. He would never again know what it was like not to have an impure thought and it made him feel violated.

“I’ve been having dreams about the murders,” Father John said as he looked up into his brother’s eyes.

“What kind of dreams?”

“I see the murders from the killer’s eyes like I am the one raping and stabbing them. It’s like I am the Sterling Killer in my dreams.”

“How is that possible?” James asked perplexed as he folded his arms across his chest.

Father John sighed and took the last swig of his beer. “The police think I may have a split personality that is committing the crimes and that I am mistaking my split personality’s memory of committing the killings as dreams.”

“I find that hard to believe. You are the most holy person I know. There has to be another explanation.”

Father John got up slowly and went to fridge and grabbed two more beers and then returned to his stool at the counter and handed one to his brother.

“The Devil is testing me,” Father John told James as he twisted the cap off of the bottle with a
psht
. “In the face of the surmounting evidence that I indeed did commit these inhumane crimes, he is testing me to see if I will abandon my conviction in a righteous God.”

“What will you do if they arrest you?”

“I will accept my fate as the will of God.” Father John replied plainly. “It is not for me to ask why; it is only for me to accept that it is part of God’s grand plan. If there is one thing I have come to know after all my years of learning, it’s that we cannot know and understand what God’s plan is. We have to have faith.”

James took a long swig from his beer as he pondered what his brother was telling him. “What if you do have a split personality that committed these crimes? What will you do then?”

Father John glared at James disappointed. “If the Devil has created a split personality in me, God will grant me the strength to defeat him.”

James shook his head with disbelief. “I don’t know whether to admire your faith or to feel sorry for you for allowing your faith to lead you down a path of self destruction.”

Father John reached into the side of his robe and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and began to pack them with a whack on the counter.

“You smoke too?” James said astonished.

Father John pulled out a cigarette, placing it precariously on his moist lips. Leaving the open pack on the counter, he reached into his pocket and produced a disposable white lighter and held the flame to the end of the cigarette as he puffed on it until there was a glowing orange ember.

Father John took a drag from his cigarette and closed his eyes. “I remember when I first found out that mom died while giving birth to me,” Father John said reflectively as smoke slowly dissipated from his mouth and nose. “Mathew got mad at me one day, I don’t remember why, and told me that it was my fault that Mom was dead. When I asked Dad later what he meant by that, he told me that my mom had died due to complications while in labor with me.” He tapped the ash from his cigarette into his empty beer bottle as the smoke streamed into the kitchen air. “He told me that it was no fault of my own and that it was God’s will, but I felt responsible for her death.” He took another drag, exhaled and took a swallow from his beer. “He explained that we could not know why God did these things and that we just have to have faith that it is part of his grand plan.”

James looked at his brother with a long face of remorse as he pulled out a stool and sat at the island and listened intently.

“When I asked him what faith meant, he told me that it was an unquestioning trust in something.” Father John was sitting, leaning over
casually with his right elbow on the counter holding his cigarette up as the smoke trailed off and his left hand grasped the beer bottle on the counter. “He explained that if I saw God with my own eyes then I would trust that he was real and believe in him. Faith, he said, is believing in God without ever seeing him and trusting your life with him because he was something I knew in my heart to be true even without evidence to support his existence.” Father John held the cigarette to his lips between his thumb and forefinger like he was holding a joint and took another drag, exhaling streams of smoke out his nostrils. “He told me that God has a special plan for me and that if I put my faith in God, one day I would know why he took my mother away from me and what his plan is.”

James watched his brother with a look of amazement, as if he was seeing him for the first time.

“At first I didn’t notice anything different about myself, but as I got older I realized that I could do things that the other kids couldn’t do and that I understood the way of the world in a way that not even adults could understand,” Father John explained with a proud reflective gaze. “I have the power to heal and save; I have the power of persuasion and I can convince people to agree with me simply by saying something with conviction. I was gifted and blessed with power and knowledge beyond my comprehension,” he said shaking his head with astonishment as he took another drag from his cigarette and chased it with a swig of his beer.

“That is when I decided to dedicate my life to my faith in God and immersed myself in the study of religion. I know there is a reason why I am here and why my mom died and I want to know more. I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge and enlightenment. I need to understand how we fit in his grand plan,” Father John continued as he took a drag from his cigarette and dropped the butt into the empty bottle as it sizzled on the counter. “That’s why I left home and traveled the world to learn the teachings from scholars and holy aesthetics, hoping that they could teach me the truth and tell me how to become enlightened, but the more I learned, the more I realized that enlightenment is not something that can be taught. It has to be experienced. That is why there are so few people who are enlightened.”

“What did you do?” James asked captivated by his brother’s tale.

