Father Luke’s Journey into Darkness. Nancy Carol James
where the face should be. Hamlet’s ghost has come to warn me, Luke immediately thought. Outstretched bony, trembling fingers with open palms facing upwards reached out to him, imploring and begging. The ghastly fingers tried again and again to breach the gap to touch Luke, but were stopped. The hands pleaded for help and the dark, hidden face bespoke a visit from the underworld. Trembling, Luke reached for the light switch, the ghost was gone yet vestiges of an ancient terror gripped him.
“It’s dry,” Luke heard in a strangulated voice. The janitor Carlos was coming down the stairs, his pale face panting in an asthmatic attack. Luke quickly said, “Can I help?”
“I’ve already taken my medicine. It’s dry. Do you notice?”
“Yes, it’s everywhere.”
Luke slumped down and then said all he could think of. “We all feel it.” Luke grimaced. “I don’t understand what is happening here.”
Shakily, Luke walked upstairs. The ghost had both begged and warned.
Chapter Three
What happens when a priest falls? The Body of Christ, so gravely wounded, hemorrhages in terror. The priest’s soul had been flooded with grace, yet now he will find the grotesque and the bizarre. And when fallen priests meet committed ones, the monstrous meets the sublime and only God knows what will happen.
In a Washington, DC park, the priest looked at the two rivers flowing one into another. Power, he thought, where the Potomac and Anacostia rivers join: the pure power of flowing river currents symbolizes the joining together of different worlds.
All geniuses recognize places of power.
We’ll claim this one now. What pure excitement, pleasure, and power.
And who do we have for this ceremony?
He called the official. “We are helping the market again. I ordered some from the Nationals game, just a mile from here.”
Listening for a moment, he replied, “Yes, Buzzards Point. Not well known, but out of this world. You’ll love it!”
Later in the mysterious dark of the night, he searched through his pocket and dug out a gold-colored knife emblazoned with the seal of the Vatican, two keys crossing each other. He took the caged hamster out of his back seat. He saw the men waiting and quickly grasped the animal by its neck and strode into the middle of the group. “Moloch! Moloch!” they prayed reverently. And soon the squeals of the animal with its dripping blood promised an answer from Moloch.
Then flicking his knife open, he chose the largest tree and approached it in reverence. He raised the knife up and with a quick gesture, penetrated the tree’s thick bark, gashed a pinwheel and with worship-filled strength, encircled an open wound around the tree, whose sap immediately sprang forth from the deep wounding.
Now bring on the celebration; and with the advent of car headlights, he saw approaching people. Chaotic wildness visits the waiting mob.
Early the next morning, Jerry once again thought of the wolf and instantly upon reaching his desk felt new words. Wolves, and particularly the alpha male and female wolf, watched for predators and in an organized fashion fought back. Their hierarchical pack allowed them to fight off any threats to their young.
Jerry wondered, how do wolves have the instinct for hierarchy? To become alpha wolves, they were tested by winning a long and often brutal fight to prove their strength. After an alpha wolf took command, together he presented a formidable defense to any threat. Jerry thought of the beauty of the open pack loping along in the wilderness, yet the alpha male listened for howling communications from others.
But what thesis comes here? Jerry thought. All academic thought comes first in symbols, dreams, and poems. The way the wolves structure their lives was symbolic of the structure of community life. Where was the alpha wolf in their community? The bishop?
A brief flash of an image of a running, loping wolf in the wilderness shot through his mind. Majestic beauty! Passion!
Yet my pack, my community, is loping not for beauty but now fighting against the powers of darkness. Our pack is being destroyed wolf by wolf. We are all weakened.
Jerry knew he must have patience as he waited for answers.
But patience was in short quantity in Washington, DC.
The mayor called the DC Police Department and spoke directly, “What happened at the Buzzards Point Marina?”
The police chief tried to sound positive. “Look, we had police watching parks everywhere but what kind of nut would go to Buzzards Point with all of those secure facilities there?” She made an irritated noise. “With both the Coast Guard headquarters and the National Defense University right there? Security everywhere? Who would do this at that spot?”
The mayor leaned back. “Rats.” This property was already a sore point with him. “And how did the military get that prime location anyway with the intersection of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers? With all the development of the waterfront, I wonder if we could get this property back in the name of Native American history. You can almost see the hand-built canoes in those timeless rivers.” In his mind he remembered the beautiful V shape of the waterways of these two powerful rivers connecting one with the other. “What did these criminals do?”
“Cut more pinwheels into a large tree right at Buzzards Point Marina. But what is puzzling is some unexplained blood splatters and bloodied clothes. I think there is violence or sexual assault going on, like cultic rituals.”
The momentary peace the mayor had enjoyed disappeared stolen by a thief in the night. The IMF meeting was soon and the chief was telling him of odd spiritual rituals being conducted in public parks. Financial leaders from the world will live and play all over Washington, DC at the time of the Cherry Blossom Festival. And bizarre rituals are happening under the eagle eyes of security.
“Leaders of the entire world are going to be here and we can’t stop some kooks from defacing trees with knives? Get this situation stopped! We will look like crazy Americans.”
Late that day Luke overheard Peter’s raised voice talking on the phone in the church office, “Chancellor, what do you mean a priest from this parish solicited men in a park? Or are you saying that a man from this parish solicited a priest?”
Luke walked more slowly now.
“Nonsense. We have two fine priests here, Luke and Jerry. They wouldn’t do that.”
The old air conditioning system clanged on and all that Luke heard was “any authorities.”
Today Oscar’s songs were dismal. He started with, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen!” Father Luke bowed and Oscar responded, bowing, but he stayed bent over and low. Father Luke, leaning down, saw tears flowing from his eyes.
“Why, Oscar? What’s wrong?” Oscar lifted his arm up and bowed with tears dripping down his face. Unable to offer any comfort to the disconsolate singer, Luke walked toward the 5 p.m. church service. As he got his key out, he wondered, what is it about a church in the evening? There was the quiet presence of the flickering flame from the red lamp stating that Jesus was present, body, blood, and soul. The divine was here. Yet also he sensed ominous presences: spirits of the dead, fiends hanging around to torment the faithful, hoping to inhabit an open human heart. The sense of the restless presence grew as Luke hung his purple priest’s stole around his neck.
Luke walked up into the sanctuary. He saw the brown cross with Jesus’s contorted body hung, his head leaning on his right shoulder, with the ancient words INRI whittled into the crude sign over his head. INRI: Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews.
Flashing through Luke’s mind came a memory from Kansas, a time in gym when Luke, the puniest kid in the class, got kicked in the stomach. Luke twisted in pain. The class bully leaned over him and said, “I’m sorry.” He then leered as Luke rolled from side to side. Luke winced at the sight of Jesus’s contorted body with nails tearing through his skin.