the village in the valley below. The diary recorded all of the murderous deeds he had carried out against children hundreds of years earlier, part of a demented, secret, sacrificial rite in which he buried their hearts near a cave where he believed his angry ancestors still existed, suspended between life and death. The man would keep the children’s bodies in a high cave that was sealed by an ice shield through the winter, returning them in advance of Easter so that the bodies could be committed to a family crypt and the souls sent on to the heavens on Resurrection Sunday. Even in the face of that evidence, and despite the detailed confession by the crazed man in his own handwriting, the tale of a heartless beast still persists in the region today and there are lithographs of the imagined monster in the archives of a local museum.
I once read a book entitled The Animal In Us All, a historical, anthropological view of atrocities committed by our species against our own; abominations which were committed not in war, but in wickedness. The author recounted a series of macabre acts that were chilling to read. That these acts had happened on all of the continents and island chains defied classifying them in a cultural context. After listing the horrors, he examined the theories which have been offered through the ages to explain man’s ability to act in such an inhumane way. One of the theories ascribed responsibility to an Antichrist. The writer accepted the possibility that an Antichrist existed but dismissed the notionthat the Antichrist could be responsible for the Holocaust and other savage acts ending in death. He argued that all available writing about the Antichrist made it clear the Antichrist never kills; the Antichrist considers human death a kindness and the Antichrist is not kind enough to kill. Everyone touched by the Antichrist is allowed to live and touch others in the same fiendish way he or she was touched.
Doctor Kennison’s covering summary noted that there was a very real danger the child victims might grow to be adult perpetrators of sex abuse. This was cited in addition to a long list of probable and possible problems that might visit victims throughout their lives. He had written: “Because one is a victim of sexual crimes such as these, it does not necessarily follow that the child will himself become a pedophile who will victimize children of approximately the same age. However, medical literature is replete with evidence that almost all adults who sexually molest children were victims of sex abuse when they were children. They do to children what was done to them.”
I knew I would not be able to sleep. The raging storm outside mirrored my interior landscape. A single phrase reverberated around my conscious mind. Everyone touched by the Antichrist is allowed to live and touch others in the same fiendish way he or she was touched.
9
IN A CONSECRATED PLACE
5:40 p.m., Thursday September 8, 1983
Amalie, Cypress Bay, Louisiana
Cheney Falgout spent the afternoon of his tenth birthday on his father’s shrimp boat in Cypress Bay. His dad was in the engine well. Cheney was handing him tools. But he was thinking about something he’d read in a storybook at school that week. The story was titled “No Secrets”. The hero of the story was a young boy who learned that secrets were like poison and truth was like medicine; secrets could make you sick and truth could make you well. Cheney had felt sick for three years. He wanted to be well again.
Cheney thought about his seventh birthday often. He remembered everything that had happened on the altar that September Monday three years ago, and what had happened after he left the little church with Father Nicky.
Father Francis Dominick Dubois was the only person with keys to the church in Amalie on the shore of Cypress Bay. As he locked the door behind them that day, he had made sure Cheney understood that. The priest had led the way as the two of them
I once read a book entitled The Animal In Us All, a historical, anthropological view of atrocities committed by our species against our own; abominations which were committed not in war, but in wickedness. The author recounted a series of macabre acts that were chilling to read. That these acts had happened on all of the continents and island chains defied classifying them in a cultural context. After listing the horrors, he examined the theories which have been offered through the ages to explain man’s ability to act in such an inhumane way. One of the theories ascribed responsibility to an Antichrist. The writer accepted the possibility that an Antichrist existed but dismissed the notionthat the Antichrist could be responsible for the Holocaust and other savage acts ending in death. He argued that all available writing about the Antichrist made it clear the Antichrist never kills; the Antichrist considers human death a kindness and the Antichrist is not kind enough to kill. Everyone touched by the Antichrist is allowed to live and touch others in the same fiendish way he or she was touched.
Doctor Kennison’s covering summary noted that there was a very real danger the child victims might grow to be adult perpetrators of sex abuse. This was cited in addition to a long list of probable and possible problems that might visit victims throughout their lives. He had written: “Because one is a victim of sexual crimes such as these, it does not necessarily follow that the child will himself become a pedophile who will victimize children of approximately the same age. However, medical literature is replete with evidence that almost all adults who sexually molest children were victims of sex abuse when they were children. They do to children what was done to them.”
I knew I would not be able to sleep. The raging storm outside mirrored my interior landscape. A single phrase reverberated around my conscious mind. Everyone touched by the Antichrist is allowed to live and touch others in the same fiendish way he or she was touched.
9
IN A CONSECRATED PLACE
5:40 p.m., Thursday September 8, 1983
Amalie, Cypress Bay, Louisiana
Cheney Falgout spent the afternoon of his tenth birthday on his father’s shrimp boat in Cypress Bay. His dad was in the engine well. Cheney was handing him tools. But he was thinking about something he’d read in a storybook at school that week. The story was titled “No Secrets”. The hero of the story was a young boy who learned that secrets were like poison and truth was like medicine; secrets could make you sick and truth could make you well. Cheney had felt sick for three years. He wanted to be well again.
Cheney thought about his seventh birthday often. He remembered everything that had happened on the altar that September Monday three years ago, and what had happened after he left the little church with Father Nicky.
Father Francis Dominick Dubois was the only person with keys to the church in Amalie on the shore of Cypress Bay. As he locked the door behind them that day, he had made sure Cheney understood that. The priest had led the way as the two of them
Similar Books
