Prayers to Broken Stones (12 page)

“That’s ridiculous,” managed Brother Freddy, forgetting the cameras, forgetting the audience, forgetting everything but the monstrous illogic—not to mention blasphemy—of what this crazy Italian had just said. “If that was … true,” cried Brother Freddy, “then the world … things … everything would be changing all the time.”

“Precisely,” smiled Vanni Fucci. His teeth looked small and white and very sharp.

“Then … well … Hell wouldn’t be the same either,” said Brother Freddy. “Dante wrote a long time ago. Three or four hundred years, at least …”

“He died in 1321,” said Vanni Fucci.

“Yeah … well … so …” concluded Brother Freddy.

Vanni Fucci shook his head. “You understand nothing. When an idea is strong enough, large enough,
comprehensive
enough to redefine the universe, it has tremendous staying power. It lasts until an equally powerful paradigm is formulated … and accepted by the popular imagination … to replace it. For instance, your Old Testament God lasted thousands of years before it … He … was actively redefined by a much more civilized if somewhat schizophrenic New Testament deity. Even the newer and weaker version has lasted fifteen hundred years or so before being on the verge of being sneezed out of existence by the allergy of modern science.”

Brother Freddy was certain he was going to have a stroke.

“But who has bothered to redefine Hell?” Vanni Fucci asked rhetorically. “The Germans came close in this century, but their visionaries were snuffed out before the new concept could take root in the mass mind. So we remain. Hell persists. Our eternal torments drag on with no more reason for existence than could be offered for your little toe or vermiform appendix.”

Brother Freddy realized that he might be dealing with a demon here. After almost forty years of preaching about
demons, teaching about demons, finding the spiritual footprints of demons in everything from rock music to FCC legislation, warning against demons being in the schools and kids’ games and in the symbols on breakfast cereal boxes, and generally making a fair-sized fortune by being one of the nation’s foremost experts on demons, Brother Freddy found it a bit disconcerting to be sitting three feet from someone who might very well be possessed by a demon if not actually
be
one. The closest he could recall to coming to one before this was when he was around the Reverend Jim Bakker’s wife Tammy Faye when her “shoppin’ demons were hoppin’ ” back before the couple’s unfortunate publicity.

Brother Freddy clutched the Bible in his left hand and raised his right hand in a powerfully curved claw over Vanni Fucci’s head. “I abjure thee, Satan!” he cried. “And all of the powers and dominions and servants of Satan … BE GONE from this place of God! In the name of JE-SUS I
command
thee! In the name of JE-SUS I
command
thee!”

“Oh, shut up,” said Vanni Fucci. He glanced at his gold wristwatch. “Look, let me get to the important part of all this. I don’t have too much time.”

As the Italian began to speak, Brother Freddy kept his pose with the raised hand and clutched Bible. After a minute his arm got tired and he lowered his hand. He did not release the Bible.

“My crime was political,” said Vanni Fucci, “even though that Short Eyes Florentine put me in the Bolgia reserved for thieves. Yes, yes, I
know
you don’t know what I’m talking about. In those days the political battles between we Blacks and the dogspittle Whites were of great importance—a third of Dante’s damned
Inferno
is filled with it—but I realize that today no one even knows what the parties were, any more than people seven hundred years from now will remember the Republicans or Democrats.

“In 1293 two friends and I stole the treasure of San Jacopo in the Duomo of San Zeno to help our political cause. The Duomo was a church. The treasure included a chalice. But I didn’t go to Dante’s Hell just because of one little robbery about as common then as knocking over a
convenience store today.
No.
I have prime billing in the Seventh Bolgia of the Eighth Circle because I was a Black and because Dante was a White and the unfairness of it all
pisses me off.
”

Brother Freddy closed his eyes.

Vanni Fucci said, “You’d think an eternity of wallowing in a trench of
merde
and hot embers would be enough revenge for the sickest S-M deity, but that’s not the half of it.” Vanni Fucci swiveled toward the Breakfast Club guests on the divan. “I admit it. I have a temper. When I get mad I give God the fig.”

Frank Flinsey, Reverend Deeters, and the Miracle Triplets looked blankly at Vanni Fucci.

