This Present Darkness

by Frank E. Peretti

  They made small talk for a few minutes, finding out about each other. Andy owned and ran the lumberyard just on the outskirts of town; June was a legal secretary. They had a son, Ron, who was in trouble with drugs and needed the Lord.

  “Well,” said Andy, “we haven’t been saved too long ourselves. We used to go to the Ashton United Christian …” His voice trailed off.

  June was less inhibited. “We were starving there. We couldn’t wait to get out.”

  Andy cut back in, “Yeah, that’s right. We heard about this church; well, actually we heard about you; we heard you were in a bit of trouble for being such a stickler with the Word of God, and we just thought to ourselves, ‘We ought to check that guy out.’ Now I’m glad we did.

  “Pastor,” he continued, “I want you to know there are a lot of hungry people out there. We have some friends who love the Lord and have no place to go. It’s been really strange the last few years. One by one the churches around here have kind of died. Oh, they’re still there, all right, and they have the people and the bucks, but … you know what I mean.”

  Hank wasn’t sure that he did. “What do you mean?”

  Andy shook his head. “Satan’s really playing games with this town, I guess. Ashton never used to be this way, with so much weird stuff going on. Hey, you may have trouble believing this, but we have friends who have dropped out of three, no, four of the local churches.”

  June exchanged glances with Andy as she went through a mental list of names. “Greg and Eva Smith, the Bartons, the Jennings, Clint Neal …”

  “Yeah, right, right,” said Andy. “Like I said, there are a lot of hungry people out there, sheep without a shepherd. The churches around here just don’t cut it. They don’t preach the gospel.”

  Just then Mary walked up, all smiles. Hank happily introduced her.

  Then Mary said, “Hank, I’d like you to meet—” And she turned toward the empty room. Whoever was supposed to be there wasn’t. “Well … he’s gone!”

  “Who was it?” Hank asked.

  “Oh, you remember that big guy sitting in the back?”

  “The big blond guy?”

  “Yes. I got a chance to talk to him. He told me to tell you that,” Mary deepened her voice to mimic him, “‘the Lord is with you, keep praying and keep listening.’”

  “Well, that was nice. Did you get his name?”

  “Uh … no, I don’t think he ever told me.”

  Andy asked, “Who was this?”

  “Oh,” said Hank, “you know, that big guy in the back. He was sitting right next to you.”

  Andy looked at June, and her eyes got wide. Andy started smiling, then he started laughing, and then he started clapping his hands and practically dancing.

  “Praise the Lord!” he exclaimed, and Hank hadn’t seen such enthusiasm in a long time. “Praise the Lord, there was nobody there. Pastor, we didn’t see a soul!”

  Mary’s mouth dropped open, and she covered it with her fingers.

  OLIVER YOUNG WAS a real showman; he could work an audience right down to each tear or titter and time it so well that they became just so many puppets on a string. He would stand behind the pulpit with incredible dignity and poise, and his words were so well-chosen that whatever he was saying had to be right. The vast congregation certainly seemed to think so; they had packed the place out. Many of them were professionals: doctors, teachers, lawyers, self-proclaimed philosophers and poets; a very large segment was from or connected in some way with the college. They took fastidious notes on Young’s message, as if it were a lecture.

  Marshall had heard a lot of this little song and dance before, so on this particular Sunday he mulled over the questions he couldn’t wait to spring on Young after the service was over.

  Young continued. “Did not God say, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness’? What had remained in the darkness of tradition and ignorance, we find now revealed within ourselves. We discover—no, rather, we rediscover the knowledge we have always had as a race: we are inherently divine in our very essence, and have within ourselves the capacity for good, the potential to become, as it were, gods, made in the exact likeness of Father God, the ultimate source of all that is …”

  Marshall took a quick and furtive glance sideways. There was Kate, and there was Sandy taking notes like mad, and next to her sat Shawn Ormsby. Sandy and Shawn had hit it off pretty well, and he had a definite positive influence on her life. Today, for example, he had made a deal with Sandy: he would go to church with her if she would go with her folks. Well, it worked.

