This Present Darkness

by Frank E. Peretti

  Mayer and Coleman kept a close eye on each other, silently mouthing as they counted. Mayer finished counting, waited for Coleman to finish. Coleman finished, looked at Mayer and asked him if he wanted to count again. They counted again.

  Then Mayer took his pen, wrote the result on a slip of paper, and carried it up to Brummel. Mayer and Coleman took their seats as Brummel unfolded the paper.

  Visibly shaken, Brummel took a few moments to put on his relaxed, businesslike, public image.

  “Well …” he began, trying to control the tone of his voice, “all right, then. The … pastor has been retained.”

  One side of the room loosened up, tittered, and smiled. The other side gathered up coats and belongings to leave.

  “Alf, what was the vote?” someone wanted to know.

  “Uh … it doesn’t say.”

  “Twenty-eight to twenty-six!” Gordon Mayer said accusingly, looking back toward Lou Stanley.

  But Lou Stanley had left.

  CHAPTER 11

  TAL, SIGNA, AND the other sentries could see the explosion from where they stood. With cries and wails of rage, demons scattered everywhere, erupting through the roof and sides of the church like shrapnel and fanning out in all directions over the town. Their cries became a loud, echoing drone of savage fury that rang over the whole town like a thousand melancholy factory whistles, sirens, and horns.

  “They will wreak havoc tonight,” said Tal.

  Mota, Chimon, and Guilo were there to report.

  “By two votes,” said Mota.

  Tal smiled and said, “Very well, then.”

  “But Lou Stanley!” Chimon exclaimed. “Was that really Lou Stanley?”

  Tal caught the implication. “Yes, that was Mr. Stanley. I’ve been standing right here ever since I delivered Edith Duster.”

  “I see the Spirit has been working!” Guilo chuckled.

  “Let’s get Edith home safely and get a guard around her. Everyone to your posts. There will be angry spirits over the town tonight.”

  That night the police were busy. Fights broke out in the local taverns, slogans were spray-painted on the courthouse, some cars were stolen and joy-ridden through the lawn and flowers in the park.

  LATE INTO THE night, Juleen Langstrat hovered in an inescapable trance, halfway between a tormented life on earth and the licking, searing flames of hell. She lay on her bed, tumbled to the floor, clawed her way up the wall to stand on her feet, staggered about the room, and fell to the floor again. Threatening voices, monsters, flames, and blood exploded and pounded with unimaginable force in her head; she thought her skull would burst. She could feel claws tearing at her throat, creatures squirming and biting inside her, chains around her arms and legs. She could hear the voices of spirits, see their eyes and fangs, smell their sulfurous breath.

  The Masters were angry! “Failed, failed, failed, failed” pounded in her brain and paraded before her eyes. “Brummel has failed, you have failed, he will die, you will die …”

  Did she really hold a knife in her hand, or was this too a vision from the higher planes? She could feel a yearning, a terribly strong impulse to be free of the torment, to break loose from the bodily shell, the prison of flesh that bound her.

  “Join us, join us, join us,” said the voices. She felt the edge of the blade, and blood trickled down her finger.

  The telephone rang. Time froze. The bedroom registered on her retinas. The telephone rang. She was in her bedroom. There was blood on the floor. The telephone rang. The knife fell from her hands. She could hear voices, angry voices. The telephone rang.

  She was on her knees on the floor of her bedroom. She had cut her finger. The phone was still ringing. She called out hello, but it still rang.

  “I won’t fail you,” she said to her visitors. “Leave me. I won’t fail you.”

  The telephone rang.

  Alf Brummel sat in his home, listening to the phone ringing on the other end. Juleen must not be home. He hung up, relieved, if only for the moment. She would not be happy about the vote. Another delay, still another delay in the Plan. He knew he could not avoid her, that she would find out, that he would be confronted and berated by the others.

  He flopped down on his bed and contemplated resigning, escape, suicide.

