“Stay if you like, but I’m going.” He rose and moved down the length of the pew to the side aisle where he’d entered. Two weeks ago I would have gladly let him go. I would have camped out, in fact, in the front pew and inquired about moving in. But now I needed to know what this, any of this, had to do with me.
This, the question that had niggled at me these last two weeks, was helped not at all by his cryptic answers.
We stepped out, blinking, into the cold afternoon light. Now I could see the wiry gray hairs above his ears, the dark spots dotting his cheeks, betraying his age. He had a presence about him, an unflappability that I found slightly unsettling. He was casually dressed, his pants not dissimilar to mine that day in the bookstore, albeit softer around the knees. To any other eye he might have been a local academic out for a casual weekend. An accountant on his day off. A tourist.
“So you popped up from hell to meet me in church.” I shoved my hands into my pockets.
“I’ve never been there.”
“To church?”
“To hell.”
I squinted at him.
“You’ve got so much of this wrong, Clay. Your conventional wisdom lacks one thing: wisdom. None of us have been to hell.”
“So it doesn’t really exist.”
“Not now, no.”
“So you mean you haven’t been to hell
He flashed me such a baleful glance that my heart tripped in my chest. I started down the street, stiffly, my shoulders having risen toward my ears in the chill. A moment later, the demon fell into step beside me.
“To begin my story I should say that my beginning predates yours by a brief infinity.”
“You’re not making sense.” I didn’t look at him.
“The beginning of the world is only the beginning of time. Your Scriptures, being written for your benefit, begin at the point where you enter history. But my beginning came long before.”
“In heaven, I suppose.”
“No, Eden.”
“What, the garden of Eden?”
“Yes. That garden, the green one, was in Eden. And Eden is here. This.” He spread his hands out toward the expanse of sidewalk in front of us. “Eden preexisted that garden and the first of your kind. It was Lucifer’s—and my—home first.”
I raised my brows.
“What—you thought the world was full of nothingness before your creation?” He gave a short laugh. “Rather ethnocentric of you, isn’t it? Do you believe the earth is flat, too? Listen to me: Elohim created Eden. He also created us. And that includes Lucifer—which is important because no creation is equal to the creator. What that means for you is that, contrary to popular myth, Lucifer is no evil opposite of God.”
“I thought Lucifer was God’s nemesis.”
He stopped. “Clay, for this to work you have to let go of that. This is not your so-called classic human tale of the struggle between good and evil. Hades, but you humans always have a way of distorting the truth into something utterly simplistic and banal—not to mention trite.”
We walked again, and for several moments there was nothing but the steady sound of our heels on the sidewalk and the occasional brittle leaf that skittered across it, joined from time to time by the orphaned bits of conversations from passing pedestrians and the cars on Massachusetts Avenue. In the distance a church bell chimed the half hour.
At length he said, “Elohim was my god before you ever existed. We called him that—‘Mighty God and Creator’—though the name implies so much more. I say this for you because the fearful names we have known since those first days cannot be formed by human tongues.”
I thought again of the barely perceptible lilt of his words that I had noticed earlier.
“El made a garden in Eden and lavished Lucifer with everything—all government, total power. He lived there like a favorite first son, the hawk to our sparrows, the jewel to our quartz.”
“So why did he make you? Especially if he knew you would turn out . . . like this.”
“I could ask you the same thing.” But he didn’t. “Why El made us, I’ve never known. One could surmise that El was lonely, but the fact is that he didn’t really need us. You, created in his image, might actually have more insight into that question than I do. We’re not so privileged as you in that way. As for me, my purpose for living, my role in this great scheme was clear to me from the first: to fall down, to worship, to praise, to wait upon the word of El.”
“That sounds really boring.”
“Really? Imagine the bliss of fulfilling one’s created purpose.”
I couldn’t. “Why do you sometimes call him
