Judgement Day

by Andrew Neiderman

  Kevin knew this section of the Village well. He had gone there often to have lunch at a nearby delicatessen. He went directly to the parking lot next to Father Vincent’s building, and, just a little over a half an hour since he had called him, he rang the man’s apartment and entered as the door was buzzed open.

  Father Vincent opened his apartment door for Kevin as soon as he emerged from the elevator. “Right this way,” he called in a deep, resonant voice. Kevin hurried toward him.

  A short, stout, bald-headed man in a crisp white shirt and black slacks stepped back so he could enter.

  Father Vincent had two lean puffs of starch-white hair over his ears. They combined at the rear of his head to emphasize the oval shape of his shiny crown, spotted with brown age spots. His eyebrows were gray and bushy, but his eyes were a soft, youthful blue, revealing the spirit and intellectual energy of the man. His cheeks were inflated just under his eyes. In fact, there was a bloated look to his entire face, all his features somewhat large. His chin dipped and curved smoothly, rounding off his elliptical visage.

  He was barely over five feet tall, and Kevin thought there was something dwarfish about his hands. He extended his left one quickly, seizing Kevin’s right hand and pumping his palm with unexpectedly strong stubby fingers.

  When he smiled, the softness in his cheeks folded to form two dimples just above the corners of his mouth. Kevin decided he was a cuddly, cute man, lovable, a beardless, albeit a bit diminutive, version of Kris Kringle.

  “Cold as hell out there, I bet,” Father Vincent said, rubbing his hands together sympathetically.

  “Yes. The wind is especially biting tonight,” Kevin said, and for an instant he replayed the image of the shadowy man on the corner, his collar up against the frosty air.

  “Go right into the living room. Make yourself comfortable,” Father Vincent said, closing the door. “How about a hot drink or a stiff one?”

  “I think . . . a stiff one.”

  “Brandy?”

  “Fine. Thank you.”

  Kevin followed him into the cozy little living room, its furniture consisting of an egg-white large cushioned sectional, two glass and wood end tables, and a matching table at the center of the sectional. There was a dark pine rocker in the far left corner with a pole lamp beside it. On the right and to the immediate left were shelves and shelves of books. The far wall consisted of a fake marble fireplace. There was a false log with a glowing red light in it. The light blue nylon carpet looked old but not yet worn.

  Father Vincent went to a small liquor cabinet on the immediate left and poured two snifters of cognac.

  “Thank you,” Kevin said, taking his.

  “Have a seat. Please.” Father Vincent gestured toward the sectional, and Kevin sat down, unbuttoning his top two overcoat buttons.

  “I’ll give you a chance to warm up before taking your overcoat, if you like.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Kevin said. “This will help,” he added, indicating the brandy. The drink did feel wonderful as it burned its way gently down his throat and into his stomach. He closed his eyes and relaxed.

  “You look like a very troubled young man,” Father Vincent said. He sat across from Kevin and studied him as he sipped his own brandy.

  “Father, that’s an understatement.”

  “Unfortunately for me, it often is.” He smiled. “People come to priests or psychiatrists only as a last resort, usually. So,” he said, relaxing himself, “you’re a friend of Bob McKensie’s, huh?”

  “Not exactly a friend. I’m a defense attorney. I opposed him in a case recently.”

  “Oh?”

  “Father Vincent,” Kevin said, thinking it was best to get right down to it, “Bob explained that you have done considerable research in what we call the occult.”

  “It’s been one of my passions, yes.”

  “And he told me you are a practicing psychiatrist as well as a priest.”

  “To be honest, I wasn’t all that active as a psychiatrist. I dabble in it now and then on a part-time basis. And I’m sure he told you I have retired from my clerical duties.”

  “Yes. Well, to be honest, I think Bob wanted me to see you as both a priest and a psychiatrist.”

  “I see. Well, why don’t you begin at the beginning? What seems to be the problem?”

