The Night of the Parents by Christopher Suarez
CHAPTER SIX
The church turns out to be a small, grey clapboard church with a worn, weather-beaten steeple, more of a chapel than a church. The sign over the door reads “Our Lady Of Perpetual Mercy”. A Catholic church. We run up the steps. Jobie tries the doors and it turns out he was right. They are unlocked. Holding one door open as I hold the other, he raises his bat and enters. I enter behind him, followed by Madison, Taylor, and finally Lynda.
The vestibule of the church is dark but the interior is lit. I look through the window of one of the swinging inner doors and see a man dressed in black lying prostrate on the altar – the priest I assume. I can’t see anyone else but as soon as Jobie pushes open one of the swinging doors I hear the sound of two people sobbing – a man and a child.
We enter in the same order as before and make our way slowly to the front of the church, checking out each pew as we go. We don’t find anyone else until we get to the very first pew, right in front of the altar. There we find three really messed up kids curled up on the bench: an unconscious, deathly pale, curly-haired boy of about sixteen with blood soaked denim pants; a sobbing, chubby girl of about twelve with blood in her hair; and a skinny, apparently uninjured African American girl of perhaps eight who’s sucking her thumb and staring into space like a zombie.
“Damn,” Taylor mutters.
Calling Nine-One-One for them will be a waste of time. The priest should be our best bet for help, but he’s sobbing louder than the chubby girl.
“Father?” I ask timidly.
The priest doesn’t respond. I can’t see his face but from behind he appears to be a young priest. He’s lean, his black hair has no grey in it, and the backs of his hands are smooth and free of bulging veins.
“Father? Can you . . . I mean, are you okay?”
Again no answer.
“Great,” Jobie says sarcastically.
“We should see if we can lock the doors,” Madison suggests.
That comment finally evokes a response from the padre. “Don’t touch those doors!” he bellows, still prostrate. We all jump. “It’s Judgment Day! Suffer the children to come unto Him!”
Madison steps up onto the altar and glares down at the priest with undisguised contempt. “Yeah, well we have come unto Him but we can still use some help.” She points at the kids curled up in the first pew. “And so can they.”
The priest still doesn’t stand up. “Lord have mercy on us! Lord have mercy!” he cries.
“If the Lord really is running the show, something tells me he’s not in a very merciful mood tonight,” Madison taunts.
Despite everything that’s happened, Madison’s contempt for the priest makes me nervous. Even though I hardly ever go to church anymore, I’m technically still a Catholic. I have a lot of issues with the church, not the least of which is the child sex abuse scandal. And the fact that my dad goes to Mass every Sunday despite his meanness doesn’t help either. But I still believe in the basic teachings of The Church, and in God, so I never mouth off at priests and get tense whenever anyone does.
Jobie rests his bat on his shoulder and leans over the unconscious boy. “Father, I . . . I think this boy is dead.”
“Then kneel and thank God for his salvation.”
“Maybe we can revive him,” Lynda says, turning to me. “Do CPR!” She knows I took a first aid class in school once.
“There’s no point in doing CPR if I can’t treat his injuries, and I can’t. Besides, he looks like he’s been dead too long for CPR.”
The chubby girl sobs louder. Jobie turns away from the dead boy and looks down at the priest.
“Father, I really do think we should lock the doors. I know – “
“They were unlocked for you, weren’t they?”
“Yeah, they were. But – “
“In fact, you wouldn’t have come here tonight if you thought the doors were going to be locked, right?”
Jobie sighs. “Right. I guess it wouldn’t be fair to lock them now. But then again, if we did, I could always stand by them and open them for anyone who knocked.”
I guess Jobie had a religious upbringing too. That’s why he’s talking so respectfully to the prostrate, loony priest, instead of bombarding him with sarcasm and hostility.
Madison, on the other hand, must have been raised by atheists.
“Will you get up off the floor and do something for God’s sake!” she shouts, loud enough to shock the chubby girl into silence.
That does the trick. The priest slowly pushes himself up onto his knees and then, finally, rises to his feet. He turns to face us for the first time, and it turns out that he is a young priest, no older than thirty. And handsome. If he hadn’t chosen to be a priest he could have been an actor or a model.
“The only way I can help you,” he says solemnly, brushing off the front of his clerics, “is by convincing you to go home to your parents and let them kill you. The sooner you accept your fate, the better.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “You want us to just let ourselves get killed?”
“I don’t want you to,” the priest insists. “God wants you to. Don’t you see? He’s inviting all the innocents to join Him in Heaven. This world, this life, He’s leaving to those who are already corrupted beyond hope.”
