Absence of Faith

by Anthony S. Policastro

  "Of the disease?"

  "Yeah."

  "Oh, how awful," Frank said.

  "He's taken it pretty badly. He's organizing the town into a fanatical religious group and he's attracted all the crazies. Worst part is that he's lost all his better judgment as a doctor - he no longer believes it's a disease; he believes it’s the work of the devil."

  "Gee, he's lost the faith," Frank said as they passed the towering distillation columns that lit up the sky over the Elizabeth City oil refinery. The columns distilled crude oil into various petroleum-based products like heating oil, gasoline, and jet fuel.

  "More like he's embraced it," Carson said.

  Frank appeared distracted and looked at the decaying factories harnessed by rusting chain-link fencing.

  "You don't understand. Stokes is very influential in Ocean Village. He's like the mayor, the police force, the council, and the social conscience of the town all in one. Remember that commercial? 'When EF Hutton speaks...people listen.' That's Stokes. I just got a bad feeling about him going around reading from the Bible and making people crazy. He won’t even talk to me anymore. How do you think the hospital is going to react to us?"

  "How is it supposed to act?" Frank said. "I think you're being a little paranoid, Carson. Do you honestly think an entire hospital is going to believe one doctor claiming that all the deaths are the work of Satan?"

  Carson looked at him straight in the eye and said, "Yes. You don't know this town."

  Frank was silent a few moments. "I'll have to see it to believe it."

  "You would take a pathologist's viewpoint. What are you from Missouri - the show me state?" Carson said to lighten the troubled look on Frank's face.

  "Yeah, that's me."

  "Well, I'll show you," Carson said. "You haven't seen the effect this disease has on people."

  "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Didn't it happen to you? How come you didn't turn into a religious fanatic, quoting the Bible every five minutes?"

  "I'm a doctor. Even though the experience was as real as sitting here talking with you, I know it was a hallucination. I don't really believe I was in hell, but it was scary. My worse nightmare came to life there, but I know I was never there. These people still fear God. It's their whole life. They live and breathe religion - they come from the old schools. Most of them are much older than our parents. They were raised to fear God, and when something like this happens to them, they really believe it," Carson said changing lanes for Exit 11. "They are the generation that believes everything they read in the papers. We don't read the papers - we watch CNN or browse the Internet and then we take everything with a grain a salt."

  "Are you sure?"

  "No."

  "No? What do you mean?" Frank said.

  "I sometimes tend to side with them. I lose confidence in myself and slip into believing it really is an evil force causing all this madness, especially when we can't find what's causing it."

  "There's got to be an explanation," Frank said. "Remember Legionnaires' disease? Everyone was panicking because they couldn't find a reason for all these men getting sick and dying. Mankind has been battling infectious diseases for centuries, and this won't be the end of it. Today, we have the West Nile virus and the pandemic bird flu - 150 years ago, it was influenza, in the 1920s it was diphtheria, in 1952 it was polio, and now it’s the Hellfire Syndrome. When was the last time you heard of someone dying of polio or TB in the United States? It's rare. Most of us will never know the panic and worry people suffered back then when everyone seemed to be dying of the flu or suffering from polio. It's the same today with AIDS. People assume we have all these great cures and preventative vaccines. But, new diseases develop everyday and they will always develop and we don't always have a cure or an idea of what causes them. A disease could develop and wipe out the entire human race someday."

  "Boy, you sure are optimistic."

  "I'm only making a point that new diseases pop up every day. Have you ever heard of NORD, the National Organization for Rare Disorders and orphan diseases?" Frank said.

  "Of course. But what does it do exactly?"

  "NORD is an informal coalition of small voluntary health agencies and individuals affected by orphan diseases. It was formed to get the Orphan Drug Act passed," Frank explained.

  "Now, I remember studying it," Carson said.

  "It’s any disease that affects fewer than 200,000 Americans. There are more than 6,000 such afflictions such as Tay Sach's disease, Huntington's, Cystic Fibrosis, and Multiple Sclerosis. The Hellfire Syndrome certainly fits into this category. NORD helped get the Orphan Drug Act passed in Congress that requires government to offer drug companies incentives to develop and market orphan drugs, otherwise, they wouldn't do it because there's no profit in orphan drugs. Look at it this way. If you manufactured Valium, you're producing quite a bit of it and making a good profit. Then someone comes along and says they need such and such a drug, but they need only enough for one thousand patients. You find that it costs ten times the amount to manufacture a thousand doses. Would you make the drug?"

  Carson put on his directional signal for Exit 11.

  "That's typical of them. If there's no profit in it why bother to develop drugs that save lives or cure diseases," Carson said.

