A QUESTION OF FAITH
A Short Story by Macey Baggett Wuesthoff

This story is a work of fiction. All names, characters,
locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination,
or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons
living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Macey Baggett Wuesthoff
All rights reserved.
No portion of this story may be transmitted or
reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in
writing from Macey Baggett Wuesthoff, with the exception of brief
excerpts used for the purposes of review.

ne of the biggest reasons I became a minister ten years ago was my heartfelt desire to help people. And throughout the last ten years, I’d always felt that I had been able to help my congregation members, or at least offer them spiritually comforting words during trying times.

All of that changed after the abduction of Eva Fall. Eva was a newborn and the only child of Thornton and Delilah Fall, a young couple who was part of my congregation at Littleville, Alabama’s First Baptist Church. Much like the Lindbergh baby, Eva was stolen from her nursery while the family slept. The few leads the police got turned up nothing. Prior to Eva’s kidnapping, the Falls never missed a single service or church activity. Afterwards, though, Delilah began drifting in and out of psychiatric offices and mental institutions, and the Falls showed up in church less and less. The times they did make it, Delilah broke down crying in the middle of services, and Thornton had to escort her outside.

What made the loss especially hard on Delilah was that complications in labor rendered her unable to bear any more children. I spoke with her about this a few times and tried to help her by steering her focus away from the negativity of what she couldn’t do—have more children—to positive things she could do. I told her that maybe God meant for her to not have more children because He needed her for non-maternal purposes, perhaps either to concentrate on finding her missing baby, or to serve him in some other way, such as through volunteering at the church. While she agreed that she should take an active role in looking for Eva, she wouldn’t hear of doing anything else. She explained that she was too upset to participate in anything other than the effort to find her baby.

One Sunday, almost a year after Eva’s abduction, Delilah came to me alone between morning and evening services for religious counseling. During the entire hour that I sat on the pew alongside the young mother, patting her bony, frail shoulder as she lamented about Eva between sobs into a ragged tissue, I tried to think of something else comforting to do or say. For the first time ever, I found myself at a complete loss.

“We’re thinking of going to Lucinda Fergueson...Psychic Lucinda.”

Delilah’s words, the first she had uttered in ten minutes of silence between us, jolted me from my thoughts. While she had spoken them in her usual soft tone, they seemed to echo loudly—ominously—throughout the empty church. “Oh, no, Delilah...”

“Why not, Paul?” Delilah asked. “She’s helped in so many missing person’s cases…”

“Delilah, you know the Bible warns against fortune tellers, psychics, all the likes of Psychic Lucinda.”

“But Paul, look at how many people like us whom psychics have helped. And many of those psychics are religious people who thank God…”

“Yes, but Lucinda is not one of them,” I reminded her. “Lucinda is a self-proclaimed Darwinist and atheist who credits her powers to other sources.” The world-renowned psychic had stated things of that sort on TV many a time, although she’d never revealed from what source she believed her own psychic powers to originate. I continued, “It would be tragic for our congregation to see devout Christians like Thornton and yourself resort to help from a person of Lucinda’s beliefs.” I paused for a moment, and then offered a compromise. “Couldn’t you go to another psychic, perhaps one of the more…well…Christian ones?”

Delilah lowered the tissue from her eyes. Her voice strained, she said, “But Lucinda is the best. Remember, those other psychics haven’t been able to solve all of the cases presented to them, but Lucinda has solved all of hers. And we don’t have much money to pay to those so-called Christian psychics, most of whom charge an arm and a leg. Lucinda charges next to nothing, sometimes nothing at all. She says…”

“Yes, yes, I know,” I interrupted. “‘The world’s belief in me is payment enough,’” I finished, quoting Lucinda’s favorite public relations tagline.

“So how can a person who is so charitable and helps so many people be bad?”

I didn’t know the answer. All I knew was that everything in me, all that I’d ever believed or been taught religiously, told me it would go against God, would be like following a false prophet, to resort to Lucinda for help. “Please, Delilah. Remember your faith in God. Believe in Him, instead of earthly, pagan powers, to bring your daughter back to you.”

