2013: Beyond Armageddon Page 4

  “I know I look horrible, son, but I’m not contagious. Come over here and sit down.” He indicated a small frayed couch beside his chair.

  Snapped out of his daze by the wheezing voice, Zeke haltingly advanced to the couch, appalled at the beer cans and cigarette butts, the dirty laundry and dishes, the squalor that was everywhere. Professor Connolly was a smoker, and had a fondness for beer, but—this. The reek of stale tobacco and beer hung in the air. Everything about the scene screamed: here is a man who does not want to live.

  Zeke sat and groped for something to say. “We know each other too well for me to say something phony like ‘how are you?’ I can see how you are. Awful. What’s happened?”

  “I’m dying, Ezekiel. I know that’s obvious. I’ve probably got a month at most. The doctors have said maybe six, but they’re wrong. A month. No more. I doubt seriously it will be that long.” He caught Zeke frowning at the beer cans and cigarettes. “Bad habits,” he wheezed. “I’ve always been too afraid to stop them.”

  Afraid? Zeke puzzled over the word choice, but his friend went on.

  “I’ve been an alcoholic since 1947. All these years I’ve used alcohol to keep from thinking about a horrible secret I’ve kept hidden from the world. To keep from thinking about what a coward I am for never having done anything. Of course the alcohol couldn’t kill the secret. All it has done is kill me. With a little help from the cigarettes. Coffin nails, I’ve heard them called. How apt.”

  A feeble smile at his gallows humor only resulted in a wizened puckering of his mouth, which made the grotesque scene all the more unnerving.

  “What is this ‘secret’?” Zeke asked over the professor’s labored breathing.

  “I must tell someone, Ezekiel. You are the only person I have ever known who possesses the physical and moral strength to deal with this. Time is running out for me. This knowledge must be given to someone before I die.” He leaned closer. “I have chosen you.”

  He let loose a series of gasping coughs. It seemed very possible that the old man could die tonight. He needed medical help, fast.

  “Dr. Connolly, Washington Hospital Center is right up the road. Why don’t you let me take you there, so we can get you fixed up. Then you can tell me what you want to tell me.”

  “No!” Zeke recoiled from the sudden force of the word. “No hospital, no doctors, Ezekiel. This must be done now. I have much to tell you and not much time. After that—believe me—it will not matter if I die. Please.”

  Fearful of upsetting him further, Zeke nodded. The scene had taken on a surrealistic air, as if the entire universe had ceased to exist except for these two men, grimly staring at each other in the sickly pool of yellow lamplight. Beyond that light, all was silence and nothingness.

  The old man feebly motioned toward the only closet in the small efficiency. “On the shelf there is a clay jar. Please bring it here. And be very, very gentle with it. It is extremely old and fragile. Like me.” His lips withdrew in a ghastly smile.

  Zeke peered into the shadows. Gradually he made out an upright shape. Cradling it carefully, he leaned to hand it to Dr. Connolly.

  “No, no,” he said. “I am too weak. I might drop it. You take care of it, Ezekiel.”

  He placed the jar near the door so it would be out of the way. That far from the light, it loomed like a shadowy sentinel.

  Despite the grim situation, Zeke felt a moment of inner amusement at Dr. Connolly’s never failing to call him Ezekiel. No one else ever had, not even his parents. As a theologian, the professor thought the full Biblical name much more distinguished. Surely, he’d always said, that’s why his parents gave it to him—because of the Biblical power it evoked. The professor had never accepted the utterly un-Biblical reason for his name: his father named him after his favorite NFL quarterback, Zeke Bratkowski. The choice turned out perfectly when Zeke grew up to have a rocket arm and quarterbacked his high school team to a championship his senior year. The final irony came when Zeke looked up Zeke Bratkowski years later. His name wasn’t Ezekiel. It was Edmund Raymond.

  The sharp claws of the old man’s voice tore through his reflection as the dying Professor of Theology began his unholy tale.

