When the Day of Evil Comes

by Melanie Wells

  Bob listened without changing his expression. He raised his eyebrows a couple of times, but that was it. When I was finished, he checked a list beside his phone and dialed an extension.

  “Tony?” he said into the phone. “You got a minute? I’ve got something you might want to hear. Great. In my office.”

  He hung up the phone and looked at me. “You remember Tony DeStefano?”

  “The missions guy with the glasses?”

  “No, the other one. The short one with the briefcase.”

  “I always got those two mixed up.”

  “Well, Tony doesn’t have the briefcase anymore. He’s been in Central America for six years. Guy’s got cockroach stories like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Cockroach stories? What does that have to do with—”

  He waved my question away. “No, not the cockroaches. He’s teaching here for a year while he’s on sabbatical from Central America. I forget where he was stationed. Costa Rica, I think.”

  “Nicaragua,” a voice said.

  I turned around and laid eyes on Tony DeStefano for the first time in more than a decade. Bob was right, the briefcase was gone. Tony wasn’t Mr. Buttoned-Down Seminary Guy anymore. He was worn around the edges. Wrinkled khakis, a little-boy tie clipped to his shirt pocket (I guess in deference to the Seminary’s requirement that the men wear ties), and hair that was beginning to gray.

  We said our greetings and spent a few minutes catching up. Then Bob asked me to repeat my story.

  “What do you think?” Bob asked Tony when I was finished.

  Tony shrugged. “I think you got some demonic activity there.”

  Tony was from New York. I loved his accent. Hearing him talk always made me want to go to a baseball game and order a hot dog.

  “You think?” I said. “Seems like there must be some other explanation.”

  Tony squinted at me. “Why look for one?”

  “Because it seems so far-fetched. Demons don’t just run around going to picnics and giving people presents and injecting themselves into people’s dreams. This is America. Modern times. Cell phones and computerized air-conditioning and skin grafts with synthetic skin. Not first-century Jerusalem.”

  “What difference does that make?” Tony asked. “Spirits—angels and demons both—are eternal. It’s not like they all died off after the New Testament was written. They’re still around.”

  “That’s why I called you,” Bob said to Tony.

  Bob turned to me. “Missionaries see theology happening all around them every day. Americans are so insulated from this stuff, I think. We don’t see it. It’s all theory for us. But these missions guys have stories you wouldn’t believe. Where life is more primitive and primal, theology is very raw and daily. And demonic activity is easy to spot. You see it every day.”

  “Is that true?” I asked Tony.

  “Absolutely.” Tony nodded emphatically. “I been in Nicaragua for, what, six years? And Haiti before that. Both cultures, they got these traditions of spiritism. You see some crazy stuff. Stuff you wouldn’t believe. When you’re not living in the culture, it’s easy to dismiss as superstition. You think, these people just aren’t sophisticated enough to know any better, see?

  “But when you’re there, living with them, eating and sleeping and praying with them, you see that it’s real. And pragmatically, and scripturally too, there’s no reason not to see it for what it is. You see it a lot in these cultures. All the time.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. I was willing to concede the point. Tony obviously knew what he was talking about.

  “Why would I rate a visit?” I said. “It’s not like I’m a threat to anyone. I’m not out there holding evangelism crusades, you know? And I’m not out there holding séances either. I’m just going about my tiny little life, doing my tiny little thing.”

  “Bad theology,” Bob interjected.

  “Excuse me?” I feigned offense.

  “Lousy theology, in point of fact. ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.’”

  “Hebrews,” Tony said. “Thirteen, verse two, I think. New American Standard, right?”

  Bob nodded and grinned.

  “You guys need some hobbies,” I said.

  “Demons are angels, Dylan,” Bob was saying. “Just fallen ones. The passage says nothing about the person who receives the visit being in any way special. It’s the angel that’s special.”

  “Then why show up in my life as opposed to someone else’s?” I asked. “It’s not like this happens to people every day. Something bizarre is going on.”