Delilah leapt to her feet, fire in her chocolate-colored eyes. “We’ve believed in God, prayed to God, all year, and He hasn’t brought our daughter back!” she yelled. “Our case is different from these other kidnappings investigated by hit-and-miss psychics who are just looking for a dead body. The police have said that the evidence shows our baby was taken by people who didn’t want to harm her, but just wanted her for themselves. That means our Eva is still out there somewhere alive, just waiting to be found. And Thornton and I will do whatever it takes to get her back, even if, even if…”

She paused, but only for a second before deciding to voice the rest of her thought. “…even if we have to go to the Devil himself!”

With that, she tossed her long, thinning dark hair over her shoulder, whirled around, and stormed out of the church.

That was the last time I saw either of the Falls for a very long time, at least in person. They faded away into objects of the town gossips’ rumors, and faces in the local media’s occasional photos and video clips accompanying news of their case. I tried to reach out to them, but they would not answer the phone when I called their house, or their door when I dropped by and knocked. I figured they were ignoring me because I had angered Delilah. Yet a few other members of the congregation who attempted to phone and visit got the same results. However, I heard that some of their friends outside the congregation had no problems reaching them. It seemed that they weren’t just avoiding me, or even people in general, but the church and any and all representatives of it.

Not surprisingly, the Falls ignored my advice and went to Lucinda for help. Lucinda led the police to the kidnappers and baby Eva. The kidnappers got locked up, and the Falls got their daughter back, safe and sound.

I hoped that the Falls would see their reunion with Eva as a blessing from God and return to church. But they didn’t come back. The rest of my congregation, who had always admired the Falls for their prior active participation in the church, was as confused as I. Why wouldn’t such a devout couple blessed with this great miracle return to church to thank God? A few weeks later, I got the answer to that question when I was channel surfing and spotted the Falls on The Wanda Proffitt Talk Hour.

The Falls sat in chairs on the stage, Delilah bouncing Eva on her knee. Delilah looked simultaneously better and worse than when I’d seen her in church that last time. On the plus side, her formerly thinning dark hair had grown full and shiny, and her body had become tanned and healthier, having regained some of the nourishing pounds that anxiety had robbed of it. I was, however, taken aback by her caked-on make-up as well as her tight, black leather miniskirt and low-cut red blouse, not at all typical of her usual conservative appearance. Thornton also looked better and worse. He had lost the extra flab he’d previously toted; it appeared the gossips were right about his having liposuction. He had changed his style to a loud, tropical style, having hit the tanning beds a few too many times, bleached and spiked his hair surfer-style, and wearing a Bermuda floral shirt, bright yellow pants, and glitter-framed sunshades atop his head.

Delilah and Thornton were telling the story of their reunion with their kidnapped baby. Wanda Proffitt, the thin African-American talk show hostess, walked back and forth between the stage and the studio audience, every once in a while interjecting with a question. As the Falls concluded their story, and the audience responded with the typical smiles and applause, Wanda remarked, “They say it’s a miracle, that you should thank God for your reunion with your daughter. Do you agree?”

Thornton’s response floored me. “We stopped believing in God after the kidnapping.”

Delilah asked, “Where was God then? A psychic, not God, helped us. If there’s anyone to thank, it’s Psychic Lucinda.”

For a minute, Wanda gaped at them. Then she chuckled and said, “Well, let’s call Lucinda out and see what she has to say about that.”

A moment later, Lucinda appeared on the stage, leaning on a wooden cane as she hobbled to her chair. A short, frail woman with aquarium-thick trifocals, wrinkle-wrought skin, and powder white hair pinned atop her head in a constricting bun, Lucinda looked more ancient than time. She could have been anybody’s great-great grandmother. I suppose that enhanced her ability to lull everyone into thinking she was sweet and wonderful…

… except for me, of course. I thought of the old adage, “Evil has many faces, some of which are sweet.” I was certain this applied to Lucinda. So while she charmed everyone else with her sweet appearance and mysterious “power,” I refused to allow her to do the same to me.

“ Lucinda,” said the host, “what do you think of Thornton and Delilah giving you all the credit?”

Her face deadpan, Lucinda replied, “They should.”

“You don’t think a higher power helped?”

“No, because there’s no God, no Devil.” Her voice was monotone, hollow, lifeless.

“Wow,” murmured Wanda. “No good and evil, no Heaven and Hell, no Apocalypse?”