  CHAPTER 6

  “I used to be a priest. Did you know that, Ezekiel?”

  The revelation stunned him, but instantly he remembered how the professor had always spoken on the topic of God with such assurance. One of the courses Zeke had taken from him had indeed been called “The Philosophy of God.” Many questions sprang to mind, but Zeke didn’t want him to waste any of his waning strength on explanations that didn’t matter, so he merely shook his head.

  “In 1947. I was twenty-four, a so-called genius in languages. The best interpreter of ancient manuscripts the Catholic Church had. The best in the world, really. It was uncanny. I have—had—a photographic memory, so I was able to remember every character and symbol from all the ancient writing systems. I could decipher in minutes what it took others months, even years, to figure out.

  “The Qumran Scrolls were just coming to light. Dead Sea Scrolls, they’re called now. Rumors were flying that Biblical manuscripts were being discovered. The Vatican quickly decided they needed to procure what they could. These were documents that formed the very core of the Christian faith. The Bible itself. So they sent their two best paleographers to Jerusalem, with the full resources of the Church available for any negotiations. Word quickly got out that we were good men to see if anyone had anything old with writing on it. Even though the country was on the verge of war, I was full of blind, stupid ambition then, glad for the chance of a career-making opportunity.”

  He stared toward the shape by the door with a lifetime of regret. “Until I got my hands on that jar.” A short cough escaped. “One horrible decision in my life has led me to this end.” He coughed again. “Be careful what you wish for.”

  He stopped to regain control of his breathing, then went on.

  “The jar contains two ancient parchment scrolls. I bought them from the Bedouin who found them.” He spoke as if to himself. “Tarik. I never saw him again. I’ve often wondered what happened to him. He was a few years younger than me, but he looked much older.” Sadness came into his eyes. “I hope our Faustian bargain turned out better for him than it did for me.”

  With his invocation of Faust the air seemed to get heavier, a shroud of death slowly closing in on them. Zeke suppressed a chill and waited for the man who had once saved his soul to go on.

  “The Bedouin found them in a cave very far south of Qumran. Clearly they are not part of the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I have studied reproductions of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And I have translated these.” His withered frame become taut. He leaned forward, his eyes boring into Zeke. “You remember your Genesis, Ezekiel?”

  Zeke nodded once, grimly.

  “One of the scrolls was written by Lot. Just after he escaped the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  “Whoa. Lot? Abraham’s nephew?”

  “The same. His scroll picks up where Genesis leaves off. It was written in the cave he escaped to when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. He tells of the two angels God sent to protect him, escorting him and his two daughters to the cave. He says the Archenemy and some of his minions followed them.”

  “Archenemy? Meaning Satan?”

  Connolly nodded. “Lot says he saw him crawling up from an opening in the earth near Sodom and Gomorrah. According to Lot the opening leads to what I have translated as Sheol. More loosely, Hell.”

  His statement raised so many preposterous improbabilities that Zeke could remain silent no longer.

  “Dr. Connolly, wait a second. What you’re talking about would be one of the greatest finds in history. A document written by Abraham’s nephew? That would have to be—what? Over three thousand years old? Closer to four, probably.”

  “Something like that.”

  “And you said the scrolls w
ere parchment. This would predate the known use of parchment by—”

  “In the neighborhood of a thousand years.”

  Zeke let that pass. “You’re telling me that in that jar is an eyewitness account of the existence of the Devil himself?”

  “That is my interpretation. Not only that, but there are clues in the text that could lead to where he lives.”

  “To Hell.”

  The professor nodded again. Zeke quelled his rising impatience before responding.

  “But the notion that some entity is responsible for the all the evil in the world—Archenemy, Satan, Lucifer, call it what you will—that idea didn’t exist in Lot’s time. You devoted a whole lesson to how different religions dealt with the question of evil. We can’t know what Lot believed, but he was in the Hebrew line of descent, and you talked about Judaism believing in yetzer hara—the belief that evil lives within us all, that it doesn’t come from some outside agency.”

