Absence of Faith (13 page)

"I didn't do it, sir. Let me
explain," Carson said.

After he explained the events,
Stokes opened a lower drawer in his desk and produced a bottle of
Jack Daniels.

"I didn't think you'd do something
as foolish as this," Stokes said. "We’ll have to issue a press
release right away discrediting that reporter. Get two paper cups
from that water cooler, would you, Carson? This is the right
medicine for times like these."

"Sure. I didn't think you drank at
all," Carson said.

"Come on. Religion is good for the
soul and the spirit, but this is good for the body...in moderation,
of course," Stokes said.

"Of course." Carson
smiled.

"Stick around. I want you to talk
to public relations so we can put out a press release right away,"
Stokes said. "Then I have to take care of the people in the lobby.
It's a mess down there."

"You're kidding? I thought the
phones were the only problem."

"No, see for yourself. If it
weren't for that quote by the preacher, none of this would have
happened. The fool told the reporter that he believed people were
going to hell," Stokes said. "That's all it took. You know how
these people are in this town. They would believe a preacher before
you or me."

"I'll bet he never said that. She
just twisted it around like she did with us," Carson
added.

"You're probably right, Carson," he
said. "But that doesn't change things. We still look like
idiots."

Stokes called the public relations
office and a young woman with a note pad arrived several minutes
later. Stokes spoke and she took notes. The young woman asked a few
questions, then left. Stokes and Carson then went to the lobby.
When they arrived, the lobby was filled with a crowd of boisterous
senior citizens milling about in the lounge area.

"Ladies and gentlemen, may I have
your attention? May I have your attention?" Stokes yelled over the
noise.

The crowd settled down.

"You are all aware of the story
that appeared in today's Sentinel. Well, let me assure you we did
not make any official statements to the press regarding a Hellfire
disease or any disease for that matter."

"Are you telling us the newspaper's
lying?" a man leaning on a cane yelled from the crowd.

"Yes and no, Mr. Roberts. What I'm
saying is that there is some kind of disease - very rare that
causes these effects, but in no way do we have any evidence,
medical or whatsoever, that proves beyond a doubt that the victims
went to hell and came back. There is a medical reason for the
symptoms - not a religious one," Stokes explained.

"What about the preacher who said
it's true?" a tiny, wrinkled woman shouted from the
crowd.

"What preacher? Here's a copy of
the article and it says a church official made that statement not a
preacher. A church official could be an assistant. It could even be
one of the choir members or a janitor who happened to be there at
the time when the reporter called. No one that we know of is quoted
in the story. There are no names. As far as I'm concerned and this
hospital, the story cannot be confirmed," Stokes said. "It's just
another effort at sensationalism."

Several people in the crowd
laughed.

"Come on, Jerry. I told you this
was a hoax," a tall, lanky man said. "Did you really believe that
someone could go to hell and come back? Come on let's go home. This
was a waste of time."

"Yeah," another voice came out of
the crowd. "I could have finished my laundry."

"Well, I don't know," Jerry said.
"I've always thought that what the newspapers printed was
true."

"When are you going to grow up,
Jerry? Come on let's go home," said another man.

The crowd slowly dispersed and the
lobby emptied out.

"That was easier than I thought.
Let's hope it stays that way," Stokes said.

"We should call you spin doctor,"
Carson replied. "You defused that story in a split second. That was
brilliant."

"All in a day's work. Let's go back
to my office. I have some information for you."

"You mean the cooked man?" Carson
asked.

"That's the one."

G
ary left
the fifth floor of Bayside Medical Center with his stomach
squirming. He couldn't get in touch with Julie after leaving
several messages at the newspaper and on her cell phone. Gary
wondered how she could do this to him - after all, they were
engaged to be married, and now the most important person in his
life was avoiding him. He was more sad than angry because he knew
in his heart this was the beginning of the end. When he reached the
hospital lobby, he pulled out his cell phone and made another call
to Julie. The phone rang and rang until the call was forwarded to
her voicemail.

"Julie! If you don't call me, we're
through!" he shouted into the phone surprised at what he had said.
He slammed the phone shut and drove to her apartment. He walked up
to the tiny porch, rang the bell, and waited. Nothing. He rang it
again and again. Frustrated, he returned to his car and waited.
About two hours later, Julie pulled up, and Gary rushed towards the
car.

"Why did you print that story!" he
yelled, his face flushed and his eyes on fire.

Her neutral expression turned to
one of agony as she looked up at Gary's wild face. Within seconds,
her face relaxed again. Gary gripped the edges of the door as if he
were hanging on for life...for their relationship.

"I'm just doing my job. Do you
think I want to work for the Sentinel for the rest of my life? I'm
going places," she said calmly. Her face was a sheath of
ice.

"That's right, and I'm not going
with you! You've showed me your true colors! I want the ring back!
I've had it with you!" he shouted back.

"It's in the mail," she replied
sternly. "And stop calling me...you're using up my minutes on my
phone every time I have to retrieve my voicemail. I could miss
important calls."

Gary's face flushed again and his
eyes burned white hot.

"You're a real bitch! Go to hell!"
he yelled and walked off.

Julie flipped her hand to wave him
off and pretended he was no longer there. Gary sped off. Seconds
later he slammed on his brakes realizing he almost ran a red light.
He quickly backed up and waited for the light to change. He wiped
his eyes so he could see more clearly.

Julie whipped her purse onto her
sofa as she entered her living room.