  "And I've seen many good doctors bought off by the drug companies," Frank said.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Just that. The drug companies are very powerful and they have deep pockets. They offer many incentives for doctors to push their drugs on patients, even if the patient doesn't really need it. I'm talking about weekends in Palm Springs, Las Vegas, special discounts, junkets, all kinds of fringe benefits," Frank explained. "I even heard of one company putting a down payment on a house that a doctor wanted."

  "Are you talking fact or fiction here?" Carson asked.

  "Fact."

  "Well, it won't happen to me. I'm not going to be caught up in that shit. I didn't become a doctor for the money. I became a doctor because I really want to help people. Sure, the money is nice, but that's not my sole motivation. That's why I chose Ocean Village. I've had offers from Boston, Philadelphia and New York at triple the salary, but I took Ocean Village because I believe the people there really need me," Carson said. "Besides, I wanted to live by the ocean."

  "You're a rare bird, Carson," Frank said.

  "I hope so for the sake of our profession. It has a bad enough rep as it is. I hope our generation changes things," Carson added.

  "I hope so, too."

  Carson approached the tollbooth, paid the toll, and headed left towards Route 9 south. After three miles, signs for the Garden State Parkway appeared and Carson got in the right lane to take the exit south.

  "So where do I set up shop?" Frank asked.

  "In the lab. I've cleared it already with Dr. Hansen. He's the one that offered me the partnership," Carson said glancing over at Frank. "It's a brand new facility with state-of-the-art equipment and a new high speed Internet based program, which links all member labs, and all university and research center databases including the CDC.

  "Really? I haven't heard anything about it," Frank added.

  "That's because it's not launched yet. We are one of the first labs to test it. You simply fill out a web site and it matches your data to all known cases and research. You get to see what's out there from some of the largest research centers and universities," Carson said.

  Frank looked out at the tall overgrown grass on the side of highway rushing past in a blur of green.

  "Isn't Stokes a partner in the lab? You think he’ll allow it now that he's...you know?" Frank said twirling his index finger by his ear.

  "He doesn't have much say in it. He's not one of the partners, just an investor. Hansen has the controlling interest," Carson explained. "I just can't understand Stokes. He and I were like partners in this, now he's a religious nut and turned against me."

  "It's an absence of faith," Frank said.

  The
Search - Chapter 34

  A warm breeze whipped Doctor Matthew Stokes' face as he sat in a wicker chair on the screened-in porch in the rear of his house staring at the tree where Mary had died. He kept telling himself of how peaceful it was for her to die at her favorite place. A tear formed in his left eye, and cascaded down his face and another was about to make the plunge when the chimes of his doorbell sounded. He quickly wiped his eyes and got up. He still held the snifter with a splash of Remy Martin sloshing around when he opened the door to a white-hair man with a face of wrinkles and ice blue eyes.

  "Hello Homer. Come on in," Stokes said opening the door.

  The man nodded and sheepishly entered.

  "What can I do for you?" Stokes said.

  "I was thinking. Maybe we should form a group to fight these devil worshippers. Run them out and maybe people will stop dying and going to hell," he explained. "People will rest better without them."

  "Homer, let's sit out on the deck and talk." Stokes said. "You want something to drink?"

  "Yeah, got a beer?"

  "Sure. Have a seat out there."

  A few moments later, Stokes appeared with bottle of Heineken and a tall narrow glass. He sat down next to Homer and Homer took the bottle.

  "I think we should consider all non-believers our enemies. This is a war between the devil and us and we could win if we just keep the faith and have everyone else around us do the same," Homer said tilting the bottle up to his mouth. "I believe my wife when she says she went to hell. Martha is not one for tall tales. Now she just sits home and prays all day. I'm not saying we should not pray, but she's too scared to go anywhere except church. She believes that if she goes too far from the house or the church, the devil will get her. In a sense, I've lost her, just as you have lost Mary. We have to do something."

  "Yes. We have to lead the way and show they are wrong. The Bible foretells of the moral collapse of men, that the evil ones will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, disloyal, with no self-control, betrayers, headstrong, proud, and lovers of pleasure. Evil men have advanced from bad to worse and this is what we are seeing now."

  "What can we do?" Homer asked taking another drink of his beer.

  "I think we have to find the devil worshippers and try to convince them to follow us," Stokes said. "Go to them."

  "But they are evil! Shouldn't we get rid of them...run them out...scare them off?"

  "No, Homer. They are children of God just like you and me, but they have lost their way."

  "You sound like the pastor," Homer said bringing the emerald green bottle to his mouth again.

  "I have to be. Someone around here has to lead the way."

  "So how do we find them?"

  "We know that Henry was one of them..."

  "Doctor Graber? You must be pullin’ my leg!"

  "We have good reason to believe he was one of them. It's hard for even me to believe it. You know he had to have associates."

  Stokes looked out at the old maple tree its leaves were still and the last orange beams of the setting sun streamed through its entangled branches. Homer watched him waiting for an answer. The men were silent while a warm breeze played with their hair like a mischievous child.

