The Mormon Candidate - a Novel (59 page)

Chapter 58

The white slippers
had been
lost in the struggle, and a barefooted Ben reached the end of the hallway only to see the reception hall as peaceful as it had been before. Word had not arrived yet
of the violence that had bloodied
the fanciest office in the
t
emple
. H
e wished it was possible for him to cross the
reception hall and leave through
the main doors with the memory flash drive in his hand. But walking out
while dressed in
the white poncho would draw as much attention as dragging the bleeding Ghost across the marble floor.

Instead, he turned right and headed to the locker room, only to run into Pat, whose creased face seemed more bewildered than angry. “Brother Sampson! Where have you
been
?”

“I got lost,” Ben said breathlessly as he kept going. “It’s a big place.”

“The H
ouse of the Lord
is commensurate with His greatness
.” Pat kept up with him. “You need to change now
and come to the Creation Room
for the communal part of the endowment ceremony
.”

“Sure,” Ben said,
entering
locker room. “Creation Room next.”

“I’
ll wait for you here.
”

“Thank you
, Brother Pat
. God bless.”

As he pulled his stuff from the locker, Ben’s hands trembled and his panting was rapid.
There was blood on
his
arm and he wiped it off with the white poncho, which he tossed away.
He
got out of the sacred underpants and undershirt, which were
oily and wet
. He f
orced the white suit pants onto his sticky legs, buttoned down the dress shirt, and
slipped
the
white
tie
back on, tightening it around his neck. There was a dull ache in his shoulder, either from the old injury or from the
fresh wound that
had
replaced his beautiful tattoo
.

He unhooked the memory flash drive from the bloody Angel Moroni key ring, which he washed in a sink
, wiped thoroughly
to remove any fingerprints,
and
dropped
in a trash bin
. The
memory
flash drive went in his pocket, together with the keys to the GS.

With the unlaced white shoes on his bare feet, Ben left
the locker room
. H
e
i
gnore
d
Pat and head
ed
left toward the main exit, but as he
looked up,
through the flow of white-dressed men and women,
all the way at the other end,
he saw
the tall fig
ure of the Ghost
. She had a towel pressed to her face, but her eyes were focused.

Ben
turned and grabbed
Pat’s arm. “
Where’s the
Creation Room?”

They went down the hallway and entered a large hall
. It was
decorated with beautiful murals of glorious nature vistas, roaming wild beasts, and glowing angels. Men and woman sat separately
in rows of chairs on each side of the room
, all wearing white
clothes and shoes
.
All of them had ceremonial green belts and white hats draped over their arm
s, ready for the next part.
Ben pulled his from the plastic bag and did the same.
Some of the women were very young, dressed in mo
dest wedding gowns with no train
s. On a large screen up
front, a
movie was playing
,

Pat made him sit among the men
on the right side of the room.

Ben watch
ed
the door, trying not to be too conspicuous. Part of his mind absorbed the ongoing drama on the wall-sized screen. It was apparently the story of
the c
reation of the world according to Mormonism. There was
little
similarity to what he remember
ed from bible study.
To begin with, t
here were
many
g
ods
.
Elohim
was
the Father, and
Jehovah,
who was also called
Jesus
, was his physical son
. The third
g
od
,
Michael, later became Adam
and roamed the Garden
of Eden
with Eve
.

At this point, the me
n put on the green belt with the fig leaf dangling before their genital area, just like Adam did in the movie.

The chief
g
od, Elohim, asked
Eve—
as well as all the Mormon women seated on
the left side of the Creation Room—to make an absolute vow of obedience to their husbands.
The
women took the vow with loud voices, promising to abide by
t
he Law of Obedience
and serve their husbands unquestionably as the only way to achieve their own spiritual exaltation in this world and in the afterlife
.
The men
then followed up with a
vow to obey God
’s commands
as communicated through the
p
rophet,
s
eer, and
r
evelator
in Salt Lake City
and down
the line
through the Church leaders.

Next was a vow to sacrifice anything—even life itself
, yours or someone else
’
s
—
die or kill
in the defense of the True Church.
Ben was too shocked to recite the violent words. They seemed to belong in another era, or a different reality
, not in the contemporary American world that existed just outside the temple walls.

