Exodus (8 page)

Pastor Ted turned away.

“That’s rich. That’s really rich, you know?” Phil Donagee laughed. “This church can’t get a revival off the ground because the pastor is
literally
in bed with prostitutes. No Biblical analysis of the symbolic identity of Babylon needed here! Ha!”

“How dare you speak to an ordained man of God that way!” Mr. Bob demanded of Phil. The color in his face and neck was rising again. “You had better be careful before you step out from under the protection of his pastoral covering!”

“Protection?! Why would I want—. Hey! Now wait a minute! You should have—. We need to make sure our theology—,” the elders all began shouting at once.

“What we need is unity.” One voice cut through the din. 

“That’s right, Phil. Sit down,” Mr. Stauffin said, pointing at the couch.

Phil Donagee sat down. He looked stunned.

Aria’s dad burned a hole in the rug with his eyes.

Unity? Unity about what?
Aria wondered. She couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. She could barely remember the feeling she used to get when she walked into church, like everything made sense for one day of the week.

This feeling of confusion was becoming familiar, though.

She put her guard up and scanned the room for the dark presence of the red static demon.

Ugh!
It was there, perched above the TV, presiding over the conflict.

Aria understood now. This demon seemed to feed off the chaos of the elders and was egging them on. Smaller winged demons sat on the shoulders of Mr. Bob and Mr. Stauffin, swirling long yellow fingernails inside their heads as if they were stirring soup.

That’s just how I’ve felt all this time!
she realized.
No wonder they can’t make sense of this, with demons stirring their brains into a mess.

She wondered why no demons were sitting on Phil Donagee or the skinny elder.

One fat, wart-covered demon sat behind Pastor Ted with its legs and arms wrapped around him in a tight hug. It had slapped its tattered wings tightly over his eyes.

Aria wanted to throw up. Spiritual blindness. And he had let all this happen. He had invited all these demons into the church by becoming involved in this.

Now she understood Mrs. Coghill’s resigned air. There was nothing she could do when the man with the spiritual authority to protect the church had given it up. He was in this up to his blind eyeballs.

“He was in an accountability group! What more could we do? We need to trust our God-appointed leaders to shepherd the flock, not hound them and spy on them!” The elders were looking at Pastor Ted now for his response.

“How could I share my struggles in a group when any admission of humanity would put my job on the line?” he asked them, appealing to them with spread arms. “I don’t get days off like you do! I’m tired! I’m human! I’m not even sure what we’re fighting for anymore! When I got into this ministry I had a vision for reaching the lost in our community. Now I just want to go….”

He scowled at his hands.

The elders looked wide-eyed at each other.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Aria’s dad asked him quietly. “I don’t think any of us had any idea how lonely and burned out you were getting.”

Pastor Ted stood up and paced the carpet. The fat demon clung to his back like a cloak, mimicking his movements exactly.

“Say what? To whom?” He raised his voice. “Pastors don’t have the luxury of friends!” He pointed his finger down into a leather ottoman. The demon poked the ottoman with a yellow talon, too.

Pastor Ted sat down on the ottoman and put his head in his hands. Several elders reached out and touched his shoulders and back, as if to pray. He did not respond.

“Our pastor needs time and space to heal,” Mr. Bob said finally. “We need to present a unified front to the church, so they know their leadership is still strong for them. None of this can leave this room… Jim.”

“Look, Bob, I appreciate what you’re saying, but there’s a difference between loving respect and unquestioning loyalty,” Aria’s dad replied, “and just look how much Pastor Ted has benefited from our deference for his spiritual maturity so far.”

Pastor Ted kept his head in his hands, unmoving. The fat demon wrapped its wings around him again even more tightly.

“The church congregation isn’t stupid. They know something is wrong, and they deserve to know they have committed themselves to spiritual leadership that lets thievery and adultery go unpunished.”

“What is it with you and punishment?” Mr. Stauffin objected. “Can’t you see Pastor Ted is hurting? You have always been so judgmental! Stop being so legalistic. Lawyers!” He settled back onto the couch and smiled slightly to himself.

“Why won’t you think for yourself?” Aria’s dad demanded. “You just go with whatever Pastor Ted says, not even considering how badly he might be manipulating you!”

“Jim, if we all thought for ourselves, we would all be pastors,” Mr. Stauffin replied. “Some of us need to just be the sheep of Jesus’ fold.”

“How can you just sweep this under the rug?” Aria’s dad asked. “This is a matter of integrity!”

“We can’t have a pastor leading us who has had such moral failings!” the skinny elder yelled.

“We all have moral failings, do we not?” Mr. Stauffin said.

The skinny elder sat down with a squeak on an office chair by the couch.

“You should be ashamed of yourself, kicking our leader when he’s down,” Mr. Bob stepped in. He pointed at Aria’s dad. “It’s enough to make one think you want his job.”

The elders watched him for his reaction.

“I know, Bob,” he said. “You’re loyal. I get it. And that’s great. Just think about what you’re signing up for here, okay?” He rolled his eyes at Mr. Bob’s unflinching stance and turned to look over the low cabinets that divided the living room from the family room. He gazed out the family room windows into the back yard and shoved his hands in his pockets.

There were kids in the yard on the other side of the back gate, chasing one another with water guns to relieve the oppressive evening heat of what was turning into a serious drought. Aria wanted to open the sliding door and let her dad out on the deck, to run away with him through the garden. She wanted to see his boyish grin again and to skip with him across the grass.

