Scars on the Face of God

by Chris Bauer

  Father’s arms and legs ignited into winged flames, his chest heaving, his mouth spewing blood, his face contorting in tortured agony.

  “Father!” I yelled, my voice ragged, trembling. “Adam! No, you bastard!”

  Father’s eyes drilled into me, held me back, and trying to speak, his laboring lips mouthed words through airless lungs: “…get out…now…”

  The scepter swiveled out of the fire, slammed against the wooden credenza like a thundering sledgehammer, splitting the desk in two with Father, the hammer’s head, still attached. Adam raised the scepter again, Father’s blazing body now limp and lifeless as a skewered rag doll. The boy-monster brought the scepter down again and again around the sacristy, crushing piece after piece of furniture with the mangled and charred stump of something that no longer looked like it had ever been a human being.

  Much as I wanted to cry for Father right now, and for Viola, and for Harry, and for the whole human race, this wasn’t the time for it. I reached behind me with my good hand, pulled the sacristy door out of the way and backed up, trying to ease my way out. I didn’t get more than a step before something moved into me.

  —EEeeEEee—

  Raymond’s wheelchair was against my leg, a wide-eyed Leo pushing it, the chair’s leather straps belted into place across Raymond’s frail body.

  “Back him out, Leo! Get him out of here. Now!”

  “But Raymond wants to know if he said it,” Leo said, standing his ground, his face pleading.

  I pushed on the chair arm, but it wouldn’t budge. Behind me I felt the heat, glanced over my shoulder, saw the fire that started as a burning book now roaring out of control nearly two stories high, Adam’s dark silhouette standing fixed in front of it, the scepter upright by his side, Father Duncan’s torso no more than a smoky roast of meat impaled on its end. I closed my eyes to this nightmare and turned back to the wheelchair.

  “Move, Leo!”

  “But, Wump, Raymond says—”

  “Move!”

  Raymond’s hand slapped onto my forearm in a death grip, and through his long bony fingers I sensed something—impatience, or maybe seething determination—until my subconscious was rocked by a bugling, wake-the-hell-up scream:

  DID HE SAY WHO HE IS

  “What? Raymond?”

  I heard a rumbling, and behind Adam a larger figure raised itself to stand full upright, ten feet high, two pearly-white horns jutting from its beastly forehead like bony handles, the horns curving down like a ram’s, curling around to frame the figure’s charred face. Its form was human, its beefy naked body the color of scorched pewter, its eyes yellow-gold, its hands clawed, and its manhood so grotesquely large his legs were bowed around it. With a single step toward us it, became one with Adam. The room filled with an overpowering stench, like rotting flesh in sewage.

  “Yes!” I shouted at Raymond, and in a flash I remembered Father Duncan’s words: God wouldn’t intervene till he was sure it was the real thing. “He said he’s the son of Lucifer! The false Christ, damn it! And now they’re one with Lucifer himself! Go!”

  The beast let out an earsplitting banshee yell that dropped me hard against the floor. I pulled at Raymond’s squeaky wheel for leverage, got to one knee and tried to stand. Raymond’s hand dropped onto my shoulder, held me down like I was cemented into place until—

  SNAP. The leather strap across Raymond’s legs retracted like it was spring-loaded, slapped next to my ear like a fly swatter on glass.

  SNAP. The wide strap across his waist recoiled the same way, ringing my ears, then—

  SNA-A-A-PPP!

  Raymond’s strapped-in chest busted free of its restraint. His shoulders rose and fell, his chest heaving hard like he’d been holding his breath for ages. He filled his lungs, savored each gulp of air until his pale face and neck colored up to a healthy glow I hadn’t seen on him as far back as never. I felt my eyes tear up, and I rubbed them with my good hand, because now I saw this diseased child with half-lidded blind eyes, and legs that been failing him all his life, step out of his wheelchair, and my, oh my if he wasn’t simply so wonderfully and incredibly the most beautiful being I had ever seen.

