Piercing the Darkness

by Frank Peretti

  Lucy was angry now. “Amber! Do you want me to—” She was going to say the word spank, but . . . now it didn’t seem to fit.

  “Faster,” said Amethyst, “faster, faster . . . to your death, to your death!”

  Then, with a final squealing sound and a powerful thrust of her hand, she sent the little car off the end of the table. It flew across the room and nosed into the carpet, tumbling end over end.

  “And now you are gone, removed from that which is called life!” said Amethyst with a raucous laugh and another whinny. “You were just so clumsy!”

  Lucy backed away as her daughter danced and pranced around the little upside-down car.

  She took Amber’s coat and hung it up herself.

  CHAPTER 9

  “YOU DID WHAT?”

  Attorney Wayne Corrigan had been patiently listening to Tom Harris’s story up to this point and had hardly said a word. This was his first question.

  Tom tried to back up a bit to explain. “She was . . . well, she was ‘channeling’ a spirit.”

  Corrigan rested his forehead on his fingertips and stared down at his desk, paging through the lawsuit as purely an emotional outlet. Looking down felt safer right now than looking Tom Harris and Pastor Mark Howard in the eye. “Channeling . . .”

  “Well, yes. We used to call it mediumism; a person allows a demonic spirit to speak through him or her . . .”

  “Well, yes, I know what it is, but . . .” And then Corrigan couldn’t think of the right words for his feelings. He could only shake his head.

  This was his last appointment of the day, and now it would probably be his worst. He was trying to be pleasant, but it was tough. Oh, what so many people expected of him! Here he was, in his forties, a small-town lawyer just scraping by, a reasonable man with a dear wife, four kids, mortgage payments, and a life of struggles and mistakes just like everybody else. But once again, someone with a need and no funds was sitting there looking for him to perform some miracle and suggest quick, simple answers to a case that was going to be complex and difficult. It just wasn’t fair.

  Pastor Mark decided to get into this. “Mr. Corrigan, I can assure you that Tom is a reasonable and truthful man. I believe what he’s saying, and besides, Mrs. Fields can concur. She was there; she saw it too.”

  “All right, all right.”

  Corrigan stopped to think for a moment. Should he hear the rest of this? How far should he let these two go before he turned them down? Maybe he should just tell them how much defending a case like this would cost, and that would end this whole conversation. He wasn’t too familiar with Tom Harris, but he knew Mark Howard and liked him. This gentle, genuine man in his fifties had that “gray head found in the way of righteousness” that the Bible talked about. Corrigan considered him a decent man of God, and most everyone agreed that the Good Shepherd Community Church was doing a lot of good for its people and for the community.

  Corrigan shook his head. It always happens to the good people, he thought.

  He leaned back with a sigh. “Okay, go on.”

  Tom wasn’t sure he wanted to. “She . . . well, she came to our school just about three months ago. Her mother brought her in and signed her up.”

  “Did Mrs. Brandon agree to your Statement of Beliefs?”

  “Well, yes. She signed her acceptance of them. She knows our doctrinal positions.”

  “What about the paragraph in the handbook about corporal punishment?”

  “Well, I assumed that she’d read it.”

  “All right, go ahead.”

  Tom regathered his thoughts and picked up the story again. “Amber got along fine with the other kids for a while. It took her about a month to fit in. Then, during recess, she started teaching the children . . . how to relax.”

  “Relaxation techniques?”

  Tom and Mark looked at each other with a ray of hope in their eyes.

  “You’ve heard of it?” Tom asked.

  “We had a case a year ago involving yoga being taught in a physical education class, and relaxation techniques were a part of it. Some parents—Christian parents—complained the school was teaching Eastern religion.”

  “So . . .” Mark was curious, “what happened?”

  “We complained to the school district, but we didn’t get the results we wanted. The school simply changed all the terms and sanitized the program so it wouldn’t sound like religion, and then just kept doing it.”

  “So . . .” ventured Tom, “I guess you lost that one.”

