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The Second Coming of the Fallen Angel | By: Barry Shrapnel | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | Category: Short Story - Adventure

The Second Coming of the Fallen Angel

"The Second Coming of the Fallen Angel" is a work of fiction,
and any resemblance between the characters and any real persons
living or dead is or any fictional locations is unintentional
and coincidental.

The Second Coming of the Fallen Angel

The day I conjured up Satan started like any other day, right
down to my mom shouting up the stairs in a voice which could wake
Count Dracula out of his coffin in the middle of the day.

"Elaine . . . Elaine . . . you'll be late for school."

I opened my eyes but the rest of me refused to move. (Being on
the Internet all night can do that to a person.)

"What time is it?" I said.

"Seven."

Shit, I thought. And I remembered: today I had to give a speech to
the Sceptics Club. I got nervous and I woke up.

The Sceptics Club is so cool because we talk about all kinds of
weird stuff.

Like, yesterday we had a heavy discussion about Satan and I
volunteered to give a speech about him. My topic was how to prove
the devil is bullshit. I'd do it by getting people to use a spell
Satanists believed would conjure up the devil. When the spell didn't
work, we'd know Satan was rubbish.

"Elaine, you up yet?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Don't forget your Dad and I are going to the Grand Canyon for the
weekend. There's money on the table for groceries."

"Thanks, Mom."

"Bye, dear. Don't be late for school."

Thank God I don't wear lots of make-up. In five minutes I was
downstairs eating my corn flakes and drinking a double-strength
coffee. That's when I saw Mom's note on the table. In obsessive
little strokes she had written:

Elaine,
St. Patrick's has a Friday night Mass.
Your father and I would be so happy if you went.
Love, Mom.

The notes started exactly one week ago, the day I told Mom I was in
the Sceptics Club. I wasn't worried she'd forbid me from the club or
anything, but I knew there would be yelling. (Mom and Dad are into
effective parenting and like me to make up my own mind, but they get
upset when they can't make me agree with them.)

Mom was rational at first. "The principal has told me about your
Sceptics Club," she said. "I don't think it's healthy for you because
they talk about non-Christian ideas."

"Mom, we just talk about philosophy."

"The principal said you discuss things like paganism and witchcraft.
He also said you talk about the death of God. I shudder to think of
it."

"We only talk about things. We don't believe . . ."

"They're atheists," she yelled.

"They're not."

"How can you renounce God?"

"Don't be silly, Mom. I believe in God. I just don't believe in all
that superstitious Hail Mary stuff."

She crossed herself. "I'll pray for you as a fallen Catholic."

I wanted to tell her even the Pope is a fallen Catholic, but Mom has
high blood pressure so I said nothing. She never mentioned the
Sceptics Club again, but for the rest of the week I kept finding
funny little reminder notes hidden in all kinds of places. She
probably thought if she wrote enough notes I'd feel guilty.

I finished my breakfast and went out to sit on the front porch swing
and wait for Debbie. I love the swing. I can sit on it, push it back
and forth with my toes, and dream I'm on the front porch of our old
house. (I hate our new neighborhood in Scottsdale. We live in one of
those new housing developments where all the houses look the same
and there's no trees.)

The school sucks. It's in a bad area so Mom won't let me drive to
school because she says my VW would be broken into, my stereo stolen,
or worse.

Actually, there are only two good things about the school: It has
the Sceptics club, and Debbie goes there. Debbie's my best friend
and she's really cool. She wears huge earrings, lots of bracelets,
and a ribbon choker with a small silver crucifix on it. And she knows
all kinds of strange stuff.

I have to admit I'm a little jealous of her. Now, I know I'm pretty:
I've got blonde hair and hazel eyes, and boys have told me I have
a good figure and nice legs.

But Debbie's the best looking girl I've ever seen. She's sensual,
in a dark and mysterious grown up way which drives boys crazy. (I
once overheard these guys talking about her, and one of them said
Debbie looks like an archetypal gypsy
temptress who wears sexy outfits.)

I feel sorry for her though. She never saw her real father, and her
mom died when she was twelve. Now she lives with her alcoholic
stepfather who doesn't care what she does.

I was still thinking about Debbie when I heard this whistling, kind
of gentle and far off. I recognized the tune. It was 'The Devil Came
to Alabama,' Debbie's favorite song. I saw her when she came around
the corner . . . and the bus came. Debbie and I had to run to catch
it.

* * *

The bus started right after we got on, but I was so busy trying to
balance myself as I walked to the back that I didn't see Brad
Hawkins until I sat down. He came up the aisle and slid into the
seat in front of me. He gave me this dreamy-eyed look. "Hi, Elaine,"
he said.

"Is Debbie the invisible woman or something?"

"Oh sorry," he said. "Hi, Debbie."

"Hi," she said.

Then he stuck this flower practically in my face. "A beautiful flower
for a beautiful girl," he said.

Debbie suddenly seemed all involved in her biology book. I think she
was embarrassed.

I looked at the flower. "You took that from someone's front garden."
I pushed his hand away. "I can't take that flower Brad. I think
you're a really great guy, but I told you I just want to be friends."

"I'm not going to give up on you."

"Brad, I need to talk to Debbie now."

"Girl talk," he said. "Cool." He went back to the front of the bus.

"Why are you so mean to him?" Debbie said. "I liked it when he used
to hang around with us."

"You don't get it, Debbie. I can't handle him. I mean, Brad and I
had a totally cool Platonic thing going until he got all gooey and
romantic and stuff."

"Personally I think you need to see a shrink. Look at him. What more
could you want? He looks like a movie star and he's on the football
team and everything. Plus, he's so popular he can give you a flower
on the school bus in front of everybody."

"Maybe you should go out with him, Debbie."

"You know I don't like jocks."

"You like the intellectual type, I suppose?"

"Actually I do." She started reading her book again.

I started to go over the prompt cards for my speech but I couldn't
concentrate. Brad kept throwing lost puppy dog looks at me.

Brad said he fell in love with me the day I saved him from being
killed by Juan Ramirez, the toughest hood in school. I had just
gone under the bleacher stairs at recess to study when Ramirez
came up and put his arm around me.

"I seen you starin' at me in biology," he said. (Actually, I was
daydreaming, looking out the window straight behind him.)

I shrugged his arm off. "Piss off," I said and walked away.

He caught up to me, grabbed my arm, and shoved me against one of
the cement posts. I dropped my books. "Leave me alone," I said.

"So you wanna play hard to get, do you?" Then he planted this gross
kiss on me. (I felt like I was being swallowed by a saliva machine.)
Anyway, the kiss only lasted a few seconds because Brad pulled
Ramirez off me and started to beat the shit out of him.

Juan punched Brad in the stomach, pulled out a switchblade and
lunged at him. Brad jumped sideways so the knife only sliced
through the skin on his side. Juan's back was to me, so I picked up
my biology book and hit him on the side of the head as hard as I
could. He dropped. I called the ambulance and the police. (After the
trial, when Ramirez got ten years non-parole for assault with intent
to murder, my mom said she wished I'd blackened both his eyes
instead of one.)

It's because of Brad I don't have any girlfriends except Debbie.
See, Julie Zawickie, who happens to be the most popular girl in the
school, loves Brad. Of course, he doesn't even notice her, so she
hates me majorly and has gotten all her friends to hate me too.
(Also, I should add all the girls hate Debbie because she's so good
looking.)

I woke up from my daydream when Debbie nudged me with her elbow.
"Wake up, Elaine," she said. "We're here."

We got off the bus and went straight to J Block where our lockers
were. Debbie had just opened hers when Julie came up to her and
said, "Everyone hates you, you gypsy bitch."

Debbie smiled at her. "Of course," she said.

"You didn't hear me," Julie said. "You're a bitch."

"Probably the best bitch in the school," Debbie said. Then nice and
polite she said: "Excuse me, I have to go to class now."

Julie followed her down the hall abusing her more and more and
Debbie kept ignoring her. So Julie got mad and started yelling
louder and louder, getting redder and redder in the face. Pretty
soon she looked like a raving mad person and people were stopping
and laughing. Mr. Jenkins had to run over and calm Julie down, and
she ended up in tears in the infirmary. Not exactly a good image for
the head of the cheerleader squad.

* * *

My speech started out fantastic. I showed a weird picture of Satan
which got everyone's attention, except Mr. Jenkins. (He was in the
back marking papers.)"Last night," I said, "I found a spell on the
Internet that Satanists guaranteewill conjure up the devil." Mr.
Jenkins put down his pen and looked up.

I went on: "Yesterday, you all said the devil was mere superstition.
Would any of you be brave enough to put it to the test?"

Brad's hand flew up. I pretended not to see it, but he started
waving it all over the place.

"What?" I said.

"I volunteer to help you conjure up the devil."

Mr. Jenkins jumped up. "Stop right there. You better sit down, young
lady. You should know such behavior is not allowed on school grounds."

For the rest of the period we had to listen to Mr. Jenkins rave on
about the rules. At least lunch was next.

* * *

When I got to the cafeteria, Debbie was saving me a place in line.

"Did you get anyone to do the spell with you?" she said.

"Only Brad, but I told him not to come. He'll try to kiss me or hold
my hand or something."

"Couldn't you get anyone else?"

"No. Except for Brad, they're all chicken-shits."

"Doesn't matter. We'll test the spell ourselves."

She got a milk shake like she always did, and I got an order of
fries. (We never got anything but junk food because the stuff they
served and claimed was nutritious was garbage.)

Anyway, we paid our money and sat down. And I noticed Julie Zawickie
was at the table across from us.

"Let's go," I said. "Julie and her friends are giggling and staring
at us."

"I'm not leaving 'cause of her." Debbie sipped her shake and made a
face. "Yuck, this is off." She put it down.

Julie leaned over and whispered something to another girl, got up
and sashayed over to our table. "Hi, Debbie," Julie said with this
bitchy pretend friendliness. "Don't you like your milk shake?"

"Milk's spoiled," Debbie said.

Suddenly I noticed the cafeteria had gotten real quiet.

"Maybe," Julie insisted, "you should see what's inside your milk
shake."

"I'm busy," Debbie said. "Go away."

"I better show you." And Julie pulled a little tiny dead frog out.
Heaps of milk shake dripped off the frog on to the table. Julie
dropped the frog and bits of milk shake flicked on to Debbie's face.
Julie turned around and walked back to her table where all her jock
friends were. She sat down and they all started pointing at us and
laughing.

All of a sudden Julie's tray flipped up and dumped a plateful of
stringy meat, mashed potatoes and gravy between her cleavage, all
over the front of her sleeveless dress, and into her lap.

"Oh shit," she said. She tried to wipe the stuff off but ended up
smearing it all over. One of the boys across from her pointed at her
boobs. "You've got a piece of meat right in there," he said. "Let me
remove it for you." He reached across the table into her cleavage
and pulled the meat out. He held it up and waved it around like a
trophy. All the boys around him clapped and cheered.

Julie stared at each boy at the table, one by one. I thought she was
going to scream at them, but she didn't make a sound. It was eerie.
She kept looking at them until their laughing and cheering dwindled
away. Soon all you could here was a low murmuring from the rest of
the room. Someone coughed.

Mr. Jenkins got to Julie's table in about three strides. He looked
like he was going to have a fit, his face was so red. He pointed at
the boys. "You characters get to the principal's office,
immediately," he shouted. The boys scuttled away.

Mr. Jenkins looked at Julie. "Are you okay?" he asked her . "Maybe
you should see the nurse."

She looked up at him, her face all contorted. She didn't say
anything for a second, then let out a horrible moan, stood up and
ran for the door. When she was halfway there you could hear these
big sobs, which slowly faded as she ran out of the cafeteria and
down the hall.

Debbie dipped a napkin in her water glass and wiped the bits of milk
shake off her cheek. "Funny that," she said.

* * *

When we got to my house Debbie went straight to the liquor cabinet.
She found a bottle of whiskey and filled two shot glasses. She
handed one to me.

"A shot before meeting Lucifer," she said. She downed the stuff in
one gulp without flinching. I sipped mine.

