Our Favourite Demon

                                                                  Reader Discretion is Advised...

I woke up in cold sweat, panting hard in the darkness, arms raised above my head in anticipated defense as I waited for him to charge through the walls again, pass through the barriers of what we call solid to catch me in that lethal embrace. A hand touched my leg and I screamed – and he screamed as well, my little boy who had come into my room to escape the terror of the thunder that sporadically rocked the heavens from time to time. Then there was the faint crackle of lightening that illuminated the room briefly and then I saw the eerie face behind him – and I screamed yet again!

“What in God’s name is going on with you, honey?” said my wife, who had gone to relieve herself and had come back to find the sweaty, shivering, emotional mess that was her husband. All I could say over and over, till the realization of the truth in my words slowly calmed me was:

“I had a dream.”

"I had a dream..."

It had been Sunday morning, without the rain that was in my current reality. The night had been fairly short and I had awoken to a world bathed in sunlight that seemed to wash everything in its path with gold. I got out of bed with a smile, feeling good with the world and myself for reasons I could not put a finger on. Aha, I thought to myself, it is Sunday and on Sundays, we go for services. Forget the history about the Jewish Sabbath being on Saturday or that Constantine, the Sun Worshipper who redefined Christianity as we know it, made Sun-day into a holy day, the bottom line was that Sunday was “the day of the Lord” now – and that was that. There would be service, there would be hymns, there would be dancing, there would be a sermon, and I would be charged up and feel motivated, all pepped and prepped for the week ahead.

I showered briefly, had breakfast, left the house behind and began to walk the short distance to…

“Going to a place called Church?” The carpenter said, his fairly large middle-Eastern nose pointed at me like a beak. I wondered how he got to be in a corner of my compound. Perhaps someone had invited him over. He stepped back from the chair he was making, muscular arms covered in wood filing and his bronze like skin, for a split second, seemed to make the sunlight go grey. Three men, two women and some kids sat right next to him, talking, munching on sandwiches and having drinks, and while the set up seemed weird and inviting, something in me kicked against the Carpenter’s distracting conversation. Matter of fact, I felt like he was getting in my way.  

“Yes, I am going to Church”, I replied casually. I didn’t know this guy, though he looked and sounded familiar.

“Interesting,” he said, “but you do realise that Emmanuel is here.” His hands pointed everywhere and nowhere at the same time – and I could not help thinking to myself, who the heck is Emmanuel?

“Er, alright,” I said, trying to be as polite as possible. I had wasted enough time talking to the stranger. I had to get to service and his interesting conversation – and disposition – was nice and warm and endearing, and yet distracting and irritating at the same time. To be honest, he seemed very open, but he made me feel uncomfortable. Maybe it was the large gash on his hands that looked like he must have had a nasty accident. 

“I’ll just be on my way. Off to Church. You take care.” You had to be polite with people. Honestly, I didn’t care if he took care.

“You take care,” he said with a rueful smile. “Emmanuel is here…”

O- k! I had had enough and I walked off rather quickly, to put as much distance as possible between us. You had to wonder where all these cults came from with their creepy slogans, as they munched away in corners with drugged smiles, talking nonsense like ‘Emmanuel is here’. I found myself giving thanks to God for how he had delivered me again from the deception of evil men – and somehow, I was right in front of the Church.

A feeling of contentment came over me as I walked through the gates and a song welled right up – I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart… I didn’t know when I turned to the man right beside me and said, with a wide smile “You’ve got to love Church” – but that was the end of my smile because right next to me was the Carpenter’s son. Well, it had to be, because this guy looked just like the Carpenter, the same Arabian-looking face, long nose, thick shoulders, but he was dressed different and he looked cleaner. This guy, on the other hand, wasn’t smiling at all; infact, it was like he didn’t realise that it was polite to smile back when someone smiled at you – even when you didn’t give a damn about them.

I didn’t realise I had stopped in some sort of wonder till he said to me, mouthing the words very slowly like I was a dummy who couldn’t get the basics of kindergarten arithmetic.

“This is not the Church, but Emmanuel is here…”

I fled from the creep, but if you think my day had been dramatic, then what unfolded next will totally blow you away…

Service had begun, and I was quite upset that I had not come in at the beginning. You know that there is a special blessing for those who come for service on time – or so we have been told. I believed it totally, even though, when you think about it, you wonder what kind of blessing you get for coming in early for a meeting. I thought we were blessed already, or maybe there were deeper blessings we didn’t know about. A frown creased my brow at the thought because I was wondering why I was having these thoughts all of a sudden, why I was wondering if ‘blessings’ were nothing more than a carrot dangled in front of me to keep me coming early and behaving in a certain way, like the promise of loyalty points if I shopped consistently at a specific merchant store.

What the heck were these blessings? 

The worship session was drawing to a close and they were singing a song I did not know. So I sat in the back seat, suddenly feeling empty and confused. Then the singer began to sing the popular hymn, ‘When I survey the wondrous cross…’ and without really thinking about it, I had looked right up at our massive cross that was affixed on the wall behind the altar, facing the congregation – and it was right there that the horror began to unfold. 

                  To be continued...