  “We didn’t exactly lose it. We dropped it. Let’s hear the rest of your story.”

  “Well . . . I saw what Amber was doing and I asked her what was going on, and she told me that it was what she learned in Miss Brewer’s class—that would be at the Bacon’s Corner Elementary—and that it was fun because it helped you feel better and meet special friends, imaginary guides. I didn’t know quite how to handle that, so I let it go. The other kids didn’t seem that interested anyway.

  “Well, then the kids started playing pretend games—you know how kids do. They were playing like they were in a horse show, and some of them were acting like horses and doing tricks while the other kids were the trainers. Kids play pretend games like that all the time—it was nothing odd, really.

  “But then . . . Amber became the leader in the group, and her horse—the one she was pretending to be—was showing all the other horses how to prance, and do tricks, and how to . . . well, be good horses, I guess. And that was fine. But after recess, she wouldn’t stop pretending to be a horse. She’d prance into the room and sit at her desk for a while, then prance over to the pencil sharpener, then prance up and down the aisles for no good reason, and she’d make horse sounds whenever I called on her, and we started having a real discipline problem. She was disturbing the class and disrupting things at every turn.”

  Mark prompted, “Tell her about the horse’s name.”

  Tom recalled that part. “Oh yeah, right. I got after her once. I said, ‘Amber, now you sit down and be quiet,’ and she”—Tom made the motions with his hands—“pawed the air like a wild horse, and whinnied, and said, ‘I’m not Amber. My name is Amethyst!’” Tom shrugged. “That was enough. I had to take her into the office with Mrs. Fields and have her paddled.”

  “Uh . . .” Corrigan looked at the document on his desk. “I think that’s the second item on the complaint here.”

  “I think so. We followed the procedure clearly stated in the handbook and agreed to by any parent who enrolls his or her child. We use a paddle when a child decides to force his will against the teacher’s will and we’ve carefully considered all the circumstances. We get alone with the student, we pray with them, we immediately try to contact the parents—”

  “Could you contact Mrs. Brandon?”

  “No. We tried her at home and at the Post Office, but she just wasn’t available and the situation was getting pretty intense.”

  “Who spanked Amber?”

  “Mrs. Fields. It’s our policy that the girls must be spanked by a woman and the boys by a man.”

  “Oh, that’s good. Did you have a witness?”

  “Yes, our art teacher was there that day, and she served as a witness. We made a record of the whole thing, and then we finally contacted Mrs. Brandon that night and told her what had happened.”

  “So what was her reaction?”

  “That’s the strange part. She agreed with our action. She wasn’t opposed to spanking Amber if Amber needed it.”

  Corrigan looked at the lawsuit again. “Mm. Somebody’s changed her mind. But when did you . . . uh . . .”

  Tom knew what Corrigan meant. “Just about a month ago. After we punished Amber, things went pretty smoothly for about three days, and then . . .” Tom stopped to think. “I think it must have started up again during noon recess. Amber became a horse again, just like before, and came back into class as . . . as ‘Amethyst.’ This time I wasn’t about to tolerate it, and I got firm with her, confronte
d her, and then . . .”

  Tom had to stop. He looked like he would cry. He forced himself to continue. “And then something came over that little girl. Her entire personality changed. She began to blaspheme, and curse, and mock the name of Jesus, and . . . and I had to get her out of there. The other kids were really being disturbed by it.

  “I took her by the arm and had to physically drag her from the room—she was grabbing onto the desks and the chairs and even the other kids. Mrs. Fields could hear the commotion from clear across the hall, and she came running to see what was going on, and it took the two of us to get her out into the common room and hold her down. She was just having a real tantrum . . . no, worse than that. She wasn’t herself. She wasn’t Amber Brandon.”

  Tom stopped. Neither Corrigan nor Mark said anything. There were no questions. They were both waiting to hear the rest.