“I thought the meek were supposed to inherit the earth, not the totally corrupt,” Madison counters.
“They will. The morally meek.”
I tap the base of the altar with my branch. “So if my dad comes in here and tries to kill me you won’t stop him? You’ll just let him kill me right here in God’s house?”
“Yeah. That’s right. After I counsel you first.”
“Counsel me?”
Out of the corner of my eye I see Taylor and Lynda sit down between the chubby girl and the catatonic African American girl. Lynda puts her hand on the catatonic girl’s shoulder and says something to her, but I can’t make out what she says. Taylor glances briefly at the chubby girl but doesn’t say a word to her. Instead, he sits back and closes his eyes.
“Well if you’re gonna leave the doors unlocked you better counsel me and my brother and sister now,” I tell the young priest. “Because any minute now my parents are gonna come barging in here.” The odds of that actually happening are pretty slim, of course, but I want to hear the priest’s words of wisdom.
“Mine too,” Madison lies. “So go on. Start counseling.”
The priest runs his hand through his hair and sighs. “Well let’s start with the big question: Do you kids believe in God?”
Madison and I answer simultaneously. “Yes,” I say. “No,” she says.
“How about you three?” he asks, looking from Jobie to Taylor to Lynda.
My siblings answer “Yes”. Jobie says “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
“Well there’s no point in counseling anyone who doesn’t believe, because if you don’t believe you’re not going to Heaven anyway.”
“Then I’m safe,” Madison snorts. “If kids are being killed because God wants all kids up in Heaven, and I’m not eligible for Heaven, then I won’t be killed.”
“Wait a minute,” Jobie says, turning to me with a withering look. “I thought we’re being killed because people have a built-in biological failsafe that stops them from destroying the planet.”
“That was just my theory,” I say angrily, wishing that I’d never shared it with him.
That’s when I hear the heavy outside doors open and close. I turn and see a short, stocky, bulldog-faced man standing in the vestibule, staring at us through the window of one of the swinging doors.
“Another soul for counseling,” Madison mutters.
The man hesitates a few seconds, then pushes open the swinging door and strides down the center aisle, checking each pew as he passes, just as we did.
Jobie immediately moves closer to the aisle. Taylor and Lynda stand up but stay put. The chubby girl resume
s her sobbing, while the catatonic girl just blinks.
The priest stands before the altar. “Can I help you my son?”
The man doesn’t answer. When he reaches the first pew he glances down at the dead boy and the two girls.
“I said, can I help you?”
“No. No you can’t,” the man answers calmly. He points at the chubby girl. “But she can.”
“In what way?”
The man approaches the chubby girl. I expect the priest to make a move and block his way, but he doesn’t. Madison does. At the same time Jobie moves in from the side and raises his bat to strike. I raise my branch.
“You know my daughter,” the man says. “You go to school with her. I’ve seen you talk to her.” He sounds just like June’s mother did a few hours ago. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” the chubby girl whimpers without opening her eyes.
“Yes you do.”
“Back off Mister,” I warn.
Jobie takes a step closer, his bat still raised. “Yeah. There’s three of us and one of you,” he says, understandably not including the priest as one of the girl’s defenders.
The man ignores us. “Just tell me where she is.”
“I can’t,” the chubby girl says. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, just her.”
“Why?” I ask him. “Why do you want to hurt your daughter?”
The man glares at me. “Because she has it coming.”
“Why? What did she do?”
“She was born.”
The priest nods. “And you want to do God’s will and send her to heaven.”
“Screw it,” Jobie says. He lunges forward and swings his bat, striking the man on his right arm just above the elbow. The man cries out in pain. Clutching his injured right arm with his left, he staggers forward. Despite his homicidal madness, I wince at the sight of his suffering. Then, ashamed of my weakness, I make an intimidating, slashing motion with my branch.
“Get out of here!” I shout.
Even though he approves of the day’s carnage, the priest is appalled by Jobie’s attack. “How dare you hurt that man! He’s just doing what he has to do, the same as my brother!”
“You get out too!” Jobie shouts.
“What did you say to me?”
“I said get out!”
“This is my church!”
Not willing to risk any further injury, the bulldog-faced man staggers back towards the center aisle.
“I’m sorry,” the priest tells him. “You came here for inspiration and courage, not abuse. I’ve failed you. I should have taken the bat away from the boy.” He tries to walk alongside the man but the man is in no mood for companionship.
“Get lost!”
We all watch as the bulldog-faced man slowly makes his way up the aisle and through one of the swinging doors. As soon as we hear the heavy outer door close behind him we all turn on the priest.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” Madison shouts.
