Piercing the Darkness (29 page)

Just beneath them, unnoticed, a brown Buick eased down Front Street. The big man driving the Buick was taking it easy going through town, just getting a feel of the place. It wasn’t much of a place. On the one side was the only gas station in town, boasting cheap prices and fixing flats for ladies free. Next to it was the Bacon’s Corner Mercantile, a sagging old veteran of many a hard season, just like the old rusted tractor parked alongside in grass as high as the hubs.

On the other side of the street was the Myers Feed and Farm Store. That place seemed to be getting a lot of business—there were a lot of weathered pickup trucks parked around it and a lot of John Deere hats around. Then came the grain elevators, the towering sentinels that were visible for miles and bore the name of the town for anyone who might be wondering what all these little buildings were doing out in the middle of nowhere. The PriceWise grocery seemed out of place—it needed a mall around it to look right.

“So where now?” the big man asked his wife.

She sat next to him, at least as radiant in real life as she was in that picture he always kept on his desk. “What was that church we passed back there?”

“Methodist, I think.”

“Oh, here’s a Lutheran.”

“Yeah. Very nice.”

“So where do you put a Community Church?”

“We’re running out of community, Kate. We’ll have to turn around.”

“Guess we’d better ask somebody.”

He pulled over in front of Max’s Barber Shop, much to the interest of the two easygoing retirees sitting in their wooden chairs on the front porch.

“Hello there,” he said, and they both stood and came closer.

“Well, hi,” said Ed.

“Yeh,” said Mose.

“I’m looking for the Good Shepherd Community Church.”

The two grayheads looked at each other and exchanged a silent, inside joke with their eyes.

Ed leaned against the car and just about put his head through the window. “You another reporter?”

Well . . . in a way, he was. “Uh, not exactly.”

Mose stood behind Ed to ask his question, even while Ed just stayed there, his nose almost through the window, looking this big fellow over. “Don’t think anyone’s there now. The school’s in session, though, and maybe the pastor’s there, but he and that other lady . . .”

“Mrs. Fields,” said Ed.

“Yeah, they’d be up to their gizzards in kids right now. But Tom Harris is the real hot item. If you want to see
him . . .
”

The man looked at his wife. She already had one eyebrow raised. This thing
was
big news around this town. He turned to Mose—and Ed, who was unavoidable. “Okay. Where can I find Tom Harris?”

“You’re almost there. Head on up to the bank there, turn right. That’s Pond Road. You go about half a mile, and you’ll see the church first, on the left, and then Tom Harris’s place is just the other side of the pond, on the right, a little white house with a glassed-in south side.”

“Where you from?” asked Ed.

“You’ve never heard of the place.”

“Just wondering.”

Ed stood away from the car and gave a little wave as the Buick drove away. Mose just watched with a smile on his face.

Ed nodded with great conviction. “He’s a reporter, Mose. I can tell.”

TOM WAS READING
through some notes he’d made for some upcoming interrogatories. Wayne Corrigan said the ACFA probably would skirt having to answer most of them, but he was going to ask them
anyway. He had a lot of questions to ask those characters, and it was going to start right here.

There was a knock on the door. He closed the folder and tucked it away on the bookshelf.

Then he opened the door. His first thought was that he was facing another set of reporters, but these two were probably married, the way they stood next to each other. The man was tall and strong-looking, about middle-aged, dressed casually. His wife was attractive, also dressed casually, but exuding a quiet dignity.

“Tom Harris?” the big man asked.

“Yes,” he answered, and made no effort to hide his wariness of these two strangers. “And just who are you?”

“The name is Marshall Hogan, and this is my wife Kate. We’ve come a long way, and we’d like to talk to you.”

CHAPTER 17

TOM MADE A
lunch of it. He invited Mark and Cathy, Ben and Bev, and Wayne Corrigan. Corrigan was in court and couldn’t make it, but the others got right over there. They pooled their sandwiches, chips, salad, and soft drinks and met with the two out-of-towners in Tom’s backyard for a meeting of the minds, a serious checking-out of this Marshall Hogan. Sure, he was a Christian, and sure, he’d been through an interesting spiritual battle himself, but he was also a member of the press, and by now the press was not considered friendly or trustworthy.

They sat in a circle of chairs in the yard, munching on sandwiches and talking seriously. Marshall recounted in crisp, news-copy fashion the adventure he’d had in the town of Ashton. They were amazed. Naturally, the occult-based conspiracy to take over Ashton and the thwarting of that conspiracy went unreported in the national media. No one sitting in the yard that day had ever heard of the place or what happened there.

“And I never would have heard of you people either,” he said, “if the whole thing didn’t have such scandal potential. Hey, this kind of stuff the press calls news. It sells papers, and that’s how it got to me, over the news wire. From what I read in the wire copy—reading between the lines, of course—you folks are up against the same thing we were facing, only worse.”

Mark asked, “So you weren’t disillusioned by the reports of our
‘outrageous religious behavior’?”

“Maybe you
are
outrageous. Maybe you’re like too many Christians who see a demon under every doily. Maybe you deserve the lawsuit and the press you’re getting.” Marshall looked every one of them in the eye as he spoke. “Or maybe this whole thing is legit. If it is, then I might stick around and do what I can to help you out. I’ve got a young gal who can run that paper while I’m away; I can take care of my own expenses up to a point. I’m a good snoop, I know how to dig things up, and I know how to fight. If this thing is what it looks like, then I’m ready to make myself available, and so is Kate.”

Could this be an answer to prayer? Mark was willing to explore it further, and the others agreed. They decided to tell Marshall the details of the lawsuit and the strange incident with Amber Brandon that started the whole thing. Marshall listened intently to the whole story, and he appeared to believe it.

Then Marshall asked, “So did Amethyst ever show up again?”

