A Handicap of the Devil? (4 page)

"You were in your pre-hippie days when you made the choice. Now you'd no doubt choose the electric guitar."

"You can dress like this and still love classical music, man. You know
I
do.” God's tone was testy. “We haven't time for these eternal arguments. We only have a few minutes to decide whether or not we send this cat back, or whether we send him elsewhere."

Peter sulkily washed the dishes.

"You mean if you do decide not to send me back, I'm not certain to stay here?"

"Hey, I haven't let any cats come up here to groove for a couple of centuries."

"Everyone goes to hell?"

"Some do. Some we send elsewhere."

"Where is ‘elsewhere'?"

"That's not for you to know, man.” God sighed and looked tired, which was understandable since He was as old as time. “I gave the human race a miss yonks ago. All that strife! Wars, induced famines ... bloodshed everywhere."

"Isn't that down to you?"

God's roar echoed throughout the room, deafening Jonathan. He lost the jive talk when he was angry. “What do you think I am, omnipotent or something?” He ignored Peter sniggering in the background.

Peter was so highly amused, he dropped one of the plates he was washing. Fortunately it didn't break.

God glared at Jonathan. “Do you think I'm responsible for everything that goes wrong down there in your petty little world? Most of it has nothing to do with me."

Jonathan desperately tried to remember what little theology he had learned as a young man. It was a long time since he had been inside a church. “I thought you were...."

"Forget what you thought. Nothing is as it seems, and the teaching down there is a load of horse manure. I'm different things to different people. Call me what you will. I'm one and the same. Jehovah, God, Allah ... you name it. I'm the One. The Godhead. The supposedly all-powerful One.... But I gave the lot of you a miss centuries ago. You could twist anything to suit your stupid worldly political ends.... You all act like a bunch of lawyers. And the stories you tell, and the rewritings of the great books? No, don't get me started. I haven't got time right now."

"He could go on for eons.” Peter was serious.

God walked to a cupboard, opened the door, and with his back to Jonathan, took something out. When He turned, He held a large, heavy, black key in both hands. “Do you know what this is?"

"A key."

"Did you practice to become stupid, or did it come naturally? Of course it's a key, but what do you suppose the key does...? Not a clue, eh? It's the key with which I wound up the world—all those centuries ago—to start it. The world is winding down and will stop if I don't insert this key and wind it up again very soon.” God glared at Jonathan. “I won't, unless things change—and change radically—down there. Do you understand?"

Jonathan shifted uncomfortably on his chair under the intensity of God's brown-eyed gaze. “Yes, I understand."

"If it were up to you, would you insert the key and wind it...? Or would you let it stop?"

"Well, gosh, I don't know. I mean there are some very lovely things about the world."

"Name three."

"Well there's the ... err ... the...."

"Hard, isn't it?"

"Well, there's hot tea and well made toast. There are my bunnies, who are beautiful, gentle, little creatures. I wouldn't want to see them die because you didn't rewind the world."

"That's pretty weak, and it's only two."

Jonathan thought hard. “There's all the lovely children in the world. I wouldn't want to see them get hurt."

"Have you ever had children?"

"No."

"Do you know any teenagers?"

"No."

"You're grasping at straws. But anyway, you do seem to think your world is worth saving—for whatever reasons. Is that a fair summary of your position?"

"Well, yes."

God fixed Jonathan with his penetrating stare and flicked his hair back out of his eyes. “What I want to know is, do you want to go back?"

"Well, I don't know. I wasn't having much of a time of it, and if I'm dead, I might as well remain dead. I mean, if I go back, I've only got to go and die all over again sometime, and the next one might be painful."

"Ah ha! The world isn't so great that you particularly want to go back there. What about your Leporidae, hey?"

Jonathan was God's equal when it came to rabbit terminology. “Mrs. O'Reilly will look after them. She's a hard woman, and although she pretends not to, she really likes the bunnies."

God frowned. “In a nutshell, you'd rather not go back because your next death might be painful?"

"That's it."