  “I had to maintain academic neutrality in my classes, knowing that new discoveries often force us to revise previously held views. These scrolls changed everything, but I could never say that.

  “Yes. Humans have always believed in evil, we have just called it by different names. Baalism was probably the predominant belief in Sodom and Gomorrah, although we cannot be certain. Baalism had its own evil entity, Mot. The word ‘satan’ is found in the ancient Hebrew of Lot’s time, but then it simply meant ‘adversary,’ something blocking your path. Even so, long before he evolved into the Adversary with a capital A of the Christians, Satan makes an appearance in the Book of Job. Many scholars—myself included—believe the time of Job could have overlapped with the time of Abraham and Lot. What I have translated as ‘Archenemy,’ based on a lifetime of studying ancient words and their meanings, and considering the word in its context… Yes. I believe Lot is warning us against Satan himself. In any case, the only concrete proof we have of what went on in Sodom and Gomorrah is that scroll. From, as you say, an eyewitness.

  “But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Before you can form your opinion, you would need to read my full translations. Believe me, they are beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings. The other scroll is the original Book of the Apocalypse, the one that inspired Revelation—which of course is also known as the Book of the Apocalypse. It was written by Enoch. Lot refers to Enoch as Metatron, the name given to him by God as an angel in Heaven. Lot says the two angels sent to help him escape from Sodom and Gomorrah are with him at the cave: Metatron is one. The other is Michael—God’s chief warrior against Satan.

  “Legend calls Enoch the inventor of writing. The first astronomer, the first to measure time. He is known as the heavenly scribe, the one who sat closest to the throne. So if you accept the scroll as authentic—and I do—what we have is proof that God exists. In effect, the scroll is Enoch passing along His warning to us.”

  “Warning of what?”

  “The Apocalypse. Judgment Day. Enoch describes it as a pivotal moment in our history, when we must choose between good and evil or be destroyed. Interestingly, God—through Enoch—says it will come this year. On the winter solstice. Which coincides exactly with the Mayan prediction for the final day of their so-called long count calendar. The Mayans don’t predict the end of the world, per se, but they do call that last day Creation Day. The day when the old world will end and a new one begin.”

  “It’s certainly an interesting theory,” Zeke said. “The idea that after making a complete mess of things for thousands of years we will be given a second chance. I don’t have much faith in the human race, but you’d like to think that maybe—just maybe—we’ve learned something and could get it right this time.”

  Connolly gave a small, sad nod. “One can only hope,” he said. “Be that as it may, my interpretation of Enoch’s timeline is certainly open to debate, but since the solstice is less than three months away, it added to my sense of urgency in calling you.”

  Zeke smiled. “Finding Satan and confronting Armageddon. That’s a tall order in less than three months.”

  “Indeed.” Obviously taxed by so much talking, Connolly held up a hand to give him a moment.

  While he waited Zeke groped for an elusive wisp of memory, triggered by Dr. Connolly’s comment about Enoch being the one in Heaven who “sat closest to the throne.” Where had he heard that before?

  Connolly gestured to continue and the tantalizing memory floated away.

  “Enoch,” Zeke said. “He’s a mysterious figure in Genesis, as I recall. Methuselah’s father.”

  “Among other things. There are many legends and myths associated with him. Enoch scholarship is a field unto itself. There are even cults devoted to him. Apocryphal works attributed to him exist, but they were written by others. Here we have his own firsthand version of events. His Book of the Apocalypse. Most incredible, I know, but I am convinced.”

  “Do you believe in his 2012 prediction?”

  “The evidence in his scroll his very compelling. Of course no one can know what—if anything—will happen. History and common sense tell us nothing will. Be that as it may, the opinion I’ve seen most often about 2012 is that the human race is coming to a day of reckoning. A day when we must finally decide to pursue the path of righteousness or perish.”

  He paused to gain control of his labored breathing before going on.