"He called me a bitch! What a
bastard!" she said aloud to the empty room. "I'll fix
him!"

She opened the refrigerator, and
grabbed a paper-wrapped sub sandwich, and then she picked up her
purse, and left for the newspaper office. When she entered, the
dark air smelled of burnt coffee and microwave popcorn. She went to
her desk, turned on her computer and waited for the machine to boot
up. She moved the pointer with her mouse and clicked twice on an
icon on the screen named, "Hellfire Syndrome." She quickly edited
the story. She opened the email program and attached the story.
Then she wrote,

Hi Jacob, I really have a scoop
this time. You can be the first to run it. Just make sure my byline
is on the story.

Thanks, Julie

She waited several minutes and then
picked up the phone.

"Hello, Associated Press, Newark
Bureau," the burly voice said.

"Hi, this is Julie Watson. Is Jacob
Schwartz there?" she said.

She un-wrapped the oil-stained,
white paper covering the sub and looked at the hardened
bread.

"Hold on. Let me check," the man
said.

She listened to the silence in the
phone and tapped her fingers.

"No, he just left. Do you want to
leave a message?"

"Yeah. Tell him to check his email.
I just sent him a story that I think he would like to run," she
said. "He has my cell number if he needs to call me. He can call me
anytime."

"Your name again?"

"Julie Watson."

Julie hung up the phone and sat
back in the darkness. The white glow from the computer screen lit
her face with a spectral gray light. She took a bite from her sub -
it was her first meal since breakfast. The lids of her eyes closed
slightly and her eyes rolled in pleasure.

L
inda
shivered from the cold rain that seemed to permeate through her
clothes as they approached the tall oak double doors of the Ocean
Village Methodist Church.

"I guess that story really scared a
lot of people," Carson said, opening the thick, heavy door to the
one hundred-year-old church.

"Oh, yeah, I've never seen it so
crowded."

"Me neither."

Linda and Carson moved through the
crowd to get a better view. They stopped at a row of beige metal
folding chairs.

"They had to bring the folding
chairs out of the rec room," an elderly man with a large nose and
leathery face told them as they stood near the chairs. His eyes
seemed to be peering out through a mask as he stared at them in a
funny way.

A few minutes later, the crowd
became silent and Pastor James Millard entered the room and stepped
up to the pulpit with a smile.

"Good morning. I see we have many
of our friends here today that we haven't seen in a while. Well, I
hope you are all feeling well, and can join us regularly. Today, I
want to talk about a particular story I read in the newspaper this
week about the rise of Satanism and a particular incident that
occurred at the hospital involving what I call a peculiar disease -
a disease I call Satan's disease. It's another one of his
temptations to see how loyal you are to God and your faith. It's a
way to sway you to have doubts about your faith in the hopes that
you will leave our church and join his. Should we conclude that sin
and Satan actually control the world? Satan would like you to
believe that he controls the world so you will fear him. He made
that boast to Christ in Luke 4:6. However, Satan is the father of
lies and must not be believed. Some dear believers have concurred
with Satan's claim, which is most dishonoring to Christ. It is true
that Satan is far superior in strength and wisdom than man, but it
is also true that God has granted him a degree of influence over
wicked men and institutions. Satan is not independent of God. There
is only one absolute Sovereign in the universe and that is God,
according to Dan 4:34-35," the pastor explained. He raised a small
glass of water to his lips and drank.

"The Christian journey is like a
walk of faith. It requires that we put our faith in the Lord. We
don't know what the future holds, but we do know we have a God we
can trust who will be with us every step of the way. By knowing
that God is with us, we can walk by faith and not by sight alone.
The root of most of our problems is original sin - lack of faith.
When we place ourselves at the center, we fall and we are
miserable. When we allow God to be the center we find the joy
described in Revelation 7:17.

We've also been content to allow
people to stop with only a second-grade Christian education, and
then we wonder why their lives are spiritually empty and they are
unable to stand up to a crisis in life. We're teaching a faith that
lives with integrity that is taught with credibility and relevance.
I want us to start teaching the biblical story so that it is
relevant to our modern lives, important to us and credible. I want
it to be understood by our children and ourselves so that it
determines the way we see the world and how we live our lives. We
need to make our beliefs more relevant to modern living, and I want
all of you to help. We are all God's children. You have nothing to
worry about if your faith is strong. Good reigns over evil, but
sometimes it seems that evil is stronger and this is hard to
accept. It is only another test of our faith and its strength. The
weak will fall into the clutches of Satan, while the strong, the
faithful, the true believers go on forever with our Father in
heaven," the pastor explained.

He looked down at his bible, and
then raised the glass again to his lips. He looked out over the
congregation, rows of heads anxiously waiting for him to say
more.

"'Go ye therefore and teach all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son
and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo I am with you always even
unto the end of the world,' from Matthew 28:19-20. Now I would like
to hear what you think about this," Pastor Millard said.

A bald man with gold wire-rimmed
glasses raised his hand. His white, wrinkled hand shook
nervously.

"Yes, Mr. Whitehead," the pastor
said.

"How do you explain my wife's
burned skin? She swears she's being punished and was sent to hell,"
Homer explained.

"I don't think she went to Satan's
home. The symptoms have to do with something medical. The
experience she had was probably a reaction of some sort to the
accident. The mind works in strange ways," Pastor Millard
explained. "But these symptoms whatever they are, have given Satan
an excellent opportunity to doubt our beliefs."