“I went on a sabbatical to the Vatican and met the most exquisite woman you have ever seen and fell in love with her,” he recalled fondly.
“She taught me things I never knew were possible and opened my eyes to a whole new world. The love we shared made me feel closer to God than I ever thought possible.”

“What happened to her?”

“For over a year we lived together and laughed and loved and danced. That is where I picked up these vices,” he said sardonically motioning to the cigarettes and beers sitting on the granite counter. “I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her and I asked her to marry me but she told me the timing wasn’t right. She knew me better than I knew myself,” he said with a reflective pause. “She knew that one day I would leave her in my quest for enlightenment.”

“Tell me about her.” James pleaded. “What is her name? Where did you live?”

For the next couple of hours the two brothers sat at the kitchen island drinking beers together as Father John regaled him with his exploits. He told him about the enchanting Arianna and how they lived in her apartment above the art studio and how they entertained their powerful and wealthy clientele with lavish parties. He explained that because selling art was just a game and that it didn’t truly matter to him that he became a very successful art dealer. It was because he didn’t worry if someone bought a piece of art or not that he was able to talk about the beauty and meaning of the art in such a way that he was able to sell more than if his life depended on it. Father John understood that the key to selling was to establish a relationship of trust with the purchaser instead of trying to sell it in order to make money. He told James about all of the money they made and the people they met and the parties they had and James listened with a mesmerized glow to his face.

Nothing mattered to Father John except Arianna’s love and she would at times become aggravated with his flippant attitude towards the business that allowed them to live the life they lived. She didn’t understand how he could be so care free and he would explain that because he had nothing when he started, he had nothing to lose. He told her all of the things he did were for her and that they were insignificant to him. In the end, all of the money and parties meant nothing to him and he realized he was left with an empty, self gratifying life and even though he loved Arianna with all of his being, it wasn’t enough. His journey was not over. He still had a thirst for knowledge and enlightenment and he knew he had to leave. Leaving Arianna was the
hardest thing he ever did, but his journey was not over. Something was calling him; pulling him back.

“I envy you,” James told him with admiration when he was done. “You have lived the most fascinating life on your own terms and because of your faith, you’ve never questioned what you were doing. You let life guide you where it may.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Father John warned him with an ironic wave of his finger as he got up from his stool. “My life may seem like an adventure, but I’ve spent it in search of an elusive answer that might not be attainable. Arianna once told me that I am a lot like a drug addict in search of the high that doesn’t exist. I keep getting little tastes of the answer I am searching for, but it’s never enough to fully satisfy me. It’s just enough to keep me searching for the answer I may never find.”

chapter
53

A
FTER THEY FINISHED
talking in the kitchen, Father John went upstairs to visit his father. He could see his dad’s decrepit body lying motionless under the neatly folded sheets of his bed, hooked up with tubes to life support machines. His heart was filled with a hopeless sense of sorrow as he paused outside the door to reflect on the great love and admiration he felt for this noble man. He watched as the machines pumped and beeped life into his father and he knew in his soul that this once great man, who devoted his life selflessly to raising his 5 sons as children of God with a moral and righteous upbringing, this man of unyielding integrity, would soon be joining God and his dearly departed wife in Heaven. It was time and Father John was going to make his dad’s transition to the afterlife as painless as possible. It gave him solace to know that all he had learned over all these years, from men wiser than he, could now be used to help his beloved father.

The pungent stench of urine mixed with the stale smell of an old person caused him to wince. It was a thick, heavy smell that seemed to stick to his clothes and was not helped by the lack of ventilation in the room. He moved over to the wall adjacent to his dad’s bed and opened the dark plantation shutters and raised the window. A cool breeze swept over the father as he grabbed a lacquered side chair from the wall next to the life support equipment and placed it beside his father.

He sat down in the chair and stared at his father’s ashen face with regretful admiration. They lost so many years when Father John was off in search of enlightenment. There was so much he had learned that he wanted to share with his father, but it was too late. All the years he was searching and seeking knowledge and answers caused him to neglect his time with his
father and family and there was nothing that could be done to change that. He was going to do his best to make up for lost time in the brief time his father had left.

He reached out for his father’s frail hand and held it in his. It was boney with thin, loose skin. Holding his handed reminded him of the security he used to feel as a child when his dad held his hand tenderly. They used to play a game where Father John’s dad would squeeze his hand three short times which meant “I love you” and Father John would squeeze his father’s hand back four quick times which meant “I love you more”. His hand had felt so small in his dad’s large hand and now his dad’s fragile hand felt so small in his hand. It was the cycle of life and Father John smiled and gave his dad’s hand three gentle squeezes with a heavy heart as he trembled with the overwhelming feeling of wanting to cry. Gritting his teeth and fighting back the tears, he bowed his head and prayed in silence.