The Adam Enigma (9 page)

Myriam had become more involved with its caretaker Adam, taking a personal interest in his physical recovery from the motorcycle accident that had left him nearly dead and in a coma for six weeks.

“He's like nobody I've ever met. There's even a sort of luminescence to his presence,” she had told Beecher. She began spending more and more time there and with Adam. Often Beecher would join them as
they strolled around the grounds chatting with visitors and pilgrims who were eager to talk about their experiences.

Beecher had never once been jealous of her attention to the man. There was no need. For one thing, Adam didn't appear to have an agenda with anyone. He devoted himself entirely to the shrine and its visitors. And it was clear that Myriam was as much in love with Beecher as he was with her.

Beecher sipped his coffee. Myriam leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I need to powder my nose, honey.” He rose as she did. She smiled and said, “That's what I love about you. You're old fashioned, like a wild west cowboy.”

“I have a white hat, too,” he said, loving her.

Watching her walk off, he murmured, “It has been the best.”

All her adult life Myriam had had trouble sleeping. After a particularly bad night she wandered around the grounds of the shrine and had come across one of the many vendors who set up shop on a small strip of land beside the parking lot. These were mostly Native Americans and a few others who sold their wares to pilgrims and tourists. She approached a battered old Ford pickup with blue doors and red stripes across the hood, like a painted face. The owner had erected a makeshift ramada from a tattered, blue plastic tarp. It stretched over the bed and on either side and past the back. He sat on the tailgate, a faded, black ten-gallon hat covering his head. He was an old man with silver hair in long braids down his back. Behind him in medicine bags were his wares. If Carlotta Moore had not told her he was the one whose Indian medicine was the best, she would have passed him by for one of the newer looking gaily colored stalls further along the road.

“Excuse me, sir. Do you have any wild chamomile or sage tea?” Myriam had asked.

The man raised his head and gazed at her quietly. Gray eyes scanned her like a benediction. “You're having trouble sleeping?” he had asked.

She nodded. “I seem to fall asleep right away but then I wake up, maybe forty-five minutes later and I can't get back to sleep. It's happened three days in a row and I'm exhausted.”

He had smiled, his teeth white and even. He reached behind him and pulled a beaded bag from among the others. It was the color of tanned deer hide. The adornment was porcupine quills in the manner of plains Indians before the arrival of Europeans to America. She recognized the style from artifacts she had acquired for the University of Oregon's Museum of Natural and Cultural History.

“Here, a gift from Coyote to help you sleep,” he had said, his voice soft, the words cadenced like he was saying a prayer.

Myriam's eyes widened. “Are you sure? Coyote is the trickster. Perhaps it will have the opposite effect.”

“Among the Lakota it is
iktomi
the spider who is the trickster. Coyote is the bringer of change. Tonight, you will sleep and you will dream I am sure.”

She quickly replied, “I'm one of those people that never dream.”

With a gleeful twinkle the old Indian reached out and touched her forehead. “Make a tea just before bedtime with a spoonful of this. Steep it fifteen minutes then strain it and drink it right away.”

“How can I pay you?” When she offered him money he shook his head.

“Got to go.” The Indian suddenly danced off laughing and talking to himself. He walked into the sage and piñon pine surrounding the shrine, never looking back.

Myriam had thought him a very odd character and might not have heeded his words, but that night, being desperate for sleep, she followed his directions. The world of dreams descended upon her like a vision. She found herself in the middle of an ancient city of mud and straw and bricks. The reek of sewage and the stink of humans and animals were overpowering. She brought her hand to her nose and saw the skin was white and some of the fingers shortened and deformed. She touched her face and her nose was a stub, the cartilage eaten away. She gasped in fear as she recognized the disease—leprosy. She started to wail when a figure clothed in white approached her.

He stopped and stood before her. Reaching out with a long fingered hand, he touched her forehead and said in a deep voice filled with compassion, “Be clean.”

Immediately the leprosy disappeared and she was made clean. Myriam recognized, from within her dream, that this scene was repeating the biblical miracle of the cleansing of the leper. She looked up, expecting to see the shining radiance of Jesus Christ. Instead it was a stranger whose face was covered by a dark haze. Only his eyes shown through with benevolence that warmed her. The eyes were strangely familiar and she thought they might belong to Adam.