  “Father Vincent,” Kevin said, fixing his eyes on the little man, “I have good reason to believe I work for the devil or the devil’s advocate. Whatever we call him, he’s someone or something with supernatural powers, and he uses these powers to assist the forces of evil at work in our world.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Bob McKensie has told me about your work with the occult, and he assured me you wouldn’t laugh when I told you all that. Was he right?” Kevin paused and waited for the elderly man’s reaction.

  Reuben Vincent remained stoical, thoughtful for a moment, and then nodded. “You mean all this literally, I assume?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “No, I won’t laugh, nor will I embrace your statement as would so many, what shall I call them, religious fanatics, without satisfying my own criteria. I do believe in the devil’s literal existence, although I am not certain that he has manifested himself in a human form continually since the loss of Paradise. I think he has chosen his moments, much as God has chosen His.”

  Father Vincent pressed his hands together piously and rocked slightly in his seat, his eyes fixed on Kevin. He was such a diminutive man, it was difficult for Kevin to imagine that he could offer anything to combat the powers of John Milton.

  “However,” he continued, leaning forward, his eyes small, scrutinizing, “there is no question that the devil is always with us. Some of his essence exists in all of us, just as some of God’s essence exists in all of us. Some believe that is all the result of Adam and Eve’s blunder. I don’t know whether I subscribe to that theory so much as I feel we have the potential to be either good or bad.

  “So to answer your question fully, I believe in the devil and I believe he lives in us waiting for his opportunity. Sometimes, to tempt us, he takes a human form and wins our confidence and trust in some way.”

  Father Vincent sat back, smiling. “What makes you think you are working for the devil himself?”

  Kevin began with the Lois Wilson case, his decision to take it, and Paul Scholefield’s attendance at the trial. He traced the history of events, Miriam’s change in character, Helen Scholefield’s cryptic warnings, the Rothberg trial, and brought his story up to his discoveries at the computer in the office.

  Throughout it all, Father Vincent listened attentively, nodding occasionally, occasionally closing his eyes as if he had just heard something with which he was well familiar. When Kevin was finished, the old man did not say anything for a few moments. Instead, he got up and went to a window to look out at the street below. He stood there thinking. Kevin waited patiently. Finally, Father Vincent turned to him and nodded.

  “What you say makes a lot of sense to me. Stories, anecdotes, histories, and philosophies I have read convinced me quite a while ago that the devil has a sense of loyalty to his followers. Perhaps you remember a great literary work about good and evil, Paradise Lost, by the English poet John Milton?”

  “John Milton! John Milton!” Kevin sat up. A sharp, deep smile cracked across his face. Then he sat back and laughed.

  “What’s the joke?”

  “It’s his joke, his in joke, his own sick sense of humor. Father Vincent, John Milton is the name of the man I work for.”

  “Really?” Father Vincent’s eyes brightened. “This is getting interesting. Obviously, you didn’t recall the poetic narrative before this.”

  “It must have been one of those things I fudged at college, bought those summarized versions to read instead of reading the work itself.”

  “It’s not an easy thing to read . . . Latinate syntax, loads of classical references, metaphors born out of metaphors,” he said, making S’s in the air with his right hand lik
e an orchestra conductor. “Anyway, according to the poet John Milton, after the devil, Lucifer, is thrown out of Heaven for leading a rebellion against God, he finds himself and his followers in hell, and he feels sorry for his followers. Milton described him as a classic leader, don’t you see? He had vision, charisma, saw himself as destined to lead and care for his followers.”

  “John Milton cares for his associates, provides well for them: homes, money, medical care . . .”

  “Yes, yes. What you are telling me is very, very interesting. He knows the evil that lurks in the hearts of people, predicts, perhaps even encourages it, and then, like a true leader, stands by his troops, supports and defends.”

  “No matter how heinous the crime or how guilty they might be,” Kevin added, as if he and Father Vincent were solving a great mystery together.

  The short, grandfatherly man pressed out his lips and clasped his hands behind his back. “Intriguing. Manifesting himself as a lawyer. Of course. All the opportunities . . .” He shook his head, his face brightening with excitement. “I have some observations I’m going to want you to make. In time . . .”