  Marshall had to admit, even though a little reluctantly, that Shawn could communicate with Sandy in ways Marshall never could. There had been several occasions when Shawn had served quite well as a liaison or interpreter between Sandy and Marshall and opened lines of communication neither of them thought could ever materialize. Things were getting peaceful around the house at last. Shawn seemed a gentle sort with a real gift for refereeing.

  So what do I do now? Marshall wondered. For the first time in who knows how long, my whole family is sitting together in church, and that’s nothing but a miracle, a real miracle. But we sure picked one heck of a church to be sitting together in, and as for that preacher up there …

  It would be so comfortable and so nice to let everything be, but he was a reporter, and this Young had something to hide. Nuts. Talk about conflict of interests!

  So while Pastor Oliver Young was up there trying to get across his ideas on the “infinite divine potential within seemingly finite man,” Marshall had his own nagging issues to think about.

  The service ended punctually at noon, and the carillon in the tower automatically clicked on and began to play a very traditional, very Christian-sounding accompaniment to all the hand shaking, visiting, and filing out.

  Marshall and his family entered the flow of traffic that oozed toward the foyer. Oliver Young was standing by the front door in his usual spot, greeting all his parishioners, shaking hands, cootchy-cooing the babies, being pastorly. Soon Marshall, Kate, Sandy, and Shawn had their turn with him.

  “Well, Marshall, good to see you,” Young gushed, shaking Marshall’s hand.

  “Have you met Sandy?” Marshall asked, and formally introduced Young to his daughter.

  Young was very warm. “Sandy, I’m very glad to see you.”

  Sandy at least acted glad to be there.

  “And Shawn!” Young exclaimed. “Shawn Ormsby!” The two of them shook hands.

  “Oh, so you two know each other?” Marshall asked.

  “Oh, I’ve known Shawn since he was just a little shaver. Shawn, don’t make yourself so scarce, all right?”

  “All right,” Shawn answered with a shy smile.

  The others moved on, but Marshall lagged behind and came up close on the other side to speak to Young some more.

  He waited until Young had finished greeting one little group of people, and then interjected into the pause, “Hey, I just thought you’d like to know that things are going better now with Sandy and me.”

  Young smiled, shook a few hands, then said sideways to Marshall, “Wonderful! That’s really wonderful, Marshall.” He offered his hand to someone else: “Nice seeing you here today.”

  In another space between exiting greetees, Marshall interjected, “Yeah, she really enjoyed your sermon this morning. She said it was very challenging.”

  “Well, thank you for saying so. Yes, Mr. Beaumont, how are you?”

  “You know, it even seemed to be along the same lines as what Sandy’s getting in school, in Juleen Langstrat’s classes.”

  Young didn’t answer that, but directed all his attention to a young couple with a baby. “Oh my, she’s getting so big.”

  Marshall continued, “You’re going to have to meet Professor Langstrat sometime. There’s a very interesting parallel between what she teaches and what you preach.” There was no response from Young. “I understand, as a matter of fact, that Langstrat’s pretty
deeply involved in occultism and Eastern mysticism …”

  “Well,” Young finally responded, “I wouldn’t know anything about that, Marshall.”

  “And you definitely don’t know this Professor Langstrat?”

  “No, I told you that.”

  “Haven’t you attended several private sessions with her on a regular basis, and not only you, but also Alf Brummel, Ted Harmel, Delores Pinckston, Eugene Baylor, and even Judge Baker?”

  Young turned just a little red, paused, then grimaced with embarrassed recollection.

  “Oh, for goodness sake!” he laughed. “Where in the world has my mind been? You know, all this time I’ve been thinking of someone else!”

  “So you do know her?”

  “Well, yes, of course. Many of us do.”

  Young turned aside to greet some more people. When those people had gone, Marshall was still standing there.

  Marshall pressed, “So what about these private sessions? Does she really have a clientele including community leaders, elected officials, regents at the college …”

  Young looked directly at Marshall, and his eyes were a little cold. “Marshall, just what is your specific concern here?”

  “Just doing my job. Whatever this is, it seems to be something the people of Ashton should know about, especially because it involves so many of the influential people who are shaping this town.”