The stranger said, “See that you tell others who I am. Go, show yourself to them, for a proof to them.”

When she woke the next morning, Myriam remembered the dream and had called Beecher right away. She told him all about it.

Myriam returned to the table. “I have to go, dear,” she said, opening her purse. Beecher put out his hand. “It's on me.” She pouted and said, “One of these days you're going have to let me pay for something.” She kissed him on the cheek and walked out of the restaurant.

Beecher watched her drive off.
She doesn't suspect
, he told himself. Ironically, her request to be allowed to pay had in its own way already been granted. After all, her dream had inadvertently set in motion a bizarre, spiraling set of events.

After she had told Beecher about her dream, he had decided to contact the popular cable television show
Psychic or Psycho?
This popular series based in Phoenix, Arizona featured investigators who debunked psychic phenomena. Paying them a sizable advance, he persuaded them to explore the Milagro Shrine. Working under the guise that the results would soon become an episode in their popular series, the three-man, two-woman team had agreed to his proposal, and spent four days with their equipment, examining every aspect of the place and shooting copious amounts of Polycentrism Interference Photography. PIP was a remarkable new video processing technology that captured bioenergetic fields invisible to the naked eye. A scientist named Harry Oldfield invented PIP in the late 1980s, using advanced
microchip technology. Oldfield developed a scanner that could provide real-time moving images of the energy fields associated with living things. He believed that the future of medical diagnosis lay in finding an effective scanner that could see imbalances in the body's energy flows. Beecher had even provided the crew with the money to purchase the most advanced form of this technology available.

The film crew had initially focused their attention on the cottonwood tree, spending two full days and nights following groups of pilgrims who had traveled from the East Coast to spend a week at the Milagro Shrine. Though a number of men and women glowed with reports claiming they had been healed in the presence of the tree, none of the equipment registered even the tiniest anomaly in the biofield surrounding the cottonwood. The Christ Chapel was next, and then the xeriscape garden with its maze of trails. Again nothing out the ordinary had been detected emanating from any of the structures or plant life at the Milagro Shrine.

The only hiccup had occurred on the second day of filming. The film's producer, Gil James, had approached Beecher, his jaw set and an angry glare in his eyes. He wasted no time complaining. “Hiram is there any way you can keep that little shit Raphael Núnez from following us around?”

“What's he doing?”

“Asking a lot of stupid questions and getting in the way of the crew's interviews with the pilgrims. I'd like to wring his neck.” The producer's beefy hands squeezed an imaginary foe.

“I'll see what I can do, Gil. But really Raphael's just a small time opportunist. He's the chairman of the Board of the Friends of the Shrine and the local real estate broker.”

Gil raised his voice. “Keep him away from my crew and equipment, or,” he laughed harshly, “he's going to find out firsthand if this healing stuff works or not.”

Beecher had spoken to Núnez and the man had backed off, watching the production crew from a distance.

After they had finished taping, Beecher accompanied the crew when they returned to Phoenix, where the footage was carefully
examined on the production company's HD screens in their studio. What he saw had amazed him as much as it did the psychic busters. The cameras had definitely caught a number of people whose bioenergetic signatures displayed well-recognized ailments such as cancer and other diseases in black and dark red auras. One elderly gentleman, whose prostate initially appeared like a giant red cantaloupe on the screen, had his condition return to normal by the second night of filming. Others showed significant brightening, with the blackness dissipating and their bioenergetic fields moving towards more symmetry. Sometimes people's bioenergetic fields were closed. For a few nothing had happened. As astonishing as those revelations were, the most remarkable aspect recorded by the technology was an unusual energetic background signal that permeated all the footage.

The next revelation had rocked Beecher even more. It was footage taken by a woman intern who had walked around the Rio Chama de Milagro Shrine with a small hand-held camera. She had caught the caretaker, Adam Gwillt, on camera in the presence of two young girls ages ten and twelve. They were sisters, both suffering with Hodgkin's disease.

