The Kingdom

by J. R. Mabry

  5

  The demon had chosen the hard way. Richard knew he would. They always did. The possessed man’s throat opened, and the demon emitted a scream that made all of them wince. “You!” It pointed the man’s bony finger at Richard. “You have no authority…”

  “I exorcise you, Most Unclean Spirit! Invading Enemy! In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Be uprooted and expelled from this Creature of God…”

  “You separate yourselves from the True Church because you are willful, and sinful; your appetite for sin overcomes you and will be your undoing, false priests…” The demon had become unexpectedly articulate, which meant he was scared. Richard knew they were on the right track.

  “What’s the next stage, Mikael?” Terry asked.

  “Breakpoint? The battle of wills…”

  “Yup. We’re there.”

  Richard shook the aspergill at the possessed, raining him with holy water as he intoned, “He who commands you is he who ordered you to be thrown down from Heaven into the depths of Hell. He who commands you is he who dominated the sea, the wind, and the storms…”

  The demon writhed at the touch of the water, which stung his skin like acid and filled the air with the sick stench of burning flesh. “You suck the cocks of anonymous men in bathhouses!” The demon howled, and a new voice emerged, one that sounded like the massed buzzing of a billion flies. “Who are you to command me?!”

  Richard faltered, and shame rushed in. The demon saw his opening and pounced. “You lust after countless women each day. Your lust is a stain upon your soul that no sacrament can absolve! It is a sickness that ravages you, body and spirit. You’d fuck old men and bunnies if you could! You’d fuck anything that moves!”

  Terry clapped his hands to get Richard’s attention, “Dicky! Don’t argue! Don’t listen! Half-truths are the doorways to the Lie! Richard! Focus!”

  “The Voice. It’s the Voice…” Mikael breathed as all color drained from his face.

  Richard’s eyes narrowed, and he did not refute the demon. He could bear all that was true, he knew, and he could let go of the rest. He did, in fact, find bunnies oddly, even erotically, alluring. His voice, once he had cleared the phlegm born of sudden emotion, was commanding. “Hear, therefore, and tremble, Duunel, servant of the enemy of the Earth! Enemy of the Faith! Enemy of the human race! Source of death! Robber of life! Twister of justice! Root of evil!”

  Instantly, every glass item in the room shattered. The windows descended in sheets of minute, sharp shards, and the plastic IV bags exploded, showering the room in saline solution. Mikael covered his face and dove to avoid the hail of glass. The demon was just reacting, not thinking, Richard thought, as the falling salt water caused it even further distress. He set his face with grim satisfaction and raised his voice above the din.

  “In the name of He who has power to send you back to Hell! I command thee, Duunel, depart from this man! Surrender, not to me, but to Christ of whom I am a member. His power forces you. He defeated you by His Cross. Fear the strength of He who led the souls of the dead to the light of salvation from the darkness of waiting.” Richard smeared the sign of the cross on the old man’s chest. “May the body of this man be a source of fear for you.” He crossed the man’s forehead. “Duunel, demon of the sixth station, servant of the great Duke Maaluchre, I command you to depart! God the Father commands you! God the Son commands you! God the Holy Spirit commands you!”

  Richard jumped back as the bed began to float into the air and the old man’s body was racked by convulsions that would have killed even a hale man. Then the air was pierced by the sound of a heart-monitor alarm—the old man was having a heart attack.

  6

  When the phone rang, Fr. Dylan Melanchthon looked up from the screen he had been staring at for the past three hours straight and blinked. Everything was out of focus.

  “Reality rush!” he and his wife, Susan, said together. Their workstations faced each other, so a slight tilt of the eyes or the head would give them a good view of their beloved. “Reality rush” was a common phenomenon for those who make their living staring into the unblinking eye of the computer, and naming it when it happened was a bit of a ritual for them.

  He picked up the phone. “Holy Apocrypha Friary,” Dylan said distractedly in his Tennessee drawl, hitting save before completely turning his attention. He looked at his wife, her plump, curvaceous form hunched over her keyboard, her pretty face framed by short blonde hair. He smiled. It was good to work at home, to work together. The websites they built contributed heavily to the support of the Friary, and they had a sizable nest egg set aside for retirement already, as well. It was, he knew, a very good life indeed.

