This Present Darkness

by Frank E. Peretti

  Triskal reached down through the roof and gently placed his hand on Mary’s shoulder. “Shhh … be calm, it’s all right now. You’re safe.”

  She looked behind her again and began to quiet down a little.

  Triskal spoke to her heart. “The Lord has saved you. He won’t let you go. You’re all right.”

  The car was almost to a complete stop now. Mary pulled it over to the side of the street and parked it while she still had the momentum to do so. She pulled on the parking brake and sat there for several minutes just to compose herself.

  “That’s it,” said Triskal, comforting her in her spirit. “Rest in the Lord. He’s here.”

  Triskal slid off the roof of the car and reached his arm down through the hood, probing around. He found whatever it was he was looking for.

  “Mary,” he said, “why don’t you try again?”

  Mary sat in the car thinking to herself that the stupid thing would never start and what horrible timing it had, to die and leave her in such a fix.

  “C’mon,” Triskal prodded. “Take a step of faith. Trust God. You never know what He might do.”

  Mary decided to take one more stab at starting the car, even though she had little faith that anything would happen. She twisted the key. The engine cranked over, then sputtered, then started. She gave it several powerful revs just to make sure it stayed awake. Then, still in a very great hurry to get home to Hank’s protecting arms, she pulled out into the street and hot-rodded for home with Triskal riding on the roof.

  Hank was very relieved to hear the slam of the car door outside. “Oh, that must be Mary!”

  Carmen got up. “I guess I’d better go.”

  Now that Mary was here, Hank added, “Oh, listen, you don’t have to. You can stay for a while.”

  “No, no, I’ll just leave. Maybe I ought to go out the back, even.”

  “No, don’t be silly. Here. I’ll see you to the door. I need to help Mary with those groceries anyway.”

  But Mary had forgotten about the groceries and only wanted to get inside the house. Triskal ran beside her. He was battered and limping, his clothing was torn, and he could still feel the fiery wound in his back.

  Hank opened the door. “Hi, hon. Boy, I was getting worried about you.” Then he saw her tear-filled eyes. “Hey, what—”

  Carmen screamed. It was a sudden, heart-piercing scream that halted every thought and stifled any words. Hank spun around, not knowing what to expect.

  “NOOOO!” Carmen shrieked, her arms guarding her face. “Are you mad? Get away from me, you hear? Get away!”

  As Hank and Mary both looked on in horror, Carmen backed into the room, waving her arms as if trying to shield herself from some invisible attacker; she stumbled around the room, she tumbled over the furniture, she cursed and spewed horrible obscenities. She was terrified and enraged at the same time, her eyes wide and glassy, her face contorted.

  Krioni tried to grab Triskal and hold him back. Triskal had glorified and was a shimmering white; his tattered wings filled the room and glimmered like a thousand rainbows. He held a gleaming sword in his hand, and the sword flashed and sang in blinding arcs as he engaged in a frenzied battle with Lust, a hideous demon with a black-scaled, slippery body like a lizard and a red tongue that lashed about his face like the tail of a snake. Lust was first defending himself, then lashing back with his glowing red sword, the crescent blade cutting crimson arcs through the air. The swords clashed with explosions of fire and light.

  “Let me be, I tell you!” Lust screamed, his wings propelling him like a trapped hornet about the room.

  “Let him be!” shouted Krioni, trying to hold Triskal back while staying out of the path of that infinitely sharp blade. “Do you hear my order? Let him be!”

  At last Triskal withdrew, but held his sword steady and kept it raised in front of him, the light from the blade illuminating his raging face, his burning eyes.

  Carmen calmed down, rubbed her eyes, and looked about the room with a frightened expression. Hank and Mary went to her immediately and tried to comfort her.

  “What’s wrong, Carmen?” Mary asked, wide-eyed and concerned. “It’s just me, Mary. Did I do something? I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “No … no …” moaned Carmen. “It wasn’t you. It was somebody else …”

  “Who? What?”