  “I remember something about you,” Tony said quietly. “From school. You were always real good about knowing who to pray for.

  “I remember you called me out of the blue one time. Just totally out of the blue. Hadn’t heard from you since graduation, and this was about six, seven months after. You said I’d been on your mind and you had the feeling you should pray for me. You called to find out how I was. See what was up. You remember that?”

  I didn’t. I’m always getting some powerful urge about something. It pops up out of nowhere. Sometimes it lingers, and I say a prayer, and then it goes away. Sometimes it sticks around and bugs me. That’s when I make a phone call, just to put my mind at ease.

  I’ve always considered myself to be a world-class worrier. If I weren’t into swimming, worrying would be my only true sport. It’s easily one of my top ten character flaws.

  “Well, I remember it like yesterday,” Tony said. “I barely knew you in school, and here it was, half a year after graduation and you’re calling me up out of nowhere.”

  “Go on,” Bob said. Maybe the clichés weren’t limited to psychologists after all.

  “I was all in turmoil inside,” Tony was saying. “Just going nuts. Trying to decide whether or not to propose to Jenny. I’d been going over and over it in my mind for, what? Months, by then. I knew my parents would never give their blessing ’cause she wasn’t Italian. And if you’re Italian, you need your parents to approve your marriage.”

  He said this as though it was obvious to everyone.

  “I’d been up all night that night, on my knees, begging for an answer. Around daylight, I finally decided I’d ask her, and I got this terrific feeling of peace. All at once. That was about the time you said you’d gotten out of bed to pray for me. You don’t remember that?”

  “Vaguely,” I said. Jenny had called and thanked me at the time, I think. They’d been married almost ten years now. Three kids.

  “I remember thinking at the time that you must be one of those people with the good radar,” Tony said.

  “Come again?” I said.

  “A good radar for spiritual things,” Bob said. “I absolutely see that in you. The Apostle Paul was like that, and he warns us to be attuned to spiritual battles. Ephesians.”

  “Six,” Tony said.

  I rolled my eyes at him.

  “What’s been happening in your life lately?” Tony asked. “Anything else unusual going on?”

  I thought a minute. “Some strange things have been happening at home, now that you mention it.”

  “At your apartment? You still in that dump in Lakewood?” Tony asked.

  I shook my head. “I’ve moved three times since then. I’m in Oak Lawn now. In an actual house.” Oak Lawn is an old artist neighborhood in Dallas. Creaky houses and interesting people.

  “What kind of things?” Bob asked.

  “Okay, I thought this was pretty weird. I’ve had some photos fall off the walls. I have about thirty or so old family photos lining one hallway, and three pictures have fallen off the walls in the last month.”

  “Old place, right?” Bob asked. “Maybe the house is settling.”

  “They were all pictures of my mother,” I said. “And they fell off the wall without knocking off any of the ones hanging below them. Three separate times. The glass broke each time.”

&nb
sp; “Didn’t you say it was your mother’s ring in the package?” Tony asked.

  “Yep.”

  We were all silent for a moment.

  “Anything else?” Tony asked.

  “Okay, here’s something really weird. I’m sort of embarrassed to tell you about it, actually, because it makes me sound like a fruit loop. But two months ago I went to Honduras on a short-term mission trip. It was a medical mission. I went with a group of doctors, and we set up a clinic down there.” I got up to fix another cup of coffee. “I bought some masks in the square.”

  “What kind of masks?” Bob asked.

  “I don’t know—tribal masks or something.”

  Tony cut in. “There’s Indian tribes down there that still practice their ancient religions. Same as in Nicaragua. Countries are right next door to each other.”

  I returned to my seat, finding comfort in my coffee and my spoon. “I never found out anything about them. I just knew they were ritual masks, and I thought they were sort of exotic-looking, so I bought them.”

  “Sounds harmless enough,” Bob said.