  A man’s voice on the other side was tentative, uncertain. “Can I speak to…is there a priest there?”

  “Ah’m Father Dylan. How can Ah help you?” Dylan’s back creaked, and he rose to stretch it, cradling the phone on his shoulder and pressing his spine with both hands. Neither he nor Susan was small, due as much to their sedentary occupations as to their genetic predispositions. Brian and Terry called him a “baby bear,” meaning a shortish, burly man with a tendency to be both rotund and hirsute. It was a label Dylan wore with a bit of pride. Even if he wasn’t gay, it was oddly satisfying to know that there were plenty of guys out there who would find him attractive. “Um…we need to have our baby baptized. Can you do it?”

  “Sure, we can do that,” he said. “Why don’t we get together and discuss what you’re looking for?”

  “Well, my family is Catholic, and it’s mostly for them.”

  Dylan had not sought this information, but apparently the gentleman on the other end thought full disclosure important.

  “Um…okay. We can talk about that. Can you come to the friary later tonight? Say, 7:30 or so?”

  The man could, and would bring his wife and child.

  “Brian’s making cookies,” Susan offered.

  “There are cookies in the house tonight!” Dylan told the man, “and we’ll have the kettle on.” Dylan gave him the address and then hung up and stared at the phone for a second before sitting down again.

  “What was that about?”

  “Baptism of a child,” he said, but as he did so a chill ran through him.

  Susan cocked her head and took her glasses off, trying to focus on her husband. “So why do you look like you just picked a pubic hair out of your teeth?”

  Dylan looked up at her and gazed for a long moment before responding. “Ah’m…not sure.”

  7

  Bishop Tom Müeller shifted in his chair. His left calf had gone to sleep, and he resisted the temptation to punch it. He was sitting in one of the large meeting rooms in the Mercy Center just outside Tucson, Arizona, in the company of his fellow bishops. The annual meeting of the bishops of the Old Catholic Synod of the Americas was in full, sleepy swing, and he fought to remain erect and alert. When he tuned back in, Bishop Walenski of Wisconsin was practically yelling.

  “Christ cannot be represented at the altar by a gay man! Why are we even talking about this? We cannot have gay men—”

  “Or women?” interjected Bishop Van Patton, one of the two women bishops present.

  “Or women”—he nodded in her direction impatiently—“as representatives of Christ. It doesn’t work!”

  “Um, if I may ask a question…” Bishop Tom stood. The presiding bishop nodded to him. Tom had only been consecrated a year ago and was one of the youngest and least experienced bishops in the synod. He had so far managed to avoid the ire of the more forceful personalities in the episcopate by lying low and keeping quiet. “Why can’t a gay man represent Christ at the altar, Bishop Walenski?”

  Bishop Walenski, a plumber in secular life, glared at him as if he were an idiot. “Because Christ wasn’t gay!”

  Tom sat down again with a grateful nod to the presiding bishop. Tom wasn’t sure how to answer Walenski’s logic. He knew it was wrong, somehow, but he was not keen on making any enemies in
the synod’s leadership.

  “If Ah may speak?” Bishop Cornwall of Georgia leaned on his walker and got to his feet. Bishop Cornwall had been a lawyer before retirement, and Tom admired how the man’s still-nimble mind worked.

  The presiding bishop pointed to the elderly prelate, and the old man continued. “Ah’m no fan of faggots in the pulpit, gentlemen. But if you ah goin’ to keep them out, you best do it by logical means. Walenski, you sorry sow, Christ wasn’t no Polack, either, yet you seem to have no great qualms about seizing upon your own right to represent him—”

  Presiding Bishop Mellert sighed and smiled in spite of himself. When he was not wearing vestments, Bishop Mellert was a referee for the NBA—a job that ideally suited him to herd the cats of the OCSA. “Let’s keep the discourse civil, Brothers,” he admonished.

