Entertaining Strangers

             Apparently, you don’t have to be very different to be entirely too different in the town of Great Falls.

             “We don’t get a lot of Catholics around here,” the preacher said when we met in his office. “Not with a capital ‘C’ anyway. 

             The local preacher was a jovial man, and I do mean THE local preacher. Most of the townsfolk were members of his non-denominational protestant congregation that got rich and started buying up all the rest of the churches in the small town’s square. No one took it personally, he claimed, not even when the nonprofit church bought a barber shop and a hardware store for reasons he would not disclose. I’d been a priest for five years—since I’d turned twenty-five—brought into the fold somewhat early for my unique interests and thorough research, certainly not for my expertise in tax law. Better leave that to the experts.

             “That crazy Phillips boy…,” Reverend Johnson said. “That’s why you’re here, right?” He leaned forward and stared hard from across the desk, habitually chawing on his right cheek.

             “Yes, sir.”

              “Look at you now. ‘Sir!’ You don’t need all that. Welcome to South Carolina. Look here, now, though, what you do need is to know about that whackadoo Phillips boy.”

               “Zeb, right?” I wanted to make sure. “Short for Zebediah, I assume.”

               “Zeb Junior. Short for nothing. Tall as a Georgia pine and almost half as smart. Named after his daddy, o’ course, who was named after his own father’s favorite fishing reel—a Zebco. Caught a lot of fish. A little on the cheap side, if you know what I mean.”

               “Pretending I do, so when I called, you said he’d stolen some items from the church.”

               “Yeah, I told you that because you asked me. What I’ve wanted to know the whole time is how you knew to ask. As I understand, you are a specialist in the supernatural, like some sort of X-Files of The Cloth. Ain’t you afraid of being, you know, X-communicated?”

               Reverend Johnson smothered my laughter with his own.

               “I knew,” I said, “because he called from inside the church.”

               “And how did you know from whence he’d made said phone communication?”

               “Right. So, I traced the call back to the church phone, possibly that phone there on your desk.”

               A landline phone and a huge family Bible sat on his huge, laminated. They were the only items on his desk.

               “That thing works?” he asked. “I didn’t know they still worked.”

               “So, when Zeb called, he said he’d found some items, but he needed holy water. I guess the items were the stolen things.”

               “First of all, what that boy need holy water for? How’s he even heard of such a thing? Second, how’d he get your number?”

               “He researched it on your computer, he’d said.”

               Reverend Johnson looked at the relic HP desktop on a side table beside his desk.

               “Let me tell you something: that boy ain’t researched nothing. I don’t know that he can read. Hey, maybe it’s a miracle.” When he stopped laughing, he said, “Look here now: I hate if you wasted your time, but if you’re here to find our stolen treasures, we don’t necessarily want them back. That rogue scholar took a bunch of old vacation Bible school crafts that caused conflict between church members who’d made them and some other members who are now volunteer fire fighters, you see? Fine line, there is, between nostalgia and fat lighter. And we got more liturgical things—more liturgical issues—to fight over. You get me?”

               “I’m actually more interested in why Zeb wanted holy water, why he called me specifically, and why he asked so many questions while speaking Aramaic. Also, if Zeb is so challenged, how did he get in your office and have free range of the the church property?”

               “Well, as the Aramaic goes, you know, there ain’t no telling what they’re teaching in that school over there. More Jesus, a little U.S. hist’ry, and less foreign kowtowing would be a welcome change. Fortunately, all the chil’ren what got good sense ain’t listening no-ways. Furthermore, as far as that kid roaming the property, as you say, that ain’t no mystery since we don’t lock the doors to anything. God protects what’s valuable to him, so don’t go over there harassing the Phillipses over a bunch of God-forsaken knickknacks. That family got their hands full, what with that addled boy and all their businesses. You know, they say ‘round here that everything the church don’t own is owned by the Phillipses. That ain’t exactly true, though, ‘cause we got a post office, a courthouse, and a newspaper. Course, don’t nobody want them.”

               “I was actually hoping you would come with me or at least call ahead and let them know I’m coming.”

               “Give you my blessing?”

               “Well, yes.”

               “No.”

               “Just no?” I asked.

               “All right, Hell no. Look here….”

               Reverend Johnson explained his positions using many colloquial reasonings. Most of his premises centered around the idea that Zeb Junior’s mind was kept in check by a variety of medicines, and his body was usually confined by a basement until recently. Johnson ended by saying, “As the Good Book says, ‘Lost time is never found again.’”

               And who’s to argue? That is a good book.

               I was recording the interaction in my travel journal alone at a table at the pool hall when the owner’s son sat across the table from me. I knew the young man that sat silently across the little table must have been the owner’s son because, by Johnson’s logic, Jeb Senior had to own the pool hall. And I could tell this was Jeb Junior because when he walked in, all four diners, the three kids shooting pool, and the chef all found something in the opposite direction to occupy their gazes. They’d done virtually the same when my collar came on the scene. Nice that the burger was on-the-house, though.

               Even sitting, he was as tall as one of the standing pool sharks, and his unusual body looked like two smaller men stacked in a costume. Either he or the rest of us were comically disproportionate.