  He stood square in his PF Flyers, tall like I’d imagined, then put out a hand with his palm up, like a surgeon waiting for a scalpel, and I sensed a message pass from him to Leo. Leo retrieved a toy saber and the pretend billy club from the wheelchair’s basket, placed the saber into Raymond’s right hand, the club into his left, then threw the wheelchair’s wide leather waist strap over Raymond’s shoulder, letting it hang loose, and…

  I couldn’t recall ever seeing Raymond’s back, him always in his chair. Now I saw it real clear from my spot on the floor, and my prior sense of how helpless he was before, so impaired and so feeble, so unfortunate and overlooked by God, all of this gave way to what I made of him now. The boy had a pair of wings the size of a storefront, and as they softly opened and spread out above me, covering the entire sacristy wall, there was this thing that came over me that I was for sure was really certain, and that I could embrace and believe with my entire being, and this one true thing was that now, without a doubt, we were gonna see a brawl of biblical proportions.

  this belief of yours—this one true thing—

  Raymond’s soothing thoughts floated into my head like the aroma from a scented candle.

  it is your faith, Wump

  it has returned, and I am nourished by it

  Raymond inhaled his deepest breath yet, and with a twist of his left wrist the small billy club grew into a top-heavy hammer bound with leather, its granite head the size of a building cornerstone. He flicked his right hand. The toy saber made of hard rubber and plastic became a double-edged sword tall as a lightning rod, its blade broad, long, gleaming. A dead ringer for something I’d seen elsewhere but couldn’t place: a yellow mosaic sword set in two stories of stained glass.

  The beast, now only Lucifer and Adam, with no trace of a masquerading Jesus, hissed at Raymond, Raymond’s blond hair unfurling like a flag in a windstorm. With sounds more like grunts and clucks than a language, I heard the beast snarl and speak, and in my head I heard Raymond translate it:

  “Be thou gone, Archangel, for this time my strength is multiplied, swollen by the minions of the damned!”

  Raymond’s sword—that was where I seen it. In every depiction of Michael the Archangel I could ever remember. Murals, the Bible, church windows…

  yes, Wump. I am Michael, and I am one with Raymond

  The beast motioned his open hand at the floor, where the gold crucifix late of Monsignor’s head rested in a blood puddle. The cross was sucked into his clawed fingers where he gripped it by the short end, its long end lengthening then flattening out like it had been pounded by a blacksmith, becoming a sword twice the size of Michael’s, his other weapon the scepter, the small lump of smoking flesh still on its tip. He raised the scepter like a sword swallower, stuck it in his mouth, then pulled it out again, slowly, between clenched teeth, the lump of flesh disappearing like cubed beef on a shish kebab. He chewed and swallowed, took a step toward us, and opened his dagger-toothed mouth; Father Duncan’s remains were gone.

  My heart sank, and the burned flesh foulness of the beast’s breath made my legs weak. His meaty tongue surged at us from across the room, stopped short under Michael’s nose where it danced, rising and falling like a whore’s body, the tongue licking Michael’s cheeks, one then the other, taunting him with its sexiness. Michael showed no reaction. The tongue slid back along the floor, the beast’s mouth closed, and its wings emerged from behind its bare, lead-black shoulders like the raising of a circus tent. They were taller, wider, thicker than Michael’s. They flapped, and Lucifer hovered.

  Michael’s wings raised him up, his weapons by his side, a no-never-mind expression on his face. He took up a position across the sacristy from the enemy.

  This one true thing, my faith, it was badly bruised, yet I knew that, not far below the surface, it was still he
re. If faith was what you needed, Michael, then I had loads of it. Eat it up, big boy.

  Michael dropped flat-footed to the floor. He nodded at me, his face showing nothing, his blind, other-way eyes still half-lidded and unfocused. He lowered his blond head and advanced on foot toward the beast. His steps turned into a determined march, and the airborne Lucifer’s chest inflated until out of his mouth came a full-gutted, raging waterfall of fire. Michael trudged across the marble floor, the righteous sonovagun marching through the blast furnace flames unmarked, straight to their source. Leaving his feet he rose up eye level to Lucifer and clubbed his horned head with a sideways blow that sent the demon back and up like he’d been shot from a howitzer, his monstrous leaden body crashing through the front wall of the sacristy, into the deserted church. Michael followed, gliding slowly over the rubble through a jagged hole big as a bank vault; he set down on the other side. I stumbled through after him, and Leo after me. Inside the church Lucifer had recovered, was still airborne. He circled the ceiling, keen to Michael’s entrance.

