Piercing the Darkness Read online

  “So anyway, I’m faced with two options: I can be retained by Christians and find out later they can’t afford my services, or I can take their case for free or on a reduced basis—usually a drastically reduced basis. In this case right here, there would be about a zero chance of any contingency recovery. I could only hope to receive part of the settlement, but even then the system is already so stacked against me that I have no fair chance of winning, and therefore no chance of being paid that way either.

  “Am I making this clear for you? To put it simply, I can’t afford it, monetarily or reputationally. I’ve been too close to bankruptcy too many times to take another case like this. I think what you need is a fresh visionary, a brand-new horse who still has some miles left on him, somebody you can run ragged for next to nothing.”

  Corrigan stopped. He felt released now, but also a little ashamed. He looked at the wall where his eyes fell on his license to practice law, and concluded with, “Sometimes I almost admit to myself that I hate this job. Look what it does to me . . . makes me dump all my feelings on good people like you.”

  Mark looked at the legal torpedo on Corrigan’s desk and sighed. “So where can we go from here? Tom’s children are taken from him, and he still doesn’t know where. Now the school is slapped with a lawsuit that . . . Well, it seems to me that our very freedoms are being threatened. There aren’t any attorneys in Bacon’s Corner; we could have gone elsewhere, but we came to Claytonville to see you because—and I’m not ashamed to say it—we knew you were a Christian. We knew you’d have the right perspective.”

  Corrigan looked at the minister just a little sheepishly. “Well, I guess I’ve blown that notion out of the water.”

  “But what about Tom? He could be bitter right now. He lost his wife in a car wreck just three years ago, his salary is pitiful, but he’s stayed right here with his two children and served as the headmaster at our Christian school for four years now, doing an excellent job. And what thanks does he get? His children taken away and a lawsuit against the school that could jeopardize everything he and the rest of us hold dear. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. Even so, he’s remained true to his calling. He’s a righteous man, a man of principle and conviction . . .”

  “Hence the pitiful salary. Excuse me. Go on.”

  Mark was getting disgusted. “I’m through.”

  Corrigan sat quietly, rested his chin on his knuckles, thought for a moment, then nodded in agreement to his own thoughts.

  “And to think it all started in Bacon’s Corner. I guess it had to happen somewhere.” He sat up straight and folded his hands on the desk. For the first time in several minutes, he looked directly at Tom and Mark. “Pastor, the ACFA isn’t after your little school; Tom, they’re not really interested in you either; as for this allegedly traumatized child, they couldn’t care less about her. No, what they’re really after is a legal precedent, something that’s going to affect not just you, but everyone. They have all the money and skill they need to pull this thing off, and they know that you don’t, and that’s what they’re counting on. That’s why they chose a little place like Bacon’s Corner and a little dirt-poor church like yours.

  “And I guess they have me where they want me. I can just see those ACFA lawyers sitting in their office over at Ames, Jefferson, and Morris saying, ‘Yeah, hit Bacon’s Corner. That Wayne Corrigan is a burned-out tube, he’ll never take the case.’ Now wouldn’t that be just peachy for them?”

  He looked at the papers on his desk again.

  “All right, I’ll tell you what: I’ll repent . . . sort of. I’ll take this case, but I’ll take as little of it as possible. That means you do the work, you do the hoofing, you do the research, you build the case. I’ll tell you what to do, I’ll write up the affidavits, I’ll take the depositions, I’ll plead the case and present the arguments, I’ll advise you; but any information relating to this case is your responsibility. I suggest you get yourselves a private investigator to help you out. As far as my involvement, you’ll get what you pay for, and . . .” He swallowed hard, came to a reluctant decision, and added, “. . . I’ll reduce my fee by half, but you must agree to raise the other half.”

  Tom and Mark exchanged a quick glance and quickly agreed. “Okay.”

  “So what comes first?” Mark asked.