  “Well, if you are concerned about it, I’m not the person to talk to. You should go and ask Professor Langstrat herself.”

  “Oh, I intend to. I just wanted to give you the chance to give me some honest answers, something I feel you’re not quite doing.”

  Young’s voice got a bit strained. “Marshall, if I seem to be elusive it is because what you are trying to pry into is protected by professional ethics. It is privileged information. I was simply hoping you would figure that out without my having to tell you.”

  Kate was calling from the sidewalk. “Marshall, we’re all waiting for you.”

  Marshall stepped away from the conversation, and it was just as well. It could only have gotten hotter from that point, and it was getting him nowhere anyway. Young was cool, very tough, and very slippery.

  A FEW STATES away, in a deep, secluded, and steep-sided valley rimmed by high mountains and carpeted with thick green ground cover and moss-tufted rock, a small but well-constructed cluster of buildings nestled like a lonely outpost in the center of the valley floor, accessible only by one rough and meandering gravel road.

  That little cluster of buildings, once a dismal and dilapidated old ranch, had been expanded into a complex of stone and brick buildings which now housed a small dormitory, an office complex, a dining hall, a maintenance building, a clinic, and several private dwellings. There were no signs, however, no labels anywhere, nothing to indicate where or what anything was.

  Drawing a charcoal streak across the sky, a sinister black object flew over the mountaintops and began to drop into the valley, piercing through the paper-thin layers of mist that hung in the air. Cloaked by oppressive spiritual darkness and silent as a black cloud, Ba-al Rafar, the Prince of Babylon, floated along. He stayed close to the contour of the mountainside, maneuvering on a course that weaved this way and that among the dead snags and rocky crags. The canopy of darkness followed him like a cast shadow, like a tiny circle of night upon the landscape; a faint streak of red and yellow vapor trailed from his nostrils and hung in the air behind him like a long, slowly settling ribbon.

  Below, the ranch looked like a huge hive of hideous black insects. Several layers of ruthless warriors hovered almost stationary in a vast dome of defense over the complex, swords drawn, yellow eyes peering across the valley. Deep within this shell, demons of all shapes, sizes, and strengths darted about in a boiling mass of activity. As Rafar dropped closer, he noted a concentration of black spirits around a large multistoried stone house on the fringe of the cluster. The Strongman is there, he thought, so he banked gently to one side, changing his course for that building.

  The outer sentinels saw him approaching and gave an eerie, sirenlike wail. Immediately the defenders radiated outward from Rafar’s flight path, opening a channel through the defense layers. Rafar swooped skillfully through the channel as demons on all sides saluted him with upheld swords, their glowing eyes like thousands of paired yellow stars on black velvet. He ignored them and passed quickly through. The channel closed again behind him like a living gate.

  He floated slowly down through the roof of the house, through the attic, past rafters, walls, plaster, through an upstairs bedroom, through a thick, beam-supported floor and down into a spacious living room below.

  The evil in the room was thick and confining, the darkness like black liquid that swirled about with any motion of the limbs. The room was crowded.

  “Ba-al Rafar, the Prince of Babylon!” a demon announced from somewhere, and monstrous demons all around the perimeter of the room bowed in respect.

  Rafar folded his wings in regal, capelike fashion and stood with an intimidating air of royalty and might, his jewels flashing impressively. His big yellow eyes studied carefully the orderly ranks of demons lined up all around him. A horrible gathering. These were spirits from the principality levels, princes themselves of their own nations, peoples, tribes. Some were from Africa, some were from the Orient, several were from Europe. All were invincible. Rafar noted their tremendous size and formidable appearance; they all matched him for size and ferocity, and he doubted he would ever venture to challenge any of them. To receive a bow from them was a great honor, a compliment indeed.

  “Hail, Rafar,” said a gargling voice from the end of the room.

  The Strongman. It was forbidden to speak his name. He was one of the few majesties intimate with Lucifer himself—a vicious global tyrant responsible over the centuries for resisting the plans of the living God and establishing Lucifer’s kingdom on the earth. Rafar and his kind controlled nations; those such as the Strongman controlled Rafar and his kind.