"Don't be such a wimp. You only get one life ... and anyway, who says it's going to be such a bed of roses up here?"

"What will it be like? Can I see the alternative place you might send me to?"

"No you can't.... Here's the deal. I've decided to give the human race one more chance, and I need a messenger to try to straighten things out down there.” God looked down at his beads as he fiddled with them, then looked back to Jonathan. “Want the job?"

"I don't know. What do I have to do?"

"Go back down to Earth and carry my message. I'll give you all the help I can, and so will Pete. You will go down and become a ... a.... What's the word Peter?"

"A Messiah.” Peter began to clean out the fridge.

"That's it. A Messiah."

"Gee, I don't know. How do you be a Messiah?"

"Hey, it's a snap, man. You just need to pick up a few disciples, and the rest takes care of itself. Mass hysteria is a wonderful thing."

"I think maybe you've picked the wrong man. I don't have the charisma."

"I picked you for the very good reason that you're a meek and mild individual. Heck, you're one of the few who would've inherited the Earth—if I hadn't decided to give the lot of you a miss."

"I don't know. What a responsibility!"

"Take the job or go to hell."

"If you put it that way, I'll take the job. What do I have to...?"

The scene quickly dissolved to blackness in front of Jonathan's eyes. He came to on Earth in darkness—with something coarse pressing against his face. He listened as voices gradually seeped into his consciousness.

"Pity we couldn't save him. He might have been able to tell us what was going on around here.” It was a man's voice, and he sounded tired and irritable.

A female answered. “There were other people here, but where did they go?"

"They got out before we arrived.... Where the blazes is that ambulance to take away the stiff."

Cautiously, Jonathan lifted the blanket from his face and peered out. The policeman and woman stood in the doorway to the kitchen. Jonathan slowly stood up. Neither of them noticed him, so he walked out of the lounge and up the hallway. Outside, an ambulance—with lights flashing—was pulling to a stop. He saw a number of policemen, detectives and reporters standing in front of the house. All were looking at the ambulance as Jonathan came through the smashed door, and no one paid any attention to him.

He bumped into a female reporter in the half darkness. He saw her stumble and caught her before she fell. “Oh, sorry ... sorry. Thank you.” She did not reply. He walked swiftly down the street and around the corner.

Miraculously, a cab appeared. Jonathan hailed it and went home.

It had been a
big
evening.

Slowly, he folded the magazine and placed it carefully on his clean and clear desk. A slight breeze brought the scent of freshly cut grass through the window. Outside the window was a lush and beautiful golf course. The verdant green of the fairways shimmered in the sunlight, and the sky above was eggshell blue. His whole body twitched as he longed for the feel of a number one wood between his hands. In his imagination, he was on the first tee hitting a soaring drive straight down the fairway.

Soon, very soon. There is work to do first. I must be disciplined.

He pursed his lips and steepled his hands with the fingertips just under his nose. A smell of brimstone and rotten meat permeated the air around him. He came to a decision, picked up the red scrambler phone and punched a nine-digit number. Idly, he flipped over the pages of a magazine. It was the previous month's The World Bar Association Newsletter.

When a familiar voice answered, he uttered five words. “It's starting. Goodfellow. Plan A.” And he hung up.

In Adelaide, Jones P. Senior put down the phone. He stood by the desk in his study, thinking deeply. Slowly, smoke began to pour from his nostrils. His small, well-shaped ears grew and became pointed. A long tail with a spike on it grew through his suit and swished around. Black fur sprouted all over his body, and his eyes became red coals. He laughed an unearthly, eerie, horrible laugh.

"Not Goodfellow ... of all people!"

Senior turned on his computer and connected to the Internet, entered his e-mail address book and brought up the list marked ‘lawyers'.

"He is an evil little boy."

That's how Jones P. senior's headmaster described him the day his parents came to remove him from his exclusive boarding school. He had only lasted nine months before being expelled as undesirable. Some people are born bad, and others have badness thrust upon them. Jones P. senior was born that way.