  SATURDAY MORNING. THE sun was out, and lawn mowers called to each other across fences, hedges, and cul-de-sacs; kids were playing, hoses were spraying dirty cars.

  Marshall sat in the kitchen, at the table filled with advertising copy and a list of new and old accounts; the Clarion still lacked a secretary.

  The front door opened and in came Kate. “I need a hand!”

  Yes, the inevitable unloading of groceries.

  “Sandy,” Marshall hollered out the back door, “let’s get going!” Over the years the family had developed a pretty good system of grocery separating, handling, and stashing.

  “Marshall,” said Kate, passing vegetables from a sack to him at the refrigerator, “are you still working on that copy? It’s Saturday!”

  “Almost finished. I hate to have stuff stack up on me. How’s Joe and the gang?”

  Kate stopped a bunch of celery in midtransfer and said, “You know what? Joe’s gone. He sold the store and moved away, and I didn’t even hear about it.”

  “Brother. Things happen fast around here. So where’d he move?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody would tell me. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I like that new owner.”

  “What’s this cleaner here?”

  “Oh, put that under the sink.” It went under the sink. “I asked that guy about Joe and Angelina and why they sold the store and why they moved and where they moved and he wouldn’t tell me anything, just said he didn’t know.”

  “That’s the owner of the store? What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me that either.”

  “Well, does he talk? Does he know English?”

  “Enough to ring up your groceries and take your money, and that’s about it. Now could we get all this stuff off the table?”

  Marshall started gathering up all his papers before the oncoming invasion of cans and produce.

  Kate continued, “I guess I’ll get used to it, but for a while I thought I’d gone into the wrong store. I didn’t recognize anybody. They might even have all new people working there.”

  Sandy spoke for the first time. “Something weird’s going on in this town.”

  Marshall asked, “Oh yeah?”

  Sandy didn’t elaborate.

  Marshall tried to draw it out of her. “Well, what do you think it is?”

  “Aw, nothing, really. It’s just a feeling I get. People around here are starting to act weird. I think we’re being invaded by aliens.”

  Marshall let it go.

  The groceries were all put away, Sandy went back to her studies, and Kate got ready to work in the garden. Marshall had a phone call to make. Talk about weird aliens invading the town jarred his memory and also his reporter’s nose. Maybe Langstrat wasn’t an alien, but she was certainly weird.

  He sat on the couch in the living room and took the slip of paper with Ted Harmel’s phone number from his wallet. A sunny Saturday morning would be a strange time to find someone home and indoors, but Marshall figured he’d try.

  The phone on the other end rang several times and then a man’s voice answered. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Ted Harmel?”

  “Yes, who’s this?”

  “This is Marshall Hogan, the new Clarion editor.”

  “Oh, uh-huh …” Harmel waited for Marshall to go on.

  “Well, anyway, you know Bernice Krueger, right? I have her working for me.”

  “Oh, she’s still there, eh? Has she found out anything about her sister?”

  “Mm, I don’t know much about that, she’s never told me.”

  “Oh. So how’s the paper doing?”

  They talked for a few minutes about the Clarion, the office, circ
ulation, whatever may have happened to the cord to the coffeemaker. Harmel seemed particularly concerned to hear that Edie had left.

  “Her marriage broke up,” Marshall told him. “Hey, it was a complete surprise to me. I came in too late to know what was going on.”

  “Hmmm … yeah …” Harmel was doing some thinking on the other end.

  Keep it flowing, Hogan. “Yeah, well, I’ve got a daughter who’s a freshman at the college.”

  “Is that right.”

  “Yeah, doing her prerequisites, jumping through the hoop. She likes it.”

  “Well, more power to her.”

  Harmel was certainly being patient.

  “You know, Sandy has a psychology professor I thought was an interesting gal.”

  “Langstrat.”

  Bingo. “Yeah, yeah. A lot of unusual ideas.”

  “I bet.”

  “Do you know anything about her?”