  “Oh no, Father. You don’t understand. I’ve come here tonight because I’m desperate. There is one thing I haven’t yet told you. It involves my wife. I believe she is in great danger and must have an abortion, only I don’t know how to get her to believe what we are saying.”

  “An abortion!”

  Kevin related what he knew about Gloria Jaffee’s death and Richard Jaffee’s suicide, and then he began to describe what he had first thought were the strange erotic dreams. He reiterated Helen Scholefield’s warning concerning Miriam and finished with Miriam’s announcement about her own pregnancy.

  “As soon as she told me, I knew I had to see you immediately.”

  “Children of the devil,” Father Vincent said, quickly sitting himself down again as if the weight of this information was too heavy. “Completely his own, of his essence. Children without conscience who could imagine things more evil than ordinary people . . . Hitlers, Stalins, Jack the Rippers, who knows what?”

  “Intelligent children,” Kevin said, feeling the need to contribute to the scenario Father Vincent envisioned. “Clever, conniving people who work within the system to carry out the devil’s orders.”

  “Yes.” Father Vincent’s eyes lit up with the realizations. “Not only lawyers, but politicians, doctors, teachers, just as you suggest: everyone working within the system to corrupt the soul of mankind and defeat God Himself.”

  Kevin took a deep breath and sat back. Could it really be that he had discovered the greatest conspiracy of all time? Who was he to have been chosen to bring down the devil himself and be the defender of God? And yet there was Miriam to think about. He would fight devils and demons to protect her, he thought, especially since he had brought her to this . . . this hell on earth, just as Richard Jaffee had brought his wife. Only he wasn’t going to choose suicide. Helen Scholefield had told him Jaffee had two choices. Well, there were three: join Milton, commit suicide, or destroy him. Miriam’s immediate danger made this paramount.

  “The analogy you made between the weaknesses in the physical body and the weaknesses in the soul might be closer than you think,” Kevin said. He described Miriam’s tendency to develop black and blue marks. “I’ve been telling her it could be a nutritional deficiency.”

  “Evil draws from good, feeds on it. It will be the reason why the evil child will take its mother’s life in the end.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Kevin said, excited because Father Vincent had reached the same conclusion so quickly. “What can I do?” he asked in a voice that was no more than a shade above a whisper.

  “I don’t doubt any of the things you have told me, things you have seen and heard, things you have felt, and if what you tell me is true, there is only one course of action,” Father Vincent said, nodding after his words as if to convince himself first. “Only one course—we must destroy the devil in the body he has chosen.

  “First,” the elderly priest continued, “you must carry out two additional tests to satisfy yourself that you are indeed in the presence of Lucifer.” He rose from his seat and went to his bookshelves to pull out an old Bible, its brown leather cover quite faded. The words “Holy Bible,” however, were still remarkably bright, almost as if they had been retouched. He brought the Bible to Kevin, who took it slowly and waited for some explanation.

  “The devil can’t touch the Holy Book. It burns his fingers. God’s words sear his polluted soul. He will howl hideously.”

  “But knowing that, he will never touch it.”

  “Yes. I want you to give this to John Milton, but . . . ” He looked around the room a moment and then went to a cabinet and took out a plain brown paper bag. “Here. Put the Bible in this bag. Offer it to him as a gift. If he is truly the devil, when he takes it out and sees what he has touched, he will drop it as if he has grasped the center of a flame and howl in pain.”

  “I see.” Kevin slipped the Bible into the paper bag carefully. He handled it as gingerly as he would handle an explosive. “And if he does what you have just described?”

  Father Vincent stared down at him a moment and then turned and went to the bookshelves again. He reached into a corner of a shelf and came out with what looked to be a gold cross with a silver replica of Christ crucified upon it. The cross was nearly eight inches long. Father Vincent held it at the bottom in a tightly closed fist.

