Eight
An Expectation of Awaiters
I know it hasn’t been fashionable to believe in God these last twenty thirty forty years people haven’t been keeping His path much but I always did even when I was a little boy I believed truly and I loved Him and I wanted to go to church all the time even in the middle of the week I’d say to Mother let’s go to church I genuinely enjoyed kneeling and praying and feeling Him near me but she’d say no Davey you’ve got to wait till Sunday for that it’s only Wednesday now. So as they say I’m no stranger to His ways and of course when they called for that day of prayer I prayed with all my heart that he might give us a Sign but even so I’m no fool I mean I don’t accept everything on a silver platter I ask questions I have doubts I test things and probe a little I’m not one of your ordinary country bumpkins that takes everything on faith. In a way I suppose I could be said to belong to the discerning few although I don’t want any of you to get the idea I’m a Discerner oh no I have no sympathy whatever with that atheistic bunch. Anyway we all prayed and the Sign came and my first reaction was joy I don’t mind telling you I wept for joy when the sun stood still feeling that all the faith of a lifetime had been confirmed and the godless had better shiver in their boots but then a day or so later I began to think about it and I asked myself how do we know that the Sign really came from God? How can we be sure that the being we have invoked is really on our side I asked myself and of course I had no good answer to that. For all I knew we had conjured up Satan the Accursed and what we imagined was a miracle was really a trick out of the depths of hell designed to lead us all to perdition. Here are these Discerners telling us that they repent their atheism because they know now that God is real and God is with us but how naive they are they aren’t even allowing for the possibility that the Sign is a snare and a delusion I tell you we can’t be sure the thing is we absolutely can’t be sure. The Sign might have been from God or from the Devil and we don’t know we won’t know until we receive a second Sign which I await which I believe will be coming quite soon. And what will that second Sign tell us? I maintain that that has not yet been decided on high it may be a Sign announcing our utter damnation or it may be a Sign welcoming us to the Earthly Paradise and we must await it humbly and prayerfully my friends we must pray and purify ourselves and prepare for the worst as well as for the best. I like to think that in a short while God Himself will present Himself to us not in any indirect way like stopping the sun but rather in a direct manifestation either as God the Father or as God the Son and we will all be saved but this will come about only if we remain righteous. If we succumb to error and evil we will bring it to pass that the Devil’s advent will descend on us for as Thomas has said himself our destiny is in our hands as well as in His and I believe the first Sign was only the start of a process that will be decided for good or for evil in the days just ahead. Therefore I Davey Strafford call upon you my friends to keep the way of the faith for we must not waver in our hope that He Who Comes will be lovingly inclined toward us and I say that this is our time of supreme test and if we fail it we may discover that it is Satan who shows up to claim our souls. I say once more we cannot interpret the first Sign we can only have faith that it is truly from God and we must pray that this is so while we await the ultimate verdict of heaven therefore we have obtained the rental of a vacant grocery store on Coshocton Avenue which we have renamed the First Church of the Awaiters of Redemption and we will pray round the clock there are seventeen of us now and we will pray in three-hour shifts five of us at a time in rotation the numbers increasing as our expected rapid growth takes place I trust you will come to us and swell our voices for we must pray we’ve got to there’s no other hope now just pray a lot in order that He Who Comes may be benevolent and I ask you to keep praying and have a trusting heart in this our time of waiting.
Nine
A Crying of Proclaimers
Kraft enters the room as Thomas puts down the telephone. “Who were you talking to?” Kraft asks.
“Gifford the Discerner, calling from Boston.”
“Why are you answering the phone yourself?”
“There was no one else here.”
“There were three apostles in the outer office who could have handled the call, Thomas.”
Thomas shrugs. “They would have had to refer it to me eventually. So I answered. What’s wrong with that?”
“You’ve got to maintain distance between yourself and ordinary daily routines. You’ve got to stay up there on your pedestal and not go around answering telephones.”
“I’ll try, Saul,” says Thomas heavily.
“What did Gifford want?”
“He’d like to merge his group and ours.”
