by Avery Corman
While researching the Vanity Fair piece she asked each of the actresses to tell her, if they cared to, about “the wiggiest guy they ever dated.” One of the actresses described a weekend relationship with an otherwise “semi-ordinary guy,” a musician who revealed “an unbelievably strange side.” He turned out to be a member of a satanic cult which held Black Masses on 129th Street.
Ronnie looked into the cult, the Dark Angel Church, unashamedly featured on the Internet and highlighting its leader, Randall Cummings, at Darkangelchurch.org. She called her editor at New York magazine and pitched an article on the basis that the city was amazingly fragmented with special interest and demographic groups, but this was beyond beyond.
She was assigned the article and placed a call to Randall Cummings. He was smooth spoken and articulate, invited her to a mass, and was perfectly willing to be interviewed. He loved the idea of an article in New York magazine, as befitted the head of a satanic cult so modern that it had its own Web site.
The Dark Angel Church was located in Harlem in a narrow one-story brick building on 129th Street near the overhang of the West Side Highway, the exterior painted black with a small black plaque near the front door identifying the church. Harlem was known for its many churches, so it made sense to her that an anti-church group would not draw heavily from the minorities who lived in the area. Of the sixty or so people who entered the building while Ronnie observed, most were Caucasian. The worshippers wore unfashionable clothing, several men in work shoes, giving her the impression of a predominantly working-class crowd.
She waited for the stragglers to enter and approached the door. She was confronted by a bone-thin man of five feet six in a black suit, black tie, black shirt, and black shoes. The blackness of his appearance was broken by the man’s complexion, nearly ghostly white. Ronnie detected makeup.
“What do you want?”
“I’m Veronica Delaney. I’m here at the invitation of Mr. Cummings.”
“Last row. No tape recording. No pictures.”
“I’m going to take notes. That’s what I’m here for.”
“Do it quietly.” And he stepped aside allowing her to pass.
The interior of the church was painted black, the space illuminated by candelabras with glowing black candles mounted along the side walls. The worshippers were sitting in pews. Randall Cummings, their leader, stepped to an altar, an imposing six feet two, wearing a hooded black robe, and she amused herself by wondering if he might be wearing black underwear with little Calvin Klein logos. He peered at the congregants before speaking. His face was elegant from what she could see of it, with a long, thin nose. The voice, as on the phone, was soft, resonant, Middle Atlantic announcer style. No, better than that, she decided, good enough for a voice-over on a PBS nature special on seabirds. She was having difficulty taking this seriously, it was so Halloween to her.
“My fellow worshippers, it was a good week for the forces of evil. But then it always is. And yet, does that translate into your everyday lives? In hard cash? In business opportunities? In a level playing field for people such as yourselves who are not the entitled heads of corporations, the CEOs who get rich on the backs of those who do the work, the Wall Street boys in their private jets and their weekend houses and their fancy boats and their fancy cars, and their lawyers in their weekend houses and fancy cars with their mistresses and lovers, in a system where the rich get richer and the hardworking work harder?”
In college she had taken a course on modern political movements and as she listened she thought it could have been an updated Socialist Party speech by Eugene V. Debs from 1920.
“But it doesn’t have to be thus,” as he began to depart from Debs. “You can channel a force greater than all the forces on earth—and do unto others before they do unto you. You can level that playing field. You can be allied with the power of darkness, which exists, as you know. As you all know.”
The ghostly doorman wheeled out a cart with a television set attached to a DVD player, flipping it on with a remote. A fast-cutting series of images flashed on the screen, brutal images: war scenes, concentration camp scenes, American GIs dead in the streets of Iraq, dead or malnourished African children, crime scenes, an unremitting montage of civilization’s inhumanities, the worst of Mankind, torture scenes, lynchings, floggings; and on the bottom of the screen, flashing repetitively, a crude attempt at subliminal messaging, the words: “Satan lives … Satan lives … Satan lives.” She made a note for herself on the use of the footage for proselytizing—“unconscionable.”
“Is there any question in your minds,” Cummings said, as the five-minute film came to an end, “that evil—pure, constant evil—exists on this earth? It didn’t just get here. It didn’t just show up one night. It is the handiwork of the Prince of Darkness, whose power we are here to harness. And you will.”
Cummings then encouraged participation, for people to stand and bear witness to the injustices done to them that week, a litany of slights at checkout counters, work settings, parking spaces, doctors’ offices. The injustices, she noted, could easily have been from a Larry David routine on Curb Your Enthusiasm. But these people were in earnest. In each case Cummings offered words of encouragement of a perverse nature, that the aggrieved parties should lie, cheat, steal—summon the powers of evil to even the scores against them—and then he added that they should be sexually adventurous, too, illicit, if need be, to get their due in the world. Ronnie thought that was a tidy bonus, an invitation to sex folded into a satanic message.
She sensed that he walked an interesting legal tightrope, never overtly encouraging violence, keeping the fires banked on his particular modified view of evil, perhaps with an eye toward avoiding jail if any of his people were arrested for their actions.