Tom thought about that question. “Not in the same way. Amber stayed quiet, but she was still really strange—depressed, edgy, unattentive. She couldn’t sit still during our morning devotions, and she couldn’t stand hearing the Word of God. Now we know why. Amethyst wouldn’t manifest at the school anymore, but she never really left.”

“A tougher case than you figured on, I suppose?”

Tom turned to Cathy Howard. “Why don’t you tell him about what Alice Buckmeier told you?”

“Alice Buckmeier’s a widow who attends our church. She’s a dear,” Cathy explained. “It wasn’t too long ago, just about the same time this lawsuit began, that Alice was in the Post Office mailing a package when she heard this big commotion and saw Amber screaming at a woman patron. Lucy Brandon—the postmaster—came out of the back room and tried to quiet Amber down, but she just kept screaming, and Alice says Amber was prancing like a horse again, just running circles around the woman and screaming at her and scaring her to death. The woman ran away really frightened, and Alice was just . . . she just stood there, just blown away.”

“Who was the woman?”

Cathy shrugged. “Alice didn’t know; she never saw her before. Anyway, Lucy Brandon chased Amber around the Post Office lobby
for a long time, and I guess Amber finally calmed down and acted like nothing happened, like a total personality switch. Now that sounds . . . well . . .”

Marshall whistled at the story. “This is getting more convincing all the time.”

Tom shook his head sadly. “Just try convincing the rest of the world.”

“Right.” Marshall pulled some news clippings from his attaché case. “The
Hampton County Star
seems to have you all figured out.”

“And most of the big papers too,” said Mark. “It’s gone out over UPI and AP. I imagine the whole country’s buzzing about it now.”

“Oh sure. I see they’re cashing in on the child abuse angle: ‘Child Victims of Bizarre Fundamentalist Behavior.’ Nice. Or how about this one from the East Coast: ‘Religion as Abuse: Behind the Doors of a Private School.’ Oh, I was going to ask you about this one: ‘Christian School Responds to Court Order.’ It says here that you still hadn’t decided if you would obey the court order or not. Where’s that quote? Oh. ‘“We must obey the laws of God rather than the laws of men,” said Pastor Mark Howard.’”

Mark nodded and had to laugh. “Yes, I did say those words, but I think my entire statement was that we had heard from both sides of the question, and that some said we should obey God’s appointed authorities, and some said we must obey the laws of God rather than the laws of men. I guess they caught the last part of my statement but not the first.”

“So what did you decide?”

“For now, we’ll submit to the court order. We figure it would be in our best interests until this lawsuit is settled. Then we’ll just have to look at the question again.”

Bev piped up, “Just goes to show how people with the power can decide what we know and what we don’t know. It’s just like what happened to Ben.”

“That’s nothing . . .” Ben started to say.

Bev was indignant. “Nothin’? It’s got you out of a job, babe, and I don’t call that nothin’!”

Cathy was in Bev’s camp. “There’s some other hanky-panky going on right in the Police Department. A lady was killed a few weeks ago,
and they’re calling it a suicide, but Ben thinks it was a murder, and now they’re just covering it all up.”

“And the
Star
’s coverin’ it up too,” said Bev. “Did you see that little puny article calling the whole thing a suicide?” Marshall only began to shake his head. “Well there. See, you didn’t see it either. They didn’t want anyone to see it.”

Marshall got a question in. “Ben, what happened to your job?”

“They canned him,” said Bev. “He knew too much.”

Ben laughed and put his arm around Bev. “That’s the way I see it, yes.”

Marshall considered that. “Okay. Maybe we’ll talk some more about that later. But let’s get back to the core of this problem, and that’s Amber. Tom, you said something about her claiming to have learned all this stuff in her class at the elementary school . . .”

“Right. Miss Brewer’s class. I can believe it. The schools have been experimenting with a lot of new curricula. It could be that some kind of thinly cloaked occultism got in.”

“What do you know about Miss Brewer?”

“Zilch. I think she’s new this year.”

Cathy confirmed that. “Yes, she’s new. I have some friends who know her.”

“All right, we’ll have to talk to them and see what they know. Miss Brewer may have brought a curriculum in with her, or maybe the school board’s trying out something new. In any case, it would be nice to know how Amber got the way she is, and to be able to prove it. How about it, Kate? Feel like paying Miss Brewer a visit?”

She looked up from her notes and smiled at the thought of the adventure. “Looking forward to it.”

“Now . . . people of like interests tend to clump together, just like we’re doing right now, and that’s called networking. Once they get networked, they start working together, and that gives them a lot of clout they didn’t have before. I’d like to know how much this town is networked by any occult or cosmic-type groups. They might already be in the schools. Maybe they’ve infiltrated into other areas of power as well.”

“There’s LifeCircle,” Mark said.

“Some kind of occult fellowship?”

“Oh yes. You hear a lot about them around town, and they sell herbs and mystical, holistic literature down at the Mercantile. They call themselves something like, ‘a supportive circle of friends devoted to personal growth and evolvement.’”

“Who belongs to this bunch?”

They all started looking at each other. No one knew for sure who was involved in it.

“I don’t know anyone right offhand,” Mark explained. “They don’t function much in public; they’re not very visible.”

“What about Miss Brewer?”

No one knew.

“How about Lucy Brandon?”

No answer.

“Well, we’d better find out then. We can’t see anything yet, and it may not be just this LifeCircle outfit, but what we’re looking for is some kind of connection, some kind of link-up between these ACFA guys, Claire Johanson, Lucy Brandon, Miss Brewer, and ultimately Amber. We’ve got to know the enemy before we can deal with him.” Marshall finished the last few drops of root beer. “And I guess you know this is a spiritual battle. How are things in that department? Do you have some good prayer warriors?”