               I wiped the grease from my face and said, “I got the holy water.” I patted the blessèd flask in my hip pocket.

               He spoke meticulously as if speaking a foreign language. “We gonna need a crowbar.”

               “I don’t think I’ve ever blessed a crowbar, but then—”

               “Naw sir, we gotta get in the basement.”

               “Of the church?”

               “Naw sir, of my house.”

               “What’s in—?"

               “You won’t believe me,” he said. He stood, walked outside, and waited patiently on the other side of the shaded glass entrance door.

               I left a twenty in the tip jar.

               He made sure I had the holy water on my person before he said, “We will walk and not faint.”

               I took his word for it.

###

               After only a little over a mile and seven gallons of sweat later, we stood in a large natural rock gateway looking across an expansive property at a starter mansion that looked big even at a considerable distance. Jeb Phillips, Jr. said, “This is the house where I live.”

               I took his introduction of the house to be a sort of welcome—in fact, the warmest I’d met since I hit town.

               “We never got a crowbar,” I said.

               “I am have faith.”

               Not that I didn’t, but I picked up a stout pecan branch on the way in. I had no intention of using it, but I also had no intention of hearing Zeb tell me we had to walk back to town to buy a crowbar.

               We took the long way around the house behind a hedgerow and then behind a shed to reach the back of the house where he stopped to stare at a small window built into the house’s foundation. The window had been quickly and poorly rattle-can painted a matte black that prominently spilled over onto what appeared to be hand-made brick.

               “Now,” Zeb said, “we need that stick.”

               “I don’t believe we should break that window, Mr. Phil—”

               “No!” This was his Zeb’s first hasty syllable, maybe ever. “That will scare it, and it might end us most violently. Pry the window from the top. And do not strike that spigot.” He pointed at a water faucet with a long green hose, shook his head to indicate a bad idea, and proceeded to pantomime the act of opening the window from the top. I tried to hand him the branch, but he refused, explaining, “You are the man of God.”

               “So, I don’t know what you think priests do, but seminary doesn’t teach breaking and entering as part of pastoral care.”

               That’s when I heard two great exhales of breath that sounded like we had suddenly entered the nostril of a giant bull. I threw myself to the ground, or I fell. The sound seemed to come from everywhere and in different tones like a demonic version of my grandfather’s quadraphonic den stereo. Zeb just continued to pantomime the jump-stab combination that he seemed to believe I could and even would use to jimmy the blackened window. Then, a series of sublime and ghastly wails in an array of octaves emanated from the window and even through the walls, inducing immediate pity and pain. My head felt pressure to collapse and explode in horrible harmony while Zeb acted out instructions.

               Existence, as is her wont, beat the devil out of Morality, and noticing the bent metal lip of the window’s frame, I lifted the branch, jumped as Zeb had repeatedly shown, and brought the branch down on the window’s lip, knocking the window loose. In four similar attempts, I had knocked it from the foundation so we…so I could pull it from the house.

               The wailing continued beyond the wall.

               “What now?”

               “It needs peace,” Zeb said. “It needs freedom. It needs your help.”

               The wailing wrapped around my brain, punching my mind as it pulled my faculties through my skull.

               Still, without haste, Zeb said, “You will have to enter.”

               “What’s in there?”

               “You would not believe me if….”

               “Try me! I believe in a whole host of shit.”

               “Enter.”

               I slid into the darkness and immediately fell twelve feet or so onto a concrete floor, and as the wailing continued, I wished I had gone in headfirst. I didn’t even jump when Zeb, with grace, slid in and landed straight up beside me. A horrible glow appeared before me, and were it not for the percussive sound in the walled-in subspace, I would have feared mightily the horrifying sight.

               “Wish it peace,” Zeb said two or three times.

               “You wish it peace.”

               “You have to say it.”

               “Why?”

               “Haddāyā,” Zeb said, “you must wish it peace.”

               Haddāyā? Aramaic. “Shlama 'ahlaykhu,” I said until, much to my own surprise, the wailing stopped and my own thoughts expelled the invading madness.

               But the horror had just begun. The illumination strengthened twenty or so feet in the distance. A nest of feathers so pure that even the color white would sully its sacred essence appeared to protect a dark and precious orange glow in the center.

               “It needs to know you come in peace,” Zeb said.

               “Peace…uh, shlama 'ahlaykhu?”

               “Your doubts inspire doubt.”

               “Shlama 'ahlaykhu.”

                The creature’s glow intensified before the feathers unfolded, revealing within its protection, a glowing chiseled mannish beast, created as if from Pygmalion’s own ivory with Hephaestus’s fire projecting hot flickering flames of orange and red outward from within the creature’s soul. Knees bent, it still stood to just below the basement’s ceiling. Fifteen feet, maybe more, the creature would be if it stood fully erect. Only then did I see the chains attached to its neck, wrists, and ankles. Around it, salt rings had circled the rough beast thrice. Still, even bound, its power surpassed strength, and my horror antiquated the fear I’d felt of corporeal death.