Kraft’s eyes flash. “To merge? To merge? What are we, some sort of manufacturing company? We’re a movement. A spiritual force. To talk mergers is nonsense.”
“He means that we should start working together, Saul. He says we should join forces because we’re both on the side of sanity.”
“Exactly what is that supposed to mean?”
“That we’re both anti-Apocalyptist. That we’re both working to preserve society instead of to bury it.”
“An oversimplification,” Kraft says. “We deal in faith and he deals in equations. We believe in a Divine Being and he believes in the sanctity of reason. Where’s the meeting point?”
“The Cincinnati and Chicago fires are our meeting point, Saul. The Apocalyptists are going crazy. And now these Awaiters too, these spokesmen for Satan—no. We have to act. If I put myself at Gifford’s disposal—”
“At his disposal?”
“He wants a statement from me backing the spirit if not the substance of the Discerner philosophy. He thinks it’ll serve to calm things a little.”
“He wants to co-opt you for his own purposes.”
“For the purposes of mankind, Saul.”
Kraft laughs harshly. “How naive you can be, Thomas! Where’s your sense? You can’t make an alliance with atheists. You can’t let them turn you into a ventriloquist’s dummy who—”
“They believe in God just as much as—”
“You have power, Thomas. It’s in your voice, it’s in your eyes. They have none. They’re just a bunch of professors. They want to borrow your power and make use of it to serve their own ends. They don’t want you, Thomas, they want your charisma. I forbid this alliance.”
Thomas is trembling. He towers over Kraft, but his entire body quivers and Kraft remains steady. Thomas says, “I’m so tired, Saul.”
“Tired?”
“The uproar. The rioting. The fires. I’m carrying too big a burden. Gifford can help me. With planning, with ideas. That’s a clever bunch, those people.”
“I can give you all the help you need.”
“No, Saul! What have you been telling me all along? That prayer is sufficient unto every occasion! Faith! Faith! Faith! Faith moves mountains! Well? You were right, yes, you channeled your faith through me and I spoke to the people and we got ourselves a miracle, but what now? What have we really accomplished? Everything’s falling apart, and we need strong souls to build and rebuild, and you aren’t offering anything new. You—”
“The Lord will provide for—”
“Will He? Will He, Saul? How many thousands dead already, since June 6? How much property damage? Government paralyzed. Transportation breaking down. New cults. New prophets. Here’s Gifford saying, Let’s join hands, Thomas, let’s try to work together, and you tell me—”
“I forbid this,” Kraft says.
“It’s all agreed. Gifford’s going to take the first plane west, and—”
“I’ll call him. He mustn’t come. If he does I won’t let him see you. I’ll notify the apostles to bar him.”
“No, Saul.”
“We don’t need him. We’ll be ruined if we let him near you.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s godless and our movement’s strength proceeds from the
Lord!” Kraft shouts. “Thomas, what’s happened to you? Where’s your fire? Where’s your zeal? Where’s my old swaggering Thomas who talked back to God? Belch, Thomas. Spit on the floor, scratch your belly, curse a little. I’ll get you some wine. It shocks me to see you sniveling like this. Telling me how tired you are, how scared.”
“I don’t feel like swaggering much these days, Saul.”
“Damn you, swagger anyway! The whole world is watching you! Here, listen—I’ll rough out a new speech for you that you’ll deliver on full hookup tomorrow night. We’ll outflank Gifford and his bunch. We’ll co-opt him. What you’ll do, Thomas, is call for a new act of faith, some kind of mass demonstration, something symbolic and powerful, something to turn people away from despair and destruction. We’ll follow the Discerner line plus our own element of faith. You’ll denounce all the false new cults and urge everyone to—to—let me think—to make a pilgrimage of some kind?—a coming together—a mass baptism, that’s it, a march to the sea, everybody bathing in God’s own sea, washing away doubt and sin. Right? A rededication to faith.” Kraft’s face is red. His forehead gleams. Thomas scowls at him. Kraft goes on, “Stop pulling those long faces. You’ll do it and it’ll work. It’ll pull people back from the abyss of Apocalypticism. Positive goals, that’s our approach. Thomas the Proclaimer cries out that we must work together under God. Yes? Yes. We’ll get this thing under control in ten days, I promise you. Now go have yourself a drink. Relax. I’ve got to call Gifford, and then I’ll start blocking in your new appeal. Go on. And stop looking so glum, Thomas! We hold a mighty power in our hands. We’re wielding the sword of the Lord. You want to turn all that over to Gifford’s crowd? Go. Go. Get some rest, Thomas.”
