And I was right. Change was coming.
As I attempted to rally my spirits with these upbeat thoughts, the orphan sitcom was interrupted by a weather alert.
A bleached-blond nineteen-year-old weatherman, Joey Frasca, part of the Kokomo County Fox affiliate’s recent decision to gear the local news to the age fifteen to twenty-four demographic, came on the tube jolting his arms this way and that at a map of Indiana nearly crowded out by an advertisement for a new energy drink called Yakk.
“Killer storm coming, yo,” he said, making horns with his hand and pointing at a sea of red covering the lower half of Indiana. “The most killer storm of all time.”
Curious to catch a glimpse of this most killer storm and thinking, as was customary, I wouldn’t be in agreement with the designation, I stepped out onto the back porch to take a gander.
For once, Joey Frasca was right on the money. The angry red on the TV screen had translated into commensurately angry black clouds advancing across the sky. I saw flashes of lightning in the distance. I heard grumbles of thunder from a storm only beginning to vent its fury. I felt the ominous chill from a gust sent ahead of the storm.
“Well, I’ll be. That looks like quite a squall,” my father said. He’d also gotten out of his chair to get a look, though, due to his aversion to raindrops, he did not venture beyond the screen door.
Since I’m not all that into getting rained on either, I turned my back on the storm to reenter the house, only to be halted in my tracks by my father’s raised, pointing finger, which turned me around.
There, in the middle of the field beyond our backyard fence, arms outstretched like a wizard mustering the winds, was Sparky.
He was yelling into the storm—yelling at it maybe. When he wasn’t yelling, he was cackling. When he wasn’t yelling or cackling, he was thrashing his arms like an unhinged orchestra conductor who believes his baton is what makes the music. All the while, the storm closed in on him.
“What is that dipstick doing?” my father said.
Despite being full of cookies, half-and-half, crackers, booze, and the not-so-proud owner of quite a lot of stomach, I was still able to haul ass into the field, grab Sparky, and drag him to the house in a surprisingly short amount of time.
I, gasping, was about to vomit, about to have a stroke. My father, about to do neither of those things and breathing normally, wrapped the boy in a towel and sat him on a chair in the kitchen.
The boy was breathing almost as hard as I was, but unlike me, it did not appear to be because he desperately needed the oxygen in order to live. It looked instead that he was thrilled about something. His eyes were huge, shining.
It was a look I had seen in my own eyes many times. Exhilaration. Illumination. Euphoria. Like Archimedes about to run naked through the streets of Syracuse.
You know: Eureka!
Disconcerted by those shining eyes of his and furious with him for being outside in the most killer storm of all time, my father and I attacked Sparky with a barrage of questions and rebukes.
“What were you doing out there?”
“Do you know how dangerous that was?”
“Who were you talking to?”
“Why were you laughing?”
And on and on.
Sparky, as usual, wouldn’t answer us. He just kept his shining eyes on the storm outside and his breathing labored and hoarse.
Given the look on my father’s face at that moment, I got the impression that I might be able to finally let him in on Sparky’s little secret, that it was possible he might join forces with Penny and me—even more so when Sparky looked up with those same glistening eyes and, with a voice deeper than it had ever been before, said this:
“I’m kinda worried about Mom.”
5
The goons are back and in motion, hauling the mahogany desk to the far corner of the room, next to the open balcony door. Reverend Phipps is hunched over what looks to be an open guitar case, and from it he produces a piece of thick, purple chalk and a black mat. The goons remove the rug that was underneath the desk, and with the hardwood floor exposed, Phipps rolls out the mat, kneels, and draws with the chalk what I understand is called the Sigil of Baphomet or, as I know it, a pentagram.
Which disappoints me.
Just once I’d like to hear of a satanic ritual with some other logo. Like General Motors or the US Postal Service. But then, I guess others would say the same thing about us Christians and our crosses and stick-on bumper fish.