  “And sisters!” Bishop Van Patton interjected angrily. Bishop Van Patton taught feminist theory at Midwestern Theological Seminary in Chicago, and seemed to be the self-appointed watchdog of gender balance among the denomination’s leadership.

  Mellert nodded and waved for Cornwall to continue. “This is the same threadbare argument used to keep women out of holy orders. ‘Christ wasn’t no woman, so women can’t represent him,’ was how the argument went. Remember? Ah do. It weren’t that long ago, gentlemen.”

  Bishop Van Patton glared at the old man but held her tongue.

  “If you ah goin’ to use that argument, then logic says that only unmarried Jewish men in their thirties—and carpenters, to boot—can represent Christ at the altar. No, Ah say if you’re goin’ to keep them out—and I hope you do—Ah say do it on moral grounds. The idea of our clergy buggerin’ each other while they’re singin’ ‘Here I Raise My Ebenezer’ jus’ gives me the willies.” He sat down again with all the dignity of a sack of turnips being dropped to the floor.

  “If I may?” Bishop Jeffers of New York raised one finger and waited for the presiding bishop’s nod. He got it and stood. Jeffers, a onetime actor on Broadway, now served as the maître d’ at Vesuvio in Manhattan. Everyone knew that Bishop Jeffers was gay, and one could have heard a pin drop in expectation of what he had to say. “May I interject a note of reason here, gentlemen…and ladies?”

  Bishop Van Patton smiled her approval.

  “May I recall our 2004 synod when this question completely stopped the meeting in its tracks? We have so much other business to attend to. Might I suggest that the presiding bishop appoint a committee—a fairly balanced committee, mind you, with bishops on both sides of the issue—to study the issue and make a recommendation to the next synod meeting?”

  Bishop Van Patton raised her hand. “I second that motion and call for a vote.”

  Bishop Walenski shook his head and glowered at Jeffers and Van Patton in turn, longing for the days of the old boys’ club, where the women stayed in the kitchen and the faggots kept quiet about it.

  The vote was cast, and Jeffers’s recommendation carried. The presiding bishop wrote “Appoint gay committee” on his growing to-do list. Then he noted with relief that they had worked through the last item on the morning’s agenda. He looked at his watch. It was still an hour before dinner. They were doing well. “New business,” he called.

  Bishop Hammet of Texas raised his hand. The presiding bishop nodded but not before rolling his eyes. Bishop Hammet headed the synod’s only Tridentine-rite diocese. He would not ordain women, nor would he allow the mass to be said in English. He ruled his diocese with an iron fist, and so great were his skills at alienating people that three years ago the synod had been forced to create a non-geographical diocese to tend to the ministries of disaffected clergy, including women and gays in Texas, as well as those who do not speak Latin, and everyone else Hammet had managed to piss off.

  The bishop they had consecrated for this floating diocese, Bishop Tom, felt his flesh crawl and sweat begin to bead up on his forehead as he saw his chief antagonist rise forcefully to his feet. The two men could not have been more different. Hammet was tall, lean, and came across very much like the Marine sergeant he had been before retirement. Tom, by comparison, was soft-spoken and deferential, with a body type that could only be described as doughy. Hammet was deeply resentful of the floating diocese, which he saw as an attempt to undermine his authority in Texas, and he had very nearly split from the synod over the issue. He still entertained the notion regularly, and publicly, especially after a few shots of bourbon.

  Thus far, Tom’s work had been largely composed of picking up the pieces of people’s lives and ministries left shattered by Hammet. The image of a bull wearing a mitre rampaging through a Catholic bookstore and icon boutique flashed through Tom’s mind. He shook his head to clear it.

  “Gentlemen…” He nodded in Van Patton’s direction but could not bring himself to say “ladies.” Van Patton once again donned her trademark glower.

  “It has come to my attention that there is a religious order attached to our synod that is the very antithesis of Christian virtue and values. I speak of the so-called Berkeley Blackfriars, the Old Catholic Order of Saint Raphael in California…” He spoke the syllables for California as if they were separate, equally detestable words.