  Harmel paused, sighed, and then asked, “Well, what is it you want to know?”

  “Where’s she coming from, anyway? Sandy’s bringing home some weird ideas …”

  Harmel had trouble coming up with an answer. “It’s … uh … Eastern mysticism, ancient religious craft. She’s just into, you know, meditation, higher consciousness … uh … the oneness of the universe. I don’t know if any of that makes sense to you.”

  “Not much. But she seems to spread it around a lot, doesn’t she?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, she meets with people on a regular basis; Alf Brummel, and, uh, who else? Pinckston …”

  “Delores Pinckston?”

  “Right, on the board of regents. Dwight Brandon, Eugene Baylor—”

  Harmel cut in abruptly. “What is it you want to know?”

  “Well, I understand you were pretty close to the situation—”

  “No, that’s wrong.”

  “Didn’t you have sessions with her yourself?”

  There was a long pause. “Who told you that?”

  “Oh, we … just found out.”

  Another long pause. Harmel sighed through his nose. “Listen,” he asked, “what else do you know?”

  “Not much. It just smells like there might be a story in it. You know what that’s like.”

  Harmel was struggling, fuming, groping for words. “Yes, I know what it’s like. But you’re wrong this time, you’re really wrong!” Another pause, another struggle. “Oh, brother, I wish you hadn’t called me.”

  “Hey, listen, we’re both newspapermen—”

  “No! You’re the newspaperman! I’m out. I’m sure you know all about me.”

  “I know your name, your number, and that you used to own the Clarion.”

  “All right, let’s leave it at that. I still have respect for the vocation. I don’t want to see you ruined.”

  Marshall tried not to lose a big fish. “Say, don’t leave me in the dark!”

  “I’m not trying to leave you in the dark. There are some things I just can’t talk about.”

  “Sure, I understand. No problem.”

  “No, you don’t understand. Now listen to me! I don’t know what you’ve found out, but whatever it is, bury it. Do something else. Cover the Kiwanis tree planting, anything innocuous, but just keep your nose clean.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “And quit pumping me for information! What I’m giving you is all you’re going to get, and you’d better make good use of it. I’m telling you, forget Langstrat, forget anything you may have heard about her. Now I know you’re a reporter, and so I know you’re going to go out and do just the opposite of what I’m telling you, but let me give you fair warning: Don’t.” Hogan didn’t answer. “Hogan, you hear me?”

  “How can I possibly leave it alone now?”

  “You have a wife, a daughter? Think of them. Think of yourself. Otherwise you’ll be out on your ear like everybody else.”

  “What do you mean, everybody else?”

  “I don’t know anything, I don’t know Langstrat, I don’t know you, I don’t live there anymore. Period.”

  “Ted, are you in trouble?”

  “Leave it alone!”

  He hung up. Marshall slammed the receiver down and let his mind race as he sat there. Leave it alone, Harmel said. Leave it alone.

  In a pig’s eye.

  EDITH DUSTER—WISE OLD matron of the church, former missionary to China, a widow of some thirty years—lived in the Willow Terrace Apartments, a small retirement complex not far from the church. She was in her eighties, subsisted meagerly on Social Security and a minister’s pension from her denomination, and loved to have company, especially since it was difficult for her to get out and around these days.

  Hank and Mary sat at her little dinette near the large window overlooking the building’s courtyard. Grandma Duster poured tea from a very old, very charming teapot into equally charming teacups. She was dressed nicely, almost formally, as always when she received guests.

  “No,” she said as she sat down at last, the morning tea table properly set, the pastries in place. “I don’t believe God’s purposes are ever thwarted for long. He has His own ways of working His people through difficulties.”

  Hank agreed, but weakly, “I imagine so …” Mary held his hand.

  Grandma was firm. “I know so, Henry Busche. Your being here is not a mistake; I strongly disagree with that notion. If you were not supposed to be here, the Lord would not have accomplished the things He has through your ministry.”