  Corrigan leafed through the papers. “Number One, you’ve got a temporary injunction here that restrains you from just about everything named in the complaint. Uh . . . I think what it’s going to boil down to is that you’ll have to cease and desist from spanking and from any further ‘outrageous religious behavior.’ Guess that means you can’t cast out any more demons until the court hearing in two weeks.”

  “What happens in two weeks?” asked Tom.

  “We have to appear in court . . . ‘to show cause, if any you have, why you and all persons acting on your behalf or on behalf of the school should not be immediately restrained from spanking, hitting, or otherwise having physical contact with children at the school for any reason whatsoever, and why you and all persons acting on your behalf in concert with you, should not be immediately restrained from any further religious behavior which could prove harmful to the mental, emotional, or social welfare of the child, or any excessive religious instruction, direct or indirect, of any kind, at the school or day-care facility, that could prove harmful . . .’ And it goes on and talks about all this other stuff.”

  “Just what do they mean, ‘excessive religious instruction’?” asked Tom.

  “That has yet to be defined.”

  “What should we do?” asked Mark.

  “Try to behave yourselves for the two weeks. Don’t be outrageous, whatever that means. In the meantime, you need to give me some good arguments why you should be allowed to continue the above-mentioned activities. Then I’ll file the briefs and affidavits with the court, and then we’ll go in and see if we can turn you guys loose from this restraining order. That’s the first thing.”

  “And then?” asked Mark.

  Corrigan suddenly looked worried and careworn. “One bite at a time, pastor. You’re going to be busy for a long, long time.”

  “What about Ruth and Josiah?” asked Tom.

  “No easy answers there. It’s going to be a tangled mess, and could be even worse, depending on whom you’re dealing with in the system. I think you’re entitled to a hearing within seventy-two hours to determine if the removal of your children has merit, but that’s usually a rubber-stamp session where the judge approves the removal of the children based on the testimony of the social worker. You might be called to appear, you might be barred from the hearing altogether. It just depends on who’s running the case. I’ll look into it.”

  “But . . . won’t I get my kids back?”

  Corrigan hesitated to answer the question. “You’ll probably have to go through a trial first, and that could mean a wait of six months or more.”

  Neither Tom or Mark were ready for an answer like that.

  “That can’t be all there is to it!” said Mark. “There have to be other options, something we can do!”

  “You can pray,” Corrigan answered. “Specifically, pray for some friends in the right places. You’ve got a fight ahead of you.”

  CHAPTER 10

  SALLY WOULD BE staying at the Rest Easy another night. She had the whole ten thousand dollars to spend on this one room if she wanted to, if no better ideas came to her. Right now she had no better ideas.

  She’d used up the afternoon and all the stationery in the room just scribbling thoughts down as they came to her. Now, as the day outside the windows gave way to evening, she sat at the table and leafed through page after page, her day’s work.

  The first page was no masterpiece: “Crazy my name is Sally Roe,” followed by a full page of aimless lines and squiggles. Apparently she’d failed to capture her thoughts. But that was depressing. Maybe this was an accurate record of her thoughts. She didn’t even remember doing it.

  The ne
xt page had some scribbled words that looked like they might be “Death” and “Madness,” but she couldn’t be sure. After that, her writing broke down into chaotic scribbles again, and then at the bottom of the page she’d written her name several times, encircled by some strange, dark doodles. She remembered making those in a pit of depression when she didn’t feel like thinking or writing anything. It just felt good to doodle, to pour her feelings onto the page without using any language.

  The third page sounded so great when she’d first written it: “I am I: I think, I exist, but know nothing of the grasping of the essence of all that is under or over the abysmal attitudes that so wrack our awareness in the last autumns of mayhem upon the earth . . .” Now not even she could decode all that. Apparently her brain had been working while her mind was disconnected.