  “Enoch’s scroll is filled with astonishing information, but I do not have the strength to tell it to you. You would need to read my translation and my notes, then decide for yourself. I have taken minor liberties with punctuation and certain words, using their modern equivalents to make the text more readable. But I stand by my translations, and I have tried mightily not to have any preconceived notions or Catholic bias. Still, getting a second translation might be wise in so grave a matter. I do believe that if you came face to face with Satan in Hell, whether in 2012 or not, a cataclysm would result. I suppose that is not a difficult prediction to make.”

  The ex-priest leaned back in his recliner. “I need another moment, Ezekiel.”

  Zeke considered everything he’d just heard.

  Completely aside from the implausibility of scrolls written by Lot and an angel, Zeke had never bought the notion of a literal Hell. There was undeniably evil in the world, but he believed it came from the human heart—yetzer hara—not some horned, pitchfork-wielding Devil. It was a cop-out to blame everything on a demon from the fiery pit. Hell was here on Earth. He had been in one of its chambers that night in Nam. Still, Dr. Connolly was the smartest man he’d ever met, so he forced himself to treat his conclusions with respect.

  “There’s no chance that these are forgeries?” he said.

  “No. They are autographs.” He saw Zeke puzzling over that usage of the word. “Originals, written by the authors themselves.”

  “I don’t mean to seem rude, but I think you’ll agree this sounds more than a little absurd. I mean, a discovery confirming the existence of Satan and Hell? It would answer one of the central questions that has plagued humanity since the dawn of civilization. It’s what drove me to Catholic University. Why is there evil? And yet no one has ever heard of these scrolls. How could that possibly be?”

  The professor’s iron resolve crumbled. A look of shame contorted his features as he fought back tears. Zeke leaned toward him, wanting to help but not knowing how. Finally the old man was able to speak.

  “It could possibly be because…because…I have never shown them to another soul.” His steely gaze gone, unable to look Zeke in the eye, he looked toward the jar instead.

  “I spent months poring over them. Reading them over and over. Translating them ten thousand different ways. I became convinced they were genuine, became obsessed with the idea that we might track Satan down, that Armageddon might be confronted. That we might defeat him, once and for all, so the human race could live in peace. I actually convinced myself that I had been chosen as the Teacher of Righteousness, as he is called in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the one to
lead us out of the darkness. A rather arrogant and ironic conclusion, considering that Lot is frequently referred to as a teacher of righteousness in the Koran.”

  His voice fell to a hoarse whisper. “If I was the Chosen One, God help us all.” He continued to stare at the jar. “I didn’t want to turn it over to the Vatican.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was afraid it would disappear into the Secret Archives, never to be heard of again. You’ve heard the rumors. Suppression of any text that might shake the faithful’s acceptance of Catholicism as the One, True, All-Powerful Church.” Zeke nodded. “Finally I decided I would turn it over, try to persuade them to mount a dig to find that opening in the earth. They certainly had the resources. I had none. But, every time I started to, I…I…couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I started hearing a voice. Having visions. Nightmares. I came to believe it was the Archenemy.”

  His reference to a “voice” struck a chord. “What did the voice say?”

  Fear came into the old man’s eyes. “Satan himself was warning me. Warning me not to come after him or…”

  “Or?”

  “Or he would keep my soul forever in Hell.”

  Dr. Connolly was starting to sound like one of those crackpots who spent too much time reading Revelation. All that stuff about “the Beast” and Satan being “loosed out of his prison.” But even in his present condition, this man was no crackpot. As a former Catholic priest and theology professor, his entire life had been based on the premise that God and Satan were the ultimate sources of good and evil—the very premise apparently put forth in Lot’s scroll. A scroll Dr. Connolly believed was written by no less than the nephew of Abraham.

  Abraham. Progenitor of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

  Of Jesus Christ Himself.

  It was all too much. As he watched the old man seemingly dying before his eyes, Zeke’s overriding thought became to call 911 on the slim chance his dear friend could be saved. But first he had to see this bizarre meeting through.