  "She could be one of them," Stokes said, his voice disconnected from the moment.

  "Who?"

  "Nurse Doherty. She was always with him as if she were his private nurse. He had requested that she follow-up on all his patients. It was a special request and she was assigned to him. She could be one of them," Stokes took another sip of cognac.

  "Homer, can you get one of the guys to follow her after work for about a week? Get one of the younger guys because he'll have to watch her place all night. Get someone good. These people are clever and they retaliate in extreme ways."

  "Hmmm?"

  Homer finished the beer.

  "I think I can get Jack Graham to do it and he’s good," Homer said.

  "He's not so young."

  "Oh, he'll do it. He'd love it and he would stick it out. He hasn't done anything like this in years."

  "Okay, if she is one of them, then I want to know where they meet. Get as much information as possible."

  "Okay." Homer got up to leave.

  Stokes grabbed his arm. "I'm sorry about your wife."

  "Thanks, doc. I'm sorry about Mary. I'll have Martha say a prayer if she’s not already."

  Homer left the porch and then came back a few seconds later.

  "Can I get another beer?" He said. "Martha won't allow alcohol in the house."

  "Sure. Help yourself. Let me know if Jack will do it."

  "Okay, take care," Homer said and left.

  Stokes sipped his cognac and stared at the old maple tree. Something seemed to move near the settee at the base of the tree. A white luminous gas appeared at Mary's spot. The light coalesced into a form - a human form. It was Mary. She looked at Stokes, smiled, and waved. Stokes rubbed his eyes, and then looked again. She was still there.

  "Mary!" he yelled and raced down the porch steps to the tree.

  When he got there, the luminous gas had dissipated. He stared at the tree's ancient trunk for several seconds trying to comprehend what he had just seen. Then he sat down and ran his hand over the spot where Mary usually sat on the settee. The air was cold and damp.

  "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" he screamed. "Why did you have to die, Mary? Why did you leave me? Why did the devil take such a good person? Oh, Mary I love you so much. Why? Why? Why? You were too young to die!"

  Stokes pounded the settee with his fist.

  "It's so unfair! So unfair! You were cheated out of life...I was cheated!"

  The Body - Chapter 35

  The young rookie extended the fishhook into the Shark River until it reached the floating body a few feet from the dock. He moved it slightly, hooked it under one of the arms, and pulled.

  "Oh this is the worst!" the police officer said as he rolled the floating torso around to get a look at the dead man's face. The young cop handed the fishhook to another officer, turned to the other side of the dock, and threw up the ham and eggs biscuit he had just eaten for breakfast.

  "Gee! No head," the other police officer said.

  "Shit! They took his hands, too. Now we'll have a heck of a time ID-ing this one," Nick Vancuso said.

  Several other police officers and detectives turned away. The officer with the fishhook rolled the body over again. Its bloated gray skin seemed more fish like than human.

  "What do you think? A mob hit? It's typical. No dental charts or finger prints to ID," Jerry Vandergarde said, Nick's partner.

  "Maybe," Nick added. "They usually dump them in New York Harbor. There is no way this body could have floated into the inlet and up river this far. Mob hits usually end up on the beaches. The currents just wouldn't bring it up this far."

  "So who could do something like this? This is pretty sick shit!" Jerry said looking down at the headless torso.

  "I have a gut feeling that it's a cult," Nick said. "Look his clothes are all black. He could be a minister or priest."

  "You really believe that shit about these cults and human sacrifices? It’s pretty weird stuff," Jerry said moving his right hand through his short blonde hair.

  "I've been investigating a break-in that could be related," Nick added. "A young couple out in Ocean Village. I took the call last night when I got off duty. Remember the Harmon case in Little Silver?"

  "Yeah, the kid who murdered his mother...cut her face up like a steak. It was the worse thing I've ever seen," Jerry said.

  "Well, I think Satanism is on the rise again with this new generation of teenagers. You know that report that came in last month from the library about the missing books? Most of them were books on cults and Satanism. Try finding a book on Satanism in the library; the computer will tell you it's either checked out, lost or long overdue. Lost means it was stolen. Libraries don't lose books - people steal them," Nick explained. "Go to any web search engine and put in Satanis
m and tens of thousands of sites pop up."

  "Yeah, but today's kids are into video games and downloading music. They don't have time for that shit!"

  "You know back in 1978 when Jim Jones committed suicide with all those people in Guyana, people said it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, an exception and that it would never happen again. Well, it did happen again in Waco with that sicko Koresh. It could happen again given the right set of circumstances and the right people," Nick said, staring at the body bobbing gently from the movement of the water. "There are potential Jones towns out there waiting for the right moment. It just takes something or someone to light the fuse."