She went into the lounge room. "You realize your mother is a
religious fanatic, don't you?"

"You say the same thing every time you come over."

"It's true."

"It's not," I said. "Mom's just very Catholic."

"She's more Catholic than the Pope. There's six pictures of Jesus
hanging up, four statues of the Virgin Mary, and heaps of fiddly
little religious things."

I ignored her comment and put the whiskey bottle back in the
cabinet. I got my Ouija board from the secret hiding place in my
room and put it on the coffee table between Mom's leather sofas.
"Ready," I said.

Debbie sat across from me and we put our hands on the Ouija marker.
I chanted the spell:

In nomine Dei nostri Satanas Luciferi excelsi!
Hail Satan, the ruler of the earth:
By all the gods of the pits
I command you open wide the gates of hell
To come forth from the abyss.

The Ouija marker jerked out of our hands, smashed through my
mom's favorite statue of the Virgin, streaked across the room, and
buried itself into the brick wall.

"Excuse me," said a voice behind us. We turned and there was a guy
in a three-piece suit, sitting cross-legged, floating above the
floor. He had a long beard. "I am Mephistopheles," he said. His
breath smelled of urine.

"No," Debbie screamed. She ripped one of my mom's crucifixes off the
wall and held it in front of herself as she advanced on him. She
said: 'I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten
Son of God. God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God.'
Satan didn't retreat from her, he just laughed. Then so fast I
could hardly see it, he pointed his index finger at Debbie, and a
red beam shot out of it, straight at her heart. Debbie whipped the
cross up and stopped the beam. The cross began to glow, making
a crackling noise and shooting off sparks.

Satan wove his finger around trying to get his beam past her cross
but she held the beam with it. The stalemate went on for almost a
whole minute. Debbie started sweating and breathing like a long
distance runner. She said: 'Credo in unum Dominum Jesum Christum,
Filium Dei unigenitum Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine,
Deum verum de Deo vero.' Satan roared . . . and vanished.

Debbie dropped the cross. She leaned against the top of the sofa and
sweat dripped off her forehead making little marks on the carpet.
She looked at her hand; it had burn marks on it. "My God," she
said, "it doesn't hurt." As I watched, the marks vanished.

I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "Goddamn you," I screamed.
"You knew he existed and you let me conjure him up." I slapped her.
She grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back.

"Listen to me," she said. "It's over. He's gone."

"Jesus, Debbie, that hurts. Let go."

She pushed on my arm again. "You promise to shut up and listen?"

"Yes."

She released the pressure, a little. "You didn't believe in Satan
before you saw him did you?"

"No."

"Neither did I."

"Bullshit. You knew the words to get rid of him."

"My mother made me memorize those words when I was ten. I thought
she was crazy because of her brain tumor. Do you think I'd conjure
up Satan if I believed he was real?"

She had me there. "All right," I said. "I'll give you the benefit of
the doubt."

She let me go. I rubbed my arm. "Are you an angel or something?"

"Don't be stupid. I'm a normal person except I was born with certain
powers."

"I knew it. You made Julie's tray flip over on her, didn't you?"

"What makes you think I did?"

"Debbie, hello. You just got rid of the devil. I figure dumping a
bit of meat down Julie's boobs ought to have been real easy."

"It was."

"Okay, you can levitate things. You got any other powers?"

"I can start small fires and make weak-minded people think the way I
want."

"Is Satan coming back?" I said.

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"Would you please not panic? I'll stop him again if he comes. Just
listen, okay?"

I nodded.

"When I was eleven my mother told me she had a hundred year old book
which was a copy of an ancient prophecy and spell about conjuring
up Satan. That prophecy must have something to do with us."

"How do you know?"

"We made the spell work. I haven't heard of anyone else who could."

"Okay, fine. But what did the book say?"

"I don't know. It's in some weird language."

"Then I think we'd better get someone to translate it." I went to
get my keys off the entry table. Right next to them was this
syringe. Instead of a needle sticking out of it, there was a
pencil-sized plastic tube with a round hole in the end. And inside
the syringe was this milky-white gooey stuff. "Looks like Satan
dropped something," I said.

"Let's see," Debbie said. Real careful like she picked up the
syringe, brought it as close to her nose as she could without
touching it, and smelled it. "It's sperm . . . yuck." She dropped
the syringe like it was burning her. "Satan was going it to stick
that thing in us and make us pregnant."

"How do you know?"

"It's obvious. In movies about Satan he always wants to make demon
kids. The idea is so common, it probably started with fact."

I pointed to the syringe. "Get rid of it."

"Where?"

"Down the garbage disposal."

Debbie picked up the syringe with a tissue and went into the kitchen.
I heard the disposal start.

The phone rang. It was Mom. "You'll never guess what happened," she
said.

I couldn't even think. "I give up."

"Your father is taking me to Vegas to get married all over again.
It's so romantic."

"How nice," I said.

"We will be gone for a week. Take whatever you need from the account."
And then I got this big lecture about not having boys over. (It
seemed ages before I could say good-by and hang up.)

"Who was it?" Debbie said.

"My mom." I told Debbie what Mom had said.

"Cool. You can stay over at my house."

* * *

When we got to Debbie's house, she began looking for her mom's old
book by searching through the file cabinet in her room. At first she
was very careful, but it wasn't long before she got frantic and
started pulling out files and throwing them all over her bed. She
emptied the whole cabinet. "I can't remember where I put it," she
said.

"God, Debbie, you're not supposed to forget where the prophecy about
the end of the world is."

"Sorry I'm not 'Miss Straight A' like you."

I let her little comment pass.

We looked and looked. Finally, at 11:58 PM on the second day after
we conjured up Satan, we found the book. Debbie's stepfather was
looking at it while he was watching a movie on TV.

Debbie went into the TV room, but I hung back. I didn't want to be
in the same room with him, he was so gross. His beard had bits of
potato chips in it, he hadwine and food stains all over his shirt,
and, even from where I was standing, he smelled like cheap wine and
unwashed gym socks.

Debbie went up to him. "Where'd you get the book?" she said.

He looked up, his eyes all bleary and bloodshot. "Found it in the
attic. Brought it down to look at the pictures during the
advertisements."

"Give it to me, it's mine." She grabbed it from him and clutched it
to her chest.

"Jeez," he said. "No need to be bitchy." He belched, got up and
stumbled across the room into the bathroom. We could hear him peeing.

Debbie put the book on the kitchen counter. "I wish he'd close the
door sometimes." She opened the book.

"I recognize the letters," I said. "I can translate it."

"Where'd you learn that language?"

"From playing knights and dragons."

"What language is it?"

"Actually, it's not really a language. It's Anglo Saxon Rune, a code
Druids used to write secret stuff. They substituted rune letters for
normal ones."

She started turning the pages. "Shit."

"What's wrong?"

"He spilled beer on it. Look, these letters are smudged."

"Doesn't matter, the smudged bits I can work out from the context."

The toilet flushed and her stepfather came out pulling his zipper up.
His stomach hung over his belt buckle.

"You dribbled beer on my mother's book," Debbie said. She was so mad
I was scared.

He stood there for a second, swaying. He could hardly focus on us.
"Tripped when I sat down," he said. "It spilled. Sorry." He weaved
down the hall toward his bedroom.

Debbie followed him. "You soused pig," she shouted.

He didn't say anything. Then I heard a bed squeaking real loud for a
second. (I guess he was too drunk to lie down properly and fell on
to it.)

"Hey," she said. "I haven't finished."

The only answer she got was real loud snoring.

"Asshole," Debbie said, more to herself than him.

We went into her bedroom to translate the book. It had lots of
pictures of angels and things, but it was the same stuff I'd seen in
Sunday school. There wasn't much writing (maybe about five pages).

I started with the cover which didn't make any sense because it was
written in Rune. I looked up the rune letters I didn't know on the
Internet and started transposing the letters. This is what I
got:

THE MOST HOLY PROPHECY
PERTAINING TO THE DEMISE OF THE FALLEN ANGEL

"Cool," I said. "It's in English. I was worried it might be Latin or
something."

"The book's bullshit."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't you think it's awful convenient those words translate into
English? Come on, Elaine, how could ancient Druids know English?"

"They have modern-day Druids, Debbie. I learned about them in the
Sceptics club. The Druids' philosophy has been passed down from
generation to generation."

"Oh."

I opened the book and started translating the whole thing. Debbie
watched for a while, then her head was on the table and she was
asleep. She started snoring.

I nudged her. "I can't concentrate. Go sleep in your bed."

She staggered to the bed, her eyes half shut. "You're mean," she
mumbled. She threw the files off her bed, flopped on to it, grabbed
a teddy bear, and curled up.

Translating the stuff was boring. After a while I started wishing
Brad was there. He'd figure out a way of doing the job faster. (He
was smart at figuring things out. He could always show me a better
way to do my algebra homework or fix my car.)

It took me all night to translate the whole book. The first and
second chapters weren't very interesting because they explained what
had already happened. But the rest of the book scared the hell out
of me. I went over and shook Debbie.

"Wake up."

She pushed at me. "Leave me alone."

I shook her again. "In two days Satan is going to steal Julie
Zawickie's soul so he can get strong enough to come after us. We
gotta go save her."

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. "You couldn't possibly know it's
Julie."

"The book says Satan will come back in five days after being zapped
and attempt to take a soul from a weak-minded person spiritually
connected to us. It has to be her."

"I don't get it, you said two days before, now you said five days."

"I meant five days after we zapped him, which was three days ago.
Five minus three . . ."

"Fine," she said. "I get it. But what if he's already here?"

"He can't be. He's forbidden from coming earlier than five days."

"What about later? Couldn't he . . . ?"

"Look, it's already seven o'clock in the morning. We're wasting
time; I'll explain it on the way."

* * *

I pulled out of my driveway so fast I almost made my VW burn rubber.
Debbie buckled her seat belt. "Okay, tell me."

"The prophecy says two women will conjure up Satan. They are
described as being blonde and brunette and are called the chosen
ones. Because Satan arrives weak they are able to zap him."

"I guess we're the chosen ones," Debbie said.

"Obviously. The book also says Satan will try to make the women
who conjured him up pregnant so he can get demon sons to help him
create chaos and havoc on earth. So, you were right about the
syringe and the sperm."

"Of course," she said.

"Anyway, the prophecy says every 1000 years Satan is allowed three
trips back from hell. The first one he has already used up. The
second one will be when he attacks Julie in two days. If we zap him
then, he can't make the third trip for twenty-nine and one-half
days. Which means we have time to go see a guy called the Man of
Knowledge. God has appointed him to teach us how to send Satan back
to hell for another 1000 years."

"Why can't we go and see the knowledge guy before we see Julie? We
got two days."

"It could take longer than two days to find him."

"Find him?" Debbie said. "Don't you know where he is?"

"No, but . . ."

"How are we supposed to find him?"

"The prophecy says I'm supposed to use my intuition."

Debbie stared at me like she couldn't believe what I'd just said.
"Jesus, Elaine. You're supposed to find him with feelings? How in
the hell . . ."

"I think the idea is we should have a bit of trust. Think of Job. He
got all kinds of shit dumped on him and he still trusted in God."

* * *

We got to Julie's house at seven-thirty. (She lived in an average
house like mine, which surprised me. I always thought she was rich.)

I parked in front and started to get out.

"Wait," Debbie said.

I stopped. "Why?"

"I have to psych myself up. I'll probably have to hex the whole
family to find out what I want." She took five deep breaths and
opened the door. "Wait here," she said.

"Forget it, I'm going too."

"You can't. You're giving off way too much negative energy right
now. It could mess up the hex."

Debbie went to the front door and rang the doorbell. She only waited
a few seconds before someone answered. I couldn't tell who it was
because the person didn't come out. Instead, Debbie disappeared
inside.

She came back in twenty minutes, alone.

"Where's Julie?" I said.

"In the state mental hospital in Shellburne."

"Jesus, why?"

"She climbed on to her roof and said it was the end of the world and
she was going to go to heaven to meet Jesus. So she jumped up in the
air expecting to be taken up by God, but instead fell back on to the
roof and slid off into her mother's dark purple rhododendrons. She's
lucky the garden bed was soft. All she did was fracture her wrist."