Ten
A Prostration of Propitiators
ALL PARISH CHAIRMEN PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE. The Reverend August Hammacher to his dearly beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, members of the Authentic Church of the Doctrine of Propitiation, this message from Central Shrine: greetings and blessings. Be you hereby advised that we have notified Elder Davey Strafford of the First Church of the Awaiters of Redemption that as of this date we no longer consider ourselves in communion with his church, on grounds of irremediable doctrinal differences. It is now forbidden for members of the Authentic Church to participate in the Awaiter rite or to have any sacramental contact with the instrumentalities of the Awaiter creed, although we shall continue to remember the Awaiters in our prayers and to strive for their salvation as if they were our own people.
The schism between ourselves and the Awaiters, which has been in the making for more than a week, arises from a fundamental disagreement over the nature of the Sign. It is of course our belief, greatly strengthened by the violent events of recent days, that the Author of the Sign was Satan and that the Sign foretells a coming realignment in heaven, the probable beneficiaries of which are to be the Diabolical Forces. In expectation of the imminent establishment of the Dark Powers on Earth, we therefore direct our most humble homage to Satan the Second Incarnation of Christ, hoping that when He comes among us He will take cognizance of our obeisance and spare us from the ultimate holocaust.
Now the Awaiters hold what is essentially an agnostic position, saying that we cannot know whether the Sign proceeds from God or from Satan, and that pending further revelation we must continue to pray as before to the Father and the Son, so that perhaps through our devotions we may stave off the advent of Satan entirely. There is one point of superficial kinship between their ideas and ours, which is an unwillingness to share the confidence of Thomas the Proclaimer on the one hand, and the Discerners on the other, that the Sign is God’s work. But it may be seen that a basic conflict of doctrine exists between ourselves and the Awaiters, for they refuse to comprehend our teachings concerning the potential benevolence of Satan, and cling to an attitude that may be deemed dangerously offensive by Him. Unwilling to commit themselves finally to one side or the other, they hope to steer a cautious middle course, not realizing that when the Dark One comes He will chastise all those who failed to accept the proper meaning of the revelation of June 6. We have hoped to sway the Awaiters to our position, but their attitude has grown increasingly abusive as we have exposed their doctrinal inconsistencies, and now we have no option but to pronounce excommunication upon them. For what does Revelation say? “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” We cannot risk being tainted by these lukewarm Awaiters who will not bow the knee to the Dark One, though they admit the possibility (but not the inevitability) of His Advent.
However, dearly loved friends in Christ, I am happy to reveal that we have this day established preliminary communion with the United Diabolist Apocalyptic Pentecostal Church of the United States, the headquarters of which is in Los Angeles, California. I need not here recapitulate the deep doctrinal chasms separating us from the Apocalyptist sects in general; but although we abhor certain teachings even of this Diabolist faction, we recognize large areas of common belief linking us, and hope to wean the United Diabolist Apocalyptics entirely from their errors in the course of time. This is by no means to be interpreted as presently authorizing communicants of the Authentic Church of the Doctrine of Propitiation to take part in Apocalyptist activities, even those which are nondestructive, but I do wish to advise you of the possibility of a deeper relationship with at least one Apocalyptist group even as we sever our union with the Awaiters. Our love goes out to all of you, from all of us at Central Shrine. We prostrate ourselves humbly before the Dark One whose triumph is ordained. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and Him Who Comes. Amen.
Eleven
The March to the Sea
It was the most frightening thing ever. Like an army invading us. Like a plague of locusts. They came like the locusts came upon the land of Egypt when Moses stretched out his hand. Exodus 10:15 tells it: For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt. Like a nightmare. Lucy and me were the Egyptians and all of Thomas’ people, they were the locusts.