Most of the testimonies from cult members were trivial, although some people expressed genuine pain over the illnesses and the deaths of loved ones. For these he offered a consistent form of guidance—take action. One congregant lost her husband in a farm accident in upstate New York.
“Your husband, what was his name?”
“Tom.”
“Your Tom’s unnecessary death proves the very existence of Satan. This week do something evil. Steal something. Take something that does not belong to you or something you have not paid for. There is nothing you can do about your husband’s death. What you can do is learn from it and empower yourself—through Satan. Be powerful through evil. Channel the evil that took him. What will you channel?”
“Evil.”
“And whose power is with you?”
“Satan.”
“Amen,” he said. “Whose power is with her?” he asked the congregation.
“Satan,” was the answer in unison.
“Who?”
“Satan,” they said, louder.
“Who will you win with?”
“Satan.”
“Win with Satan.”
He shook his head in the affirmative and she had an image of them pouring out of the church as if they had all been in a football locker room and were collectively going to rob a liquor store.
At the conclusion of the dozen testimonials, which lasted an hour, Cummings brought the service to an end by instructing them to join hands as he led them in chanting, “Satan is power, Satan is power, Satan is power.”
She left the building quickly to get ahead of the cult members leaving. Her intention was to stand outside the doorway and pick up any random conversation. Everyone departing was concerned with a scene unfolding across the street. A police barricade was set up with a squad car parked nearby and two police officers on duty. Behind the barricade three men and two women were shouting, “Go to hell, go to hell!” They looked more rabid and unstable in their anger than the people leaving the satanic mass. A van bearing a NEW YORK NEWS logo was parked curbside, a camera crew shooting the proceedings.
Cummings came up alongside her outside the building.
“Are you Ms. Delaney?”
; “Yes.”
“A little commotion for your article.”
“Apparently.”
Across the street several cult members shouted back at the demonstrators. The two sides yelled at each other for a couple of minutes. Under pressure from the police, the cult members dispersed and the protesters, without a target, shouted a few epithets, random barks winding down, and trailed away themselves.
The camera crew turned their attention to Cummings and walked toward him as he stood near the doorway, in his robe, hood up, preposterous in most settings; comfortable, though, in his own skin, under his hood, against the backdrop of his church. The crew consisted of a cameraman, a sound man, and a woman reporter in her twenties, a perky brunette. Here was a street demonstration protesting a satanic cult, which she was dealing with as if covering the Thanksgiving Day Parade.
“Mr. Cummings?” the reporter said, beaming. “I’m Sonya Brill.”
“Randall Cummings.”
“A pleasure.”
Ronnie leaned back against the church wall, observing.
“Could you tell us, what are your goals with your organization?”
“We worship Satan, darling. We respect Satan. We make a study of Satan’s work and we extract life’s lessons.”
“Which are?”
He launched into his speech with the do-unto-others portion, empowerment through evil acts.
“How long have you been in existence?”
“Two years.”
“And how did you come to this?”
“It came by way of a gradual awareness. When I realized that evil is endemic to our society. So we worship its dark creator to channel evil, to combat evil with evil, to level the playing field for our members.”
“I see. Well, those people across the street, they didn’t approve of you worshipping Satan.”
“They have every right to protest against us and we have every right to congregate.” And then in an apparent bid to use the television coverage to snare some new members he added, “We will win with Satan. We’re here every week at our church and every minute on the Internet at Darkangelchurch.org.”
“We have been talking to Randall Cummings on 129th Street, where protesters objected tonight to a satanic cult within their midst. Live for New York News, this is Sonya Brill.”
She shook hands with Cummings and was off with her crew.
Ronnie turned to Cummings.
“You don’t mind if I add to that, do you?”
“Ah yes, print versus TV. I’m sure you have a few other questions.”
He led her along the outside of the building to a rear entrance, opened the door, and showed her to his office. The room contained a sleek black desk, a built-in television screen above an elaborate stereo system, gray walls, black Venetian blinds; the room was illuminated by an aluminum ceiling fixture and a stainless steel desk lamp for Cummings’s work area, which included a computer and printer.
“It’s a modern Satan we’re dealing with, I see,” she said, positioning a mini tape recorder on his desk.
“No, a timeless Satan. But to reach people today, you do need to be up to date.”
“And how many cult members do you have, Mr. Cummings? It is Mr. Cummings, isn’t it? There’s no formal title?”
“A little sarcasm there, Ms. Delaney? That would be beneath you.”
“Yes, a little, nonetheless—”
“It is Mr. You can have fun with us. Shooting fish in a barrel. So easy to belittle the simpletons with their Satan worship, their cult. A sophisticated New York girl like yourself, Vanity Fair and the like.”
“You researched me?”
“I did.”
“I did the same with you. There’s not much on you.”