As Adam talked with the two girls and their parents, the film captured the largest and most perfect bioenergetic field surrounding the caretaker that the show's team had ever recorded. In fact, it was larger and clearer than images recorded of long-time Buddhist meditators or even the Dalai Lama. But even more astonishing was the effect of his aura on the two girls. Their fields had merged with his for a short time, and by the time the crew finished filming, the dark mass indicating the lymphoma had disappeared.

After much discussion and tweaking of the PIP's processing technology, the conclusion was that the pervasive background had somehow come from Adam.

Myriam's dream had been prophetic and now Beecher had proof Adam was the source of the shrine's healing power. Shaken by the findings, he had immediately taken possession of all the footage and paid an additional large sum of money to the producer to keep everything quiet.

Returning to Abilene, he had contacted the Reverend Billy Paul, telling him what he had discovered and about Myriam's dream revealing Adam as the next Christ.

December 2015
Amarillo, Texas

H
iram Beecher sat in his Amarillo office shaking his head at the Reverend Billy Paul's latest email—‘Has that matter been taken care of yet?'

He clenched his fists until the knuckles cracked. His brain felt clogged at what the televangelist was asking of him. He reread the email.
How am I going to do this?

The leader of the Brothers of the Lord had changed dramatically from the once-charismatic leader who awaited the second coming of Christ. Now the Reverend seemed old and bitter.
It has to be the pilgrimage. Something happened to him that day
, Beecher told himself. It was a wonder the man had survived.

At first, Reverend Billy Paul had been skeptical when he read Brother Hiram's report regarding Adam Gwillt's powers. After all, Beecher had given nothing but positive reviews about the Rio Chama de Milagro Shrine, touting it as a Christian center for miracles, the North American equivalent of France's Lourdes and Portugal's Our Lady of Fatima. It was what the Reverend had been waiting for since founding the Brothers—a place in America for followers to worship and experience the power of Christ. He had even confided in Beecher plans to switch the worldwide headquarters to the small community of Rio Chama in northern New Mexico.

But later, as he had reflected more deeply upon Beecher's information in the privacy of his megachurch's inner sanctum, something unexpected occurred. Reverend Billy Paul suddenly felt a strong summoning, a voice inside him telling him to visit the shrine for himself. Excitedly, the Reverend gripped the armrests of his ornate desk chair. Carved from obsidian and oak, the chair glowed under soft lights positioned to cast it in an unearthly halo of light. His followers in the Brothers of the Lord joining him here often fell to their knees and began praying when they saw the Reverend sitting in this chair behind his desk on the small dais raised in such a manner it appeared as if he were floating in the air supported only by divine will.

Reverend Paul felt his heart beat quickly; its thumping pulled at the scars of his recent bypass surgery, causing an ache his chest.
Could this be what we've all been waiting for? The second coming?
he asked himself breathlessly.

Reverend Paul had opened the laptop on his desk and pulled up the events calendar for the Milagro Shrine. The announcement of a holiday procession to honor the birth of Jesus Christ glowed eerily on his screen. It was a celebration with a pilgrimage starting in the valley below the shrine. Worshippers, pilgrims, and members of the shrine would carry a wooden cross to the Christ Chapel. Everyone would take a turn bearing Christianity's most humble symbol of salvation the five miles from Rio Chama to the shrine. An inner voice declared to Billy Paul that it would be perfect if he participated.
If Adam is who he says he is, he will be waiting for you at the Christ Chapel
, the voice declared.

Immediately Reverend Billy Paul had called Beecher and enthusiastically told him of his plans. To his surprise his most loyal lieutenant did not agree.

“It's unwise, Reverend,” Beecher had explained. “The high altitude where the shrine is, coupled with your bypass surgery less than six months ago, makes it unwise for you to carry the cross. It's very heavy and the way is slippery in many places. I'm afraid for your health and safety. It would be better for me to arrange a meeting with Adam through Myriam.”

“The Lord will sustain me, brother Beecher,” Reverend Paul had said, dismissing his concerns. “Adam will only reveal his true nature if I come to him in a state of pure faith.” Beecher implored the leader of the Brothers of the Lord to reconsider, but in the end, Reverend Billy Paul insisted he drop the matter. “I am coming to New Mexico to participate. Make the arrangements, brother Beecher.” In the end Hiram Beecher had agreed and the Reverend felt a glow of anticipation that he would make the pilgrimage.