"Was she trying to kill herself?"

"No," Debbie said. "Her mother said Julie is manic-depressive."

"Which?"

"It means a person can be very depressed one day and hyper the next.
When they're hyper they can have delusions."

"How long is Julie in for?" I said.

"They don't know. Depends on how long it takes them to adjust her
pills."

"And her mother just tells you all this stuff?"

"I hexed her, remember."

* * *


"We should've been there already," Debbie said.

"I'll ask directions at the next town."

What we got to was hardly a town. It had only eight buildings and
one street.And there was only one gas station. It had really old
pumps and a run-down workshop with a little office attached to it.
When I drove in a bell went off.

"What's that?" Debbie said.

I turned off the engine. "We ran over a hose which rings a bell.
It's really old-fashioned, it tells the guy when to come out."

But a real cute tomboy wearing a skimpy tank top and jeans came out
of the workshop. She had red-hair. I couldn't see much of it because
it was hanging out in wisps from underneath her baseball cap. She
pulled an oily-looking rag out of her back pocket and wiped the
grease off her hands as she walked over.

Debbie got out and asked where the rest room was. The girl pointed
to a small wooden outhouse at the side of the building. I didn't
think Debbie was too impressed, but she jogged over to it and went
in.

I watched the girl walk the rest of the way to the car, and I wished
I'd brought Brad. He's a car nut and he'd love a girl who was a
mechanic. (I know because the first time he tried to kiss me was
when I was all greasy from working on my VW. He said the grease
smudges made me look sexy because it emphasized my good points.) And
this girl would be greasy full-time. I could divert Brad on to her
easy.

"Fill 'er up?" she said.

"Yes, please."

She put the nozzle in. "Check the oil?"

"It's okay."

She clicked the nozzle on automatic, took a squeegee out of the
water bucket next to the pump, and started washing the windshield.

I got out. "Could you tell me where the turn-off to the mental
hospital is?"

"Go back 'bout twenty mile. It's one mailbox past Frank's Quarter
Horse Stud.

You can't miss it. You visitin' someone?"

"A friend."

"No point goin'. There's cops everywhere. They ain't lettin' no
visitors in."

"What happened?"

"A loony committed suicide by jumpin' out the top floor. Heard it on
the news an hour ago." She started cleaning the back window.

I looked at my watch. The news would come on in a few minutes. I
pointed to the office. "You got a TV in there?" I said.

"You wanna catch the news 'bout the loonies?"

"Yes."

"TV's on the counter. Feel free."

I found the TV stuck behind a potato chip rack. I moved the rack and
faced the TV toward myself. The news wouldn't be on for another
couple of minutes so I went to look for a map while I waited. I bent
down to pick it off the bottom shelf and I saw Debbie walk past the
window. She didn't look sideways, but kept going right to the car.
It was like she was on a mission.

The tomboy came in. I paid her and the news started. There was a
bunch of boring stuff first, after which Hal Brinkley came on with a
story about how a teenager named Julie Zawickie had committed
suicide. My first thought was they had the wrong person, until they
showed a year book photo of Julie.

And right there in that dingy shop in the middle of nowhere I knew I
had never really hated Julie and had been so stupid and cruel those
times I had called her bimbo and stuff. Silent tears fell from my
eyes. People like Julie aren't supposed to die.

I could see her in my mind at the football games. How she jumped
and laughed and how happy she was. I remembered the time we beat
Rosemont High fourteen to nothing and she ran over and grabbed Brad
in a big hug and he twirled her around, her legs flying out behind
her. I remembered the way the crowd cheered, and how they loved
her. (And I wished Brad was here in this stupid place to hug me. He
would know exactly what to say to make me feel better.)

The pictures the news showed were gross. Julie's body was covered in
sheets, and sticking out of it was an eight foot tall pole with a
pointed tip. (Except for the sheets, the whole scene reminded me of
a drawing I had once seen of Vlad the Impaler's victims.)

The announcer said the guard on duty had been found unconscious,
no employee had seen anything, and the police hadn't bothered with
what the nuts had said.

The station then switched to a reporter at the mental hospital who
said the nuts had told him that they saw a monkey go into the
guard's station and come out with a set of keys. The monkey used
them to turn off the security system and open one of the windows.
The animal then led Julie out of her room, helped her up to the
window ledge, and jumped out with her.

I went back to the car. When I opened the door Debbie woke up. I
told her what had happened.

"I'm not going to cry," she said.

"I never said you should."

"But I want to. God, I feel like shit. We should've at least tried
to be nice to Julie. All I could ever do was humiliate her in front
of her friends. We're nothing but a couple of petty little bitches,
that's what we are." And she cried, so quickly and intensely, I
think she surprised herself. I tried to hug her but she wouldn't let
me. It took her a whole minute to get back to normal.

"You okay?" I said.

She blew her nose. "Yes. But I think you better check your
translation. Satan's not supposed to be here yet."

I compared my translation to the book. "Here's the mistake. This
smudge your stepfather made when he spilled beer on the page changed
the number symbol enough so I was two days off."

"Any other mistakes."

I checked. "No."

"Good. Now let's concentrate on getting your intuition to work."

"It already is working: I got an idea. I mean, we found Satan on the
Internet. I'll bet we can find the Man of Knowledge there too."

We started for Tucson because it was closer than Flagstaff and I
wanted to get on the internet as quick as I could.

* * *

Debbie looked up from the map. "How much longer 'till we get to
Tucson?"

"Forty-five minutes."

"Pull over," she said. "I gotta wee."

After she got back in, I checked the rear view mirror and saw a
magpie sitting on a cactus. I drove off and forgot about it, until
I looked in the mirror again. The magpie was flying twenty yards
behind us. I accelerated, but he kept up.

"How fast can magpies fly?" I said.

"I don't know, why?"

"I'm doing seventy and there's a magpie back there keeping up with
us."

Debbie turned around. "It's him." We rolled the windows up and
locked the doors in one second. She took off her choker which had
the crucifix on it.

I watched the magpie in the rear view mirror. It caught up to us and
flew up out of sight.

"He's over the roof," Debbie said. She pointed her crucifix at the
roof and chanted the Latin words she had used at my house.

There was a loud thump on the roof and suddenly the magpie was flying
directly in front of the windshield. It made a u-turn, dropped on to
the hood, and changed into a tiny monkey. I hit the brakes and
accelerator over and over to throw the monkey off but he grabbed a
windshield wiper and was only flung forward and backward on the
hood.

The monkey started punching the windshield. His hand was so tiny it
was like: tap - tap - tap. A spider-web of cracks materialized
across the glass. I pulled off the road because if the window
shattered I wouldn't be able to see.

The monkey kept tapping and tapping and the windshield started to
sag a little more inward each time he hit it. Debbie said the Latin
words again but nothing happened. Sweat poured off her and she was
breathing like someone gets when they're turned on. "The words
aren't working," she said. "You gotta help me."

"I can't."

"You're wrong. You have the power. I sense it in you."

"What do I do?"

"Imagine the monkey is on fire and focus your mind on that picture
as hard as you can."

In my mind I saw the monkey turn into a screaming and twisting
pillar of fire. But the real monkey kept punching and hitting until
he made a little hole in the windshield. He pushed his hand through
and it stuck. I wished I had a knife . . . and I lost the picture of
the flame.

Concentrate harder," Debbie said.

I made the image come back. I visualized so hard I got more out of
breath and sweaty than ever before in my life.

The monkey tore pieces out of the windshield making the hole bigger
and bigger. He pulled his head and arms through, hissing and lunging
at me with his teeth.

I kept ducking out of the way but held the image of his burning.
There was a pop like a cherry bomb exploding and the monkey ignited
all over becoming a screaming ball of fire. He backed out the window
and jumped off the car. The flaming mass of shrieking monkey winked
out in mid-air. Ashes floated to the ground.

"You got him," Debbie said. "You sent him back to hell. I love you."
She kissed me on the cheek and collapsed into her seat. We both had
the worst case of B.O. ever.

"I didn't do anything," I said. "You did. You used your powers; you
just didn't realize it."

"I was too weak. It was you."

"That's crazy. I don't have any powers."

"You do," she said. "I could feel your energy." She pointed to a
rock at the edge of the road. "I'll bet you can make that rock float
off the ground."

"That's impossible."

"Try. Like you did with the monkey. Visualize what you want."

I concentrated and imagined the rock floating. It started to lift
off the ground. "Holy shit," I said. The rock fell.

"You got distracted. Try again."

This time I made the rock lift up and it kept going higher and
higher. It stopped when it got as tall as my house. "I don't want it
to go so high," I said.

"You're concentrating too hard. Let go a little."

I did. The rock slammed into the ground with a whump. "Damn," I said.

"Try again."

I concentrated half as much and visualized the rock circling a small
bush. I got it going around and around, but it kept crashing into the branches. I let the rock fall.

"Once more," Debbie said.

I focused as hard as I could. I made the rock do ten perfect circles
around the bush, then float to the ground. "This is so cool. I
projected my idea at the rock, felt a twitch in my head, and the
rock did exactly what I wanted."

* * *

We had to drive with no windshield, and it was gross because we got
lots of bugs in our faces. (If I hadn't driven so slow, it would
have been worse.) We didn't get to Tucson until midnight.

We decided to stay the night at the Arizona Motel because it was
across the street from the university, and close to this garage that
specialized in windshields. And we could use the internet at the
university library.

Anyway, in the morning we took the car to the garage, then went to
the student union cafeteria to eat breakfast. (It was a nice place,
it even had eggs and hash browns.)

We sat down and I proceeded to chop my eggs into gooey bits and mix
my hash browns in. I put lots of salt on top. The first bite was
heaven until I saw Debbie pour ketchup all over her fried egg and
put sugar on it.

"Gross," I said. "Now I know you're an angel."

She looked up, all serious. "I already explained I wasn't."

"Only an angel would put ketchup and sugar on their eggs."

Her face relaxed, but she didn't laugh or even smile. "Don't call it
yucky until you've tried it," she said.

"I suppose." I mixed more hash browns into my eggs. "I got an urge
to walk through the university."

"What about going to the library and using the Internet?"

"We'll do it after we walk. I don't think I should ignore any sudden
urges I get. I'm supposed to be using my intuition, remember."

We ended up in the Anatomy Museum of the university medical school
looking at a head in a jar of formaldehyde. The head was squashed
and white with one hair on the left eyebrow sticking up. Light brown
hairs poked out of its nose.

"Yuck," Debbie said. "Even a head in a jar deserves to be
well-groomed."

The place was creepy. Cases and cases of human body parts were
displayed with little cards describing the muscles or bones or
whatever. It wasn't a very popular place. There were only two other
people in there, an old guy and a young guy with him.

I heard a big saw start up and the tone change as the saw cut into
something. A few minutes later this professor came out from the back
pushing a little trolley that had something covered with a sheet on
it. (Of course I didn't know the guy was a professor, but from the
way he was walking, and from the way he was acting, I guessed he
might be.)

The young guy walked up to him.

The professor-looking person stopped. "Can I help you?" .

"Professor Hencke," the young guy said, "I'm Jay Blake. I'm in your
anatomy class." He gestured toward the old guy. "This is my father.
I'm showing him the museum."

"I think you'll find this interesting," the professor said. He
lifted up the blanket. Underneath was a pasty gray part of a female
torso.

The professor pointed to the thing on the trolley. "I've prepared
this specimen for my lecture today." (He said specimen like he was
talking about a piece of meat, which in a way I suppose he was.)

He took a probe out of his pocket. "This is the urethra," he said,
and touched it with his probe. He continued: "Here is the vagina."
And he stuck his probe into it. That made me think of Satan's
syringe with the sperm. I ran for the rest room.

I was lucky there was an empty cubicle because once I got inside I
barely had time to get the toilet seat up and crouch over the bowl
before the remains of my eggs and hashbrowns came up, right through
my mouth and nose.

I flushed the toilet and lowered the seat and its cover. I sat down,
pulled a bit of paper out of the little toilet paper box, wiped my
eyes, blew my nose, and threw the paper on the floor. I would've
killed for a toothbrush.

