in agreement. “And this year, I want us to give a special gift to Bishop Cahill: such a great leader we are blessed with! Do you know what our good bishop said to me: “Peter, your parish is the best one in DC. Now that I am close to retiring from this divine burden of being a bishop, I might just give you a run for your money and take the parish for myself!”” Laughter interrupted Father Peter’s talk. He continued. “But enough said: eat, dance, enjoy! You have come to the best party in Washington, DC.”
Standing in the crowd, Luke heard the laughter as if from a distance with his head spinning. He reached for the wall to hold himself up: were his springtime allergies acting up already? An inner ominous thunder persisted. Instinctively he looked out the window, only to see the same cherry blossom trees with their delicate, unopened buds, yet the vast skies shone with not a dark cloud in sight. Luke put down his plate and shakily walked towards the door. Maybe he had better have a moment of quiet.
“Is something wrong, Father?”
Looking up, he saw the church administrator, Hannah. “Just a little dizzy.”
Putting down the microphone, Peter headed for the dinner buffet adorned with warm chafing dishes supporting alluring fish creations and warm cherry cobblers. Balancing her full wine glass, the red-haired Annette stopped him. “Monsignor, did you get to go on the bishop’s winter Caribbean cruise?”
“I would not have missed it.” Then smiling, “As a monsignor I was invited. For those priests who stayed behind to fill in, we prayed a blessing for them.”
“Oh, Father, you are too much!”
“Enjoy yourself, my dear. This is a night to remember.”
Intent now, she added, “My son, Father, he needs to be confirmed.” Looking down, she said, “Andrew is doing so well in school and now with confirmation, everything will be great for him. Father, he has scored tops on his SAT scores and is good in basketball also. Hard to believe he is my son!”
“And we must celebrate also! Bring him directly to my office and I’ll take care of this for you. Bishop Cahill leads a great confirmation service and has one coming up soon. His new assistant Father Leo will educate our children.”
She looked directly into his grey-blue eyes.
“My dear Annette, maybe you could come by tomorrow afternoon. We could have a little sherry and talk about all the good going on in your life.”
He clasped her hand closely and then moved closer to the table with the well-dressed people chatting everywhere.
That night, Luke had the same nightmare he had suffered for several months. They started in the same way. Howling sounds came from a mysterious mountain: the tall steep peaks covered with dense curly green vegetation with not a sign of life anywhere except beneath the bizarre plants. But from the underbrush emanated scratching and long painful howls: then an even more painful silence. Night after night of howls from an unseen source.
Howls reaching out, echoing in oddly blue skies, starting low and then reaching high to tense warbling, crying out what: the end of something? A warning?
Luke woke up again, desperately sitting up, wanting to charge away from here to be anywhere else. All he knew was danger. Opening his eyes he saw his clerical shirts hanging calmly in the closet and his Bible where he left it on his nightstand.
Luke knew the bizarre message. The human race had lost the will to survive. Luke understood the human race was in danger of annihilation. “So much suffering everywhere!” he murmured to himself. He remembered that Pope Francis had written that “We have come to see ourselves as lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.”2 And he knew the truth that plundering happened everywhere.
And Luke also knew that other howling forces felt this ultimate lack, mourning, moaning, and warning humanity.3
1. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, 327.
2. Francis, “On Care for our Common Home.”
3. Central Italian fifteenth or sixteenth century (Possibly Roman fifteenth or sixteenth century), The Capitoline Wolf Suckling Romulus and Remus, National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection.
Chapter Two
What happens when a priest falls? Bishop’s hands had been on his head, praying for the power of the Holy Spirit. And when priests’ hands reach out in destruction to others, the spirit worlds collide and evil grows and flourishes, all covered by the name of Holiness.
In the dark of the night, the priest, dressed entirely in black, walked by the closed Washington DC Convention Center, then looking both ways, walked to the side of the Andrew Carnegie Library to the hidden place under the immense, old tree. There he exercised a secret ritual. Taking out a vial of warm blood, he poured it on his hands and rubbed his wet hands through his arm, saying “Moloch! Moloch!” He waited and soon his glassy eyes spun wildly around, looking intently at each passerby. He knew now what to do.
Leaving as furtively as he arrived, in a rush of satisfaction, the priest thrust his tightly clasped fists over his head. He took out the Vatican knife. He stepped back, raised the knife over his head and swishing it down, hit the tree, tearing the bark open and revealing the tree’s tender interior. Sap ran out everywhere. He twisted and turned the knife, mutilating the bark in six different directions until the shape of a pinwheel hung on the surface like graffiti announcing chaos.
At the church home on Ash Wednesday, Oscar sang the day in with “Morning has Broken!” followed by the thump against the door of the thrown Washington Post with a small headline reading, “Another Park Defacement.”
The television in the corner droned on with the popular TV newscaster Gordon Peterson announcing, “More park vandalism occurred last night. In Mount Vernon Place Park, three oddly-shaped pinwheels with a circular wound were slashed in the hundred-year old oak tree. Horticulturists say that the bark has been penetrated and the tree might not survive. The police chief asks for help from the DC citizens for solving these continuing acts of vandalism. This makes the second park defacement.”
This news announcer was not the only one concerned about the mutilated trees.
The female police chief picked up the phone and called the mayor.
“This is not a major crime in our city with our problem of increasing numbers of murders, but I want to let you know that another tree has been defaced in a park with an odd pinwheel symbol. My forestry people say it might kill the tree.”
The mayor listened.
“But what concerns me are our cherry blossom trees. There was a half-done slash in one cherry blossom tree in Stanton Park and that tree recently died. It looks like someone lunges like hell at these trees, gashing and slashing. Rumors are spreading everywhere that there are occult activities in the parks.”
The mayor sighed. “In the wake of the sniper murders, now a tree-killer, right before our Cherry Blossom festival and that stressful International Monetary Fund meeting. If this gets out, it might hurt our popular festival.”
The chief of police continued, “It’s spooking people. And sometimes there is unexplained blood. Rumors are spreading everywhere people are getting attacked in our parks.” She paused. “And it might escalate. We don’t know the thinking of this kook. The symbol looks like two peace symbols on top of each other but