               “You might,” Zeb suggested, “say more about peace or maybe…. I do not know.”

               I’d forgotten Zeb was even with me or that I was even there. The creature towered over Zeb as Zeb towered over me. I had the sense of being prey amongst unconquerable predators or like a DIII volleyball coach.

               “The water,” Zeb said.

               I took the flask from my pocket and tried to hand it to Zeb.

               “I am only a messenger for the angel of the Lord,” Zeb said.

               The creature let out a wail.

               “What? What do you think I am.”

               “You are ordained by God,” Zeb said.

               “Yeah, uh….” I stepped toward the, well, angel, I guess with the flask in hand. It wailed again, a short but piecing screech. “But you’re taller. I mean, you could just reach right in—”

               “I would not delay further, father.”

               As I approached, the creature lowered its impressive shoulders and angled its head so that I could pour the contents of the flask into its mouth. As the liquid disappeared into the creature, the glow turned from an angry furnace into a more consistent wash of amiable light.

               “Why is this working?” I asked.

               “Do not,” Zeb said, “be unbelieving.”

               I had never had doubts, but all of my studies and all of my skills were academic in nature. Even the exorcisms had seemed alchemy. I had been like a nurse pumping in chemicals, knowing the processes and amounts but not understanding the purpose and certainly not predicting meaningful success, which was itself a matter more of opinion and debate than of science and providence.

               “We need more water,” Zeb said.

               The angel’s glow began to flicker, and its peace began to falter.

               “What? That’s all I brought.”

               Zeb lowered his head and said, “I have great faith.”

               “Can you trade that for a bucket?”

               Just then, thundering footsteps descended from on high and another light blasted across the basement, but the uncanny revealed itself immediately as it was just an opening door, revealing two violent rubes who had come down a set of stairs in an anteroom: a tall man with gray hair and a preacher named Johnson.

               “I knew you’d end up here,” the reverend said.

               Several people pointed guns at me, but the tall man seemed immediately to want to use his.

               “Son,” the man said, “you have betrayed me, and if not for the scandal and your poor late mother, I would eliminate you with this monster and the papist.”

               “Yes, father,” Zeb Junior said. “I know what you must do.”

               “Leave,” his father said.

               Zeb Junior lowered his head again and walked through the men to the safety of the stairs. When he disappeared, Reverend Johnson said, “Well, I told you not to bother the Phillipses.”

               “You’re right, sir. Sorry to have bothered you. I guess I’ll be—”

               “No, you won’t” He raised his gun, and I think I begged. “You and the angel die today.”

               “Wait,” I said. Scared or not, this was ludicrous. “You mean that you know this is an angel.”

               “Sure, it’s an angel, Mr. Phillips said. “Of some sort.”

               “Lucifer was an angel too,” Reverend Johnson said, “before his great fall.”

               “How do you know it fell?”

               Reverend Johnson looked disappointed in my lack of command for the obvious. “Why would an angel be here in Great Falls consorting with an idiot?”

               Mr. Phillips agreed with the logic.

               “Why did you trap it? How?”

               The men looked at each other. “Why not?” Johnson said.

               “The angel,” Mr. Phillips explained, “put a bug in my boy’s ear. The interstate should not come through Great Falls, and our new truck stop—”

               “What interstate?”

               “Oh, you ain’t from around here. We have lobbied for an interstate, and knowing we had the votes and the right man at the DOT, we built the greatest mascot with the cutest mascot. This town will be either a large dot on the map or a forgotten blip in history depending on the revenue from the truck stop and the convenience of our trucks. Well, here’s the thing. Junior didn’t approve, so we told him to write his congressman. Remember that?”

               “Yeah,” Johnson said, “that was funny.”

               “It was until this angel convinced little Zeb that it really was a good idea. The idiot wrote many letters, and if we let him keep at it, the interstate will run through Lancaster.”

               Both men became nauseated but not distracted enough to forget their mission.

               “Besides,” Reverend Johnson said, “don’t you wonder, if this angel is good, why hadn’t God come for him? Why let him suffer down here in bondage and pain?”

               Even in my peril, I had to appreciate the question.

               “Well, varmint, say your prayers.”

               “Damn,” Reverend Johnson said, “I wanted to say that.”

               I closed my eyes. The rifle was overkill, and even though the angel started to wail, I had no reason to believe I would be saved until, Lo! A prayer had been answered from on high! Specifically, the high open window revealed a hose that immediately shot a blast of the most welcome gush of water, spraying across me and onto the monster. I could just make out Zeb Junior’s face beyond the water wall.

               I placed my hand in the spray and shouted, “Aboon Dbashmayo.” Then, I said, “Nethcadash shmokh.” The combination of the holy water (blessed by the Lord’s Prayer) washing over the angel and the regular spray began dissolving the salt rings and strengthened the fierce angel. He broke his man-made bonds, spread his ominous wings, and released his brutal vengeance, sparing me and making Zeb Phillips, Jr. a wealthy orphan.

               He left me with many questions but fewer doubts. I finally understood why God, in his mercy, advocated faith rather than supplying the evidence. Telling people a truth they’re not ready for is worse than telling them a lie.