“Michael,” Phipps says, “I would like you to come here and sit down in the middle of this circle.”
“Gentlemen,” he says to the goons, “you are not worthy of this moment. You will go.”
“What about me?” I ask as the goons unworthily trudge out.
“You are the father of the boy, correct?” Phipps says.
“Absolutely.”
“Then you are worthy. You may stay.”
“Great,” I say, and feeling just that, especially since I can stay on this couch.
I am comfy. I am worthy.
What I am about to observe is what the Church of E calls a Summoning. What’s going to be summoned is a demon of some sort, who will give various commands and guidance to Phipps, perhaps even deliver a message from his satanic majesty himself.
The Church of E, Phipps tells me, is only allowed so many Summonings per year, and as this is October, they are near the bottom of the barrel in how many Summonings they have left. Which means either Halloween, the Yule/Winter Solstice, or Casino Night will be Summoning-free this year, and entirely because of me and the fruit of my loins.
“But I wouldn’t be burning one of our last Summonings unless I felt the situation to be so special as to warrant it,” Phipps said. “I would burn one hundred years’ worth for this moment.”
Now how do you like that?
I wish I could call up my father right now. I wish I could tell him all about this and then ask him to put my younger brother on the line.
What would I say?
“Eat your heart out, Horvath.”
What the demon is being summoned for is to tell Reverend Phipps and me, once and for all, whether or not Michael Jasper Horvath is the Antichrist.
Sparky’s Black Catechism score and my stories, as good as they were, weren’t enough to convince Phipps into going all in. They were, however, enough to summon a demon to settle the issue.
That’s nothing to sneeze at.
The tough part is, once the answer is given—and in the affirmative, I’m sure—I will still have to figure out a way to take care of Sparky before Phipps and his goons can whisk him away, and preferably without having to go toe to toe with that demon. Call me unsure of myself, but I just don’t like my chances in such a fight.
Then again, I don’t like anybody’s chances in such a fight—except Jesus, who has yet to show up. And if I’m up to speed on how this end-of-the-world stuff goes, he’s not going to get here for a long time still.
Speaking of Jesus, as I watch Phipps make final preparations (a small black altar has been brought in and there are various, standard satanic artifacts being placed on it, such as bone of some sort, a tattered black book—Necronomicon probably—and a vial of what I’m thinking must be baby’s blood), one question troubles me.
“Why would you guys want the Antichrist to be alive if he’s just going to get his ass kicked by Jesus in the end?”
“Our prophecy ends a little differently than the one in your Bible,” Phipps says.
“Oh, like you guys win or something?”
“Something like that.”
I sneer. I laugh. I may doubt the existence of God and my religion from time to time, but one thing is certain: if it is true, if God is there, then He certainly isn’t going to lose.
“You sound skeptical about our prospects,”
Phipps says. “Too indoctrinated with Christian propaganda to fathom the possibility of defeat?”
“What’s my alternative? That some ego-maniac ex-angel can beat the One who created him?” I say.
Phipps smiles. “I guess we’ll just have to see what happens, but until that day—if we survive the war long enough to see it—let me give you this to think about: If the Biblical account of the fall of Lord Lucifer is to be believed, why did God, after the rebellion, not destroy Him outright? Why did he allow Him to continue to exist when there is no hope of forgiveness?”
“To prove a point,” I say. “To teach us all a lesson about God’s nature.”
“Spoken like a true sheep, Frankie,” Phipps says. “But even you have to know that isn’t much of an answer.”
“Fine. Why didn’t God destroy Satan then?”
“Because he can’t, Frankie. Because he’s not strong enough.”
At this complete and utter rubbish, I sneer a second time but do not laugh. (Why? Eh, don’t feel like it this time.)
“Okay, Phipps. If He’s not strong enough to destroy Satan, why wasn’t Satan strong enough to stay in Heaven?”