“Jim, it’s vital that you stand with us on this issue,” Mr. Bob was saying.

Aria pushed her face against the railings again to get a better look at him.

“We value your service to this church, and we need your support now more than ever. For the sake of this church and its outreach to the community, this issue needs to stay behind closed doors for now, all right? Our solidarity is important to prevent outsiders from misinterpreting what is going on here, and that reflecting poorly on the God we serve.”

Aria lay down on the hall carpet and closed her eyes.
This wasn’t supposed to happen,
she prayed.
Where are you? Why is everything still going wrong?

Her bird dream replayed on the back of her eyelids, then. She saw Pastor Ted’s boxers once more. Her eyes flew open, and she clapped her hand over her mouth. Why hadn’t she understood until now? She
had
seen the future. His pants. The prostitutes.

“We can’t even trust you to keep your pants on or your hands out of the offering plate!” Phil Donagee was yelling downstairs.

Aria stared at the ceiling.
That
was why Pastor Ted had glared at her at the picnic.
That
was why he had fought so hard to keep everyone from finding out the truth. That was why he had done everything he could to take her out. Her very nature threatened his secrets. And how could someone so blind know that she really had a dream telling the future and wasn’t just trying to oust him so her parents could take his job?

“Where
are
you?” Aria begged the ceiling. Tears started to drip into her ears. Her chest shook with silent cries. “I thought you were coming for me. You promised!” She pictured the deep, soft eyes she had fallen in love with, and her stomach tied itself in knots.
I love you,
she thought.
Come back for me!

All Aria could think about sometimes were those eyes. He had promised—those eyes of his had promised—and he had seemed so good. She closed her eyes one more time and returned to the place where everything had last made sense….

Aria had walked past the brass lamp stands in her vision of the gold temple and lifted the hem of her white dress to step up to the altar. She turned to face him.

His eyes were a soft black and gold—and so deep. Endless.

Aria fell to her knees, and a few tears had dripped onto the church floor where she lay curled up under her pew.

She heard someone speak into the microphone, “At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’”

              “I don’t deserve you,” she had groaned.

In response, he placed his gentle hands under her elbows and lifted her slowly back up to her feet, facing him.

“We have been waiting for you,” he said softly.

             
Aria turned to see forty angels assembled in the pews facing the altar. Two near the center aisle looked like twins. Blond curls circled their heads, and white-feathered wings were folded neatly behind their heads and backs.

Their huge wings were composed of layers of small feathers. Aria tried to look more closely, but the twins slipped silently behind the dark-haired angel to their right.

The dark-haired angel smiled, and the corners of his mouth creased into little tanned folds.

They didn’t want the attention.

Aria turned back to her groom.

             
“I have a gift for you, will you receive it?” he said, and gestured toward the side of the room.

Wings fluttered behind her. The angels were whispering.

Aria nodded.

They stepped down from the altar together and walked to a brass chest in the corner.

He swung open the lid and pulled out a fishing net, made of golden strings of light. The net was anchored with small blue glass floats at the corners.

Aria gasped. It was so beautiful. All she could say was, “Thank you.”

Even though she didn’t entirely understand what it symbolized, something about the net was familiar. Something about it had been with her always, outside of time. It was her destiny….

             
Aria felt a stirring in her spirit and opened her eyes. The yelling continued downstairs.

But she stared, rendered speechless.

A luminous angel was kneeling over her in the darkened hall. He was dressed in a white robe with a golden rope tied around his waist, and he had a quiver of blue arrows slung over his shoulder. His long dark hair hung in Aria’s face, and his dark blue eyes crinkled in a smile. His tanned skin creased in little folds on either side of his mouth.

She couldn’t breathe.

He was real.

Which meant the rest of it was real. Her vision of the temple, the desert plain, the demons, the dreams. All of it.

And that meant God was real, too. The good God she had met.

She had met God.

Her heart was hammering through her chest.

             
“Don’t stop,” the angel said. “You’re so close.”

He touched her eyelids with his thumb and forefinger, and she fell into a trance, her arms and legs relaxing completely. She felt her body sink into the carpet, even as the men continued to fight in the living room below.

Their voices slowly faded into the background again.

She was surrounded by blue water, struggling against ropes that held her hands and feet, unable to breathe. Her lungs felt as if they would explode, but she tried to resist the mounting pressure in her chest, knowing that if she gave in and took a breath she would sink. Bubbles slipped past her ears and tumbled around her in the waves, and she heard a voice around her echoing the words, “Anonymously, anonymously!”

Aria looked around for the person who had spoken. She could see white waves breaking above her and felt the sea carrying her in big rushes toward shallower, warmer water.

In a flash of clarity, Aria relaxed her body as she had been taught in swimming class. She let the waves carry her toward the shallows, where the sunlight danced through the rolling water onto the sandy seabed.

Aria flipped over and broke above the surface just in time. She took a huge gasping breath and choked on salt water that splashed up against her face. Her hands and feet were still wrapped up in the ropes, but she floated on her back, coughing and taking deep gulping breaths. She carried the ropes with her as the waves tugged her in to shore.

Finally, her back ground up against wet sand, and her body regained its weight. Aria pulled her hands out of the water and tried to unwind them from the ropes. It was a net, with blue glass fishing floats at the corners. It stuck fast around her right wrist. She pulled and pulled, while foaming waves broke over her lap.