The cubicle started to move all funny, like when you turn yourself
around and around and stop and the room still seems like it's
twirling. I heard Debbie calling, but her voice sounded hollow and
had a funny echo, like it was at the end of a long tunnel. Then,
all of a sudden, I had a vision . . .


I was sitting yoga-style in the middle of the school library. It was
empty except for one table. On top of the table was an upside down
crucifix resting on a model of a water molecule. A voice came over
the microphone. It started saying, 'The Man of Knowledge,' over and
over. I turned and saw Debbie on the other side of the room, waving
and calling my name . . .


The cubicle door rattled. "Are you okay?" It was Debbie.

I came out. "I had a vision."

"Yes!" she said. We did a high-five. Clap! Someone in the end
cubicle farted. We giggled and ran out.

I asked her what the vision meant. She told me the Man of Knowledge
must be a scientist who had something to do with Satan. "The water
molecule equals science," she said. "Plus, the upside down cross
means the devil."

* * *

Lucky for us one of the computers in the library was free. We
slipped behind the keyboard hoping no one would notice. But this
lady did.

The minute I saw her look at us from behind her desk we knew she was
the librarian. I mean, she stared at us kind of bossy like. And she
was old, pear-shaped, and had thin, frizzy white hair. Her glasses
were perched on the end of her nose. She got up from her desk and
came over.

She looked over the top of her glasses at us. "You must have your
student identification in the slot on top of the monitor," she
said. "These computers are only for university students.

"I have my card right here," Debbie said. She took her driver's
license out of her bag, and put it in the slot..

"Just a minute," the librarian said. She picked up the card and
started reading it.

Debbie snapped her fingers. The lady looked at the card with this
puzzled expression. "I must be getting old," she said. "For a
second, I thought . . . "

Her voice mumbled off and she stared at the license for the longest
time. Then she put it in the slot. "Never mind. Your card's up
to date. Just don't forget to renew it in September." She walked
off.

We could hardly stop ourselves from giggling.

"That was lucky," Debbie said.

"What do you mean?"

"She was hard to hex. I had to get pretty deep into her mind to find
out what the student card looked like so I could make her see that
card instead of my driver's license."

"You were so cool," I said.

"I love hexing people like that. My stepfather calls them officious.
He hates them. So do I."

I clicked on my favorite search engine and started looking for
scientists who were linked to Satanism. After about an hour, we f
ound three. Two were members of The International Satanic Church,
and one was a Christian.

"He won't be with the Satanists," I said. "The Man of Knowledge
would be against Satan."

"Go to the page about the Christian guy," Debbie said.

I did. The name that came up was Johan Von Helgermeyer. "Look," I
said. "It says he exorcised a demon from a priest in June 1999. It's
him."

"There has to be more." Debbie said. She took the mouse from me
and scrolled to the bottom of the page. She clicked on a link called
biographical information. That told us Johan was twenty-four, earned
his Ph.D in quantum physics from Harvard when he was sixteen, won a
Nobel prize when he was eighteen, and drove a 2000 Ferrari.

I took the mouse back. "Sounds like a nerd who bought a Ferrari to
look cool."

Debbie pointed to the bottom of the screen. "Go to that link there,
the one that says, Johan Helgermeyer Fan Club."

"He's got a fan club?"

"Probably because he exorcised a demon. Click on it."

The page I got said the fan club was unofficial because Johan hated
fan clubs. It also told us Johan went to the Wayfarer's Tavern in
Phoenix every day after work at 4:40 p.m. to have a brandy.

"Now all we have to do is find his address," I said.

We never found it. There was nothing in the phone book or in the
Internet White Pages.

I wrote down the address of the Wayfarer's Tavern. "We have to go
to Phoenix," I said.

"We better make sure this Johan Helgermeyer is the Man of Knowledge
first," Debbie said. "I want to keep looking."

"I know he's the right one. I trust my intuition, and I trust God."

"So we're simply going to go up to him and say we're the chosen
ones? What if he doesn't believe us? I mean, even if we use our
powers in front of him, he might think we're just witches."

"We don't have to use our powers to prove who we are."

"How else would he believe us?"

"The prophecy says the a brunette (which is obviously you) must say
certain words to the Man of Knowledge, words only he and the chosen
ones would know. That'll prove to him who we are." I took a piece of
paper out of my bag. "I've written the words down here so you can
memorize them."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Debbie said.

"The prophecy said I was not allowed to tell you about the words
until we found the Man of Knowledge."

"That's pretty stupid."

"Don't get shitty with me. We have to do things the way the prophecy
says."

"Give me the paper." She snatched it from my hands and read it:

Melkiresha will come forth
To place his seed into
The women chosen of God.

Behold, the chosen ones
Shall find the Man of Knowledge
And Melkiresha may be cursed and destroyed.

She read it again, to herself. "What's this may be stuff at the end?"

"It means we might not be able to send Satan back, that we must
have . . . "

"What kind of shitty prophecy is that? I thought a prophecy was s
upposed to guarantee that as long as you followed the directions,
you'd win."

"You don't get it, Debbie. Maybe means that if we don't have faith,
we won't beat Satan even if we do follow directions."

"That's just great," Debbie said.

* * *

We were bored. We had been sitting for an hour in my VW, parked in
front of the Wayfarer's Tavern in Phoenix.

"What if he doesn't show?" Debbie said.

"Stop worrying. You know the Internet said he always stops here."

few minutes later Johan's Ferrari pulled into the parking lot. The
guy who got out looked like a male model. He had the coolest shades,
and the height-of-fashion pants, shirt, tie, and shoes. Everything
was color-coordinated with his leather jacket.

"He's drop-dead gorgeous," Debbie said.

We waited for him to go into the tavern, but when we tried to go in
ourselves the bouncer stopped us. "Let's see the ID," he said.

Debbie winked at him and held out her hand. He started reading it
like it was our IDs. "Have a nice evening," he said.

We went in and saw Johan sitting alone in a booth at the end of the
room. We walked up to him and in one motion sat down.

"I have something I'm supposed to say to you," Debbie said.

"Well, say it."

She repeated the words she had memorized.

"Very good," he said. He drained his glass and put it in the middle
of the table.

"Now levitate the glass."

"There's people in here," Debbie said.

He waved his hand at the whole room. "They won't remember."

Debbie gripped the edge of the table and stared at the glass.

"Not you," he said. "Let blondie do it."

"My name's Elaine, not blondie," I said. I decided to teach him a
lesson.

I picked the ice cubes out of the glass and put them in my hand. I
held them out in front of me and looked up at him.

He picked the glass up. "I said levitate the glass, not the ice."

"Too easy," I said. I concentrated on the ice cubes and made them
slowly float off my hand and stop, level with Johan's eyes. Then I
made them slowly circle his head. I didn't think that was very
impressive, so I made them speed up until they were going so fast
around his head they were a blur. Johan didn't do anything except to
look at me, kind of disgusted like.

I got mad because I knew he was playing a game with me. So I flung
the ice cubes back to the opposite end of the room, made them float
there a second, then made them fly straight at his face. I stopped
them one-half inch from the tip of his nose. He didn't flinch.
Debbie looked at me, her mouth open.

I plucked the ice cubes (half-melted by now) out of the air and put
them back in the glass. I looked in his eyes, and I felt this . . .
force. I had to look away.

"So you think you're a clever girl?" he said. He dumped the ice
cubes out of the glass, and pointed at them. They boiled away into
steam without leaving any marks on the wood table. He then stared at
the glass and it shot off the table and started twisting and weaving
all around us. It got going so fast Debbie and I had to duck heaps.

When it was over, he smiled. "You did well, Elaine . . . for a
beginner. You're a smart-ass, but I respect your courage."

* * *

The outside of Johan's house didn't look ritzy, but when you went
through the big double doors it was awesome. The floor of the entry
was marble, and polished so much I could see my face in it. On each
side of the room was a staircase circling up to an inside balcony.
From where I was standing, I could see the doors of the rooms
upstairs.

"Look at the ceiling," Debbie said.

I looked up and all I could see was a huge glass dome. I could see
clouds through it.

After we finished gawking at the ceiling, Johan took us between the
two staircases and down these steps to the living room, which was
awesome. It had carpet so thick and white I felt guilty wearing my
shoes on it.

The room looked like a rich person's house you see in the movies. It
smelled of leather, marble, and polished wood. The only decorations
were a few artistic statues and three Salvador Dali paintings. (I
recognized them from art class).

Anyway, we went into a little alcove off the main part of the room.
It had a bar, but not one of those cheap ones. Johan's bar was solid
wood, with a long thick polished marble top and brass rails on the
bottom for a person's feet. To the left of the bar Johan had a wine
rack with heaps of different types of wine. Behind the bar there was
a mirror, and under the mirror, all these upside down bottles of
brandy, vodka, and whiskey sticking into measuring dispensers like
in a night-club.

We sat on the bar stools and Johan offered us some wine.

"I rather have whiskey, neat," Debbie said.

Johan filled a shot glass from the whiskey bottle under the mirror,
then poured two glasses of wine, one for himself and one for me.

I picked up my wine glass.

"Wait," he said. (It was an order, not a request.)

"What for?" I said.

"I want to pray," he said. He took hold of both our hands, then made
Debbie and I hold hands too. "First," he said, "I want to give us
time for our own meditations." He bowed his head . . . and didn't
say anything. (I felt a bit stupid. I mean, here we were with a guy
we didn't know, holding hands over a bar.)

Finally, he took a deep breath, and in a voice like one of those
ministers on TV, said:

The Lord my God is one Lord,
Now and forever.

Lord,
We come to do battle not just against
Flesh and blood.
But against the Devil incarnate.

Lord,
Please give your warriors
The power to cast Satan
Into the lake of fire and brimstone
To be tormented for 1000 years.
I ask in the name of Jesus,
Amen.

I sat up and let go of their hands. Debbie didn't let go of his.

"I never thought of myself as a warrior," Debbie said "The idea
frightens me."

"Don't worry," Johan said, staring at her and smiling this gooey
smile. He gently squeezed and rubbed her hand. "I'll protect you
until I know you're ready to fight Satan. You don't have to be
scared." She didn't move her hand and in sort of a flirty voice
said: "I'm not scared now I'm here with you, Johan."

I almost puked. I never thought Debbie could be so corny. Not with
any guy.

He held his glass up. "Now a toast: To the Lord's work." We clinked
glasses.

Debbie downed her whiskey in one gulp, like at my house. The shocked
look on Johan's face was almost comical. (I guess he didn't expect
Debbie to drink whiskey at all, much less drink a shot of whiskey in
one gulp without gagging.) He poured her another whiskey, which she
sipped this time.

I didn't enjoy the before-dinner conversation, but Debbie and Johan
did. After they had a few more drinks, they got very romantic with
each other. It pissed me off. But not because I was jealous or
anything, I wasn't. And I didn't care she thought Johan was cool.
(I thought he was an ass hole.) What I hated was they both ignored
me. I wished Brad was there - he and I could ignore them.

I got bored so I started looking around the room. It was
disgustingly ritzy, and that started to get to me. I mean, Johan
obviously had heaps of money, but all night he had been acting like
some pious person with his prayers and everything. (Except he didn't
seem very religious at the moment, with Debbie leaning over slightly
towards him, and with him looking like he was about to kiss her.)

"Hey, Johan," I said.

He looked up, and Debbie sat back on her stool.

"What is it?" he said. He looked annoyed. Debbie gave me the
dirtiest look.

"Are you a minister?" I said.

"No."

"But you consider yourself a man of God?"

"Absolutely."

"Then how can you justify keeping all the money you obviously need
to live in this ritzy house instead of giving some of it to the poor? I thought a man of God would live more like a poor person."

"Everything I have done, I have done at God's command. If he had
told me to give my money away, I would have. However, he didn't. He
choose me for the express purpose of training the chosen ones. I
understand my part of the prophecy. However, I doubt you understand
your part. In fact, I don't understand why God chose you at all.
Furthermore, Miss Baxter, you have a severe attitude problem.
Frankly, you disappoint me."