  Tom pushed ahead, over the edge. “So, I . . . I discerned in my spirit that Amber was manifesting a demon, and I confronted this . . . this Amethyst in the name of Jesus; I ordered it to be silent, and to come out of her.”

  Corrigan slumped in his chair and exhaled a long sigh.

  Mark interjected, “But she was all right after that, wasn’t she?”

  “She was herself again, yes.”

  Corrigan asked, “So naturally you assumed that this demon had left Amber, that you’d succeeded in casting it out?”

  Tom was obviously embarrassed. “Yes. I guess so. But she must have told some real tales when she got home. Mrs. Brandon came in for a conference the next day, and by then she was beside herself, accusing me of physical abuse, terror, intimidation . . .”

  Corrigan looked at his bookshelf, steadily slumping lower in his chair. “You tried to cast a demon out of a ten-year-old child . . .”

  Mark protested, “Mr. Corrigan, you know what the Bible says about demon activity. You know demons are real, don’t you?”

  Corrigan flopped his arm over his desk and pointed it in Mark’s face. “Do you think a jury will buy that, pastor? Go ahead! Pull a stunt like that and then try convincing any jury in this country that your behavior was appropriate!” Now he used both hands because he needed a bigger gesture. “A child, a ten-year-old child, and you tried to cast a demon out of her!”

  “Well, what was I supposed to do?” Tom asked.

  Corrigan sat up before he slid off his chair. He leaned over his desk and leafed through the complaint in front of him. “Well, to start out, you shouldn’t have acted alone and you shouldn’t have gone ahead with this . . . this act . . . without getting some counsel, even legal counsel.”

  Mark said, “He knows that now.”

  Then Tom protested, “But legal counsel? How was I supposed to know about that? Since when did Paul and Silas seek legal counsel before they—”

  “They ended up in jail, remember?” Corrigan snapped, and for him to use a voice that was even a little loud had to mean he was upset. “They were beaten and thrown in jail for casting out a demon, and you’re up against the civil version of the same thing. A civil suit isn’t going to get you thrown in jail, but you’re still going to need some kind of a Philippian earthquake to get you out of this. The American Citizens’ Freedom Association has their fingerprints all over this thing . . . I suppose you know that.”

  Mark and Tom looked at each other. The ACFA, that infamous association—one could say conspiracy—of professional, idealistic legal technicians, whitewashed, virtuous, and all-for-freedom on the exterior, but viciously liberal and anti-Christian in its motives and agenda. Nowadays it was getting hard to find any legal action taken against Christians, churches, or parachurch organizations that did not have the ACFA and its numerous, nationwide affiliates behind it.

  Mark said, “We thought maybe that was the case . . .”

  Corrigan tapped the bottom of the first page of the complaint. “Ames, Jefferson, and Morris are members of the ACFA; they run the local chapter, and they’ve been the liberal, legal bullies around here for years. Why else do you suppose the press knew about your kids being taken away and were right there to hassle you at your home and in the police station? Why do you think they were right there to record you being served your summons? To create a scandal and smear you in the press, that’s why. Why do you think your two kids were taken away in the first place? As soon as the ACFA heard about this case, they leaked the information—probably embellished quite a bit—to the Child Protection people and pulled them into it. They want this kind of spicy news. Now you’re branded a child abuser, Tom, before you even get to court. The ACFA plays dirty.

  “Well, just look at the complaint here against . . . uh . . . the pastor, the headmaster, the church, and the church board: ‘Outrageous Religious Behavior Against a Child’—casting out the demon, of course, ‘Physical Abuse by Spanking, Excessive Religious Instruction Harmful to the Child, Harassment, Discrimination, and Religious Indoctrination Using Federal Funds.’

  “All this stuff is dynamite; it’s going to make the case difficult because the ACFA will use all these hot issues to get the public’s attention and stir them up.

  “And did you catch those big key words, federal funds? That’s what’s going to get them through the door of the federal courts: ‘violating mother’s civil rights by teaching religion using federal funds—a violation of the Munson-Ross Civil Rights Act and the Federal Day-care and Private Primary School Assistance Act.’”