  But she felt encouraged, not because her afternoon’s project had produced such drivel, but because she could sit quietly now with her mind clear and realize it was drivel. She’d just come through some kind of spiritual storm, some raging, agonizing battle. Just like the old days, she thought. So many of the impressions, the hallucinations, the mindless wanderings were so familiar. Her mind had not slipped over the edge like that in almost ten years.

  No doubt it was this new, mysterious terror that had brought it all back. She had stepped in the way of an old Evil, and she recognized it all too well. It must have recognized her too, and that was why it was chasing her now. With only a little imagination she could sense it still lurking outside the walls of the motel room, ready to pounce on her again should she ever rest.

  But . . . what to do, what to do. What was the next step? How could she free herself?

  She picked up that day’s Hampton County Star. There was nothing new about her own death, and she figured there never would be. That story, her life, her name, were now buried, tucked neatly away in the archives to be forgotten.

  She flipped to the front page and studied a large photo. Some blonde lady was handing a guy what looked like a summons. Well, this was more news from Bacon’s Corner, a Christian school scandal. Tom Harris, headmaster at the Good Shepherd Christian School . . . accused of child abuse . . . accusations brought by local postmaster—

  Sally’s eyes froze on those last words. The local postmaster? She read the paragraph again.

  “. . . the child’s mother, the local postmaster, first became suspicious when her ten-year-old daughter was playing games of pretend and began to recount questionable behavior by her teacher at the school . . .”

  Sally checked the time. A little after 5. Maybe there was something on television. She clicked it on.

  Well . . . nothing much, just the sale of a pro football team to some unknown millionaire, a cleanup of hazardous waste in some small Midwest town, a new paint job for a historical building in the state capital . . .

  She let the television talk to itself while she finished reading the newspaper.

  According to reliable sources, Tom Harris’s two young children were taken from his home by child welfare workers yesterday afternoon . . . The CPD had what it felt was adequate reason to remove the children from the home . . . “If we must err, we must err on the side of the child,” said the source . . . CPD is beginning an investigation into the alleged abuses of children at the school . . . Postmaster Lucy Brandon and ACFA lawyers have filed a suit against the school, charging the school with outrageous religious behavior against a child, physical abuse by spanking, excessive religious instruction harmful to the child, harassment, discrimination, and religious indoctrination using federal funds. The little girl reported that Harris tried to cast a demon out of her . . .

  Oh! There it was on the television! Sally turned up the sound just as the on-the-scene footage began to roll. There was the little school, and there was Tom Harris, the headmaster, standing in the doorway. Yes, and there was the blonde lady, handing him the summons.

  Chad Davis, reporter for Channel Seven News, was doing his voice-over narration. “The lawsuit on behalf of Ms. Brandon once again raises the question of how much religious freedom is too much, especially where young children are concerned, and calls for a limit to extreme fundamentalist practices that violate the laws of the state.”

  Next shot: Lucy Brandon, the postmaster, and . . . Amber! Neither of them said anything—they just went to their car and got in. Davis narrated, “The case could have implications at the federal level because federal funds were involved in the child’s education at the school. The ACFA argues that the practices and teachings of the school are extreme, harmful, and clearly violate the laws concerning separation of church and state.”

  The blonde lady came on the screen. Her name appeared below her face: Claire Johanson, ACFA.

  “We are concerned for the welfare of our children,” she said, “and want to protect them from any more vicious and inexcusable abuse inflicted upon them under the license of religion.”

  Next came a quick interview with a Child Protection Department lady, Irene Bledsoe. “We always investigate any reports that come to us,” she was saying, “and we are looking into it.”

  Davis pressed a question from off camera. “Have Mr. Harris’s children been removed from his home?”

  “Yes, but that’s all I can say.”

  “In the meantime,” Davis continued in his voice-over, “the Federal District Court has handed down a temporary injunction against the school, barring any further spanking, religious teaching that could be harmful to children, or outrageous religious behavior, pending a hearing to be held in two weeks.”