I cringed. Lucinda had been blatantly open with her blasphemy for a long time, and it was common knowledge, not to mention she had just now re-emphasized it. I felt Wanda was deliberately accentuating Lucinda’s atheism to make a bigger spectacle of this whole thing. That is, if it could get bigger than it already was…

“We just exist, period,” said Lucinda. “If the world ends, it will end from natural disaster, not vengeance from any so-called ‘God.’”

An audience member raised his hand, and Wanda put her microphone before him. “So you’re saying there will never be an Apocalypse?”

“Exactly,” Lucinda replied.

“How do you know?”

She grinned. “Have I ever been wrong before?”

The entire studio laughed. Trembling, I shut off the TV. What I’d heard had profoundly affected me, terrified me, in fact. The Falls were the last people I ever expected to lose their faith. And I knew millions of people watched that talk show every day. What if others took this seriously and began to believe as Lucinda did?

Inspired to try to turn a negative into a positive, I wrote a sermon on psychics and false prophets. I cited passages from the Bible that spoke against both. But the following Sunday, as I preached about the talk show and warned against psychics, a few churchgoers actually spoke out. They were hostile.

“But Lucinda has done so much good!”

“What else could the Falls do?”

“They were good Christians, yet God let them down! Explain that!”

With each Sunday that followed, my congregation grew smaller and smaller. At first, I thought it was because my anti-psychic sermon had irritated them. Yet when I talked to Father Knowles, an elderly priest at a local Catholic church and a close friend of mine, I learned it wasn’t just me.

After listening to my story, Father Knowles said, “Membership’s dropping all over the place.”

“Why?” I asked.

“That talk show affected people in a big way. Folks now believe in Psychic Lucinda.”

“Don’t they believe in God anymore?”

Father Knowles sighed. “They remind me very much of those Old Testament fools who insisted on a manmade idol because they could only believe in and worship what they could see with their naked eyes. Even today, many people believe only in things they can see. Lucinda’s giving them that.”

Father Knowles was right. More and more people began to follow Lucinda, and less and less worshipped God. Lucinda continued to solve cases, appear before the media, and publicize herself. To most others, she was a hero. To me, she was a selfish, nauseating gloat. But she forever charmed the world by repeatedly taking little or no money for her work and always uttering her tag line: “The world’s belief in me is payment enough.”

One day, my wife Nora phoned me at work. As soon as I picked up the phone, I heard her screaming our only daughter’s name on the other end. “Faith! Faith!” she cried. “Oh God, Paul, it’s Faith!”

Several minutes later, I found myself at the hospital, staring at my daughter as she lay in ICU. She was hooked up to all kinds of tubes. Bandages covered most of her head and body, and what little skin that remained exposed was black and blue.

Faith had been walking home from school when two teenage boys jumped her and dragged her into an alley, where several more waited. There, she’d been gang-raped, beaten, and left for dead. She was only twelve years old.

A few days later, while I sat at Faith’s bedside in the hospital, Delilah came to visit her. Or rather, maybe she came to visit me. For, after Faith had fallen into a fitful sleep, Delilah asked me to follow her outside of the room.

Delilah was no longer mad at me but sympathetic instead. “When it’s your kid, it hurts worse than anything, doesn’t it?”

I nodded as the tears rolled down my face.

"You know, you can find out who did this, and make sure they’re caught.”

I shook my head and whispered, “I just can’t. I still believe that God will…”

Delilah held up her hand. “Well, if you change your mind, you know how to reach me.”

Weeks dragged by. The police found nothing. The townspeople clamored for something to be done. “What if those thugs go after other little girls?” they asked.

It pained me to see Faith suffer, to hear her crying every day, “Those mean guys hurt me bad, Daddy. When will they be caught?”

While Faith had been through a lot, and we’d thus been prepared for an extended period of physical recovery, she was recuperating much more slowly than she should have. We really could tell no difference at all in her physical and emotional states. During the brief periods when she was awake, she wouldn’t talk to us at all other than to ask questions about the progress of the investigation, when the attackers would be caught.

Finally one day, Faith’s doctor called us out of the room. “As you know, our hospital counselor on staff has been evaluating Faith. We’ve determined that her psychological scars are impeding her recovery.”

“ What do you mean?” I asked.

“ She’s not getting better in any way because she has no sense of closure,” he explained. “Her emotional distress at her attackers going free is retarding her recovery.”

My wife Nora asked, “And if her attackers aren’t caught…?”

