Five

Daniel in the Den of Clouds

      Daniel Hawthorne walked hesitantly toward the pulpit, silently whispering a prayer for strength. He detested what he had to do next. He hated the memories he would summon up, he hated the hold they had upon him still. But he did it. For himself, for the wayward, for God.
      The congregation applauded as he stepped slowly onto the rostrum and took the minister's place at the lectern. Only a few of the parishioners knew him here, though many had heard of him by reputation. There was an air of expectation in the hall, an electric feeling of anticipation. It was a holy feeling, a rising of the spirit, but it still made Daniel uncomfortable. It reminded him of the feeling at a rock concert, just before the headline act took the stage. Which was apt, for once again, he was on the road. On tour.
      Daniel paused and rolled his eyes upward behind his closed lids. "Oh, Lord, work through me again. Make this go easy." He felt the Lord's presence, there was no denying it. He could feel the Spirit building inside him, just a quiet fire in his chest now, but it would grow, oh yes, it would grow.
      "My friends," he said, but the words had trouble making their way out of his suddenly parched throat. He held up a finger for patience, then took a small sip from the water-glass that Reverend Smythe had thoughtfully provided for him. "My friends," he began again, "Most of you don't know me. Some of you may have heard of me. I've come fifty miles today to testify for you. Not because I want to. In truth, I'd rather be home asleep if it's all the same to you."
      There was a small ripple of laughter through the crowd. Daniel smiled at them, embarrassed. He was an uncomfortable speaker, he always had been. But he had found that honesty was, indeed, the best policy, in public speaking as in life.
      "But I know that God has a plan for me. It's a small plan, a humble plan, but it's God's plan and what he wills, I will as well. God's will is that I come before you, and open my soul. I can't ask you to believe all I tell you, or even to like me for things I have done...all I can ask of you is that you hear me, and let my story illuminate you as it will."
      As Daniel looked across the crowd, he saw the room begin to shimmer. The Spirit was building strength.
      The audience looked up at him. He could feel the hot lights reflecting off of his balding head. He could sense the choir behind him, shifting in their robes. He could see the minister standing to his right at the periphery of the rostrum. He cleared his throat, cleared his mind and began.
      "I'm here to tell you about Satan."
      Daniel Hawthorne slapped his hands against the lectern. "That's right, I said 'Satan'. The Beast! The Tempter, the Serpent, the Adversary. You all know who I'm talking about.
      "Or do you?"
      He stepped away from the lectern. The Fever was starting to build in his heart, the Spirit starting to well up in his soul, filling him, carrying him away. "I mean, who is Satan? Is he the suave stranger with the pointy beard, who speaks in an English accent as he has you sign away your soul? That's the devil we've seen in the movies; is that how you see Satan? He began to make eye contact with some of the audience. They were becoming spellbound. It was the Spirit.
      "Or is it the other way? Is he some huge horror-movie Halloween cut-out bat-winged fire-eyed pitchfork-wielding monster - but still with the pointy beard?" There was a laugh at this. "Is that how you see Satan?" He smiled at them, then his face grew dark and stern.
      "Or does Satan bear a human face? Is he, as some would have us believe, just a metaphor for the evil in everyone? Or is he more specific, is he Manson, McVeigh, Hitler?"
      He was so full of the fire now that he could scarcely contain himself. He began pacing back and forth. In a moment, he knew, he would begin gesturing wildly, flailing his hands against the air. The audience was rapt, transfixed. This wasn't theater, this wasn't rock 'n' roll, this was the real thing, this was Religion, man; this was what those others were just pale cave shadows of... God, awake! Alive! And walking through the masses! Hallelujah!
      "Is the devil among you? Is that Satan over there?" He pointed with a wild passion finger at some wallflower in the back row. The crowd gasped. "Or is he over there? How about you, sir, are you Satan?" The poor old man shook his head, aghast. "Is Satan that farmer over there, that insurance salesman, that college professor in the back..."
      He stumbled here. He had seen a college professor in the back. But the person he had thought he had seen wasn't there after all. He made a calming gesture with his hands. "No, no, no, relax, you're not the devil, sir, and neither are you or you or you. The devil does NOT wear a human face, though many serve him. He doesn't wear a suit, he doesn't have bat wings, or horns, or speak with an English accent."
      Daniel returned to the pulpit, and leaned on the lectern with tensed arms. "God came to me nearly thirty years ago. He came, and swept me into his arms, and I swept him into my soul. I have been blessed, and that is no lie. If I hadn't found my way to the lord, I could be mad, or dead now. Instead I'm here. To tell you about Satan. How he is real. And how we must stop thinking about him in human terms.
      "Satan is vast. Satan is nearly incomprehensible. The only thing that makes this bearable is my sure knowledge that God is stronger.
      "Yes, God entered my life nearly thirty years ago. And it was nearly too late.
      "Because Satan entered it first."