“The fig,” repeated the Italian. He clenched his fist, ran his thumb out between his first and index fingers, and thrust it rapidly back and forth. Based on the mass intake of breath from the crowd, the symbol must have been clear enough. Vanni Fucci swiveled back toward Brother Freddy. “And then, of course, when I do that, every thief within a hundred yards—which is everyone
in
that goddamned Bolgia, of course—turns into reptiles …”

“Reptiles?” croaked Brother Freddy.

“Chelidrids, jaculi, phareans, cenchriads,
and
two-headed amphisbands,
that sort of thing,” confirmed Vanni Fucci. “Alighieri got
that
right. And then, of course, every one of these damned snakes attacks
me.
Naturally I burst into flame and scatter into a heap of smoking ashes and charred bone …”

Brother Freddy nodded attentively. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Sisters Donna Lou and Betty Jo helping the three Security men use a chair as a battering ram against the invisible barrier that kept them off the set. The barrier held.

“I mean,” said Vanni Fucci, leaning closer, “it’s not pleasant …”

Brother Freddy decided that when all of this was over he would take a little vacation at his religious retreat in the Bahamas.

“And being
Hell,
” continued Vanni Fucci, “the pieces, my pieces, don’t die, they just reassemble—which is the most painful part, let me tell you—and then, when I’m
back together, the
unfairness
of it all gets me so pissed off that … well, you can guess …”

“The fig?” guessed Brother Freddy and clapped a hand over his own mouth.

Vanni Fucci nodded dolorously, “Both hands,” he said, “And off we go again.” He looked directly into Camera One. “But that’s not the worst part.”

“No?” said Brother Freddy.

“No?” echoed the five Breakfast Club guests.

“Hell is a lot like a theme park,” said Vanni Fucci. “The management is always trying to improve the attractions, add a more effective touch to the entertainment. And can you guess what the Big Warden in the Sky has provided the last ten years or so to add to our torment?” The Italian’s voice had climbed the scale as his anger visibly grew.

Brother Freddy and the Breakfast guests vigorously shook their heads.

“BROTHER FREDDY’S HALLELUJAH BREAKFAST CLUB!” screamed Vanni Fucci, rising to his feet. “EIGHT TIMES A GODDAMNED DAY. 90-INCH SYLVANIA SUPERSCREENS EVERY TWENTY-FIVE FEET IN BOLGIA SEVEN!”

Brother Freddy pushed back in his chair as Vanni Fucci’s saliva spattered his desk top.

“I MEAN …” bellowed Vanni Fucci, his wide, glaring eyes fixed on something above the catwalks, “… IT’S ONE THING TO SPEND ALL OF ETERNITY BURNING IN HELL AND BEING RENT LIMB FROM LIMB EVERY FEW MINUTES BUT THIS … 
THIS
 …” He raised both arms skyward.

“No!” screamed Brother Freddy.

“No!” cried the Breakfast guests.

“THIS REALLY PISSES ME OFF!” bellowed Vanni Fucci and gave God the fig. Twice.

Things happened very quickly after that. To get the full effect, one has to play back the videotape in Extreme Slow Motion and even then the sequence of events can be confusing.

Brother Freddy went first. He doubled over the desk as if an Invisible Force were vigorously practicing the Heimlich
Maneuver on him, opened his mouth to scream only to find that three rows of long fangs there made that highly impractical, and then grew scales and a tail faster than one could say “born again.” The metamorphosis was so fast and the movement afterward was so quick that no one can say for sure, but most observers agree that the Reverend Brother Freddy looked a lot like a cross between a giant bullfrog and an orange python in the brief second before he—it—leaped across the desk with one thrash of its powerful tail and lashed itself around Vanni Fucci from crotch to throat.

Frank Flinsey turned into something altogether different; in less than a second the middle-aged Armageddon expert evolved into something resembling a six-armed newt with a jagged tail-stinger straight out of
Aliens.
The thing used its tail to plow a path through the carpet, floor, divan, and crushed velour to the hapless Vanni Fucci, where it joined the Brother Freddy python-thing in a full-fanged attack. Experts agreed that Flinsey was probably the
pharean
to Brother Freddy’s
chelidrid.

There was no doubt about Bubba Deeters transmogrification: the street preacher who had found God in a foxhole deliquesced like day-old fungi, reformed as a green-striped
amphisband
with a head at each end, and slithered toward Vanni Fucci to get in on the action.