  Lucifer dove like a kamikaze from the far corner, his crucifix sword raised, his scepter blazing, both ready to run Michael through. Michael waited him out, then with the speed of a featherweight boxer he delivered a short uppercut with his fisted sword hand, driving Lucifer upward like he was on a pull string, into and through two stories of shattering stained glass, and rocketing him out of sight deep into a starless, night-like sky.

  Michael rose above the debris and drifted out of the church. Leo and me found a door and hurried outside in time to find him standing beyond the empty parking lot on the grassy slope leading down to the edge of the river. Michael’s weapons were by his side, his chin raised, his head patiently swiveling back and forth patrolling the pitch-black heavens, his half-lidded eyes still unfocused, and looking no less blind than Raymond’s.

  The slope was deserted, so quiet it was unnatural. A dark, dead-air, Silent-Night quiet, but it was only late afternoon. No animals, no wind, no movement, no other people. No other witnesses. I blinked hard a few times, then stole a look behind me at the gaping hole that was once one of the church’s stained glass windows, too real for me not to trust that it wasn’t, other witnesses or not.

  What started as a distant pinprick of light on a black sky canvas turned into a screaming winged ball of fire dropping like a meteor, its noise deafening while it swooped in toward Michael, its pitch stoked by pleading cries from what sounded like the millions of souls all damned to the bubbling shit-pits of hell, all speaking in crazy tongues but saying nothing, their voices instead climbing into one screeching bitch-fest jumble of earsplitting, chalkboard noise. Down, down, down, the dive-bombing Lucifer rocketed in for the kill from behind, Michael motionless on the grass like he was ignorant of his approach. A hundred feet from the target Lucifer raised his crucifix sword like a horseman bent on delivering a beheading, and it was then that Michael turned. With another blinding, crushing blow, Michael’s hammer-club paralyzed Lucifer, pile-driving him down and out of sight below the surface, deep into the earth, with dirt and dust and smoke rising from the explosion.

  Michael stood stiffened at the rim of the crater. Leo and me were side by side, and as we watched this thin blond angel man-boy of a warrior while he waited, him looking rock-sure as a statue on a mountaintop, I felt something wonderful, something powerful grow inside me.

  It was a confidence coming from the mysterious feeling of knowing the outcome of a poker hand before it was played. This was Michael’s faith, and Michael’s confidence, and my faith in him became his faith in me, and this one true thing I needed to be sure about at this very moment now hit home: Michael, God’s Archangel, was invincible.

  Lucifer rose from the depths of the cave-in, lighted on his feet on the other side of the crater, began pacing like a caged animal that had been poked with a stick, scowling, hissing, growling, then scowling some more. Michael felt for the leather strap still hanging loose over his shoulder. He resettled it, then resettled his grip on each of his weapons. He turned, stayed earthbound and bent forward, and marched around the crater’s edge, his noiseless PF Flyers tramping toward the enemy. Lucifer flexed then raised his weapons high while his yellow demon eyes rolled up into his horned head, and from the depths of the crater, from all those dark and pleading souls of hell he summoned it, summoned with one command all their hate, and their sins, and their grief, and their scorn for God—

  “Bestow upon me—the fury—of thy damnation!”

  —and guided it all into his monstrous winged body, and it was then I felt its draw, felt its surge of power as it groped at me, fueled all my doubts and my fears, of sickness, and of death, and of loneliness and depression, and of what my life would be without my Viola. Lucifer’s head jerked in my direction, and with one final wrench at my core, he turned up the heat and stoked my pain, drawing it to the surface and feeding on it, making it his and mine together—

  …Harry, his tired young body shivering, his last breath leaving his lips.

  …Viola, lost and pleading and crying helplessly, her insides in the throes of shedding a life we’d created.

  …Viola grimacing through a final, swelling agony, about to finger the last bead of her rosary, her voice fading to a whisper as she said good-bye.

  I doubled over in agony—it was like my groin was in a vice.

  “…unnhhh…”

  Then words I never thought I’d ever hear slammed into me, overcame and took command of me: “I will save her,” Lucifer howled. “She will live.”