I couldn't think how to answer him, so I said nothing. I think
Debbie and Johan were embarrassed because they sat there all silent.
It was awful. It made me think being rude to Johan hadn't been such
a good idea, and I felt bad. So I apologized and the atmosphere in
the room was okay again. They went back to their flirting.

I still couldn't stand watching them, so I went into the living room
and tried to figure out what the Salvador Dali paintings were
supposed to mean. By the time Debbie came out and told me Johan had
gone to fix us Chinese for dinner, I still hadn't figured the
paintings out.

* * *

The dining room we ate in was dismal. The dark marble floor and
wood-paneled walls had a depressing brownness to them. What was
worse, we had to eat looking at these huge depressing paintings. One
was of a skinny horse being ridden by a skeleton. The skeleton had a
sickle in his hand and was making the horse trample over all these
people dressed up like ancient kings and queens. The people looked
like they were screaming and in lots of pain. Blood was all over the
ground.

Debbie pointed to the painting. "What's that one called?"

"It's by Pronvou," Johan said. "It's titled, The Horse of Death.
It's based on a Dürer woodcut of the fifteenth century called The
Four Horseman of the Apocalypse."

I shivered. I had learned about those horseman in Sunday school.

The other painting was a lot more scary. It showed a dismal and dark
desert with four half naked men riding horses on a road of human
skulls. "That one's depressing," I said.

"I disagree," Johan said. "I choose it on purpose. It's by Delaqua.
He called it, 'Uncertainty of Man.'"

"Why do you have it in this room?" I said. "You have to eat in here."

"Exactly," he said. "When I look at it, I realize I obtain my meals
due to the Lord's grace. It also makes me think of your coming
battle and the possibility of Armageddon." He didn't say anymore. I
think he was waiting for one of us to say something intelligent.

"It's a very deep painting," I said. (He made a little half-smile,
the kind a teacher makes when he doesn't like what you say but
doesn't want to tell you he thought your comment was stupid.)

"The Second Coming of the Fallen Angel" is a work of fiction,
and any resemblance between the characters and any real persons
living or dead is or any fictional locations is unintentional and
coincidental.


Second Coming of the Fallen Angel Part 2

Debbie looked up from the map. "How much longer 'till we get to
Tucson?"

"Forty-five minutes."

"Pull over," she said. "I gotta wee."

After she got back in, I checked the rear view mirror and saw a
magpie sitting on a cactus. I drove off and forgot about it, until
I looked in the mirror again. The magpie was flying twenty yards
behind us. I accelerated, but he kept up.

"How fast can magpies fly?" I said.

"I don't know, why?"

"I'm doing seventy and there's a magpie back there keeping up with
us."

Debbie turned around. "It's him." We rolled the windows up and
locked the doors in one second. She took off her choker which had
the crucifix on it.

I watched the magpie in the rear view mirror. It caught up to us and
flew up out of sight.

"He's over the roof," Debbie said. She pointed her crucifix at the
roof and chanted the Latin words she had used at my house.

There was a loud thump on the roof and suddenly the magpie was flying
directly in front of the windshield. It made a u-turn, dropped on to
the hood, and changed into a tiny monkey. I hit the brakes and
accelerator over and over to throw the monkey off but he grabbed a
windshield wiper and was only flung forward and backward on the
hood.

The monkey started punching the windshield. His hand was so tiny it
was like: tap - tap - tap. A spider-web of cracks materialized
across the glass. I pulled off the road because if the window
shattered I wouldn't be able to see.

The monkey kept tapping and tapping and the windshield started to
sag a little more inward each time he hit it. Debbie said the Latin
words again but nothing happened. Sweat poured off her and she was
breathing like someone gets when they're turned on. "The words
aren't working," she said. "You gotta help me."

"I can't."

"You're wrong. You have the power. I sense it in you."

"What do I do?"

"Imagine the monkey is on fire and focus your mind on that picture
as hard as you can."

In my mind I saw the monkey turn into a screaming and twisting
pillar of fire. But the real monkey kept punching and hitting until
he made a little hole in the windshield. He pushed his hand through
and it stuck. I wished I had a knife . . . and I lost the picture of
the flame.

Concentrate harder," Debbie said.

I made the image come back. I visualized so hard I got more out of
breath and sweaty than ever before in my life.

The monkey tore pieces out of the windshield making the hole bigger
and bigger. He pulled his head and arms through, hissing and lunging
at me with his teeth.

I kept ducking out of the way but held the image of his burning.
There was a pop like a cherry bomb exploding and the monkey ignited
all over becoming a screaming ball of fire. He backed out the window
and jumped off the car. The flaming mass of shrieking monkey winked
out in mid-air. Ashes floated to the ground.

"You got him," Debbie said. "You sent him back to hell. I love you."
She kissed me on the cheek and collapsed into her seat. We both had
the worst case of B.O. ever.

"I didn't do anything," I said. "You did. You used your powers; you
just didn't realize it."

"I was too weak. It was you."

"That's crazy. I don't have any powers."

"You do," she said. "I could feel your energy." She pointed to a
rock at the edge of the road. "I'll bet you can make that rock float
off the ground."

"That's impossible."

"Try. Like you did with the monkey. Visualize what you want."

I concentrated and imagined the rock floating. It started to lift
off the ground. "Holy shit," I said. The rock fell.

"You got distracted. Try again."

This time I made the rock lift up and it kept going higher and
higher. It stopped when it got as tall as my house. "I don't want it
to go so high," I said.

"You're concentrating too hard. Let go a little."

I did. The rock slammed into the ground with a whump. "Damn," I said.

"Try again."

I concentrated half as much and visualized the rock circling a small
bush. I got it going around and around, but it kept crashing into the branches. I let the rock fall.

"Once more," Debbie said.

I focused as hard as I could. I made the rock do ten perfect circles
around the bush, then float to the ground. "This is so cool. I
projected my idea at the rock, felt a twitch in my head, and the
rock did exactly what I wanted."

* * *

We had to drive with no windshield, and it was gross because we got
lots of bugs in our faces. (If I hadn't driven so slow, it would
have been worse.) We didn't get to Tucson until midnight.

We decided to stay the night at the Arizona Motel because it was
across the street from the university, and close to this garage that
specialized in windshields. And we could use the internet at the
university library.

Anyway, in the morning we took the car to the garage, then went to
the student union cafeteria to eat breakfast. (It was a nice place,
it even had eggs and hash browns.)

We sat down and I proceeded to chop my eggs into gooey bits and mix
my hash browns in. I put lots of salt on top. The first bite was
heaven until I saw Debbie pour ketchup all over her fried egg and
put sugar on it.

"Gross," I said. "Now I know you're an angel."

She looked up, all serious. "I already explained I wasn't."

"Only an angel would put ketchup and sugar on their eggs."

Her face relaxed, but she didn't laugh or even smile. "Don't call it
yucky until you've tried it," she said.

"I suppose." I mixed more hash browns into my eggs. "I got an urge
to walk through the university."

"What about going to the library and using the Internet?"

"We'll do it after we walk. I don't think I should ignore any sudden
urges I get. I'm supposed to be using my intuition, remember."

We ended up in the Anatomy Museum of the university medical school
looking at a head in a jar of formaldehyde. The head was squashed
and white with one hair on the left eyebrow sticking up. Light brown
hairs poked out of its nose.

"Yuck," Debbie said. "Even a head in a jar deserves to be
well-groomed."

The place was creepy. Cases and cases of human body parts were
displayed with little cards describing the muscles or bones or
whatever. It wasn't a very popular place. There were only two other
people in there, an old guy and a young guy with him.

I heard a big saw start up and the tone change as the saw cut into
something. A few minutes later this professor came out from the back
pushing a little trolley that had something covered with a sheet on
it. (Of course I didn't know the guy was a professor, but from the
way he was walking, and from the way he was acting, I guessed he
might be.)

The young guy walked up to him.

The professor-looking person stopped. "Can I help you?" .

"Professor Hencke," the young guy said, "I'm Jay Blake. I'm in your
anatomy class." He gestured toward the old guy. "This is my father.
I'm showing him the museum."

"I think you'll find this interesting," the professor said. He
lifted up the blanket. Underneath was a pasty gray part of a female
torso.

The professor pointed to the thing on the trolley. "I've prepared
this specimen for my lecture today." (He said specimen like he was
talking about a piece of meat, which in a way I suppose he was.)

He took a probe out of his pocket. "This is the urethra," he said,
and touched it with his probe. He continued: "Here is the vagina."
And he stuck his probe into it. That made me think of Satan's
syringe with the sperm. I ran for the rest room.

I was lucky there was an empty cubicle because once I got inside I
barely had time to get the toilet seat up and crouch over the bowl
before the remains of my eggs and hashbrowns came up, right through
my mouth and nose.

I flushed the toilet and lowered the seat and its cover. I sat down,
pulled a bit of paper out of the little toilet paper box, wiped my
eyes, blew my nose, and threw the paper on the floor. I would've
killed for a toothbrush.

The cubicle started to move all funny, like when you turn yourself
around and around and stop and the room still seems like it's
twirling. I heard Debbie calling, but her voice sounded hollow and
had a funny echo, like it was at the end of a long tunnel. Then,
all of a sudden, I had a vision . . .


I was sitting yoga-style in the middle of the school library. It was
empty except for one table. On top of the table was an upside down
crucifix resting on a model of a water molecule. A voice came over
the microphone. It started saying, 'The Man of Knowledge,' over and
over. I turned and saw Debbie on the other side of the room, waving
and calling my name . . .


The cubicle door rattled. "Are you okay?" It was Debbie.

I came out. "I had a vision."

"Yes!" she said. We did a high-five. Clap! Someone in the end
cubicle farted. We giggled and ran out.

I asked her what the vision meant. She told me the Man of Knowledge
must be a scientist who had something to do with Satan. "The water
molecule equals science," she said. "Plus, the upside down cross
means the devil."

* * *

Lucky for us one of the computers in the library was free. We
slipped behind the keyboard hoping no one would notice. But this
lady did.

The minute I saw her look at us from behind her desk we knew she was
the librarian. I mean, she stared at us kind of bossy like. And she
was old, pear-shaped, and had thin, frizzy white hair. Her glasses
were perched on the end of her nose. She got up from her desk and
came over.

She looked over the top of her glasses at us. "You must have your
student identification in the slot on top of the monitor," she
said. "These computers are only for university students.

"I have my card right here," Debbie said. She took her driver's
license out of her bag, and put it in the slot..

"Just a minute," the librarian said. She picked up the card and
started reading it.

Debbie snapped her fingers. The lady looked at the card with this
puzzled expression. "I must be getting old," she said. "For a
second, I thought . . . "

Her voice mumbled off and she stared at the license for the longest
time. Then she put it in the slot. "Never mind. Your card's up
to date. Just don't forget to renew it in September." She walked
off.

We could hardly stop ourselves from giggling.

"That was lucky," Debbie said.

"What do you mean?"

"She was hard to hex. I had to get pretty deep into her mind to find
out what the student card looked like so I could make her see that
card instead of my driver's license."

"You were so cool," I said.

"I love hexing people like that. My stepfather calls them officious.
He hates them. So do I."

I clicked on my favorite search engine and started looking for
scientists who were linked to Satanism. After about an hour, we f
ound three. Two were members of The International Satanic Church,
and one was a Christian.

"He won't be with the Satanists," I said. "The Man of Knowledge
would be against Satan."

"Go to the page about the Christian guy," Debbie said.

I did. The name that came up was Johan Von Helgermeyer. "Look," I
said. "It says he exorcised a demon from a priest in June 1999. It's
him."

"There has to be more." Debbie said. She took the mouse from me
and scrolled to the bottom of the page. She clicked on a link called
biographical information. That told us Johan was twenty-four, earned
his Ph.D in quantum physics from Harvard when he was sixteen, won a
Nobel prize when he was eighteen, and drove a 2000 Ferrari.

I took the mouse back. "Sounds like a nerd who bought a Ferrari to
look cool."