On The Sunday after Thanksgiving, the afternoon was sunny and the temperature had hovered just above freezing. There was no wind and it was going to be a glorious pilgrimage to the shrine. Hundreds of worshippers and followers gathered at the starting point. Brother Beecher and other Brothers of the Lord were also in attendance. Reverend Billy Paul had stood with them. He had dressed in a simple white, woolen cassock, similar to what Jesus had worn on the day of his crucifixion. The cross had been constructed from nearby trees the weekend before by local artisans. As the time approached, Rio Chama's local choir sang
Adeste Fideles
in the original Latin. The sonorous and joyful words filled Reverend Billy Paul with exultation as he joined the group of men and women preparing to carry the cross on the long march to the shrine. As the final notes of the song drifted through the thin mountain air, the first of the worshippers lifted the cross to their shoulders and proceeded to drag it forward along the road to the shrine. At intervals of about a hundred yards, the heavy cross was passed to the next person who would carry it the next length.

Billy Paul had walked along with the others with his head held low like a penitent, waiting his turn at the back of the procession. He would be the last one to carry the cross. His placement was not by accident. He had wrangled his turn at the end, where he would triumphantly carry the cross to the front of the Christ Chapel, hoping to see Adam there waiting for him.

Spontaneously the group had begun singing Christmas hymns as the burden of the cross passed from one person to the next. As they entered the long gravel drive to the shrine's parking lot, the short, middle-aged woman in front of Billy Paul stumbled under the burden of the cross and fell to her knees. Amid gasps from the crowd of
onlookers, the aging Reverend reached out to steady her. “Let me take this burden from you,” he said, feeling the spirit of Simon of Cyrene filling his limbs with strength.

Hoisting the heavy wooden cross to his bony shoulders, he trudged forward. By the time Billy Paul was navigating the last steps to the front of the chapel, the sharp edges of the cross had bitten deeply into the flesh of his shoulders. His breath came in aching gasps and his heart labored against his ribs like a jackhammer. He dragged the now-painful burden toward the chapel entrance, his mind and body reeling under the weight and from the thin mountain air. The woman he had helped joined him and whispered, “This is going to be a special Christmas like the first.” One by one, others in the procession came forward, each touching a part of the cross, some lifting it with their hands while praying.

The group swept forward, singing hallelujahs and chanting prayers. By now Billy Paul and his burden were being half-carried along by the crowd caught up in the exultation of Christ's final journey on Earth and oblivious to his gasping wheezes and staggering steps. At the small rock path leading to the now open chapel doors, one end of the cross lurched sideways and slid heavily on Reverend Paul's shoulder, breaking the skin. Blood trickled down his back, staining his white cassock red. A sharp pain lanced down his leg. He lost his balance and stumbled away from the group grabbing a hold of a small wooden sign identifying the Christ Chapel. The men and women carrying the cross left him behind as if he didn't exist. Even the bulk of the crowd—engulfed in a state of spiritual excitation—passed him by unnoticed.

Deeply saddened by this callous dismissal of his fellow cross bearers, Billy Paul sank to his knees. Moments later a gentle hand touched his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” asked a deep voice.

Turning, the TV evangelist immediately recognized the speaker from the video clips Beecher had provided. “Adam,” he whispered. A sudden blissful joy filled his body and then, just as suddenly, excruciating pain gripped his chest and he crumpled into the shrine caretaker's strong arms.

The pain vanished in an instant. A sense of ease filled Billy Paul with a simplicity and strength he had not experienced since the time, as a teenager, when he had swiped oranges from the groves surrounding his Southern California home with his pals. Accompanying the peace and calm was a sense of floating in a bright white cloud. He looked down on a brown, dusty earth, now slowly receding. He recognized the cottonwood tree and the nearby Christ Chapel. They glowed with a soft inviting light. Beside the white gravel walkway leading to the chapel's entrance he saw his limp frail body cradled in the lap of Adam, his limbs curled up in a fetal position. Faceless human forms were gathered around the two of them.
They seem to be attending to me!
thought Billy Paul with great surprise.
Who are they?
But a sudden dread filled him, and the tranquility he had experienced only moments before vanished. The faceless beings darkened. They bent down toward him, talons extended, ready to grasp and rend his flesh.
NO! DON'T LET THEM TAKE ME!
he shouted at Adam.