  Back came the anchorman, staring soberly at the camera. “Thank you, Chad, for that report. We’ll definitely keep working on this one and bring you more developments as they happen. Speaking on the lighter side . . .”

  Commercial. Young bucks running and hollering and opening bottles of beer.

  She turned off the television and sat on the bed, stunned. Irene Bledsoe . . . that same woman with the ratty brown hair and crinkled moonface. That same scowl.

  The woman at the intersection! That was her? Those were Tom Harris’s kids?

  Lucy Brandon. Amber. Oh, and just when my mind was clearing up!

  Thoughts began to fill Sally’s mind with the bursting rhythm of popcorn, carrying it away in a tumbling flood, driving it forward like a wild automobile with no one at the wheel; it raced and swerved headlong from one thought to another, skipping over memories and colliding with replays, snagging and dragging scenes through her consciousness faster than she could watch them, flushing out conversations, facts, faces.

  She clapped her hands to the sides of her head as if being attacked by a horde of noises. Please, one at a time! I can’t hear you when you’re all screaming at once! Slow down!

  She looked at the news photo of Tom Harris again, standing in the doorway of the little school, getting his big white envelope from the blonde lady.

  So he had met little Amber too!

  Sally’s hand went to the ring hanging under her shirt. It seemed that bad things happened to people who had run-ins with Amber Brandon.

  She went to the table and found the first piece of paper she’d scribbled on that day. It was all she had; perhaps some legible writing would show up against all that nonsense.

  Unless she just wrote more nonsense. It was going to be a struggle, but she would try again. She would try all night if she had to. Her head was boiling with scattered, unruly thoughts, and sooner or later they would have to spill out in some clear fashion.

  THEN SUDDENLY, ALL around the motel, such an unexpected legion of harassing demons began to shower down that Chimon and Scion could no longer hide and had to throw any subtlety to the wind. They were in full glory, bright and visible, swatting and slashing as the demons swarmed around them like vile, biting bees. The intensity of the onslaught was shocking, surprisingly strong. It seemed each spirit would be swatted away only to be replaced by two more, and the air was filled with them. They were bold, brash, reckless, attacking with scr
eams and shrieks, even grinning mockingly.

  “For Destroyer!” they screamed as their battle cry. “For Destroyer!”

  So that was it. The demonic warlord was trying a new tactic now, and this difficulty could only be caused by one thing: something had happened to their prayer cover.

  “WELL,” SAID JUDY Waring, “you just . . . you just never know about people. I always did wonder about him. We voted on your recommendation, we went along with it, and now what are we going to do . . .”

  Mark was trying to end this telephone conversation and get back to the meeting. The parsonage telephone had been ringing all day, and he was about to pull the plug out of the wall.

  “Listen, Judy,” he said, “we’re about to have an emergency board meeting about it right now, so I have to hang up. But let me assure you that Tom’s handling this whole thing very well, just really open and forthright. I think we can trust him.”

  “Well . . . I’m hearing a lot of things . . .”

  “Right . . . Let me say something about that before I hang up. I don’t want any more gossip going around about Tom or the school or any of these matters. If there’s anything to be settled, it will be settled at this meeting, with Tom present and able to speak for himself. Now please—”

  “You did hear what the news said tonight—”

  “Judy! Now listen to me! You don’t need to get your information from the news, not when all this is happening to us, in our own church. Now you just sit tight and don’t listen to any more rumors, and please don’t spread any, all right?”

  “Well, all right, but I don’t know if we can keep Charlie enrolled at the school with this going on . . .”

  “We’ll have our meeting tonight, and then we’ll take care of your concerns. Just be patient.”

  Judy was about to say something else. She always had the last word in any conversation. Mark quietly and courteously hung up before she could get rolling again.

  Cathy Howard was nearby, making coffee for the men gathered in the dining room, and overhearing Mark’s end of at least the twentieth conversation. Mark told her quietly, “Maybe you can unplug this thing, or leave it off the hook.”