Debbie pointed to the bottom of the screen. "Go to that link there,
the one that says, Johan Helgermeyer Fan Club."

"He's got a fan club?"

"Probably because he exorcised a demon. Click on it."

The page I got said the fan club was unofficial because Johan hated
fan clubs. It also told us Johan went to the Wayfarer's Tavern in
Phoenix every day after work at 4:40 p.m. to have a brandy.

"Now all we have to do is find his address," I said.

We never found it. There was nothing in the phone book or in the
Internet White Pages.

I wrote down the address of the Wayfarer's Tavern. "We have to go
to Phoenix," I said.

"We better make sure this Johan Helgermeyer is the Man of Knowledge
first," Debbie said. "I want to keep looking."

"I know he's the right one. I trust my intuition, and I trust God."

"So we're simply going to go up to him and say we're the chosen
ones? What if he doesn't believe us? I mean, even if we use our
powers in front of him, he might think we're just witches."

"We don't have to use our powers to prove who we are."

"How else would he believe us?"

"The prophecy says the a brunette (which is obviously you) must say
certain words to the Man of Knowledge, words only he and the chosen
ones would know. That'll prove to him who we are." I took a piece of
paper out of my bag. "I've written the words down here so you can
memorize them."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Debbie said.

"The prophecy said I was not allowed to tell you about the words
until we found the Man of Knowledge."

"That's pretty stupid."

"Don't get shitty with me. We have to do things the way the prophecy
says."

"Give me the paper." She snatched it from my hands and read it:

Melkiresha will come forth
To place his seed into
The women chosen of God.

Behold, the chosen ones
Shall find the Man of Knowledge
And Melkiresha may be cursed and destroyed.

She read it again, to herself. "What's this may be stuff at the end?"

"It means we might not be able to send Satan back, that we must
have . . . "

"What kind of shitty prophecy is that? I thought a prophecy was s
upposed to guarantee that as long as you followed the directions,
you'd win."

"You don't get it, Debbie. Maybe means that if we don't have faith,
we won't beat Satan even if we do follow directions."

"That's just great," Debbie said.

* * *

We were bored. We had been sitting for an hour in my VW, parked in
front of the Wayfarer's Tavern in Phoenix.

"What if he doesn't show?" Debbie said.

"Stop worrying. You know the Internet said he always stops here."

few minutes later Johan's Ferrari pulled into the parking lot. The
guy who got out looked like a male model. He had the coolest shades,
and the height-of-fashion pants, shirt, tie, and shoes. Everything
was color-coordinated with his leather jacket.

"He's drop-dead gorgeous," Debbie said.

We waited for him to go into the tavern, but when we tried to go in
ourselves the bouncer stopped us. "Let's see the ID," he said.

Debbie winked at him and held out her hand. He started reading it
like it was our IDs. "Have a nice evening," he said.

We went in and saw Johan sitting alone in a booth at the end of the
room. We walked up to him and in one motion sat down.

"I have something I'm supposed to say to you," Debbie said.

"Well, say it."

She repeated the words she had memorized.

"Very good," he said. He drained his glass and put it in the middle
of the table.

"Now levitate the glass."

"There's people in here," Debbie said.

He waved his hand at the whole room. "They won't remember."

Debbie gripped the edge of the table and stared at the glass.

"Not you," he said. "Let blondie do it."

"My name's Elaine, not blondie," I said. I decided to teach him a
lesson.

I picked the ice cubes out of the glass and put them in my hand. I
held them out in front of me and looked up at him.

He picked the glass up. "I said levitate the glass, not the ice."

"Too easy," I said. I concentrated on the ice cubes and made them
slowly float off my hand and stop, level with Johan's eyes. Then I
made them slowly circle his head. I didn't think that was very
impressive, so I made them speed up until they were going so fast
around his head they were a blur. Johan didn't do anything except to
look at me, kind of disgusted like.

I got mad because I knew he was playing a game with me. So I flung
the ice cubes back to the opposite end of the room, made them float
there a second, then made them fly straight at his face. I stopped
them one-half inch from the tip of his nose. He didn't flinch.
Debbie looked at me, her mouth open.

I plucked the ice cubes (half-melted by now) out of the air and put
them back in the glass. I looked in his eyes, and I felt this . . .
force. I had to look away.

"So you think you're a clever girl?" he said. He dumped the ice
cubes out of the glass, and pointed at them. They boiled away into
steam without leaving any marks on the wood table. He then stared at
the glass and it shot off the table and started twisting and weaving
all around us. It got going so fast Debbie and I had to duck heaps.

When it was over, he smiled. "You did well, Elaine . . . for a
beginner. You're a smart-ass, but I respect your courage."

* * *

The outside of Johan's house didn't look ritzy, but when you went
through the big double doors it was awesome. The floor of the entry
was marble, and polished so much I could see my face in it. On each
side of the room was a staircase circling up to an inside balcony.
From where I was standing, I could see the doors of the rooms
upstairs.

"Look at the ceiling," Debbie said.

I looked up and all I could see was a huge glass dome. I could see
clouds through it.

After we finished gawking at the ceiling, Johan took us between the
two staircases and down these steps to the living room, which was
awesome. It had carpet so thick and white I felt guilty wearing my
shoes on it.

The room looked like a rich person's house you see in the movies. It
smelled of leather, marble, and polished wood. The only decorations
were a few artistic statues and three Salvador Dali paintings. (I
recognized them from art class).

Anyway, we went into a little alcove off the main part of the room.
It had a bar, but not one of those cheap ones. Johan's bar was solid
wood, with a long thick polished marble top and brass rails on the
bottom for a person's feet. To the left of the bar Johan had a wine
rack with heaps of different types of wine. Behind the bar there was
a mirror, and under the mirror, all these upside down bottles of
brandy, vodka, and whiskey sticking into measuring dispensers like
in a night-club.

We sat on the bar stools and Johan offered us some wine.

"I rather have whiskey, neat," Debbie said.

Johan filled a shot glass from the whiskey bottle under the mirror,
then poured two glasses of wine, one for himself and one for me.

I picked up my wine glass.

"Wait," he said. (It was an order, not a request.)

"What for?" I said.

"I want to pray," he said. He took hold of both our hands, then made
Debbie and I hold hands too. "First," he said, "I want to give us
time for our own meditations." He bowed his head . . . and didn't
say anything. (I felt a bit stupid. I mean, here we were with a guy
we didn't know, holding hands over a bar.)

Finally, he took a deep breath, and in a voice like one of those
ministers on TV, said:

The Lord my God is one Lord,
Now and forever.

Lord,
We come to do battle not just against
Flesh and blood.
But against the Devil incarnate.

Lord,
Please give your warriors
The power to cast Satan
Into the lake of fire and brimstone
To be tormented for 1000 years.
I ask in the name of Jesus,
Amen.


I sat up and let go of their hands. Debbie didn't let go of his.

"I never thought of myself as a warrior," Debbie said "The idea
frightens me."

"Don't worry," Johan said, staring at her and smiling this gooey
smile. He gently squeezed and rubbed her hand. "I'll protect you
until I know you're ready to fight Satan. You don't have to be
scared." She didn't move her hand and in sort of a flirty voice
said: "I'm not scared now I'm here with you, Johan."

I almost puked. I never thought Debbie could be so corny. Not with
any guy.

He held his glass up. "Now a toast: To the Lord's work." We clinked
glasses.

Debbie downed her whiskey in one gulp, like at my house. The shocked
look on Johan's face was almost comical. (I guess he didn't expect
Debbie to drink whiskey at all, much less drink a shot of whiskey in
one gulp without gagging.) He poured her another whiskey, which she
sipped this time.

I didn't enjoy the before-dinner conversation, but Debbie and Johan
did. After they had a few more drinks, they got very romantic with
each other. It pissed me off. But not because I was jealous or
anything, I wasn't. And I didn't care she thought Johan was cool.
(I thought he was an ass hole.) What I hated was they both ignored
me. I wished Brad was there - he and I could ignore them.

I got bored so I started looking around the room. It was
disgustingly ritzy, and that started to get to me. I mean, Johan
obviously had heaps of money, but all night he had been acting like
some pious person with his prayers and everything. (Except he didn't
seem very religious at the moment, with Debbie leaning over slightly
towards him, and with him looking like he was about to kiss her.)

"Hey, Johan," I said.

He looked up, and Debbie sat back on her stool.

"What is it?" he said. He looked annoyed. Debbie gave me the
dirtiest look.

"Are you a minister?" I said.

"No."

"But you consider yourself a man of God?"

"Absolutely."

"Then how can you justify keeping all the money you obviously need
to live in this ritzy house instead of giving some of it to the poor? I thought a man of God would live more like a poor person."

"Everything I have done, I have done at God's command. If he had
told me to give my money away, I would have. However, he didn't. He
choose me for the express purpose of training the chosen ones. I
understand my part of the prophecy. However, I doubt you understand
your part. In fact, I don't understand why God chose you at all.
Furthermore, Miss Baxter, you have a severe attitude problem.
Frankly, you disappoint me."

I couldn't think how to answer him, so I said nothing. I think
Debbie and Johan were embarrassed because they sat there all silent.
It was awful. It made me think being rude to Johan hadn't been such
a good idea, and I felt bad. So I apologized and the atmosphere in
the room was okay again. They went back to their flirting.

I still couldn't stand watching them, so I went into the living room
and tried to figure out what the Salvador Dali paintings were
supposed to mean. By the time Debbie came out and told me Johan had
gone to fix us Chinese for dinner, I still hadn't figured the
paintings out.

* * *

The dining room we ate in was dismal. The dark marble floor and
wood-paneled walls had a depressing brownness to them. What was
worse, we had to eat looking at these huge depressing paintings. One
was of a skinny horse being ridden by a skeleton. The skeleton had a
sickle in his hand and was making the horse trample over all these
people dressed up like ancient kings and queens. The people looked
like they were screaming and in lots of pain. Blood was all over the
ground.

Debbie pointed to the painting. "What's that one called?"

"It's by Pronvou," Johan said. "It's titled, The Horse of Death.
It's based on a Dürer woodcut of the fifteenth century called The
Four Horseman of the Apocalypse."

I shivered. I had learned about those horseman in Sunday school.

The other painting was a lot more scary. It showed a dismal and dark
desert with four half naked men riding horses on a road of human
skulls. "That one's depressing," I said.

"I disagree," Johan said. "I choose it on purpose. It's by Delaqua.
He called it, 'Uncertainty of Man.'"

"Why do you have it in this room?" I said. "You have to eat in here."

"Exactly," he said. "When I look at it, I realize I obtain my meals
due to the Lord's grace. It also makes me think of your coming
battle and the possibility of Armageddon." He didn't say anymore. I
think he was waiting for one of us to say something intelligent.

"It's a very deep painting," I said. (He made a little half-smile,
the kind a teacher makes when he doesn't like what you say but
doesn't want to tell you he thought your comment was stupid.)

* * *

When we finished dinner Johan showed us the firing range in the
basement.I thought it was kind of strange he had a firing range in
his house, and I guess he saw the look on my face.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'm not a redneck. The firing range has to
do with my calling as the Man of Knowledge." (I believed him. I
mean, here he was with all his guns, and he wasn't acting like a gun
nut.)

The next thing he showed us was the indoor pool. (It was a small
one, just big enough to do laps in.) The whole pool was covered with
a glass dome, so it seemed like we were outside.

He finished his little tour by taking us up the back stairs to a
room he called the guest room. It freaked me out. It was like an
executive suite in a plush hotel. He left us to unpack.

After we put our stuff away, Johan took us to his study. Except for
the funny black and white paintings, it was like the discussion area
in our library at school. There was a whiteboard, TV, video, and
overhead projector set up.

When I asked Johan about the paintings, he told me they were
enlargements of drawings from an illustrated version of Dante's
Paradise Lost. In one picture, Satan was sitting in the center of
hell chewing on Judas. (It was weird, Satan was in a huge ice cave,
and there was no fire or brimstone.) The other picture showed
hundreds of lost souls, writhing all over the place in a dark
overcast valley. They were being tortured by a rain of fire.