  “I thought so. I had them in a bag with some other stuff I’d bought and just stuck them in a closet in my bedroom till I could decide where to hang them. That same night, I started having these horrible nightmares. Screaming, horrific, terrifying nightmares. Violent. For a solid week.

  “I tried everything I could think of to get rid of them. Did all my psychologist tricks. I kept a journal, took some herbal sleep remedies, started reading my Bible before I went to bed, meditating, praying, the whole bit. But they kept on. It was just debilitating. They didn’t stop until I threw the masks away. I thought of it on a hunch—even though it sounded completely ridiculous. But that night I slept like a baby. All night long. Haven’t had a nightmare since.”

  “Any theories about the connection to your mom? With the photos and the ring?” Bob asked.

  “Not really. My mom’s been gone for two years. She wasn’t a particularly spiritual woman. I don’t even think she was a believer.”

  “You were close to her, though,” Bob said. “I remember when she died, I thought we were going to have to put you away for a while.”

  “Yeah, it was tough,” I said. She’d died of breast cancer. Fifty-five years old. I still had a hard time thinking about it.

  “Well,” Tony said finally, “the good news is that as a child of the King, you’re entitled to protection.”

  “You don’t think Christians are at risk for being harmed by demons?” I asked.

  “Sure they are,” Bob said. “But you have access to protection. I’ll send you back to Ephesians. Chapter six. Why would you need to arm yourself if you were in no danger? Why fight the battle at all, in fact?”

  “So what can I expect? What should I be doing? Should I keep the jewelry? Should I …” I couldn’t think of where to begin.

  “I think you can expect that it will keep up for a while,” Tony said. “And I think you should pay attention to that kid’s dream. What’s his name? Devon?”

  “Gavin,” I said. “Which part of the dream?”

  “The part where he threw the book at old slash-back and he turned tail and ran,” Bob said. “‘Living and sharper than a two-edged sword,’” he quoted.

  “Hebrews chapter four?” I guessed.

  “Very good. You’re not that rusty,” Bob said.

  “Too rusty to fight a battle like this one,” I said.

  Bob got up and went to his bookshelf. “Here’s another book for you.”

  I looked at the title. Demons and the Christian Heart. By Tony DeStefano.

  “If you want, I’ll sign it for you,” Tony said. “I’ve sold at least fifteen of these. Maybe twenty. I’m a celeb now.”

  “You and me both, man,” I said. “It’s just that I’ve apparently caught the attention of a different crowd.”

  4

  I WENT BACK TO WORK with neither creativity nor enthusiasm. At the end of the long afternoon, I said good-bye to the last student, started my noisy truck, and drove the hot, congested streets of Dallas to my house.

  I locked my front door behind me and went straight to the buffet cabinet, unlocking it and pulling the velvet bag out into the daylight that streamed through the windows. I felt it before I opened it up, probing it with my fingers to see if anything was still in there. The lumps felt like they were supposed to, so I pulled the drawstring and emptied the contents gently onto my kitchen table.

  I picked the necklace up first and examined it closely. There was nothing extraordinary or other-worldly about it. There were no freaky markings on it. It didn’t twine itself into a 666 pattern when I laid it down. Nothing weird or spooky like that. I guess you could make a case for the black stone being symbolic somehow. But the necklace itself just didn’t seem sinister to me at all. It was just a necklace. An odd but beautiful piece of jewelry that I liked. Something I would have bought for myself, had I had the chance.

  I undid the clasp and tried it on. I guess I expected it to suddenly get heavy or burn a mark in my skin. Something fantastic that would be … I don’t know … obvious. But it just lay there like a normal necklace, perfectly passive and well-behaved. I glanced in the mirror. I liked the way it looked on me. It looked like it belonged there.

  The ring sparkled in the light and caught my attention.

  I didn’t feel nearly as casual picking up the ring as I had the necklace. I almost went to the utensil drawer to get some tongs, as a matter of fact. I couldn’t get past the idea that my mom was supposed to be wearing that ring in her grave. But I made myself reach out and put my fingers on it and bring it up to my eye.

