This Present Darkness

Speaking with Shawn, Sandy seeks out solutions for the problems she is having with her family. Shawn tries to give Sandy answers to her problems by suggesting that religion is fine, but that they lack open minds: “you see, the problem with religion—any religion—is that it’s basically a limited perspective, only a partial view of the whole truth” (117). Shawn insists that the problems Sandy is having with her family—and her parents antagonistic attitude—is really just a matter of perspective, and that God is already in everyone.

After talking with Harmel, Marshall and Bernice meet up at the newspaper offices to discuss their most recent finds. They try to find any clues in previous issues of the newspaper on what had happened in the town that had gotten Harmel run out of town and conclude that a conspiracy had been invented to get Harmel to stop asking questions about the financial situation of Whitmore College.

The next Sunday was the best Hank had experienced in Ashton since arriving, as the vast majority of people who showed up were those who had voted to keep Hank there. Numerous people waited to speak with Hank after the service, and everyone was overjoyed that great things were beginning to happen in their church. Meanwhile Marshall and his family attend the larger church, where Oliver Young is pastor. After the service Marshall confronts Oliver with his knowledge that Oliver has been having regular meetings and counseling sessions with Langstrat, a fact Oliver had previously denied.

Elsewhere in the country, a horde of demons was gathering in order to make preparations for the next step in the demons plan: welcoming the Strongman, an ancient demon of great strength. He is even more powerful and more influential than Rafar: “It was forbidden to speak his name. He was one of the few majesties intimate with Lucifer himself” (132). The Strongman questions Rafar and gives him his orders for how to continue their plans to eventually defeat Tal and the rest of the angels.

Unbeknownst to her father, Sandy has begun to have counseling sessions with Juleen Langstrat in order to develop her inner power of meditation, and to try contacting her own spirit guide. Langstrat warns Sandy to keep their sessions private and secret from anyone else. While Sandy was with Shawn at her counseling sessions, Hank is beginning a counseling session of his own with Carmen, the woman he met with previously, but Hank suspects that Carmen may have ulterior motives in visiting him.

Mary visits the grocery store with the new owners, still unable to glean any information about why their friends sold the store. While they are leaving, Triskal—the angel watching over Mary—is attacked by Rafar and a company of other demons. Mary notices a man approaching her as she attempts to start her car, a man whom Tal can see is possessed by demons. Struggling against the demons, Triskal tries to help Mary, but the man is chased away by someone in the parking lot who noticed him acting strangely. Desperate, Mary manages to start the car and makes her way home. Rushing into the house, she runs to Hank. Triskal follows her into the house, and the demon who had been manipulating Carmen shrieks in terror, causing Carmen to do the same and quickly leave the house.

Kate receives a phone call from Marshall, who tells her that he won’t be home for dinner. Furious, Kate proceeds to tell him that she is worried about their daughter. They hang up, and Marshall proceeds to call Juleen Langstrat in hopes of setting up an interview. During the call, he reveals that his daughter is Sandy, who takes her courses, and Langstrat proceeds to deny that they have ever met.

In the basement of the college, Rafar and Lucius meet with the other demons as Rafar fumes about being unable to locate the angel Tal. The angels, for their part, patch up the wounded Triskal, and discern how best to stay hidden from the demons until the right time.

That afternoon, Hank decides to go for a walk, praying as he goes: “He had a feeling that God had some particular purpose for this little jaunt, but he couldn’t begin to guess what it was” (149). On his walk, he winds up at an arcade called The Cave, where he meets Ron, the son of the Forsythes who attend his church. Hank can tell that Ron is under the influence of drugs and invites him outside to have a conversation. While outside, the angels prompt Hank to pray for Ron, and Hank is able to discern the evil spirits that are influencing Ron and rebuke them. As Hank prays, the angels assist in expelling the demons from Ron: “Ron was changing before Hank’s very eyes, relaxing, breathing easier, his eyes returning to a normal, down-to-earth gaze” (153). With Ron now feeling at peace, he lets Hank tell him more about Jesus.

Marshall and Bernice travel out of town to visit the former college dean Eldon Strachan. While there, Eldon reveals the truth of the existence of an inner circle of confidants at the college who managed to kick him off the college board and out of town; Eldon had been the one who raised issues regarding the college’s finances. Additionally, they are able to confirm on Eldon’s testimony the centrality of Langstrat’s influence on the group, as well as the recent turnover in long-term faculty at the college, suggesting great personnel changes in recent years. Marshall convinces Eldon to try and speak with Ted Harmel since they are friends, and Harmel had refused to speak with Marshall. Back at the newspaper offices, Carmen arrives and applies for a job with the paper, and is greeted warmly by Tom McBride and given a tour of the offices.