      Marcia Hawthorne was awakened by lightning and an accompanying distant burp of thunder, though when she became fully alert she realized that it didn't seem to be raining outside. She sensed that she was alone; she reached over to the empty space beside her in the bed. Daniel was not there. "Danny?" She sat up.
      She found him standing downstairs in the living room, looking out across the cornfields at a far-off thunderhead. Flashes of light glinted momentarily, ephemerally within it.
      "Heat lightning," Daniel said, without turning around.
      She stayed where she was for a moment, at the foot of the stairs, looking at him, his silhouette flickeringly illuminated by those quick flashes. She was used to finding him up and about in the small hours; he had trouble sleeping, especially on a day after he'd Testified, dredging up those memories of those days back in New England, and the Miskawhoosit Acid Thing. The doctor had prescribed sleeping pills, but Daniel refused to have anything to do with any drug stronger than aspirin (and had to have his arm bent to even take that).
      A large cluster of flashes lit up the cloud from within, like fireworks inside a clump of cotton candy. "Well, would you look at that," she said, marveling.
      Daniel didn't respond. As her eyes got used to the light she began to note the oddness of the cloud formation. It was a clear night with a nearly full moon, and the stars were visible; in fact, the sky above their house and for miles beyond it seemed to be entirely clear of clouds. Yet this one thunderhead seemed to hover in one spot. It seemed to be about ten miles away, and if so, the area it covered would have had to have been at least several miles in diameter. "It must be some sort of temperature inversion," she said, speaking her thoughts out loud.
      "It... would seem like the sensible explanation." There was an odd undertone, an uneasy quaver to the timbre of his usually strong, confident voice.
      "Why," she asked, "What else could it be?Ó
      "Look at it. Look closely."
      Marcia move next to him at the window and stared out into the Indiana night.
      A renewed cluster of flashes illuminated the distant cloud. The lightning came in rapid succession, maybe a dozen flashes inside a second, then stillness for moments or minutes. The cloud was a deep gray-white when still, lit by the light of the moon; when electrified, it came alive with shades of fire-orange and yellow, and swirls and eddies of black and deep gray against a cotton-white background.
      "Keep watching," Daniel murmured.
      A cluster of strobe-like flashes lit the guts of the cloud. She realized that the eddies of gray-black fluff inside the cloud were moving, forming cloud pictures that appeared then dissipated; but the light flashed too fast for the mind to draw the correspondences that organize random shapes into "pictures"; it was all just wisps in the sky.
      Then another flash struck, a cluster of a dozen or more lightning bursts, and she gasped.
      There was a face inside the cloud. Screaming.
      "Good. You see it too." Daniel seemed relieved.
      "What... what's..."
      "Shh. There'll be more."
      And there were. The next flash revealed a beast on horseback, riding out of an explosion, yowling in triumph. The flash after that came from a different side of the cloud... a woman held her face in her hands. Something small and lifeless lay before her. They weren't pictures per se, of course; just wisps of water vapor and patterns of light and shadow that seemed to form figures in the air. Yes, that was all they were, all they could be... and then another flash revealed a soldier crawling across a field of dead bodies; so clear, so defined that Marcia could see the desperation, the horror in his eyes.
      Then the flash would be over, the cloud once again dark; and when the next flash would go off, the figure that was there before would be gone, replaced by something equally horrible, equally realistic, equally unsettling.
      "What is going on, Daniel?" She was shaking now. This... this wasn't right, this wasn't normal. This was evil. "Just pray with me. We'll be all right. It's not getting any closer. It's just some sort of show. The devil's magic TV set in the sky." He'd have laughed at the idea. But it wasn't very funny. "Why is it there? What is going on?"
      "I don't know for sure. But I think it's here for me to see."
      "Why? Because you Testified today?"
      "Because it's not over. It's never going to be over. It's never going to let me be. And I think there's something I have to do..."
      They looked at the cloud, still and squalid in the wide midwestern sky. The lightning had stilled momentarily, and the cloud simply hung there, like a blotch of something foul staining the fabric of night.
      Then there came a great thunderous explosion of light from the gut of the cloud, and suddenly Daniel and Marcia saw a new and more horrible vision than before. In the interim in which it was darkened, the cloud had begun to sprout limbs. The pseudopods of wisp and vapor stretched out from the body of the cloud by the dozens, like tentacles made of sea foam. And if one were to focus one's vision on any one of these cloud limbs, it would seem that all of the others began to squirm and undulate against each other.
      They both gasped in unison.
      The cloud was momentarily still and invisible against the black sky, and when the next bout of lightning struck it had dissipated. The air seemed clearer, and somehow cleaner, now that the cloud was gone.
      "Do you feel that?" Daniel asked Marcia. "Yes, it's like a hand lifted off my heart. Dear God!"
      "Like the shadow of death has passed over us."
      "Has it? Has it passed over us? What was it doing here in the first place?"
      "I don't know. I just feel... like something is happening... something that involves me. Something big. Something frightening."
      "Why you? You've left the world of evil; you've given yourself to God! Can't it just leave you alone?"
      "I don't think so. I don't think it can. It still wants me. I can feel its thirst."
      Marcia's voice grew dark, low, paper-husky. "Daniel... that cloud... was that the devil?"
      Daniel's voice caught in his throat. "I don't know! I can't stand this... I'm trying to be strong, but... Oh God! The nightmares, the waking dreams, the eyes in the shadows... Jesus, make it stop! Don't ask me to do any more! My soul is weak, I can't stand it!"
      He buried his face in his hands, but did not weep. Marcia placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "God will see us through this, Daniel, God will see us through." She looked at the sky and wished she could really, truly believe that.