Of course he wasn't called ‘senior’ in those days—there being no junior on the horizon for a number of years. Most of the boys at school called him ‘Percival', which was a good idea because that was his name. His circle of intimates—some of whom were expelled the same day as Jones P.—called him ‘Perce'. After Jones P. junior was born, he insisted on being addressed as Jones P. senior, and that his son should be called Jones P. junior.

Jones P. senior was born into a long line of lawyers, some more successful than others. His father had been a contracts lawyer and made his pile in the nineteen forties and fifties in the lush economic conditions of the ‘long boom', the lengthy period of fantastic economic growth that followed World War II. He had conveniently died in the early 1960's—shortly before the boom ended—leaving his fortune to his only son.

The will contained a proviso that Jones P. look after his mother for the rest of her life. Jones P. promptly swindled the old lady's house out from under her and put her in a nursing home to get rid of her. She was nowhere near old or infirm enough to be in a nursing home—being a hale and hearty sixty when she went in. She was so healthy the home balked, but Jones P. greased a few palms and had her admitted—whereupon she promptly lived to the ripe old age of ninety-four, just to spite him.

She knew that as long as she lived, he would have to pay for her upkeep.

Jones P. could have been a force for good, and that is what he should have been. From the very beginning, he had every advantage. Born into a wealthy family, he had the best of everything. The best schools and tutors for his weak spots. A well-stocked library at home. Parents who cared about his school grades. A family that moved in the best circles. They counted prime ministers, premiers, sports stars and artists as their friends.

Jones P. found the occult at an early age ... when he first went to boarding school.
The Black Circle Club
was the most secret society in the school, and he was initiated into it very soon after he arrived.

This came about after the president of the club observed him pulling the wings off flies and drowning them in his ink well—while stabbing them with the nib of his pen. “A very likely candidate,” the president told the other members of the society at their next meeting. They sounded out Jones P. and quickly made him a member.

It was all fairly innocent stuff. At the end of the school property—which included many acres of virgin bush—there was a large cave hidden in underbrush. This was the
Black Circle Club's headquarters where initiation rites were carried out—all of which were nasty and carnal and shall not be mentioned here.

One of the main functions of the club was to hold séances. The Ouija board was constantly in use in the dark and spooky candlelit cave. Before Jones P. came along, it was mostly fun. People pushed the glass around the board with their fingers while pretending not to. Once Jones P. arrived, the glass took off, and a number of incidents took place in the cave that frightened many years’ growth out of several of the participants.

Apparitions appeared. People and objects levitated. Weird, hollow laughter echoed throughout the cave. The glass moved across the board with a manic will of its own, and many times it leapt from the board and either smashed against a wall or gave one of the participants a nasty bruise. The glass began to direct their activities. Although Jones P. was a first-year, his influence was so strong that he was quickly made leader of the society. He got much better results than anyone else, and very soon the entire club went from being boys experimenting with something dark to dedicated Satanists practicing the black arts.

Several times each month, all members of the society went into a trance-like state from which they did not emerge for several hours. None of them ever remembered what they experienced while in the trance. They did not know that the Devil, being the master hypnotist he is, was busily instructing their subconscious minds. One of the things they were to reflect on often in later years, was that the boys in the cave who belonged to the Black Circle Club
all went on to study law. They also formed the nucleus of The Legal Rulers Society. All believed passionately in the forces of darkness and the inevitability of those forces conquering the world and ruling in its name. Every one of them intended to be there when the conquest took place and to be in a position of power after it had been completed.

The end for the club came suddenly on one summer's Sunday, when the boys were all under the spell of the longest trance of all. On that fateful Sunday afternoon, they were unconscious for so long none of them returned to the school in time for prayers before dinner. They were discovered missing at four forty-five p.m. when the roll was called at church parade. A wimpy little boy named Slattery gave the game away by having a quiet word in the sports master's ear straight after the parade. Slattery knew the whereabouts of the cave, because he had been there once to be initiated into the secret society. He had fled rather than face the bestial initiation rites.