“We’re new. So you’ve got an inside track here, Ms. Delaney. Now my advice is, don’t be fooled. Someone as clever as you wouldn’t be taken in by all the candles and atmosphere, I would expect. But Satan is real. I believe that.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. And so do most God-fearing priests, the ones who aren’t just filling time. There’s too much evil in the world and the evil is too profound to be accidental.” He peered deeply into her eyes as he said this, the same technique he used with his congregants. “What is your religion?” he asked.
“I was Catholic once.”
“They have you forever, unless, of course, you’d like to come over to me.”
“How many people are in your group?”
“About a hundred at services, another thousand via the Internet.”
“And how do they worship exactly?”
“They receive the minutes of our masses. They can exchange e-mails with me. Buddy up with other congregants.”
“And you’ve been at this two years. Before that? Where did you come from, your basic bio?”
“I’m from Chicago. I taught acting and drama at Macalester. And then there was a turning point in my life. What you heard me tell that woman about her husband’s death. That comes from personal experience. My wife, a beautiful woman, kind, generous, was raped and beaten to death. They never found the murderer. You want to talk to me about evil? You want to say to me, there’s no Satan?”
She couldn’t tell. He had her. He could have been truthful about a wife, or not. She didn’t know. And he knew he had her. She could sense it in his expression.
“I’m missing something, Mr. Cummings, in the philosophy here. The connection between the Satan you say exists and the practical means of harnessing Satan’s powers, as you put it—”
“I encourage my people to lie, to cheat, to steal, to do nothing other than the big boys on Wall Street do, and the wheeler-dealers in those fancy-ass corporations.”
“Lie, cheat, steal, but nothing worse?”
“I don’t limit their imaginations.”
“You don’t seem to encourage them either. As though you’re being careful.”
“I don’t write specific prescriptions, if that’s what you mean.”
“You seem to be limiting your culpability by not suggesting anything violent. Almost as if you’ve had benefit of counsel on limits, on being a co-conspirator.”
“They can choose their evil.”
“It seems to be within limits.”
“That was hardly a Sunday sermon. I’m not telling them to run bake sales.”
“That thing of sexual freedom. I can see where it can be a big draw. Illicit sexual behavior as a sanctioned activity.”
“Whatever works. It’s all up to them. Truth is, they need encouragement. They need someone to tell them they can be empowered. And I’m the messenger. They’ll be better off for the message, doing unto others before they can be done unto, better off channeling evil, than they’d ever be mired in their helplessness.”
“So what all this is, really, is kind of a self-help course with Satan as the hook.”
“Oh, you’re just too, too sophisticated, aren’t you, Ms. Delaney? Our church is growing. People are helped.” He had a manila envelope on his desk. “Here are minutes of previous masses. Testimonials from members. Some general background we provide to people who inquire about membership.”
“Yes, I logged on to your Web site. It costs a thousand dollars a year to be in the cult, per person, fifteen hundred per family. That’s not nothing for people without means.”
“It’s nothing for the empowerment they get.” He handed her the envelope. “Try to go through this with an open mind. Give us the benefit of a fair-minded appraisal, without a ‘gotcha’ in it, if that’s possible. And visit us again if you wish, attend another mass. Call me if you have any other questions.”
“I will.”
“I’d like to ask you a question: Would you ever go to dinner with a satanic cult leader?” he said wryly.
“Thank you for your time.”
“Thank you, Ms. Delaney. And I’m serious about the dinner. As you may have noticed I’m very empathetic and supportive.”
She prepared to leave. He studie
d her with his mannered, probing look. She had taken herself to a Black Mass, interviewed the cult leader. She was not intimidated in the least by him, but as she left his office, she was unnerved by his closing remark.
“We might do something about that sadness I see in your eyes.”
The dream came again that night. The same elements. The little girl lost in the playground. The shattered glass. Something new this time. Cummings’s face. He was peering straight ahead. She awoke, cold and sweating at the same time. She was all right while she was at the church, but she presumed it must have frightened her on some level, the darkness of the place, the violence of the film, the invocations of evil. She was angry with herself. A year since the last time. She thought the dream was gone.
2
FOR THE BACKGROUND RESEARCH on the piece Ronnie entered the dark tunnel of satanic belief in America. Documented on Web sites and described in articles and speeches accessible on the Internet were the bleak views of people in emotional shadows. They believed in the power of Satan, and in conspiracy theories, that every year across the United States an unknown number of children and adults disappeared completely or for periods of time, kidnapped by satanic cult members, sexually abused or sacrificed in cult rituals, some supposedly murdered, some supposedly returned to their everyday lives with repressed remembrances that could only be unlocked by recovered-memory therapy.
The belief in these abuses had fallen out of favor since the discrediting of such alleged cases in the 1980s, but there were still people holding to the idea of ritual crimes by dark forces. Cults openly invited prospects to join with a fee for membership, as with the Dark Angel Church. Also available on the Internet were the opinions of law enforcement experts debunking the idea of satanic conspiracies, and the pros and cons of satanism were debated in Internet chat rooms. “A gloomy loopiness alive in the land,” Ronnie wrote in her notes.