“You and your two friends have just driven a good man from a house of God!” the priest counters. “You’re going to pay for that in the next life!”
“Screw you!” Jobie shouts.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Hold on. What was that you said before about your brother?”
“I said that man was just doing what he had to do, like my brother.”
“Your brother wants to kill his kids too?”
“No, my brother has killed his kids. I was there at the house when he heard God’s word. One moment he was just sitting there at the kitchen table, peeling an apple. The next he was stabbing my niece and nephew to death with his paring knife.”
Lynda cringes. “Jesus.”
“At first I didn’t understand. I thought he’d gone mad. But when I couldn’t get through to Nine-One-One I ran outside to get help and saw his neighbors chasing down and killing their children. That’s when I realized the truth. My brother wasn’t mad. He was divinely inspired, like all the other parents tonight. God’s calling his children home.”
Now I know what drove the young priest over the edge. I feel sorry for him, but my sympathy doesn’t change the fact that he’s insane now. And dangerous. He’s definitely not going to let Jobie kick him out of his own church. No priest would. So we have to go. But to where? And what about the two messed up girls?
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I tell the priest. “Look, you don’t have to go. We’ll – “
“I know I don’t have to go.”
“We’ll go. Come on guys.”
“Where are we going?” Lynda asks calmly.
I turn to Jobie. “Jobie’s place. That is, if his mom won’t mind.”
“She won’t,” Jobie says, a slight smirk on his face.
“Wait a minute. Your mom’s gonna be there?” Madison asks.
“In body, not in mind.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s long past her sober time.”
“That doesn’t mean she’ll be safe to be around.”
“I can handle her.”
Madison sighs. “Shit.”
“I’m not going out there,” the chubby girl blubbers before I can even ask her to join us. That takes care of her. As for the other girl, carrying her to our next destination is definitely out of the question.
“She’s gonna have to stay here too,” I tell Jobie and Madison, nodding towards the catatonic girl. “Carrying her will slow us down, and we’ll just end up having to dump her somewhere if we get attacked.”
“I know,” Madison says. She squeezes the catatonic girl’s shoulder. “Sorry.”
We all join up in the center aisle. As we walk out I glance back at the young priest.
“Good luck,” I say.
“You’re rejecting His invitation,” he accuses us. “You’re saying no to paradise. I can’t even say ‘God help you’ because He won’t.
“Whatever.”
We exit God’s house.
The church turns out to be a small, grey clapboard church with a worn, weather-beaten steeple, more of a chapel than a church. The sign over the door reads “Our Lady Of Perpetual Mercy”. A Catholic church. We run up the steps. Jobie tries the doors and it turns out he was right. They are unlocked. Holding one door open as I hold the other, he raises his bat and enters. I enter behind him, followed by Madison, Taylor, and finally Lynda.
The vestibule of the church is dark but the interior is lit. I look through the window of one of the swinging inner doors and see a man dressed in black lying prostrate on the altar – the priest I assume. I can’t see anyone else but as soon as Jobie pushes open one of the swinging doors I hear the sound of two people sobbing – a man and a child.
We enter in the same order as before and make our way slowly to the front of the church, checking out each pew as we go. We don’t find anyone else until we get to the very first pew, right in front of the altar. There we find three really messed up kids curled up on the bench: an unconscious, deathly pale, curly-haired boy of about sixteen with blood soaked denim pants; a sobbing, chubby girl of about twelve with blood in her hair; and a skinny, apparently uninjured African American girl of perhaps eight who’s sucking her thumb and staring into space like a zombie.
“Damn,” Taylor mutters.
Calling Nine-One-One for them will be a waste of time. The priest should be our best bet for help, but he’s sobbing louder than the chubby girl.
“Father?” I ask timidly.
The priest doesn’t respond. I can’t see his face but from behind he appears to be a young priest. He’s lean, his black hair has no grey in it, and the backs of his hands are smooth and free of bulging veins.
“Father? Can you . . . I mean, are you okay?”
Again no answer.
“Great,” Jobie says sarcastically.
“We should see if we can lock the doors,” Madison suggests.
That comment finally evokes a response from the padre. “Don’t touch those doors!” he bellows, still prostrate. We all jump. “It’s Judgment Day! Suffer the children to come unto Him!”
Madison steps up onto the altar and glares down at the priest with undisguised contempt. “Yeah, well we have come unto Him but we can still use some help.” She points at the kids curled up in the first pew. “And so can they.”
The priest still doesn’t stand up. “Lord have mercy on us! Lord have mercy!” he cries.
“If the Lord really is running the show, something tells me he’s not in a very merciful mood tonight,” Madison taunts.