He told us to sit around a small table while he stood in front of us
and started this lecture. He made little outlines on the white board
as he talked.

"The basis of my power and yours," he said, "is from manipulating
matter at the quantum level. Your powers come solely from science."

"Impossible," Debbie said. "I messed with the bouncer's mind. It had
to be magic."

"No. What you did was rearrange the atoms in his brain."

"That's ridiculous," I said. "She'd have to be a brain surgeon to do
that."

"Wrong," Johan said. "You can mix yellow and red paint and get
orange paint without knowing what is happening at the molecular level."

"Very interesting," I said. "But what's the point?"

Debbie nudged me with her foot.

"There is," he said, "but one point: You don't have all the facts
because your version of the prophecy is incomplete. The part I have,
and the part you need, contains the procedures for getting rid of
Satan. Therefore Miss Baxter, I think you better have patience and
listen to me."

"I'm sorry."

"Good." He paused, long enough to glare at me. "Now to continue.
Satan has one fatal weakness: he has to come back in human form and
can therefore feel pain. We will use that weakness. Elaine will
first wound him with an instrument blessed with holy water. After he
is wounded, Debbie can hex him and send him back to hell."

Johan opened a cupboard and brought out a gun. He put it on the
table. "This is a .357 Magnum," he said. "Elaine will shoot Satan
with it."

"A gun couldn't be what God had in mind," I said. "They weren't
invented when the prophecy was written."

"You're right," Johan said. "However, the prophecy says you must
use whatever instrument the Man of Knowledge feels is the best. I
believe the .357Magnum is the best."

"I don't know how to shoot a gun," I said. "Maybe I should use a
knife."

"I don't think you could," he said. "If you had been paying
attention before you would remember I said Satan will come back in
human form. Stabbing him would be like sticking a knife in a real
person. It would be up close and messy. Is that what you want?"

"No."

"Okay. You will shoot him with a .38 hollow point bullet I will
bless with holy water. The bullet flattens on impact producing
extremely sharp edges and will cut a big hole in Satan. The shock
and pain will momentarily stun him. Then, at the exact instant the
bullet goes in, you will take over his brain with a technique I'll
teach you. After that, Debbie will hex him and send him back to
hell."

I picked the gun up and aimed it at the picture of Satan. "I'll
enjoy cutting lots of big holes in Satan." I said.

He took the gun off me. "God says you can shoot him only once."

"Okay," I said. "But I want to take some vials of holy water with
me, just in case."

* * *

Johan pulled my target in from the end of the firing range.
"Beautiful," he said.

"All your shots are in the bull's-eye. How did you learn so quickly?"

"Beginner's luck."

He stared at me. "Did you use your powers?"

"Of course."

"You're not thinking, Elaine. You must never use your powers when
you are handling the gun."

"Give me one good reason."

"Why do you always have to question everything?"

"I was in the Sceptics club at school."

"Well, I guess that explains it then." (He didn't say any more. I
think he was waiting for me to forget about my question and simply
accept I couldn't use my powers on the gun.)

"Are you going to give me a reason or not," I said.

"All right, I'll explain: You'll agree holy water is spiritual,
right?"

"Yes."

"If I bless the bullets with holy water, they are spiritual, correct?"

"Yes."

"Therefore, when I put the bullets in the gun, they make the gun
spiritual. With me so far?"

"Yes. God, you're touchy."

"Listen. God has allowed both man and the devil to use science, not
magic, to dominate the physical world. Magic is part of the
spiritual world, which only belongs to God. Therefore you can't use
your powers derived from science on a gun that is spiritual. You
will be breaking God's law and the gun won't kill Satan."

"It worked on the target."

"Think, Elaine, think. Shooting targets is not a spiritual
situation."He left me to practice, which got boring because it
didn't take long before I could hit the bulls-eye without using my
powers. After a bit of practice, I was able to shoot from the hip
like a cowboy. It was easy. I pointed the barrel as if I were
pointing my finger at the target. I didn't think about it, I simply
did it. I fired another six rounds, right into the bullseye.

I was cleaning the gun when Johan came back. He looked at the target.

"Impressive," he said. You are ready to start your physical training."

"We have to do PE now?"

He glared at me. "Yes. Its purpose is to get you and Debbie ready
for battle, and to prepare you for your vision quest."

"What vision quest?"

"The quest wherein you will lie naked in the hot desert sun to make
yourself worthy of receiving the vision that will tell you the
location of the final battle. Also, you can't use your powers to get
rid of the pain"

That scared me. I'm not very good about pain.

* * *

The physical training was bad. We had to do all the crap you see in
movies about army boot camp. We ran through tires, climbed ropes,
jumped over walls, and always finished with a four mile run. We
sweated so much there wasn't a dry spot anywhere on our tank tops or
shorts. (Johan made us drink quarts of some horrible electrolyte
cola so we wouldn't get dehydrated.) And, after we had the cola, he
made us swim thirty laps in his pool.

By the sixth day we were totally dead. We had started through the
park for the final hundred yards of our run when we noticed Johan
wasn't tired at all. He was running next to us talking with all the
breath in the world, asking all kinds of stupid questions. All
Debbie and I could do was gasp and grunt to answer. We needed every
last breath for running.

"Race you," Johan said and sprinted off. Debbie started walking.
"Forget it," she said. "We gotta use our powers from now on."

We did and it worked. The next day we beat him.

"You finally figured it out," Johan said.

"Big deal," I said. "We figured out if we had kept up this pace of
training without using our powers, we would have ended up less fit
than when we started."

"Precisely," Johan said. "The whole reason for your physical
training was to get you to realize you can apply your powers to your
own bodies and improve your strength."

"Thanks for not telling us first," I said. "You really piss me off
Johan."

"Don't be so immature. You're no good to God if you can't figure out
things for yourself."

* * *

Our scientific training started the next day. (Johan said we had to
understand the science behind our powers so they would be as strong
as possible.)

Anyway, it took six days, and it was hard. We learned all about
quantum physics: about baryons, mesons, and those funny names for
quarks: up, down, bottom, top, strange, and charm.

When the training was over our powers were humungously strong. We
could use them to start up the particle accelerator at Johan's work
and run it for fifteen minutes.

We weren't doing magic, though. That took the fun away.

* * *

There was pain. I had no clothes on and had to lie down stretched
over small pointy rocks. It wasn't so bad at first, but after a
couple of minutes I felt like hundreds of lit cigarettes were
pressing on me. I wanted to scream and scream. But I knew I had to
be brave, so I cried instead.

My crying must have helped because, after a while, the individual
points of sharp pain turned into a dull ache over my whole back.
(The ache was awful, but at least I could stand it.)

I was distracted from my misery a little when I heard Debbie coming.
She came across the desert every couple of hours to put sunscreen on
me. (Johan told us the prophecy did not say the chosen one had to be
cooked like a lobster.) She put the stuff all over me. When she
finished, she kissed me on the forehead and left. I was alone with
the burning hurt once more.

A bird landed on my foot, pooed, and started hopping up my leg
toward my face. I yelled at it: "Piss off go away." The bird stopped
and began flapping its wings,and suddenly I got dizzy, just like I
did in the cubicle at the university when I had the other
vision . . .


I was flying with the bird, circling, diving, and playing tag. I
chased it as it circled around the mammoth statue of Jesus in Rio.
Then the statue disappeared, and the bird and I were hovering over
a sign on the I-10 in the middle of nowhere which said "Red Rock
5 Miles." The bird pointed to the sign with his wing.


I woke up. And I knew the bird was telling me I had to fight the
devil in some place called Red Rock. And I hadn't even got an
address. Which meant I'd probably have to have another vision when
I got there. Shit.

I got up and limped back to the house. I went through the kitchen
door and was about to walk across the entry when I saw Johan and
Debbie standing on the stairs, kissing. They must have been on the
way to his bedroom because they were very passionate. (They weren't
having sex yet, but from what their hands were doing to each other,
I could tell it wouldn't be long.)

I backed out of the room as quiet as I could and took the back
stairs up to our room. Seeing Debbie and Johan together made me want
to see Brad. And I got confused. I mean, I knew I didn't like Brad
for a boyfriend, but I felt a sort of ache he wasn't there.

* * *

I was propped up in bed reading when Debbie came in. She sat in
front of the mirror and started brushing her hair.

I put my book down. "Since when did you start liking older guys?"

She got all red. I could see it in the mirror. "What makes you
think . . ."

"I saw you kissing him."

"When did you start spying on me?"

"I wasn't spying. I happened to walk in and you were making out with
him. Ionly saw for a second."

"I love him," she said.

"Are you serious? He doesn't have a sense of humor even. And he's
rude."

"You're wrong. You don't know him like I do. Besides, you always
annoyed him."

"I suppose. Guess I didn't see what was going on."

"You didn't," she said.

"All you've got is a falling-for-your teacher crush. Which is silly.
You're not the silly type."

"Maybe I should be. Maybe we should be. God, we always paid out
Julie for being silly. But she was the one having fun; she was the
one with friends."

"Excuse me, we have friends."

"We think we do, but not really. All we are is outcasts."

"It's not that bad," I said.

"It is that bad, Elaine. But it isn't going to be anymore. When this
crap is over I'm going to have friends. I'm going to be silly and
girly and in love. I'm going to have fun."

"You've done it with him already, haven't you?"

"I told you I love him."

"Aren't you afraid he's taking advantage of the fact you think he's
a hero or something? I bet he'll find somebody else the minute
you're gone."

She opened her bag and tossed a big wad of money on my bed. "I don't
think so," she said. "Count it."

It was all in hundreds, so it didn't take me long. "There's ten
thousand here."

"He gave it to me. For spending money. He said your mother probably
has reported you missing by now so if we used our credit cards, we'd
be traced." She threw a set of keys on top of the money. "These are
his Ferrari keys. He said we need more than a VW to fight Satan." Then
she held her finger up. "Also, he gave me this."

She had a big diamond ring on.

"That's beautiful," I said.

"He said he loves me and wants to marry me. You owe me an apology,
Elaine."

"All right then, I was wrong."

She put the stuff away and got in her bed. "Go to sleep. I swear,
sometimes I can't talk to you."

I turned my light off but I couldn't sleep. I felt so alone it
sucked. I decided I had to convince Brad to accept being just
friends. I desperately wanted to hang around with him again.

* * *

Twenty-five miles out of Phoenix, we were cool. I mean, with a
Ferrari you can't help but be cool. We had our shades on, the top
down, and the radio blaring. Guys would pass us and gesture and
whistle.

"I hope Johan's okay," Debbie said. "He looked depressed."

"He's probably worried about you."

"True. Plus, I think it's because the big job he has been preparing
for all his life is suddenly over. I mean . . ."

The front tire blew. The steering wheel jerked to the right and the
car started swerving all over the road. I ignored Debbie's screaming
as I let off the gas and fought with the shimmying wheel. The car
swerved on to the edge of the road, dust flying everywhere. I was so
scared I forgot to use my powers.

Then I saw the sign, ten yards in front of us, two yards tall and
wide, held up by skinny wooden legs. I heard myself scream as the
car sliced the legs right through, toppling the sign on to the
windshield frame. The frame bent backwards, the windshield exploded
into zillions of pieces, and the air bags went off.

The car jarred to a stop. Dust blew up and away behind us.

"Oh shit," Debbie said.

We got out. The front end was all bent up so we had to pry the hood
open. The cooling system was mangled.

"We'll use our powers to fix it," Debbie said.

"We can't. We have to know exactly how everything looked before the
accident. Only then we can visualize . . ."

"Okay. Call a tow truck."

I punched up information. Nothing. "Damn," I said. I threw the phone
into the car.

"What's wrong?" Debbie said.

"Battery's dead. We'll have to walk to Red Rock."

Before we could start walking, a car pulled up: a white four-seater
convertible with a red leather interior. The driver was about thirty
and wore a tan summer jacket. I figured the woman with him was his
wife because there were kids in the back, a boy about eight and a
girl about ten. All of them were blonde and more beautiful than
humanly possible. (It was like an artist had made them up.)

"Need help?" the man asked.