  The Strongman rose from his place, and his huge form filled that part of the room. The evil that emanated from him could be felt everywhere, almost like an extension of his body. He was grotesque, hulking, his black hide hanging like sacks and curtains from his limbs and torso, his face a macabre landscape of bony prominences and deep, folded furrows. His jewels flashed brilliantly from his neck, chest, arms; his big black wings draped his body like a royal robe and trailed along the floor.

  Rafar bowed low in homage, feeling the Strongman’s presence from clear across the room. “Hail, my lord.”

  The Strongman never wasted words. “Shall we be detained again?”

  “The errors of Prince Lucius are being corrected. The new resistance is failing, my lord. Soon the town will be ready.”

  “And what of the host of heaven?”

  “Limited.”

  The Strongman did not like Rafar’s answer—Rafar could feel that distinctly. He spoke slowly. “We have received reports of a strong Captain of the Host being sent to Ashton. I believe you know him.”

  “I have reason to believe Tal has been sent, but I have anticipated him.”

  The big, velvet-draped eyes burned with fury. “Is it not this Tal who vanquished you at the fall of Babylon?”

  Rafar knew he must answer, and quickly. “It is this Tal.”

  “Then the delays have cost us our advantage. You have now been matched strength for strength.”

  “My lord, you will see what your servant can do.”

  “Bold words, Rafar, but your strengths can only succeed with immediacy; the strengths of our enemies grow with time.”

  “All will be ready.”

  “And what of the man of God and the newspaperman?”

  “Does my lord even give them his attention?”

  “Your lord wishes you to give them yours!”

  “They are powerless, my lord, and will soon be removed.”

  “But only if Tal is removed,” the Strongman said d
erisively. “Let me see it happen before you bother me in boasting about it. Until then, we remain confined here. Rafar, I will not wait long!”

  “Nor shall you need to.”

  The Strongman only smirked. “You have your orders. Begone!”

  Rafar bowed low, and with an unfurling of his wings he quietly rose through the house until he was outside.

  Then, with a furious burst of rage, he swooped upward, sending unexpecting demons tumbling out of the way. He picked up speed, his wings rushing in a blinding blur, and the defenders could barely get a channel opened before he burst through it trailing a hot stream of sulfurous breath. They closed up the channel again, giving each other curious looks as they watched him soar away.

  Rafar roared like a rocket up the side of the mountains and then out over the craggy peaks and back toward the little town of Ashton. In his rage he cared not who saw him, he cared not about stealth or even decorum. Let the whole world see him, and let it tremble! He was Rafar, the Prince of Babylon! Let all the world bow before him or be decimated under the edge of his sword!

  Tal! The very name was bitterness itself on his tongue. The lords of Lucifer would never let him forget that defeat so long ago. Never—until the day when Rafar redeemed his honor.

  And indeed he would. Rafar could see his sword gutting Tal and scattering him in shreds and pieces across the sky; he could feel the impact in his arms, he could hear the ripping sound of it. It was only a matter of time.

  Among the jagged rocks on one mountain’s summit, a silver-haired man came out of hiding to watch Rafar quickly shrink into the distance, etching a long black trail across the sky until he vanished over the horizon. The man took one more look at the demon-swarmed cluster of buildings in the valley, looked again toward the horizon, then vanished down the other side of the mountain in a flash of light and a flurry of wings.

  CHAPTER 14

  WELL, THOUGHT MARSHALL, sooner or later I have to get around to it. On Thursday afternoon, when things were quiet, he closed himself in his office and made some phone calls trying to track down Professor Juleen Langstrat. He called the college, got the number of the Psychology Department, and went through two receptionists in two different offices before he finally found out that Langstrat was not in today and had an unlisted home number. Then Marshall thought of the very cooperative Albert Darr, and gave his office a ring. Professor Darr was teaching, but would return his call if he would leave a message. Marshall left a message. Two hours later, Albert Darr returned Marshall’s call, and he did have the unlisted number for Juleen Langstrat’s apartment.