Despite everything that’s happened, Madison’s contempt for the priest makes me nervous. Even though I hardly ever go to church anymore, I’m technically still a Catholic. I have a lot of issues with the church, not the least of which is the child sex abuse scandal. And the fact that my dad goes to Mass every Sunday despite his meanness doesn’t help either. But I still believe in the basic teachings of The Church, and in God, so I never mouth off at priests and get tense whenever anyone does.
Jobie rests his bat on his shoulder and leans over the unconscious boy. “Father, I . . . I think this boy is dead.”
“Then kneel and thank God for his salvation.”
“Maybe we can revive him,” Lynda says, turning to me. “Do CPR!” She knows I took a first aid class in school once.
“There’s no point in doing CPR if I can’t treat his injuries, and I can’t. Besides, he looks like he’s been dead too long for CPR.”
The chubby girl sobs louder. Jobie turns away from the dead boy and looks down at the priest.
“Father, I really do think we should lock the doors. I know – “
“They were unlocked for you, weren’t they?”
“Yeah, they were. But – “
“In fact, you wouldn’t have come here tonight if you thought the doors were going to be locked, right?”
Jobie sighs. “Right. I guess it wouldn’t be fair to lock them now. But then again, if we did, I could always stand by them and open them for anyone who knocked.”
I guess Jobie had a religious upbringing too. That’s why he’s talking so respectfully to the prostrate, loony priest, instead of bombarding him with sarcasm and hostility.
Madison, on the other hand, must have been raised by atheists.
“Will you get up off the floor and do something for God’s sake!” she shouts, loud enough to shock the chubby girl into silence.
That does the trick. The priest slowly pushes himself up onto his knees and then, finally, rises to his feet. He turns to face us for the first time, and it turns out that he is a young priest, no older than thirty. And handsome. If he hadn’t chosen to be a priest he could have been an actor or a model.
“The only way I can help you,” he says solemnly, brushing off the front of his clerics, “is by convincing you to go home to your parents and let them kill you. The sooner you accept your fate, the better.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “You want us to just let ourselves get killed?”
“I don’t want you to,” the priest insists. “God wants you to. Don’t you see? He’s inviting all the innocents to join Him in Heaven. This world, this life, He’s leaving to those who are already corrupted beyond hope.”
“I thought the meek were supposed to inherit the earth, not the totally corrupt,” Madison counters.
“They will. The morally meek.”
I tap the base of the altar with my branch. “So if my dad comes in here and tries to kill me you won’t stop him? You’ll just let him kill me right here in God’s house?”
“Yeah. That’s right. After I counsel you first.”
“Counsel me?”
Out of the corner of my eye I see Taylor and Lynda sit down between the chubby girl and the catatonic African American girl. Lynda puts her hand on the catatonic girl’s shoulder and says something to her, but I can’t make out what she says. Taylor glances briefly at the chubby girl but doesn’t say a word to her. Instead, he sits back and closes his eyes.
“Well if you’re gonna leave the doors unlocked you better counsel me and my brother and sister now,” I tell the young priest. “Because any minute now my parents are gonna come barging in here.” The odds of that actually happening are pretty slim, of course, but I want to hear the priest’s words of wisdom.
“Mine too,” Madison lies. “So go on. Start counseling.”
The priest runs his hand through his hair and sighs. “Well let’s start with the big question: Do you kids believe in God?”
Madison and I answer simultaneously. “Yes,” I say. “No,” she says.
“How about you three?” he asks, looking from Jobie to Taylor to Lynda.
My siblings answer “Yes”. Jobie says “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
“Well there’s no point in counseling anyone who doesn’t believe, because if you don’t believe you’re not going to Heaven anyway.”
“Then I’m safe,” Madison snorts. “If kids are being killed because God wants all kids up in Heaven, and I’m not eligible for Heaven, then I won’t be killed.”
“Wait a minute,” Jobie says, turning to me with a withering look. “I thought we’re being killed because people have a built-in biological failsafe that stops them from destroying the planet.”
“That was just my theory,” I say angrily, wishing that I’d never shared it with him.
That’s when I hear the heavy outside doors open and close. I turn and see a short, stocky, bulldog-faced man standing in the vestibule, staring at us through the window of one of the swinging doors.
“Another soul for counseling,” Madison mutters.
The man hesitates a few seconds, then pushes open the swinging door and strides down the center aisle, checking each pew as he passes, just as we did.
Jobie immediately moves closer to the aisle. Taylor and Lynda stand up but stay put. The chubby girl resume
The priest stands before the altar. “Can I help you my son?”