The figure of Adam did not move. Billy Paul shouted until his voice was hoarse, but Adam ignored his pleas and continued to rock Billy Paul's lifeless body to and fro without a care in the world.

Frantically, Billy Paul drew up his legs and kicked forward, his hands making desperate swimming motions as he tried to swim back through the air toward his body. He had to stop the dark angels from taking his soul to hell! He seemed to move imperceptibly through air that was thick as jelly. His breathing hoarsened. He could no longer move at all. The last thing he remembered as his hands beat futilely against the thick air were the demons descending on him, fangs and claws bared as they prepared to take his soul to hell.

Reverend Billy Paul had awakened in a dimly lit hospital room in Taos, New Mexico. Fortunately the shrine had paramedics on the scene for just such emergencies. He had been resuscitated and helicoptered to the hospital.

As full awareness returned, the Reverend had an overpowering realization. Adam Gwillt was
not
Christ. No, he was the worst thing possible. The world's people had to know that Satan walked in their midst, disguised as the Milagro Shrine's healer!

Beecher's email program chimed. He leaned forward and a second email from Reverend Billy Paul appeared. It was the same message—‘Has that matter been taken care of yet?' He noticed his hands trembled at the idea of what the leader of the Brothers of the Lord was ordering him to do.
That cursed pilgrimage is responsible for his changed attitude
.

A few weeks after the heart attack, Beecher had received an ill-tempered call from a highly agitated Billy Paul. The televangelist had started right in without saying hello or asking about Myriam. “That Adam caretaker is the secret leader of a heretic group and is able to transfer his divine power from his body to those who follow him. They're going to claim that this will be the equivalent of Christ rising from the dead. This two-bit hustler, Adam, can't be allowed to take on the robe of our savior . . . He needs to be stopped for the salvation of our souls.”

Beecher had reeled from the angry diatribe. “That's impossible!” he blurted.

“Do you doubt my revelations, Brother Beecher?” Billy Paul had asked, his displeasure clear at Beecher's lack of faith.

“Of course not. It's just—”

“Then heed my words. Adam has dark and dangerous powers.”

“But . . . but how do you know this?” Beecher had asked, the certainty behind the Reverend's words rattling him.

“I had a vision when I visited the shrine for the pilgrimage. It showed me that Adam is not the second coming of Christ. He is Satan.” He paused. “It's time Adam Gwillt left the shrine. You're close to it and him. Take care of it.”

“What do you mean? Take care of it how?” Beecher asked taken aback by the Reverend's hardline tone.

“Do I need to say more?” the Reverend mocked Beecher in an angry voice. “You're a resourceful former military man. Do what needs to be done. Am I clear?” He had disconnected without another word.

Beecher leaned back in his chair. Outside his Amarillo office, rain began to fall, hard enough to clean the dust off windshields. He wished it could clear up this matter for him. He hadn't liked the implications
of Billy Paul's order. It was clear the televangelist wanted Adam Gwillt to disappear permanently. The idea was distasteful, but Beecher had always been a good soldier.
But how to carry out the order?

He had wrestled with that question for a number of sleepless nights. He had not traveled to the Milagro Shrine nor spoken with Myriam except on the phone. If only he could talk with her, maybe he could find the answers he needed. But he knew that way was blocked. He was in way too deep with Billy Paul and the reverend's plans for Adam. If he told her the truth now about what he knew, he'd lose her forever.

He had wracked his brain finding a way to entice Adam to move to a more comfortable place. He talked to Carlotta to see if she could induce her brother to move to Hawaii to avoid New Mexico's bitter winters. She laughed at him, saying Adam had a permanent home at the shrine and wouldn't leave it if another ice age descended. Next, Beecher contacted Adam's longtime friend, Malcolm Grossinger in Des Moines, to see if he would be willing to take care of him back in Iowa. However, Grossinger had danced around the question and his attitude just seemed troubling to Beecher. In the end no inducement could get Adam to leave the Rio Chama Shrine.