When Demons Float. Susan Thistlethwaite

      When Demons Float

      A Kristin Ginelli Mystery

      Copyright © 2019 Susan Thistlethwaite. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-9625-1

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-9626-8

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-9627-5

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 10/17/19

      Other books in this series:

      Where Drowned Things Live: A Kristin Ginelli Mystery

      Wipf and Stock, 2017

      Every Wickedness: A Kristin Ginelli Mystery

      Wipf and Stock, 2017

      for my grandchildren

      Thus Satan talking to his neerest Mate

      With Head up-lift above the wave, and Eyes

      That sparkling blaz’d, his other Parts besides

      Prone on the Flood, extended long and large

      Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge

      As whom the Fables name of monstrous size . . .

—John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I (192-197)1

1. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, 192-197, Thomas H. Luxon, ed., Milton Reading Room. Accessed July 23, 2019. https://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/text.shtml

      Preface

      Human beings do not live in a perfect paradise, a Garden of Eden if you will. Instead, people live between the love that we sometimes name Heaven and the hate that we often call Hell.

      Over centuries, human beings have come to make these forces of love and hate into characters, such as Angels who represent love, and Satan and Demons who are the forces of hate. The struggle between love and hate, between our “better angels” and the temptation to sin and evil, can be considered the human story in this world.

      I cited a short passage on a previous page from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, a 17th century epic poem that is loosely based on the beginning of the biblical book of Genesis and the story of how human beings get kicked out of the Garden of Eden (the “Fall”).

      When Milton begins his classic poem, Satan has already rebelled against God, and he and his minions are cast out of heaven and thrown into an abyss. But, even God can’t keep Satan, and the Demons who follow him, down for long. I took the title of this novel from the few lines I quote where both Satan and his “mate,” the arch demon Beelzebub, fall into a burning lake. But, instead of drowning, Satan lifts his head above a wave and talks to Beelzebub and they float “prone on the Flood.”

      Whether this is what Milton intended, or not, my interpretation of this striking scene is that you can’t keep a Demon or Satan down for long. Just like Milton shows, they float back up again and go on to create chaos in the world.

      One of the main ways Satan sows chaos in the world is by lying to Eve and convincing her to disobey God. This, in my view, is an accurate way to describe how Satan operates for, as the Christian scriptures say, Satan is “a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)

      Lying is becoming normalized in the United States. Just calling that out doesn’t seem to be enough, so I decided to write a work of fiction that could show what happens in a community when hate takes over. This novel explores what happens when some people are so deluded by the falsehood that their race or their religion is superior that they will commit violence and even murder to protect that lie. These people are often called white supremacists or neo-Nazis.

      To write this work of fiction, I needed to do research on how white supremacists seduce people into believing the lie of white supremacy. I used public library computers for this research with anonymous login numbers. In the novel, my main character uses identity-masking software for her online probing into the white supremacist communications, but I have been made aware that this software is not foolproof and I do not recommend you use that method. These are dangerous extremists and you really don’t want to have them know who you are.

      In the novel, I have reproduced chat room dialogue among the white supremacists mirroring some of the exchanges I found in these Internet excursions, but I have coded their language. These extremists use the most crude, even foul words to denigrate and demean those whom they consider inferiors. I made a decision that I would not help them in that awful work, but instead indicate what they say by coding it. For example, these chat room dialogues routinely refer to women by a crass term that means their vaginal area, but I have rendered that C***s. The racism in these chat rooms is hideous and very repetitious. I refuse to reproduce those words, and instead render these references as N*****s or other terms you will recognize despite the codes.

      I chose this method of rendering their fictional online communications because I refuse to help them do their dirty, demonic work. You, as the reader, will get the sense of what they are up to without the assault of the full words themselves. As a writer, I know words have power and I believe as writer and reader we should respect that.

      I became conscious, as I was researching this novel, how much this online white supremacist rhetoric fed on itself, drawing people in and over lines that they would not have ordinarily crossed unless they were tempted into it.

      As a theologian, I came to realize this was the very definition of the demonic, the tempting forces that prey on human beings, drawing them in and down into the depths of depravity. Indeed, I ended up drawing on classical theologians such as Thomas Aquinas more than contemporary ones for mapping how the demonic actually works. I do not agree with Aquinas on demons having an ultimate, divine purpose, but when he is describing how demons go about their business, I felt he was often spot on.

      The demonic is very real in our time, and I have given it one of its names, white supremacy. As Jesus knew, if you call a Demon by its right name, you can cast it out. (Mark 5:1-20). Now, one novel is not going to do that, but together, if we call the Demon of white supremacy by its right name, we can greatly reduce its power.

      Acknowledgments

The University of Chicago is, of course, a real place, but no people, events, or even structures described in this work of fiction are real, with the exception of Rockefeller Chapel. I do also refer to the well-publicized struggles over “political correctness” at the university. The latter forms the backdrop for one scene.2

      While the events depicted in this novel are fictional, sadly enough, colleges and universities around the country are being subjected to attacks by white supremacists in various ways. In my view, this is an assault on the very purpose of higher education. One of my main reasons for creating this work of fiction, therefore, and locating it on what could literally be one of dozens of university campuses, was to allow the reader to see the destructive nature of this kind of extremism and realize how difficult it is to counter it.