  Mary volunteered some information. “He feels a bit down about the vote.”

  Grandma smiled lovingly and looked into Hank’s eyes. “I think the Lord is forcing a revival upon that church, but its like the turning of the tide: before the tide can come back in, it first has to stop all its going out. Give the church time to turn around. Expect opposition, even expect to lose a few people, but the direction will change after the lull. Just give it time.

  “But I do know one thing: there was nothing that could keep me away from that meeting last night. I was dreadfully sick, Satan’s attack, I suppose, but it was the Lord who got me out. Right about the time of the meeting I could just feel His arms bearing me up and I got my coat on and got down there, and just in time, too. I don’t know if I’d even go that far to get groceries. It was the Lord, I know it. I’m just sorry I only had one vote.”

  “So who do you suppose the other vote came from?” Hank asked.

  Mary quickly added, “It couldn’t have been Lou Stanley.”

  Grandma smiled. “Oh, now don’t say that. You never know what the Lord might do. But you are curious, aren’t you?”

  “I’m really curious,” said Hank, and now he smiled too.

  “Well, you might find out, and maybe you never will. But it’s all in the Lord’s hands, and so are you. Let me warm up your tea.”

  “That church can’t possibly survive if half the congregation removes its support, and I can’t imagine them supporting a pastor they don’t want.”

  “Oh, but I’ve had dreams of angels lately.” Grandma was always very matter-of-fact about such things. “I don’t usually, but I’ve seen angels before, and always when there was great headway to be made for the kingdom of God. I just have a feeling in my spirit that something is really stirring here. Haven’t you felt that way?”

  Hank and Mary looked at each other to see which of them should speak first. Then Hank told Grandma all about the battle of the other night and the burden he had felt lately for the town. Mary slipped in her remembrances whenever they came to her. Grandma listened with great fascination, responding at key moments with “Oh dear,” “Well, praise the Lord,” and “Well …!”

  “Yes,” she said finally, “yes, that makes a lot of sense to me. You know, I had an experience just the other night, standing right by that window.” She pointed to the front window overlooking the courtyard. “I was getting the place straightened up, getting ready for bed, and I walked by that window
and looked out at the rooftops and the streetlight and all of a sudden I got really dizzy. I had to sit down or I’d fall down. And I never get dizzy. The only time that ever happened before was in China. My husband and I were visiting a woman’s home there, and she was a medium, a spiritist, and I knew she hated us and I think she was trying to put a curse on us. But just outside her door I had the same dizzy sensation, and I’ll never forget it. What I felt the other night was just like that time in China.”

  “What did you do?” Mary asked.

  “Oh, I prayed. I just said, ‘Demon, be gone in the name of Jesus!’ and it went away, just like that.”

  Hank asked, “So you think it was a demon?”

  “Oh yes. God is moving and Satan doesn’t like it. I do think there are evil spirits out there.”

  “But don’t you feel like there are more than usual? I mean, I’ve been a Christian all my life and I’ve never come up against anything that felt like this.”

  Her face grew pensive. “‘This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.’ We need to pray, and we need to get other people praying. That’s just what the angels keep telling me.”

  Mary was intrigued. “The angels in your dreams?” Grandma nodded. “What did they look like?”

  “Oh, people, but different from anybody else. They’re big, very handsome, bright clothes, big swords at their sides, very large, bright wings. One of them last night reminded me of my son; he was tall, blond, he looked Scandinavian.” She looked at Hank. “He was telling me to pray for you, and you were in the dream too. I could see you up behind that pulpit preaching, and he was standing there behind you with his wings stretched out over you like a big canopy, and he looked back at me and said, ‘Pray for this man.’”

  “I never knew you were praying for me,” said Hank.

  “Well, it’s time somebody else was praying too. I believe the tide is turning, Hank, and now you need true believers, true visionaries who can stand with you to pray for this town. We need to pray that the Lord will gather them in.”