  Tom grabbed the arms of his chair to quell the vertigo that rushed through him. There was not a drop of afternoon sleepiness in him now. Only pure, panicked adrenaline. He had been given oversight of the Order of Saint Raphael when he had first been consecrated—mostly because none of the other bishops knew what to do with them. They were an ecclesiastical anomaly, an order of exorcists—friars whose entire ministry stood in direct contradiction to everything the modern church holds dear: rationality, psychology, and order.

  Certainly, Tom agreed that there was nothing orderly about the Order of Saint Raphael, but from the moment he met them during his first episcopal visit, he discovered in them kindred spirits. He let them in on his secret fascination with Theosophy, and they had passed him a joint. Thus far, his relationship with the friars had been a marriage made in heaven. They were not just his charges; they were his friends.

  “I have it on good authority,” Hammet announced, “that the men in this order have no respect for the Catholic tradition. They are hedonists and perverts, and what’s more, they are Satanists.”

  A collective gasp rose up from the assembled bishops, and Tom slunk down in his seat in an unconscious attempt to disappear. It was true they were hedonists, Tom agreed silently. No doubt about that. He had never seen anyone put away as much liquor and weed in one weekend as the Blackfriars had done. Yes, they were addicts and alcoholics, some more than others. And yes, some of them were perverts, if that’s how you regarded gay men and bisexuals. But Tom didn’t consider them perverted. Terry’s marriage to Brian seemed to him to be one of the healthiest he had ever witnessed, gay or straight. Certainly, it was more functional than his own marriage. But Satanists? No, they were not Satanists. Occultists, maybe, perhaps even Theoretical magickians. But Satanists? No. He struggled with what to say, and how to say it.

  Bishop Stolte of Oregon asked to be recognized and stood. “My brother and sister bishops, as many of you know, my son Charlie has suffered from mental illness his entire life. At least we thought it was mental illness. When paranormal phenomena began to accompany his seizures, Bishop Tom Müeller suggested I call on the Order of Saint Raphael. They drove up the very same day I called them. They were friendly, respectful, and knowledgeable regarding demonic possession. They quickly ascertained that my son was not epileptic but possessed. Against their advice, I assisted at the exorcism. I can tell you they are the real thing. They wrestled with that demon for nearly twenty hours, but eventually they beat that beast and restored my son to me. They could not have done it if they were not faithful ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As our Lord said, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ They did not cast that demon out by the power of Satan but by the power of the Holy Ghost.”

  He sat down again, and Bishop Tom was heartened as two mo
re bishops rose and offered testimonies on behalf of the order’s ministries in their own situations. Each of them spoke glowingly. He was beginning to feel downright confident when Bishop Hammet asked for the floor again. “Yes, yes,” he agreed, “they are very effective at seeming to be on the side of the angels. But the means do not justify the end, gentlemen! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light! We have wolves in sheep’s clothing right here in our own synod, and they must be rooted out!”

  The presiding bishop looked at his watch and sighed. “All right, stand down, Bishop Hammet. We will break here for the night. Tomorrow we will consider Bishop Hammet’s evidence against the friars after we have concluded the business already on the agenda. Let us pray…”

  The bishops stood and bowed their heads, but Bishop Tom remained seated, too stunned to move. Should he call Richard and the others? Of course he should. There wasn’t anything any of them could do, but they deserved to know what was being said about them. Realizing he was the only seated person in the room, he stood up quickly, sending his chair flying. Every eye in the room shot open, and in his direction, as the clatter of metal on linoleum echoed through the cavernous hall.

  8

  Nurse Stahl had, apparently, been listening at her door, since as the heart-monitor alarm sounded, she raced into the room and began shouting, “Back off! You’re killing him!” The friars stood frozen, uncertain how to respond to this intrusion at the very point of expelling the beast.

  “It’s just a ruse!” Terry tried to intercept her, but she evaded him like a veteran running back and grabbing the hospital bed now inexplicably hovering a foot or more off the ground. She yanked it down to the floor with a crash of steel. She snatched a syringe from a nearby tray and, quickly filling it, injected the man in the neck. Summoning every ounce of strength, she pounded on the old man’s sternum once, twice, and then pushed upon it rhythmically, without ever taking her eyes off the green-glowing monitor.