  “Federal funds?” asked Tom.

  “Lucy Brandon works at the Post Office, right? She’s a federal employee, and under this Federal Day-care Act she receives a subsidy to help pay Amber’s tuition. Didn’t you know that?”

  Tom was obviously surprised. “It’s news to me. She didn’t say a thing about it.”

  “Interesting. Maybe she didn’t want you to know. Anyway, if you’re getting federal funds, that means you can’t discriminate or impose religion or spank or cause mental anguish by suggesting a child is demon-possessed, or whatever else the ACFA wants to test in a court of law. That’s the whole point of this thing: they find a vague law and then work up legal cases just like this one to stretch that law as far as they can in the courts. This Federal Day-care and Private Primary School Assistance Act is a big, vague, anything-goes cloud of smoke, a clever move by Congress that most people never heard about. Now the ACFA’s ready to get it defined through case law, legal precedents, maybe a Supreme Court decision.

  “That’s why they’re going federal with this, citing federal law. Look here: ‘You are commanded to appear at nine in the morning, two weeks hence, at the department of the Honorable Emily R. Fletcher of the Federal District Court, Western District, Room 412, Federal Courthouse, blah blah, blah.’ This is a federal case, guys.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Tom.

  Corrigan became quiet and then fumbled through an answer. “Well . . . I would say you need a lawyer, all right, but . . . um . . . I’m not sure whom you should consult on something like this . . .”

  “You mean, you won’t take this case?” Mark asked.

  Corrigan gave a nervous chuckle and shook his head. “Well . . . no. No, I can’t.” He quickly blurted, “Now before you say anything or ask me why not . . .”

  Then he stopped. Oh brother, here I go again, having to explain this to another bunch of naive martyrs.

  “Listen, no offense intended, please understand. I mean, I can appreciate your position . . .” Corrigan pushed his chair back from his desk, waved his hands around a little, and looked at his bookcase as he tried to find the words. “But I’ve just about established a new policy in this office not to defend Christians anymore who can’t pay for my services.”

  Mark thought the statement a little strange. “But . . . we didn’t think you’d do this for free.”

  It wasn’t a good enough escape for Corrigan to look down at his desk—now he looked down at the rug. “Pastor Howard, you’re the last guy on earth I’d ever want to turn down, but . . . Well, let me just share some depress
ing information with you.

  “Okay, I’m a Christian and everybody knows it; the police know it, the local judges know it, the county prosecutor knows it . . . Worst of all, all the Christians around this county know it. That means, when the Christians get into a legal predicament, they call me, because I’m a ‘brother in the Lord.’

  “But then, because they’re . . . Christians . . . they come into it having some convictions about how my services are going to be paid for, if paid for at all; they sit in my office and tell me about faith and God’s provision and usually throw something in about God rewarding me for all my time and sacrifice; but in the meantime, my practice goes down the tubes from bad debts.

  “But please don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming them. It’s just the way the system works: The little people—the Christians—get into legal tangles because the state, or the ACFA, or some other rabid, Christian-eating secularist organization decides to pick on them, and those people always have all the power, connections, and finances they need to win any battle they want in a court of law. Not so with the Christians. They have to put on spaghetti dinners and car washes and jogathons just to hire some poor, minor-league attorney like me who supposedly has such a love for righteous causes that he doesn’t care about the money.”

  Corrigan saw that Mark and Tom were listening without any signs of malice—at least not yet; so he proceeded. “Now that’s half of the problem. The other half is that all too often Christians just aren’t credible. You know, I’ve actually instructed some clients not to testify in court that they are Christians because in too many cases that information would damage their credibility! The world out there . . . the system . . . thinks it understands us. It has us pegged, categorized, defined. We believe in God; we believe in absolutes. Therefore, we can’t possibly be credible!” He chuckled wryly. “When I was in law school it was the other way around. The perception was that people lacked credibility if they didn’t believe in God. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?