Brother
Pat
leaned over and
whispered, “
‘
That which is wrong under one circumstance may be, and often is, right under another, as God said:
“
You shall
not kill
”
and at another time H
e said:
“
Thou shall utterly destroy!
”’
Remember
who said that
?”

It was an easy guess.
Ben
whispered back,
“Joseph Smith, the true prophet of God.”

Brother Pat smiled approvingly and helped him put on the ceremonial hat. Everyone else did too, covering their heads with the puffed-
up cap
s
resembling chef
s
’ hats, yet
equipped with a strap and a clip to secure it to the collar and prevent it from falling to the floor.

Continuing the story on the screen,
many
g
ods
, who all appeared to be strapping
white
m
ales
like those surrounding Ben at the moment,
ruled their own
worlds
while procreating incessantly with their plural wives
. S
ouls in white
or
dark
skin
went
up and down, and Lucifer play
ed
a major role
opposite Jesus
. But it was hard for Ben to concentrate as the Ghost entered
the hall
, swathed in a white robe over her lanky figure,
a towel pressed to the side of her face,
and took a seat on the women’s side
of the room
.

Brother Pat turned to Ben and held out his hand. On the screen, Elohim instructed everyone to practice a special handshake
—The First Token of the Aaronic Pries
t
hood.
It was an elaborate maneuver, and Ben struggled to do it with the confidence of a
s
aint who had already done this before and was doing it today only as a charitable proxy for the soul of a dead Gentile.
There were other signs and tokens, which were intended to be
practiced
as
well so that
, when the great day came,
each
s
aint could
prove to the angels guarding the Celestial Kingdom that
he
ha
d
indeed achieved salvation through exaltation
in the True Gospel
of Joseph Smith
.

The next oath was to keep all these handshakes and hand
signs secret even at the price of life itself.
When Ben glanced over to the rear of the women’s section, the Ghost’s eyes were waiting for him
over the
white towel
she held to
her cheek.

The men passed first
into the next chamber: The Lone and Dreary World. The room was decorated to communicate a desolate, desert-like space, similar to the bleak world that awaited Adam upon his banishment from the Garden of Eden.
The women followed, e
veryone
now fully clothed in
white robes,
which
t
emple workers
passed around to those who had not brought their own. The
robes were heavy, giving a
sen
se
of being laden down with weights
.
A
second movie
started
play
ing
.

Now it was Satan’s time to play, and Ben absorbed little of the dramatic attempts
at
corruption occurring up on the screen while the Ghost
’s eyes drilled holes in
hi
s back
. But
he was probably safe until she found a way to attack him surreptitiously, and
he managed to follow the story enough to understand that Satan was trying to co
rrupt gullible men
by preaching to them
the main tenets of mainstream Christianity—that God was
one, that He was
without a physical body or earthy passions, that
H
e sat on a topless throne, that he was everywhere always but nowhere in particular,
that He was
big enough to fill the universe yet small enough to live in one’
s heart
—all of the
basic
elements
of faith held by Christians. But
then
came the message
that
Joseph Smith had received from Elohim the Father and Jesus the Jehovah in the First Vision, that all the Christian churches
were
false
abominations perpetrated by Satan, that
in truth
there were many g
ods, that the first
g
od—Elohim
the Father
—was a physical man living on
his own p
lanet with plural g
odly wives with whom he
was having regular intercourse and bege
t
ting
godly children
—among them Jesus the Jehovah and Lucifer the Satan
, and that He therefore was in one place, not everywhere, and of the same
physical
size as any
s
aint
in th
is
room.

Soon Satan was shooed away by John, James, and Peter,
the prophets sent by
Elohim
the Father
,
who
was
now
look
ing
like a
n elderly
Mormon man
. Upon departing, Satan declared about
“
these people,
”
that “
i
f they do no
t
walk up to every covenant they make at these altars this day, they will be in my power!”

An audible sigh of fear sounded in the room, which made Ben cough to hid
e
a burst of nervous laughter.