A frantic-looking young man burst into my church this morning with bags under his eyes and tears in his clothes begging for help. What that led to has made me question everything I thought i knew.
I’ve been a pastor for half my life and a devout Christian for double that. I was born into a church family on the bible belt and even before I could talk they would pray with me, apparently my first words were “Amen.” My father pushed me to be a priest since early high school but I never understood why. He was never a particularly pious man. Sure he’d close his eyes at dinner and attend church, but the quick, polite decline that he gave any time he was asked to lead a prayer and the bored eyes I noticed at church even as a kid told me his faith was only skin deep. Yet despite the subtle irreverence, he sat me down at fourteen and waxed poetic about making my contribution to the faith and finding my place in the world. I was naturally suspicious of his sudden interest in the divine but my faith was more than feigned so I didn’t take much convincing.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the classes were pretty easy given my near-encyclopedic knowledge of the Good Book. After my schooling was done I started in a nearby church and quickly worked my way up the ranks until I was head of the whole church and people called me a pastor. I’ve always been comforted by the knowledge that god was looking over me and the idea that I was spreading the comfort of his word filled me with an incredible feeling of contentment. I’d never run into any real trouble until the young man I mentioned earlier slammed through the oak doors to my church.
He was completely ragged, looking like he’d been chased by hounds through dense woods and hadn’t slept in weeks. He seemed to be in his mid-twenties with shoulder-length hair and a guitar pick necklace. The dirt, sweat, and tears on his face coupled with the messed up hair and deep eyebags made a grotesque visage only made worse by his incoherence and the abject terror plain on his face. After I made him a cup of coffee and we sat in the back room for a while, he seemed to gain enough composure to talk and eventually gave his story.
“I just wanted to be like my brother. As a kid, we were pretty much the same level of skill at everything but once we got into high school we learned we had separate skill sets. Mine was getting girls and his was playing piano, so naturally, in high school, I was way cooler. but after we graduated, he was playing Chopin on stage while I was only a mediocre pickup artist. After a while, I couldn’t take it anymore and got desperate. I had always loved guitars but I was never particularly good at them so I gave up I decided that with enough work I could make a band and be on equal footing with my brother. After several months and little progress, I was about to give up when I was walking back from a lesson late one night when I came upon a strange-looking man in a suit standing on a street corner in the middle of the night. He was on my path but I thought nothing of it until I realized he was staring at my guitar case and smiling. I thought he was thinking of stealing it but instead, he looked me in the eyes and said ‘If you want to know how to really play that thing I can help.’ Maybe I should’ve been more suspicious but by this point I was desperate, and a little drunk, so I inquired about it and he told me he would help me if I sold my soul. Thinking this was probably a joke, and if it wasn’t, I needed the help anyway, I signed the paper he handed me.
“The next day I woke up with a hangover and callouses on my fingertips. Still suspicious, I picked up a guitar and suddenly my fingers danced to the song like they were long practiced, and every song was the same. Within the month I joined a band and we blew up pretty quickly. I was living the rockstar lifestyle when-” The man’s story was interrupted by three sharp knocks on the door, followed quickly by the door swinging open.
A tall gaunt man in a black suit walked far too casually into my church. He had his hair slicked back with a widow’s peak and a bemused smile cracked on his face when he noticed the items in my hands. “Father Thomas, what makes you think your funny little artifacts can stop me? Mr. James made a deal fair and square. I have rights to his soul, so stop trying to protect him.”
“The Almighty Lord will protect those who accept him no matter what they’ve done in the past.”
“And what almighty lord is that? The one on the cross? I was making deals long before that boy was ever nailed up there and I haven’t missed one collection. Father Thomas, please step aside, you have no idea what’s going on and you’re liable to get yourself hurt.”
“I have a pretty good idea, I’ve read the stories. You’re the devil, or maybe a demon, either way, the Lord will smite you down.” At this, the man let out an earth-shaking laugh and stepped toward me.
“Stories change over time, child, the wrong points get emphasized, and the message gets changed. I’m about as close as it gets when it comes to gods.”
“The Devil is king of lies” I held out my crucifix and readied my holy water but this only made him laugh harder. Finally, I splashed him with the holy water and he stopped laughing to grab my wrist and look me in the eyes and I swear his eyes glowed and flickered like embers in a dying fire, seeming almost sad. The last thing I remember before blacking out was feeling profound pity for the man in the black suit and that’s something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain.
When I woke up I was in the hospital and quickly learned I’d been out for 2 days. My church was burned to the ground and nobody had seen or heard from the man whose name I later learned was Jimmy James since then. I started thinking maybe I could chalk this all up to fume-based hallucinations caused by the fire but I can’t explain the three long scratches across my chest and I can’t stop thinking about those eyes. Whenever I try to pray I only see those eyes and hear those words, and deep down I can feel that he wasn’t lying despite how much I want the opposite to be true. Even if there is a god how could I pray to a being that can’t or won’t stop something like that? People will donate, and my church will recover, but with that voice in my head, no matter how hard I try, I can’t believe in the god I once dedicated my life to. I prayed to that god for so long I don’t know what to do now, I feel so empty without a god to worship, but now that I think about it I do have a god. Out of this whole experience, I learned there are gods out there, you just need to seek them out. I’ll tell you what I find.