"The battery in my phone is gone," I said. "Can you call a tow truck
for us?"

"A pleasure," he said. He called a garage in Casa Grande. "The
mechanic should be here about five-thirty. You hungry?"

"Starved," I said.

"We're going on a picnic," the woman said. "We have plenty of food.
You can help us eat it."

"Yes, yes," the kids chorused. "Please come. We can play games."

"I'll get my stuff," I said.

Debbie followed me over. "Are you crazy? We don't know him."

I took my bag out of the car. "Stop worrying. He's got the Christian
fish sign on his windshield, his license plate says, 'Jesus Saves,'
and he's got kids with him. What's wrong with you? Last night you
were complaining you never had fun."

"Okay, Elaine, you made your point."

I checked our money was okay and made sure the gun was out of sight
in my bag. Then we went over and squashed into the back seat with
the kids.

"What kind of car is this?" I said.

"A Rolls," the man said, "I ordered it special."

"Jesus H. Christ," Debbie said. "What do you do?"

"Plastic surgeon." He put his hand out. "I'm Paul Black."

Debbie shook his hand first, then I did. (My first thought was I
wouldn't want him operating on me, his hand felt sticky and
sweaty and cold. It made me shiver.)

His wife's name was Ruth. She introduced the kids as Matthew and
Mary. They had bathing suits on.

"Been swimming?" I said. They giggled.

Paul drove off and turned his CD on. It started playing Christian
music and they all started singing along, the wife and kids clapping
to the rhythm. But it wasn't the kind of music you'd clap to, so
they seemed ridiculous.

After ten minutes we turned on to a back road and ended up at some
picnic ground. There were lots of trees and a swimming hole. It was
huge. It had real steep sides and I guessed it was the half the size
of an Olympic pool.

"How deep is it?" I said.

"It's real deep in the north end," Paul said, "but the rest of it is
about three and a half feet deep."

"Where's the water come from," I asked.

"From an underground stream." He parked the car.

The kids climbed out of the car, right over the top of me. Then they
ran over and dive-bombed in the pool. Water splashed everywhere.

"Did you pack any suits, girls?" Paul asked.

"No," I said.

"I have extra suits," Ruth said. "My friends invariably forget
theirs." She reached under the seat and pulled them out. "Here."

"Thanks," I said. Debbie and I went behind a row of trees. We c
hanged as we talked.

"Something's wrong," Debbie said.

"Just looks like a bunch of dorks to me."

"What I mean is," Debbie said, "things don't add up. They're
disgustingly religious, but when Paul heard me swear he didn't say
anything."

"Maybe he was being polite."

"No," she said. "I think goody-goody Christians would at least react
to someone swearing in front of their kids. He didn't. I know he's
Satan. Somehow we miscalculated and he's early."

"You're being paranoid."

She was silent for a second, staring at the kids playing in the
water. She turned around. "God, I was stupid."

"What?'

"I figured it out." She got excited as she talked. "I looked at the
book last night, but I didn't get it until right now. You told me
the prophecy said that after we zapped Satan he had to wait
twenty-nine and one-half days before he could come back. The book
actually meant Satan had to wait until the end of a lunar cycle."

"So? A lunar cycle is twenty-nine and one-half days long. I said
twenty-nine days because it was easier to explain."

She took a little calendar out of her bag and pointed to the little
moon symbols. "Here is where we screwed up."

"How?"

"We zapped the monkey on the thirteenth day of the lunar cycle, so
Satan only had to wait until the end of the cycle. His waiting time
was sixteen days, not a whole twenty-nine days. Today is the sixteenth day."

"Very logical," I said. "But your idea doesn't make any sense. I
mean, we already saw the devil. He didn't look like Paul."

"What his voice was and what he looked like doesn't matter. The
devil is the father of lies."

"I still don't believe it. Paul's a babe. No one who looks like him
could be the devil."

"Being a babe proves he's Satan."

"How?" I said.

"In Isaiah 14:12, Satan is described as the 'son of the morning.'
Plus, Ezekiel 28:12 says Satan was 'perfect in beauty.'"

"Okay. But I want to make sure before I shoot him."

* * *

I took a vial of holy water out of my bag. I then uncorked the vial,
made a fist over it, and covered the top with my thumb to stop the
holy water from leaking out. Debbie prepared her vial the same way.
When we walked out of the trees I put my right hand on the gun.
(I would shoot through my bag if had to.)

Paul's wife and kids were swimming. He was sitting next to the pool
on a large rock. He still had his jacket on. Debbie got to the edge
of the swimming hole and she turned toward him. "You're not going
in?" she said.

"No," he said. "I get cramps." He turned slightly away from me when
he answered her. I flicked a drop of holy water on to his back.

"Hey, Elaine," Debbie said. "Watch this." She did the splashiest
dive bomb I had ever seen, but the water didn't touch me or Paul.
Debbie climbed out without the vial and at the same moment I looked
over at Paul. There was a small hole on his suit, and it was
growing. (It wasn't smoking or making any noise, so Paul didn't
notice it.) The hole grew outward from the center, becoming a
raggedy-edged hole about the size of a quarter.

The water in the pond started steaming and the wife and kids
shrieked. Paul roared and leaped toward me. I pulled the gun out of
my bag but I was so flustered I fired and hit him in the knee
instead of the chest. Bits of blood, bone, and gristle flew
everywhere and he screamed and fainted.

The wife and kids got to the edge of the pond. They didn't look like
humans anymore, they had weasel faces and tiny red glowing eyes and
long sharp teeth. They hissed at me and started climbing out. I
could see Debbie trying to hex them.

I shot both kids in the head and they fell back in and sank. A
circle of blood appeared on top of the water and started to spread.
Before I could aim at the wife she dove under water and swam away.
My hand was shaking from the adrenaline effect of shooting the kids,
so when she surfaced I missed the head shot, hitting her in the
shoulder. The impact threw her on her back, and she floated on the
water, stunned. I didn't dare miss again, so I used both hands and
aimed real careful. I fired twice. The top of her head came off,
making the water an even darker red. She went under.

The water made this funny gurgling sound and little bubbles appeared
all over it. The wife and kids came to the surface and starting
walking toward me. Their faces had dissolved and looked like ground
beef.

I shot at them but the gun was empty. I opened the box of bullets
but I was shaking so much they spilled all over. I remembered I
couldn't use my powers on the gun or the bullets so I concentrated
on breathing slow and regular as I picked up the bullets one at a
time and put them in the pistol.

The creatures got to the edge and started to pull themselves out.
They were halfway out of the water when the water boiled and they
fell back in. The water evaporated away into steam.

I went over to shoot them again but I didn't have to. They were l
ying on the bottom, smoldering heaps above the waist and all bones
below the waist.

"You've already stuffed it," I said. "You should have hexed him when
I shot him."

"I was trying to hex the demon kids," she said.

Satan moaned and Debbie ran over to him. "Get over here," Debbie said.
"Satan's waking up."

"You bitches are going to eat shit for this," Satan said. He had
propped himself up on his elbows. "You killed my demons. I'm going
to give you so much pain . . ."

I stuck the gun in his mouth and fired twice, blowing the bottom of
his jaw off. He collapsed unconscious.

"Sorry," I said. "You get the pain." I wiped the splattered blood
off my face.

Debbie grabbed my arm. "What're you doing? Johan told us you're only
supposed to fire one shot."

I pulled my arm away. "Johan's full of shit. Look, Satan's dying. I
want to make sure he suffers before I finish him off."

"You have to stop, you're breaking God's law. Because of you, I'm
going to have to heal him so we can start over and . . ."

I pointed the gun at her. "Shut up. Sounds like you're on Satan's
side."

"Listen, Elaine, don't you see what you're doing?"

"Yes, I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm taking out the trash." I
shot Satan in the chest. He was unconscious so all he did was twitch.

"Listen to yourself: 'I'm taking out the trash.' What movie did you
get that shit from?"

"It was in Execution of the Hit Man, if you must know."

She took a step toward me. "Give me the gun."

I cocked the hammer back with my thumb. "Don't move."

"How trite," she said. The gun flew into her hand.

"You bitch."

"You better look at Satan."

I turned him over. His face was together again.

"Shit," I said. "Armageddon is going to happen and it'll be my fault."

"Don't be so dramatic. I'll heal him, then when he is whole, shoot
him once and we'll do what Johan told us to do."

"I want to make sure he can't move." I undid his pants and pulled
them down around his ankles

"God, he's weird," Debbie said. "He doesn't have any sex organs. No
wonder he had a syringe full of sperm." She tied his belt around his
ankles. She waved her hand over his body and the broken tissue
started melting and merging together. "Get ready," she said.

Satan's knee wound healed and he jumped up. His feet got all jumbled
up in his pants and he fell down.

"Shoot him," she said.

I shot him in the heart and he moaned.

"Take him apart," Debbie said.

I closed my eyes and visualized that Satan was suspended in the
blackness of space. I then imagined he started spinning, getting
faster and faster until he was going so fast the atoms of his body
flew off him and disappeared forever into the emptiness.

I heard Debbie's voice. She said:

Behold, the fair one brought fire
From your midst.

And the fire devoured you,
Turning you to ashes
Upon the earth.

I cast you into
The Lakes of Fire and Brimstone
Where you will be tormented
For 1000 years.

Behold,
You shall deceive the nations no more.


I felt his mind withdraw itself from my brain and he vanished. No
roaring, screaming, or smoke. Nothing. The demons and the blood were
gone. The pond had water in it again, and the gun had disappeared.

* * *

The highway patrol found us walking down the main road back toward
Casa Grande. We told them we had been abducted but had gotten away
before we were raped. (We also lost our powers. I guess with Satan
gone, God didn't think we needed them.)

Debbie didn't want to go back to Johan yet, and I wasn't ready to
see Brad either. See, we both felt really guilty about how cruel we
had treated Julie and how we had thought such awful things about
her. It took us a whole week of staying up all night talking about
her before we realized we could feel terrible about Julie without
feeling guilty at the same time.

We never went to Julie's funeral for the simple reason we didn't
want to get all weepy and stuff simply because everybody else did.
So we didn't go to her grave until after the funeral was over and
everyone had left. Then we knew our sadness was genuine. (We felt we
owed Julie that.) When we left the cemetery we knew we would be okay.

The next morning Debbie went back to Johan. She said we'd always be
best friends, but I wasn't so sure. (My Dad made a big deal once
about his long lost buddy coming over to see him. When the guy
finally got to ourr house, he and my Dad didn't know what to say to
each other.)

Anyway, right after Debbie left, I called Brad and told him to come
over in thirty minutes. I put on my contact lenses, a pair of
extremely short shorts, and a tank top. I went to the garage and put
my hands into my car engine to get a bit of grease. I smeared it on
me in the places Brad had noticed that time in the garage when he
tried to kiss me. When I heard him coming I positioned myself so I
would be bending over the engine when he came into the garage.

"Hi," he said.

I stood up from the engine just the right way so he could see my
boobs. He tried to look and not look at the same time, then brought
a flower out from behind his back. "I was worried . . ."

He didn't finish because I started kissing him, I mean, really
kissing him. I even used my tongue, a little. He almost fell over he
was so surprised. When we ended the kiss, he put his hand on the
work bench to steady himself. "I'm dizzy," he said.

"Me too," I said. I put my arms around him, buried my head in the
hair on his chest and squeezed him as tight at I could. He hugged me
back and stroked my hair. He smelled of soap and men's cologne and
cherry coke. (Being close to him gave me a funny feeling inside.)

"I've waited so long for you," he said. "I love you Elaine."

I thought the first part was pretty corny, but I really liked the
last part. "I was going to ask you to be my second best friend," I
said.

"Who's the first?"

"Debbie was the first, but she moved. Now you're my boyfriend, and I
want you to be my first best friend too."

"Shouldn't we have rings or something?"

"We could wear best friend charms."

"Okay."

"Brad, I was joking. Guys don't wear best friend charms."

"I will if you want me to."

"I love you, Brad." I kissed him again.

It was cool. I mean, the first kiss can be a bit awkward. But with
the second kiss you get the rhythm right.


THE END

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