In the town where the Strongman was lying in wait, a whole group of men and women were packing up an office complex. A woman known as the Maidservant makes several copies of a book, places them in her purse, and leaves the office, returning to a large stone house. It is revealed that this book had been sent to a man named Alexander Kaseph from Juleen Langstrat, and the Maidservant wraps the book back up in the paper it had been shipped in. Taking the book, she walks to a nearby office and delivers the package to Kaseph, who expresses his surprise at the arrival of the package, and his distrust of the woman delivering it.

Above the valley, Tal and accompanying angels discuss the Maidservant:

She is close to the Strongman—dangerously close. The prayers of the Remnant have placed a blindness and stupor on the demonic hosts all around her… Soon she won’t be able to conceal her true feelings and intentions from her lord down there (165).

They continue discussing the woman, specifically the fact that she has learned of the true nature of Bernice’s sister’s death. Meanwhile, Bernice and Marshall are driving when an angel causes their car to break down, leading to Bernice meeting an old acquaintance—Kevin Weed—at a nearby service station. As they talk, Bernice discovers that they have mutual knowledge of people she is trying to track down, a woman named Susan—the Maidservant, unbeknownst to the two of them—her sister’s old college roommate.

On Sunday morning Hank leads another worship service that has begun to attract more people to the church every week. Later that day, Tal and a handful of angels arrive in New York City in order to set up an escape route for the Maidservant at a fancy hotel in which Kaseph and others are holding a meeting for the Omni Corporation. Tal comments on the gathering: “Universal Consciousness. The world religion, the doctrine of demons spreading among all the nations. Babylon revived right before the end of the age” (174). After arranging a path, they retreat to the alley as the Maidservant arrives, flanked by bodyguards.

At a predetermined moment, the angel Guilo creates a disturbance outside in order to attract the attention of the demons, distracting them from the Omni Corporation gathering, and Susan manages to escape the gathering and runs down the alley. Finding a payphone, she calls Kevin Weed, relating everything she knows to him and telling him to make sure he calls Bernice Kreuger at the Clarion newspaper to tell her everything he knows. Finishing the phone call, Susan returns to the hotel the same way she left, crawling back in through the bathroom window, and returns to the party.

Back at the Clarion newspaper offices, Marshall and Bernice welcome Kevin Weed, who had come to Ashton in order to talk to them, as Susan had requested. They discuss Alexander Kaseph, Susan, and Bernice’s sister Pat. Kevin tells the pair that Kaseph had gotten involved with Susan when he and Langstrat had co-taught classes together on Eastern mysticism and meditation. Unsure of what to tell them, since Kevin is convinced that the newspaper office and their phones are likely tapped, he continues speaking nervously.

Susan had gotten wrapped up in the New Age teachings Kaseph and Langstrat were peddling, and eventually, they turned Susan and Pat against one another, causing Susan to run off with Kaseph and drop out of school. Bernice steps outside to talk with Kevin about her sister Pat while Marshall takes a phone call from Ted Harmel inviting him out to his house for an exclusive interview. Once the two determine the next steps in their investigation, Bernice heads out to try and locate any information on Alexander Kaseph.

The next day, Marshall drives out to meet Harmel, and they walk out into the woods to chat. Harmel ensures that everything he says will be confidential and then tells Marshall all about the inner circle from which he managed to extricate himself: “It’s a secret society, a club, a whole network of people. […] The eyes of the group are everywhere; they watch what you do, what you say, what you think, how you feel” (189). They’re working toward a Universal Mind, “the concept that sooner or later all the inhabitants of the world will make a giant evolutionary leap and meld into one global brain, one transcending consciousness” (189). Harmel ends up confirming everything that Marshall and Bernice suspected up to that point.

Harmel even warns Marshall about the group’s spirit guides that had total control over their thoughts and manipulated them into taking certain actions. Harmel admits that when he was a part of the inner circle, he would have done absolutely anything they had asked. In the end, Harmel had left, but not before he’d had his reputation and family destroyed for finding out that Kaseph had been purchasing as much land and property in the town as possible, and that he suspects the college’s financial problems are his doing as well, as a long-term ploy to buy Whitmore on top of everything else. The interview ends with Harmel insisting that Marshall investigate the financial records, and that everything he’s looking for will show up there.