The doctor shook his head. “The psyche, one’s emotions, are a powerful thing, more powerful than medical science can currently understand or explain. With the state Faith’s in, if her attackers aren’t caught, progress might be halted for years…or permanently.”

Nora began to cry. After the doctor left, she gave me a hard look and said through clenched teeth, “When Delilah was here, she told me she had talked to you, and who she could get to help. And she told me what you said.” Her face contorted in rage and another oncoming fit of tears. “Surely you can’t still say ‘no’ after what you just heard?”

I only hung my head in response.

“ You have only two choices left, Paul.” Nora folded her arms. “Either you call Delilah and tell her to get in touch with Lucinda Fergueson, or I will. And when Faith is all better, I will tell her that her father wouldn’t help, and we’ll leave you forever.”

I gave in and made the call. Within days, Lucinda led the police to Faith’s attackers, and Faith identified them all in line-ups. Once they locked up the attackers, Faith recovered with amazing speed. She and Nora were very happy with me. “Psychic Lucinda and Daddy are our heroes,” they said.

That should have made me happy. Still, somehow, I felt I had betrayed myself, my God. I prayed for forgiveness. Yet no comfort would come to my heart, which suddenly felt empty and void.

One night, not long after the attackers’ sentencing, my slumber thrust me backwards in time to the last moments of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion. I stood alone before him. It was mostly dark around us, except for the orange glow of a perfect raging circle of flames that burned around us. I stared at Christ nailed to the cross, spitting and oozing blood, breathing his last dying breath. The circle of fire began to close in on us. I ran for him, reached for Jesus, to save him, to take Him back, to…

“… take it back!” I cried. “I take it back! I take back my faith...my Faith...Faith...”

Jesus turned his eyes toward me and spoke one word: “Judas.” Then his eyes glazed over in two vacant mirrors of death. The flames came closer and began to completely consume us both.

I sat up in bed and screamed. Even though it had only been a nightmare, I somehow knew nothing, including myself, would ever be the same again.

Because Lucinda always seemed to be right, everybody began believing everything she said, including her proclamations that there was no God or coming Apocalypse. Over the passing years, the world’s peoples lost their fear of damnation, and the quality of life grew worse. The number of violent crimes increased, while the number of good-hearted citizens decreased. More people than ever before killed their children, parents, spouses, those they should have loved.

Several churches were burned to the ground, including my own, and shootings occurred within others. Soon all churches were boarded up because even they weren’t safe anymore. Not that many people had been going to church anyway. Most devoted the time they previously spent in Sunday services to studying the word of Psychic Lucinda, whose seminars and TV programming “coincidentally” occurred on Sundays, during the hours that we all should have been church. It seemed that Lucinda had brought about the death of everyone’s faith, including mine.

Exactly six years, six months, and six days after I had made that phone call, after Faith had turned eighteen and gone off to college, Nora and I awoke in the middle of the night to a vociferous roar. Our house started shaking. Then came another sound, like a great tornado. The bedroom ceiling cracked, and only seconds later, a whirlwind ripped off our home’s roof as quickly and easily as if it had been merely taped in place. White lines appeared across the dark midnight sky, and it cracked open. Through the cracks shone a blinding white light …the light of God…

Nora and I at last recovered enough from our shocked stupor to run outside, just before our house collapsed like a cardboard box. We saw droves of other people fleeing their homes, which were also collapsing. Some houses had already completely caved in, and among those still standing, the roofs were gone.

A worldwide earthquake split the ground. Between the soil’s cracks, fiery orange light glowed. Several of the cracks widened, sending some people plunging directly into the flaming pits of Hell. Others ran about moaning, “But Psychic Lucinda said this would never happen!”

A loose newspaper page blew toward me. Something compelled me to pick it up. The newspaper had what seemed to be random holes in it. But they weren’t so random. The headline had formerly contained Psychic Lucinda Fergueson’s name, except the holes had omitted some letters, so that a different name was now spelled out.

Too late, I saw the name that I shouldn’t have needed spelled out for me, the name we all should have associated with the rejection of God. Too late, I figured out the meaning of Lucinda’s tagline, “The world’s belief in me is payment enough.” Too late, I realized the truth as Lucinda rose from between the cracks in the earth, her face splitting, seven horns popping out of her skull.

Lucinda Fergueson and Lucifer were one in the same.

The End