The man doesn’t answer. When he reaches the first pew he glances down at the dead boy and the two girls.
“I said, can I help you?”
“No. No you can’t,” the man answers calmly. He points at the chubby girl. “But she can.”
“In what way?”
The man approaches the chubby girl. I expect the priest to make a move and block his way, but he doesn’t. Madison does. At the same time Jobie moves in from the side and raises his bat to strike. I raise my branch.
“You know my daughter,” the man says. “You go to school with her. I’ve seen you talk to her.” He sounds just like June’s mother did a few hours ago. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” the chubby girl whimpers without opening her eyes.
“Yes you do.”
“Back off Mister,” I warn.
Jobie takes a step closer, his bat still raised. “Yeah. There’s three of us and one of you,” he says, understandably not including the priest as one of the girl’s defenders.
The man ignores us. “Just tell me where she is.”
“I can’t,” the chubby girl says. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, just her.”
“Why?” I ask him. “Why do you want to hurt your daughter?”
The man glares at me. “Because she has it coming.”
“Why? What did she do?”
“She was born.”
The priest nods. “And you want to do God’s will and send her to heaven.”
“Screw it,” Jobie says. He lunges forward and swings his bat, striking the man on his right arm just above the elbow. The man cries out in pain. Clutching his injured right arm with his left, he staggers forward. Despite his homicidal madness, I wince at the sight of his suffering. Then, ashamed of my weakness, I make an intimidating, slashing motion with my branch.
“Get out of here!” I shout.
Even though he approves of the day’s carnage, the priest is appalled by Jobie’s attack. “How dare you hurt that man! He’s just doing what he has to do, the same as my brother!”
“You get out too!” Jobie shouts.
“What did you say to me?”
“I said get out!”
“This is my church!”
Not willing to risk any further injury, the bulldog-faced man staggers back towards the center aisle.
“I’m sorry,” the priest tells him. “You came here for inspiration and courage, not abuse. I’ve failed you. I should have taken the bat away from the boy.” He tries to walk alongside the man but the man is in no mood for companionship.
“Get lost!”
We all watch as the bulldog-faced man slowly makes his way up the aisle and through one of the swinging doors. As soon as we hear the heavy outer door close behind him we all turn on the priest.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” Madison shouts.
“You and your two friends have just driven a good man from a house of God!” the priest counters. “You’re going to pay for that in the next life!”
“Screw you!” Jobie shouts.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Hold on. What was that you said before about your brother?”
“I said that man was just doing what he had to do, like my brother.”
“Your brother wants to kill his kids too?”
“No, my brother has killed his kids. I was there at the house when he heard God’s word. One moment he was just sitting there at the kitchen table, peeling an apple. The next he was stabbing my niece and nephew to death with his paring knife.”
Lynda cringes. “Jesus.”
“At first I didn’t understand. I thought he’d gone mad. But when I couldn’t get through to Nine-One-One I ran outside to get help and saw his neighbors chasing down and killing their children. That’s when I realized the truth. My brother wasn’t mad. He was divinely inspired, like all the other parents tonight. God’s calling his children home.”
Now I know what drove the young priest over the edge. I feel sorry for him, but my sympathy doesn’t change the fact that he’s insane now. And dangerous. He’s definitely not going to let Jobie kick him out of his own church. No priest would. So we have to go. But to where? And what about the two messed up girls?
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I tell the priest. “Look, you don’t have to go. We’ll – “
“I know I don’t have to go.”
“We’ll go. Come on guys.”
“Where are we going?” Lynda asks calmly.
I turn to Jobie. “Jobie’s place. That is, if his mom won’t mind.”
“She won’t,” Jobie says, a slight smirk on his face.
“Wait a minute. Your mom’s gonna be there?” Madison asks.
“In body, not in mind.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s long past her sober time.”
“That doesn’t mean she’ll be safe to be around.”
“I can handle her.”
Madison sighs. “Shit.”
“I’m not going out there,” the chubby girl blubbers before I can even ask her to join us. That takes care of her. As for the other girl, carrying her to our next destination is definitely out of the question.
“She’s gonna have to stay here too,” I tell Jobie and Madison, nodding towards the catatonic girl. “Carrying her will slow us down, and we’ll just end up having to dump her somewhere if we get attacked.”
“I know,” Madison says. She squeezes the catatonic girl’s shoulder. “Sorry.”
We all join up in the center aisle. As we walk out I glance back at the young priest.
“Good luck,” I say.
“You’re rejecting His invitation,” he accuses us. “You’re saying no to paradise. I can’t even say ‘God help you’ because He won’t.
“Whatever.”
We exit God’s house.