  Lust backed off, his sword still held high.

  Krioni told him, “We will give place to you no longer today. Begone, and don’t come here again!”

  Lust folded his wings and circled carefully around the two heavenly warriors and over to the door.

  “I was leaving anyway,” the demon hissed.

  “I was leaving anyway,” said Carmen, composing herself. “There’s … there’s bad energy in this place. Good-bye.”

  She bolted out the door. Mary tried to call after her, but Hank touched Mary’s arm and let her know that silence would be best for now.

  Krioni held Triskal until the light around him faded and he replaced his sword. Triskal was shaking.

  “Triskal,” Krioni scolded, “you know Tal’s orders! I was with Hank the whole time; he did just fine. There was no need—” Then Krioni saw Triskal’s many injuries and the deep wound in his back. “Triskal, what happened?”

  “I … I could not let myself be assailed by still another,” Triskal gasped. “Krioni, we are more than matched.”

  Mary finally remembered that she was about to cry. She picked up where she had left off.

  “Mary, what in the world is going on here?” Hank asked, putting his arms around her.

  “Just close the door, honey!” she cried. “Just close the door and hold me. Please!”

  CHAPTER 15

  KATE GRABBED A kitchen towel and hurriedly wiped her hands so she could pick up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi there.” It was Marshall.

  Kate knew what was coming; it had been happening a lot the last two weeks. “Marshall, I am cooking dinner and I am cooking enough for all four of us …”

  “Yeah, well …” Marshall had the tone of voice he always used when he was about to weasel out of something.

  “Marshall!” Then Kate turned her back toward the living room where Sandy and Shawn were studying and talking, but mostly talking; she didn’t want them to see the distress in her face. She lowered her voice. “I want you home for dinner. You’ve been out late all this week, you’ve been so busy and so preoccupied I hardly have a husband anymore—”

  “Kate!” Marshall broke in. “It won’t be as bad as you thought: I’m just calling to say I’ll be a little late, not that I won’t be there.”

  “How late?”

  “Oh brother …” Marshall wasn’t sure at all. “How about an hour?”

  Kate couldn’t think of what to say. She only sighed in disgust and anger.

  Marshall tried to appease her. “Listen, I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  Kate decided to say it over the phone; she might never get the chance any other time. “Marshall, I’m concerned about Sandy.”

  “What’s wrong with her now?”

  Oh, she could just punch him for that tone of voice! “Marshall, if you’d just be around here once in a while you’d know! She’s … I don’t know. She just isn’t the same old Sandy anymore. I’m afraid of what Shawn is doing to her.”

  “What Shawn is doing to her?”

  “I can’t talk about it over the phone.”

  Now Marshall sighed. “All right, all right. We’ll talk about it.”

  “When, Marshall?”

  “Oh, tonight, when I get home.”

  “We can’t talk right in front of them—”

  “I mean … oh, you know what I mean!” Marshall was tiring of this conversation.

  “Well, just get home, Marshall, please!”

  “All right, all right!”

  Marshall hung up the phone with hardly a loving gentleness. For a split second he regretted the act
and thought about how it must have made Kate feel, but he forced his thoughts onward to the next, very pressing project: interviewing Professor Juleen Langstrat.

  Friday evening. She should be home now. He dialed the number, and this time it rang. And rang. And rang one more time.

  Click. “Hello?”

  “Hello, this is Marshall Hogan, editor of the Ashton Clarion. Am I speaking with Professor Juleen Langstrat?”

  “Yes, you are. What can I do for you, Mr. Hogan?”

  “My daughter Sandy has been in some of your classes.”

  She seemed pleased to hear that. “Oh, very good!”

  “At any rate, I was wondering if we might set up a date for an interview.”

  “Well, you’d have to speak with one of my teacher assistants. They are the ones responsible for checking the progress and problems of the students. The classes are large, you understand.”