“That is nothing but a spin-job courtesy of God, the true loser of the so-called Celestial Rebellion. You see, Lucifer and His followers, dissatisfied with the weak, unstable rule of Jehovah, left Heaven of their own accord and came to Earth to establish a new kingdom. God fought to keep Lucifer, his brightest star, from leaving, and was soundly defeated. Lucifer, out of respect for His old commander, allowed God to keep Heaven, while He took control of Earth. For ages an uneasy truce was had, with God still nursing his wounds and lusting after the Earth; whereas Lord Lucifer, not the crazed, megalomaniac depicted in scripture, but a strong, wise, and just entity, was content with His lot and kept little interest in the goings on in Heaven. Knowing full well he could not defeat Lucifer in another war, God approached Him with a wager.”
“Mankind,” I say.
“Very good, Frankie,” Phipps says. “The idea was God and Lucifer would wage war in a different sense. A battle of wits over the hearts and minds of these newly created beings. During the long timeline of humanity’s existence, each would have the opportunity for one champion, one member of the human race who would be given the power to drive God or Lucifer into banishment in the far recesses of existence, a gruesome, teeth-gnashing place referred to in the Christian Bible as the Outer Darkness, but which we Epistemological Emendationists call...Tijuana.”
“Mexico?”
“Yes, but don’t interrupt again. Now, God—out of the graciousness in Lucifer’s heart—was allowed the first turn and brought forth Jesus Christ two thousand years ago.”
“And Jesus Christ won,” I say. “He died for our sins and went down to Hell and broke the chains of death, liberating souls before resurrecting himself and ascending to his glorious throne in Heaven.”
“That, my friend, is pure fiction.”
“How do you figure?”
“Oh, Christ died all right, in brutal fashion. Lucifer made sure of it. God’s champion was a poor realization indeed. Christ, who thought he was to lead a successful coup d’état in Jerusalem, subdue the Roman Empire, and rule a thousand years, didn’t even get much more than a handful of followers who promptly deserted him when the proverbial going got proverbially chewy, right before Lucifer snuffed him out.
“God did not take too well to this latest debacle. For all the puerile accusations in the Bible calling Lucifer the father of lies, God himself is the true master. His champion destroyed, God deviously invented a ridiculous fairy tale to keep mankind under bondage to weakness and make the way as difficult as possible for Lucifer’s champion. But the best he has managed has been to temporarily stave off the inevitable, and Lucifer, who has been patiently biding His time, using God’s plan against him, is now poised to end this little game that was begun so many ages ago. His champion is at hand, and so is His ultimate victory.”
“Hm. That’s quite the imagination you got there,” I say. “Gonna be a pretty bad day when you realize none of it’s going to happen.”
“Like I said, we’ll see, won’t we?” Phipps says, going back to his altar business.
“There’s no way you can win, Phipps,” I say. “It’s impossible.”
“Look around you, Frankie. What in this world tells you we are losing?”
6
A day after the wife died in Joey Frasca’s most killer rainstorm, hydroplaning the Horvath family station wagon into a telephone pole, the old man invited Sparky to come live with him, Joyce, and the Great Horvath for a while.
This invitation was not extended to me—not that I would have accepted it anyway—and that Friday, after Penny’s funeral, Sparky got into the old man’s Datsun instead of into Old Tuna with me and we went our separate ways: Sparky to his grandpa’s, me to that now haunted house of mine.
Where, liquored up, I communed with ghosts.
Where, stoned on some Xanax Joyce had slipped me, I slurred and groaned at God.
Where I punched walls, kicked doors, fell down, ate too much, slept too much, cried too much.
Oh, Penny! Oh, my love! How this pillar of the world has been transformed into a strumpet’s fool!
Throughout these mournful weeks, I bore constant visits from the old man, who, in spite of my objections, came over every day and attempted to pick me up with more pictures and stories of the little bro.