  I was spellbound, felt suspended, my eyes tearing up. The pain, it was subsiding…

  “My Viola?” I mumbled, felt my face pinch, heard my voice quiver, not believing this possible. “You can help her? How?”

  The demon roared like his long-shot horse just came in, and through a foggy numbness, I watched Michael break into a frantic run. A rejuvenated Lucifer got into a crouch, ready to spring to engage him.

  “RENOUNCE THE ANGEL. RENOUNCE GOD! BESTOW YOUR FAITH…IN ME! CHOOSE ME, AND YOU CHOOSE VIOLA!”

  The sudden might of Lucifer’s backhand staggered Michael, dropping him to one knee on the grass, Michael looking smaller and weaker now, like a turtle with a cracked shell. A second backhand sent Michael flying, slamming him into the second story of the church’s speckled granite wall. He slid down the wall to its bottom, dazed.

  Viola’s pleading face—I saw her in my mind, and instantly I knew her words, her thoughts, her outlook on her future: “I have your love, Johnny, and I have my faith, and these are enough to carry me through to the end that God has planned for me.”

  It was then I realized how very, very selfish I’d been, and it shamed me.

  “Choose you,” I shouted at Lucifer, my heart pounding, me knowing how empty this decision would make me, “I gain Viola’s life, but—” Screwing up my courage, I ended the debate.

  “Choose you, I lose her love. No deal.”

  Michael regained his footing and moved like he had radar, the beast striking at him again and again with slashing swipes and poking thrusts, but now Michael deflected each blow and drove Lucifer back onto his heels, pounding the demon’s body with enough thundering, mind-drubbing power to separate starch from a sail, and the puffed-up pride from someone, or something, that had never earned it.

  Lucifer’s grip on me faded, and Leo and me brought up the rear, Leo first, then me cradling my arm and doing my best to stay close behind him. The smaller Michael attacked while not taking a backward step, pummeling the beast like a ten-ton punch press stamping out machine parts, pushing him away from the church, forcing the fight downhill, with Lucifer stumbling then recovering then stumbling then recovering, until they reached the bottom of the grassy slope where Michael stopped, lowered his weapons to his side, and waited. A winded Lucifer backed away from him, sized him up while getting his bearings, then finally realized where he was. He hissed, and Michael answered him through Raymond’s subconscious voice.

  your f
ate—

  The earth shook as Lucifer’s roar hit us like booming, snapping thunderclaps. Leo and I covered our ears while Michael continued.

  is and always will be—

  Lucifer teetered on the bank of the swollen river, its current raging. Upstream, the dam was open.

  predetermined—

  Michael dropped his club, slipped the leather strap from his shoulder.

  you will reenter hell, and you will take your son with you—

  Lucifer unfurled his wings, but quick as a striking cobra, Michael snapped the leather strapping around the demon’s clawed hands, and as the beast struggled to lift his massive body, Michael pulled the strap taut and held his ground. With one gouging slice of his sword, Michael lightened Lucifer’s load by about a hundred pounds, all from below the waist.

  and you will do so without this

  He tossed Lucifer’s bloodied, coiled member onto the bank on the other side of the river, the butchered beast shrieking while Michael looped the other end of the leather binding around his beast-feet and drew it tight. Michael took to the air, and with a thrusting nosedive he slammed the hog-tied demon underwater and pressed him down, steadily pushing him into the muck at the bottom of the river.

  From the bank I saw the two figures that were one disappear beneath the surface, the ram-headed Lucifer and his drowning son Adam, bubbles rising from beneath them while Michael pulled back, the disturbed muddy sewage parting to reveal a round opening, a waterspout swirling downward, through the tainted river’s floor, them both spilling into it and spinning out of sight, sucked into its depths like turds in a toilet bowl. Under our feet, the earth trembled and groaned until the toilet-bowl hole suddenly erupted, spewing a geyser of brown water and orange and yellow and white fire, and then, just as suddenly, only fire. Michael spiked the demon’s coiled member with his sword, lifted and dangled it over the blazing hole. He rotated the blade in his hand, scorching the coiled gray meat until it was charred totally black, then released it and his skewer-sword, letting them both drop into the inferno. The fire belched, and with a small puff of smoke the blast furnace blaze sputtered and went out. The parted waters came together, covering the river floor again.