  “Oh, well, no, that’s not exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking I would like to interview you.”

  “Pertaining to your daughter? I’m afraid I don’t know her. I wouldn’t be able to tell you much …”

  “Well, we could talk a little about the class, of course, but I was also curious about the other interests you’re pursuing there on the campus, the elective classes you’ve been teaching at night …”

  “Oohh,” she said, with a down note at the end that didn’t sound promising. “Well, that was part of an experimental college idea we were trying. If you wish to check that out, the registrar might have some old flyers available. But I should inform you that I am very uncomfortable with the idea of granting any interview to the press, and I really cannot do so.”

  “So you’re not willing to discuss the very influential people you have among your circle of friends?”

  “I don’t understand the question,” and it sounded like she didn’t appreciate it either.

  “Alf Brummel, chief of police, Reverend Oliver Young, Delores Pinckston, Dwight Brandon, Eugene Baylor, Judge John Baker …”

  “I have no comment,” she said sharply, “and I really have some other things that are very pressing. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “Well …” Marshall thought he’d go ahead and try for it. “I guess the only other thing I could ask you about is why you ejected me from your class.”

  Now she was getting indignant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your class on Monday afternoon two weeks ago. ‘The Psychology of Self,’ I think it was. I’m the big guy you told to leave.”

  She began to laugh incredulously. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about! You must have the wrong person.”

  “You don’t remember telling me to wait outside?”

  “I am convinced you have me mixed up with someone else.”

  “Well, do you have long blonde hair?”

  She said simply, “Good night, Mr. Hogan,” and hung up.

  Marshall stood there a moment, then asked himself, “C’mon, Hogan, what did you expect?”

  He dropped the receiver into the cradle and went out into the front office where a question from Bernice grabbed his attention.

  “So I’d like to know how you’re finally going to corner Langstrat,” she quipped, flipping through some papers at her desk.

  Marshall felt like his face must be awfully red.

  “Boy, your face is sure red,” Bernice confirmed.

  “Talking to too many temperamental women in one night,” he explained. “Langstrat was one of them. Boy, I thought Harmel was bad!”

  Bernice turned around, excited. “You got Langstrat on the phone?”

  “For all of thirty-two seconds. She had absolutely nothing to say to me, and she didn’t remember kicking me out of her class.”

  Bernice made a screwy face. “Isn’t it funny how no one seems to remember having any encounters with us? Marshall, we must be invisible!”

  “How about very undesirable and very inconvenient?”

  “Well,” Bernice said, going back to her paperwork, “Professor Langstrat probably has been very busy, too busy to talk to nosy reporters …”

  A wad of paper bounced off her head. She turned around and saw Marshall looking over some lists. He looked like he couldn’t possibly have tossed that little projectile.

  He said, “Boy, I wonder if I could contact Harmel again? But he won’t talk either.”

  The same wad of paper bounced off his ear. He looked at Bernice and she was dead serious, all business.

  “Well, it’s obvious he knew too much. It’s my guess that both he and former Dean Strachan are running good and scared.”

  “Yeah.” Marshall had a memory come to the surface. “Harmel talked that way, warning me. He said something like, I’d be out on my ear like everybody else.”

  “So who’s everybody else?”

  “Yeah, who else do we know who could have been removed?”

  Bernice looked over some of her notes. “Well, you know, now that I look over this list, none of these people have really been in their position for a very long time.”

  The wad of paper ricocheted off her head and skittered across her desk.

  “So who did they replace?” Marshall asked.

  Bernice solemnly picked up the wad of paper as she said, “We can check that out. In the meantime, the most obvious thing to do is call Strachan and see what—” she hurled the wad at Marshall “—he has to say!”

  Marshall grabbed the wad in midflight and quickly crumpled another one to add to his arsenal, sending them both back in Bernice’s direction. Bernice began to prepare an adequate counterattack.