  “Take this out and put it as close to his face as you can. For him, if he is truly the devil, it will be like looking directly into the sun. It will blind him momentarily, and in that moment he will be a helpless old man.”

  “And then?” Kevin asked.

  “And then . . .” Father Vincent opened his fist. The bottom of the cross was a sharp dagger. “Drive this into his corrupted heart. Don’t hesitate, or you and your wife will be lost forever.” He leaned closer. “Eternal forever,” he added.

  Kevin barely breathed. His heart was pounding, but he reached up slowly and took the cross from Father Vincent. The small face on the statue of Christ looked different from any he had ever seen. The expression was one more of anger than forgiveness, a face intended to depict a soldier of God. The cross was heavy, the end very sharp.

  “Once you have driven this into his heart, he will fall.”

  “But what about my wife and that . . . child?”

  “When the devil is killed in one of his human forms, his progeny will die with him. She will abort naturally. And so,” Father Vincent concluded, pulling himself into an erect position, “you will have saved your wife.

  “But do nothing,” Father Vincent warned, “if he does not meet the two tests I have described. Come back and we’ll talk some more. Is that understood?”

  “Yes,” Kevin said. “Thank you.” He stood up, pressing the Bible in the brown bag under his arm and clutching the gold cross dagger. He inserted it between his belt and his pants.

  Father Vincent nodded. “Good. Go, and may God be with you, my son.” He placed his hand on Kevin’s shoulder and mumbled some prayer under his breath.

  “Thank you, Father,” Kevin whispered.

  The apartment house was quieter than usual. Even the security guard, a man named Lawson who replaced Philip for the night shift, was nowhere to be seen when Kevin drove up and looked through the glass doors. He turned into the driveway and pressed his clicker. The gate lifted, and he drove into the garage. It was deadly still. The sound made by closing his car door echoed through the dimly lit garage and then died. He heard the soft hum of motors.

  Kevin saw that all the associates’ cars were there. Way down in the far right corner was the firm’s limo. For the first time, he noticed a doorway that he now understood must be the way to Charon’s apartment. Charon . . . it came to him because now he was thinking about definitions. Wasn’t Charon the mythological boatman who took dead souls on the ferry ride down to Hades? His name was surely another one of Joh
n Milton’s jokes, but their Charon did ferry them deeper and deeper into hell, didn’t he? The joke’s been on us, he thought.

  Kevin went to the elevator. First, he would go to Miriam and tell her all he had learned, make her understand the danger, force her to see. If need be, he would call Father Vincent and have her speak to him, too, he thought, but when he arrived at their apartment, she was already gone. She had left him a note on the kitchen table.

  “Forgot, tonight the girls and I had tickets to the ballet. Don’t wait up. We’ll probably stop for something after. There’s a gourmet lasagna in the fridge. Just follow directions and microwave as directed. Love, Miriam.”

  Is she mad? he thought. After all I said to her, after the way I ran out of here, to just go on with her schedule, not wait for me!

  She’s lost, he thought. Talking to her would have done no good. It was all in his hands now. Kevin’s gaze fell on the small table by the phone in the kitchen. There lay a godsend, the gold key. He could go up and face John Milton and put an end to it all. He grabbed it, and with the Bible in the paper bag under his arm and the gold cross dagger in his belt, Kevin rushed out to the elevator.

  He inserted the key and pressed “P” for penthouse. The doors closed, and he began to ascend, imagining that he was truly rising up out of the confines of hell. He had his soul to save and his wife’s life.

  The doors opened slowly, more slowly than they opened on any other floor, he thought. The great room was dimly lit, the lights in the ceiling turned down, most of the lamps off. Candles burned in the candelabra on the piano. Their tiny flames threw enormous, distorted shadows on the far wall. A very slight breeze in the room made the small flames flicker, making it seem as if the silhouettes trembled.

  The stereo was on very low, the tape deck playing a piano piece that was at first only vaguely familiar. But after a few seconds of listening, Kevin realized it was the concerto Miriam had been playing the night of the party. In his mind he could almost see her sitting there, playing it now.