The Miracle Triplets instantly changed into slimy, dart-shaped things which shot through the air, leaving contrails of green mucus, and embedded themselves deep in Vanni Fucci’s flesh. Scholars are certain that the Triplets had become what Dante and Lucan had described as
jaculi,
but most viewers of the videotape today merely refer to them as “the snot rockets.”

While these creatures threw themselves on Vanni Fucci in a roiling, writhing, snake-biting mass, there was more action on the set and elsewhere.

Brother Billy Bob had put his earphones back on just in time to turn into what a nearby cameraman later described as “… a thirteen-foot-long garter snake with leprosy.” A second cameraman, since relieved of his duties by the Born Again Ministries, was reported to have said, “I
didn’t see no change in Billy Bob. All them directors look the same to me.”

Sisters Donna Lou and Betty Jo fell to the ground only to slither onto the set a second later as two immense pink worms. Much has been written about the phallic symbolism inherent in this particular set of metamorphoses, but the irony was lost on the three security guards who emptied their service revolvers into the giant worms and then ran like hell.

The audience was not untouched. Vanni Fucci had said that all thieves within a hundred yards of his blasphemy traditionally were transformed. Out of 319 audience members present that morning 226 were unaccounted for the next day. The auditorium was filled with screams as those who stayed human watched their husbands or wives or parents or in-laws or the stranger next to them transform in a flash into snakes, fanged newt-things, legless toads, giant iguanas, four-armed boa constrictors, and the usual assortment of
chelidrids, jaculi, phareans, cenchriads,
and
amphisbands.
A University of Alabama study done a month after the incident showed that most of the thieves-turned-reptiles in the audience had been in sales, but other occupations included—lawyers (8), politicians (3), visiting ministers (31), psychiatrists (1), advertising executives (2), judges (4), medical doctors (4), stock market brokers (12), absentee landlords (7), accountants (3), and a car thief (1) who had ducked into the auditorium to get away from the Alabama Highway Patrol (2).

In less than ten seconds, Vanni Fucci was the center of a mass of scales and fangs representing every reptile-thing in the Bible Broadcast Center auditorium. The Italian struggled to get his hands free to get off another fig.

Brother Freddy sank its bullfrog-python
chelidrid
fangs deep into Vanni Fucci’s throat and the blasphemer burst into flame.

The studio filled with a stink of sulphur so strong that thousands of cable subscribers later swore that they could smell it at home.

The entire mass of reptiles exploded into flame along
with Vanni Fucci, disappearing with him in a napalmish, orange-green flash that left the vidicon tubes of the RCA computerized color cameras with a 40-second after-image.

The Hallelujah Breakfast Club set was suddenly empty except for the flaming wreckage of the divan, desk, and crushed velour chair. Overhead sprinklers came on and the “bay window” imploded with a shower of sparks and glass. The sunrise did not survive.

Later that night, the
Nightline
video replay drew a sixty-share. On the same show, Dr. Carl Sagan went on record with Ted Koppel as saying that the entire event could be attributed to natural causes.

That week Brother Freddy’s Hallelujah Breakfast Club Prayer Partners sent in Love Offerings totalling $23,267,894.79.

Except for the occasional Billy Graham Crusade, it set a new weekly record.

This is another story about televangelists.

Wait! Before you close the book or decide that my only form of recreation is harpooning this particular brand of helpless sea slug, let me explain.

Some time back, the award-winning writer Edward Bryant approached me about a project. It seems that a Colorado-based publication wanted four short-shorts for their Christmas edition. The publication was … you see it was a … well, it was a comic book catalogue. But a
good
comic book catalogue. Actually, it was much more than that, since it carried a book review column by Ed and a fine film-review section by the discerning critic Leanne C. Harper.

Anyway, four of us would do these Christmas short-shorts and Ed would write the framing tale. (A difficult task at the best of times.) There were no restrictions—except for length—and the fact that the story had to be about Christmas and had to include an “overlooked present.” The other writers were all members of the Colorado Mafia—Steve Rasnic Tem, Connie Willis, and Cynthia Felice. Cynthia had already suggested that her tale would be “upbeat,” so the rest of us were allowed to return to our crypts and release whatever demons waited there.