  “All right,” Marshall said, starting to crack up with laughter, “I’ll give him a ring.” He was suddenly in the middle of a blizzard of paper wads. “But I think we’d better get out of here, my wife’s waiting.”

  Bernice was not finished with the war yet, so they finished it and then had to clean up before they could leave.

  RAFAR PACED UP and down the dark basement room, chugging out hot breath that became a layer of cloud obscuring him from the shoulders up. He pounded his fists together, he tore invisible enemies in his outstretched talons, he cursed and fumed.

  Lucius stood with the other warriors, waiting for Rafar to calm down and give the reason for calling this meeting. Lucius rather enjoyed the little scene before him. Obviously Rafar, the great braggart, had been cut down to size in his meeting with the Strongman! Lucius could hardly keep a hideous smirk off his face.

  “Wouldn’t the little angel tell you where you could find this … what was that name again?” Lucius asked, knowing full well Tal’s name.

  “TAL!” Rafar roared, and Lucius could detect Rafar’s humiliation at the very sound of the name.

  “The little angel, the helpless little angel, told you nothing?”

  Rafar’s immediate response was a monstrous black fist clamped instantly around Lucius’s throat. “Do you mock me, little imp?”

  Lucius had learned the right tone of groveling to please this tyrant. “Oh, be not offended, great one. I only seek your pleasure.”

  “Then seek this Tal!” Rafar growled. He released Lucius and turned to all the other demons present. “All of you, seek this Tal! I want him in my hands to shred him at my pleasure. This battle could be settled easily between the two of us. Find him! Bring me word!”

  Lucius tried to hide his words behind a whimpering tone, but they were specially selected for another purpose. “Indeed we shall, great one! But surely this Tal must be a formidable foe to have routed you at the fall of Babylon! Whatever will you do, should we find him? Will you dare to assail him again?”

  Rafar grinned, his fangs shining. “You will see what your Ba-al can do!”

  “And may we not see what this Tal can do!”

  Rafar drew close to Lucius and stared him down with fiery yellow orbs. “When I have vanquished this Tal and hurled his little pieces across the skies as my victory banner, I will m
ost certainly give you your chance to better me. I will relish every moment of it.”

  Rafar turned away, and for an instant the whole room was filled with his black wings before he shot upward through the building and into the sky.

  For hours afterwards as angels all over Ashton watched from their hiding places, the Ba-al flew slowly over the town like a sinister vulture, his sword visible and challenging. Up, down, back and forth he flew, weaving in among the downtown buildings, then soaring high above the town in graceful arcs.

  Down below, through the window of an obscure store basement, Scion watched as Rafar passed overhead again. He turned to his captain, who sat nearby on some appliance crates with Guilo, Triskal, and Mota. Triskal, with the help of others, was getting himself patched up and back together again.

  “I don’t understand,” said Scion. “What’s he think he’s doin’?”

  Tal looked up from Triskal’s wounds and said matter-of-factly, “He’s trying to draw me out.”

  Mota added, “He wants the captain. Apparently he has offered great honors to whatever demon can find Captain Tal and report his whereabouts.”

  Guilo said gruffly, “The devils are crawling all over the church with no other aim. It was the first place they looked.”

  Tal anticipated Scion’s next question and answered it. “Signa and the others are still there at the church. We’ve tried to keep our guard there looking as it usually does.”

  Scion watched Rafar circle over the far side of the town and come back for another pass. “I’d have trouble bein’ taunted by such as him!”

  Tal spoke the truth, without shame. “If I were to meet him now I would most certainly lose, and he knows it. Our prayer cover is insufficient—while he has all the backing he needs.”

  They could all hear the rushing of Rafar’s huge, leathery wings and see his shadow fall over the building for an instant as he passed overhead.

  “We will all have to be very, very careful.”

  HANK WAS WALKING through the town again, up and down the streets and storefronts, driven by the Lord and praying with every step he took. He had a feeling that God had some particular purpose for this little jaunt, but he couldn’t begin to guess what it was.