  It was lovely and delicate. Platinum and small stones woven around a bright, perfect center diamond.

  The ring was a copy of one my mother had seen when she and my dad were backpacking through some tiny town in Italy the summer before their senior year at the University of Texas in Austin. My father had it made before he proposed.

  My parents were hippies then. They’d lived together in my dad’s van after they met in a sophomore philosophy class. I suspected they’d done the drugs that were so common at the time, though they never told me and I never asked. I do know they used to go listen to Janis Joplin at Threadgill’s and that they missed Woodstock because my dad was enrolling in med school. I don’t think my mother ever forgave him for that.

  My brother was born three months after they married, and I came along eleven months later.

  I grew up thinking John Lennon was deity. I’m still a huge fan, of course, but realized Jesus was further up in line when I was about nine, the year I became a Christian.

  The ring had been purchased with my dad’s family money, a concession to the materialism they were supposedly committed to avoiding. But my mom had liked that Italian ring, and my dad had really liked my mom. She hadn’t taken that ring off her finger since the day she said yes in 1969. Not when she was washing dishes or bathing my brother in their first crummy med-school apartment, not during their two years in the Peace Corps in Bolivia, not when she was pouring concrete for the foundation of their first house. And not even when they divorced three years ago after thirty-three years of marriage. She wore it even after that. She never told me why.

  She did try to give it to me before she died. She really wanted me to have it. But I couldn’t deal with the weight of that ring—the burden of their optimism gone.

  And when she died, the three of us—my dad, my brother, and I—all agreed wordlessly that she should be buried wearing it. We never even discussed it.

  And here I was staring at it, two years after it had gone to her grave with her. I could almost feel her in the room. I put the ring back in the bag and picked up the phone.

  My dad, once a Peace Corp volunteer and organic gardener—Mr. Peace, Love, and Macramé himself—had slowly morphed into one of the more successful heart surgeons in the country. He was famous, busy, wealthy, and completely impossible to reach, in spite of the cell p
hone and two pagers he carried. He taught cardiovascular something-or-other at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston and was always either lecturing people or cutting them open.

  I decided to avoid the technological maze and called his secretary

  “Janet,” I said. “Dylan.”

  “Hon, I was just thinking about you.”

  “You always say that when I call.”

  “Well, I was,” she insisted.

  “Is he in?” I asked. I already knew the answer.

  She laughed. “Of course not. He’s in surgery.” I listened while she checked his schedule. “Mitral valve replacement. He went in at three. I’m guessing he’ll check in here in about a half hour. Someone else will close for him.”

  Janet knew my father better than any of us ever had.

  “He set a date yet?” I don’t know why I asked. Scratching some irritating little itch of curiosity.

  “Thanksgiving weekend,” she said. “Now don’t get mad.”

  Too late. Leave it to my father to plan his wedding on Thanksgiving weekend. I had no plans to attend anyway. I’d plan a ski trip or something.

  “Kellee spending all his money planning it?”

  “You know it. On the beach at Cabo San Lucas. They’re flying everyone down and putting them up at some spa hotel. Should be quite the shindig.”

  Kellee-with-two-e’s was my dad’s scrub nurse. Half his age and silicone-enhanced. I detested her. My dad would never cop to it, but I was certain Kellee had come along before my parents split. The last spark of the long slow scorching of their marriage.

  “Maybe it’ll rain,” I said hopefully.

  “It never rains in Cabo,” Janet said. “Kellee chants that like a mantra.”

  I changed the subject. “Hey, I’m hoping you can help me with something.”

  “Anything,” Janet said.

  “Do you have any idea where my dad buys jewelry? I’m trying to find out who made my mother’s wedding ring. I think he still uses the same guy. Some dude his family’s been using forever.”

  Janet was already flipping through her Rolodex. “Got a pencil?”