I withstood obligatory condolences from work, from everybody, including Fred T.C. Hoover Jr., who declared our feud dead. In the lunchroom the day of my return, he approached me, and we tearfully hugged like two mafia dons at the truce of a mob war.
Fred said he wanted to be friends from now on.
I, sick with grief and tired of ugly feelings, said, “That would be fine by me.”
As a show of good faith, he took down his award plaques and the Christmas lights by the vending machines. He promised not to mention me in any new videos he made with his wife, and the next chance he got, he would have Hankie Vorfath get, in his words, “a hummer from Helen of Troy right after beating the shit out of Achilles.”
To which I said, “I appreciate that.”
The big dogs at Dagwood, pitying me as well, gave me an Honorable Mention in Best Innovation in Silverware Design at that year’s Dagwood Awards for my admittedly uninspiring, yet functional, knife and fork combination.
You know: Knifey Fork.
I was even commended for my equally uninspired slogan: “For when a spork won’t cut the mustard anymore, Knifey Fork will.”
Yeah, they gave me an award for that, an award I littered a section of highway in the greater Asshat, Indiana area with after chucking it out the driver’s side window on my way home from the ceremony.
Where, liquored up once more, I communed with ghosts.
Where, stoned out of my mind again, I ranted and raved at God.
Where I cried, ate, fell down, slept.
Don’t ever say we Horvaths don’t know how to party.
7
More about the demon as we wait:
Tituba is her name. She’s an authentic, bona fide devil-whore, an honest-to-goodness, genuine bitch-demon.
Either she’s taken her name from the seventeenth century slave accused of witchcraft during a rather embarrassing chapter in Puritan history, or we’re talking quite the coincidence here.
Her territory is the northernmost tip of the Bible Belt, which includes the northern tip of Kentucky, a sliver of southwestern Ohio, and, unfortunately for her, all of Kokomo County.
I wonder how she feels about this dreary charge, this lackluster lot in her infernal existence. I also can’t help but wonder what she did to piss off Lucifer.
As part of the ritual, Reverend Phipps is chanting to Tituba, presumably to let her know her presence is requested, and maybe my
memory’s off here, but it sounds pretty much identical to what I remember his Tongues being.
You know: “Yee-ya-yee!”
Then, switching to English: “She is coming. She is coming,”
“Glad to hear it,” I say.
Phipps kneels before the black altar, his eyes closed, his arms outstretched, and I am, once again, reminded of his efforts at my dying mother’s bedside.
“Did she happen to mention her approximate ETA?” I say, looking at my arm like I have a watch there.
“She will get here when she gets here,” Phipps says.
“So what do we do until then?”
“WE WAIT!” Phipps booms.
“Super-duper,” I say. “I love waiting.”
8
Back to the past. Back to my kickass one-man Dagwood Awards afterparty. Back to being asleep.
I was in the midst of the most vivid dream of my life. It was similar in setting to the wife’s nightmare where her left boob bled.
You remember. Lake, island, crib.
Except in my dream, the lake was not just boiling, it was on fire. My dream was nice enough, though, to put me on the island at the start—no closet door boats or curtain hanger paddles for me; and I was checking the crib for Sparky and the queen bed for Penny—all over the place, really—until I realized my dream wasn’t being so kind to me after all, as the only jackass on this island in the middle of fire was me.
And to my shrieking surprise, I discovered I was as flammable in the world of dreams as I was in real life and just as incapable of remembering to do what had been drummed into my brain during my six years of fire safety instruction in elementary school: stop, drop, and roll.
Instead, I did as most people do who forget the Big Three of fire safety: I screamed and ran around. When I could take the pain no longer, I jumped into the fiery water. I think the plan was to drown.
Through the flames of the fire, I looked up.
Floating through the smoke in the sky were balloon heads of my mother and wife, attached to strings. It would seem whomever had been in charge of holding on to those strings had let go.
The Antichrist of Kokomo County Page 22