Lucy wanted to be in the middle of it all along. To her, Thomas was like a holy prophet of God from the moment he first started to preach, although I tried to tell her back then that he was a charlatan and a dangerous lunatic with a criminal record. Look at his face, I said, look at those eyes! A lot of good it did me. She kept a scrapbook of him like he was a movie star and she was a fifteen-year-old girl instead of a woman of seventy-four. Pictures of him, texts of all his speeches. She got angry at me when I called him crazy or unscrupulous: we had our worst quarrel in maybe thirty years when she wanted to send him $500 to help pay for his television expenses and I absolutely refused. Naturally after the Day of the Sign she came to look upon him as being right up there in the same exalted category as Moses and Elijah and John the Baptist, one of the true anointed voices of the Lord, and I guess I was starting to think of him that way too, despite myself. Though I didn’t like him or trust him I sensed he had a special power. When everybody was praying for the Sign I prayed too, not so much because I thought it would come about but just to avoid trouble with Lucy, but I did put my heart into the prayer, and when the Earth stopped turning a shiver ran all through me and I got such a jolt of amazement that I thought I might be having a stroke. So I apologized to Lucy for all I had said about Thomas. I still suspected he was a madman and a charlatan, but I couldn’t deny that he had something of the saint and prophet about him too. I suppose it’s possible for a man to be a saint and a charlatan both. Anything’s possible. I understand that one of these new religions is saying that Satan is actually an incarnation of Jesus, or the fourth member of the Trinity, or something like that. Honestly.
Well then all th
e riotings and burnings began when the hot weather came and the world seemed to be going crazy with things worse not better after God had given His Sign, and Thomas called for this Day of Rededication, everybody to go down to the sea and wash off his sins, a real old-time total-immersion revival meeting where we’d all get together and denounce the new cults and get things back on the right track again.
And Lucy came to me all aglow and said, Let’s go, let’s be part of it. I think there were supposed to be ten gathering-places all around the United States, New York and Houston and San Diego and Seattle and Chicago and I don’t remember which else, but Thomas himself was going to attend the main one at Atlantic City, which is just a little ways down the coast from us, and the proceedings would be beamed by live telecast to all the other meetings being held here and overseas. She hadn’t ever seen Thomas in person. I told her it was crazy for people our age to get mixed up in a mob of the size Thomas always attracts. We’d be crushed, we’d be trampled, we’d die sure as anything. Look, I said, we live right here by the seashore anyway, the ocean is fifty steps from our front porch; so why ask for trouble? We’ll stay here and watch the praying on television, and then when everybody goes down into the sea to be purified we can go right here on our own beach and we’ll be part of things in a way without taking the risks. I could see that Lucy was disappointed about not seeing Thomas in person but after all she’s a sensible woman and I’m going to be eighty next November and there had already been some pretty wild scenes at each of Thomas’ public appearances.
The big day dawned and I turned on the television and then of course we got the news that Atlantic City had banned Thomas’ meeting at the last minute on the grounds of public safety. A big oil tanker had broken up off shore the night before and an oil slick was heading toward the beach, the mayor said. If there was a mass meeting on the beach that day it would interfere with the city’s pollution-prevention procedures, and also the oil would endanger the health of anybody who went into the water, so the whole Atlantic City waterfront was being cordoned off, extra police brought in from out of town, laser lines set up, and so forth. Actually the oil slick wasn’t anywhere near Atlantic City and was drifting the other way, and when the mayor talked about public safety he really meant the safety of his city, not wanting a couple of million people ripping up the boardwalk and breaking windows. So there was Atlantic City sealed off and Thomas had this immense horde of people already collected, coming from Philadelphia and Trenton and Wilmington and even Baltimore, a crowd so big it couldn’t be counted, five, six, maybe ten million people. They showed it from a helicopter view and everybody was standing shoulder to shoulder for about twenty miles in this direction and fifty miles in that direction, that’s how it seemed, anyway, and about the only open place was where Thomas was, a clearing around fifty yards across with his apostles forming a tight ring protecting him.
Something Wild is Loose: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Three Page 25
