Boyfriend from Hell (3 page)

Cummings came up alongside her outside the building.

“Are you Ms. Delaney?”

“Yes.”

“A little commotion for your article.”

“Apparently.”

Across the street several cult members shouted back at the demonstrators. The two sides yelled at each other for a couple of minutes. Under pressure from the police, the cult members dispersed and the protesters, without a target, shouted a few epithets, random barks winding down, and trailed away themselves.

The camera crew turned their attention to Cummings and walked toward him as he stood near the doorway, in his robe, hood up, preposterous in most settings; comfortable, though, in his own skin, under his hood, against the backdrop of his church. The crew consisted of a cameraman, a sound man, and a woman reporter in her twenties, a perky brunette. Here was a street demonstration protesting a satanic cult, which she was dealing with as if covering the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

“Mr. Cummings?” the reporter said, beaming. “I’m Sonya Brill.”

“Randall Cummings.”

“A pleasure.”

Ronnie leaned back against the church wall, observing.

“Could you tell us, what are your goals with your organization?”

“We worship Satan, darling. We respect Satan. We make a study of Satan’s work and we extract life’s lessons.”

“Which are?”

He launched into his speech with the do-unto-others portion, empowerment through evil acts.

“How long have you been in existence?”

“Two years.”

“And how did you come to this?”

“It came by way of a gradual awareness. When I realized that evil is endemic to our society. So we worship its dark creator to channel evil, to combat evil with evil, to level the playing field for our members.”

“I see. Well, those people across the street, they didn’t approve of you worshipping Satan.”

“They have every right to protest against us and we have every right to congregate.” And then in an apparent bid to use the television coverage to snare some new members he added, “We will win with Satan. We’re here every week at our church and every minute on the Internet at Darkangelchurch.org.”

“We have been talking to Randall Cummings on 129th Street, where protesters objected tonight to a satanic cult within their midst. Live for
New York News,
this is Sonya Brill.”

She shook hands with Cummings and was off with her crew.

Ronnie turned to Cummings.

“You don’t mind if I add to that, do you?”

“Ah yes, print versus TV. I’m sure you have a few other questions.”

He led her along the outside of the building to a rear entrance, opened the door, and showed her to his office. The room contained a sleek black desk, a built-in television screen above an elaborate stereo system, gray walls, black Venetian blinds; the room was illuminated by an aluminum ceiling fixture and a stainless steel desk lamp for Cummings’s work area, which included a computer and printer.

“It’s a modern Satan we’re dealing with, I see,” she said, positioning a mini tape recorder on his desk.

“No, a timeless Satan. But to reach people today, you do need to be up to date.”

“And how many cult members do you have, Mr. Cummings? It is
Mr.
Cummings, isn’t it? There’s no formal title?”

“A little sarcasm there, Ms. Delaney? That would be beneath you.”

“Yes, a little, nonetheless—”

“It is Mr. You can have fun with us. Shooting fish in a barrel. So easy to belittle the simpletons with their Satan worship, their
cult.
A sophisticated New York girl like yourself,
Vanity Fair
and the like.”

“You researched me?”

“I did.”

“I did the same with you. There’s not much on you.”

“We’re new. So you’ve got an inside track here, Ms. Delaney. Now my advice is, don’t be fooled. Someone as clever as you wouldn’t be taken in by all the candles and atmosphere, I would expect. But Satan is real. I believe that.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. And so do most God-fearing priests, the ones who aren’t just filling time. There’s too much evil in the world and the evil is too profound to be accidental.” He peered deeply into her eyes as he said this, the same technique he used with his congregants. “What is your religion?” he asked.

“I was Catholic once.”

“They have you forever, unless, of course, you’d like to come over to me.”

“How many people are in your group?”

“About a hundred at services, another thousand via the Internet.”

“And how do
they
worship exactly?”

“They receive the minutes of our masses. They can exchange e-mails with me. Buddy up with other congregants.”

“And you’ve been at this two years. Before that? Where did you come from, your basic bio?”

“I’m from Chicago. I taught acting and drama at Macalester. And then there was a turning point in my life. What you heard me tell that woman about her husband’s death. That comes from personal experience. My wife, a beautiful woman, kind, generous, was raped and beaten to death. They never found the murderer. You want to talk to me about evil? You want to say to me, there’s no Satan?”

She couldn’t tell. He had her. He could have been truthful about a wife, or not. She didn’t know. And he knew he had her. She could sense it in his expression.

“I’m missing something, Mr. Cummings, in the philosophy here. The connection between the Satan you say exists and the practical means of harnessing Satan’s powers, as you put it—”

“I encourage my people to lie, to cheat, to steal, to do nothing other than the big boys on Wall Street do, and the wheeler-dealers in those fancy-ass corporations.”

“Lie, cheat, steal, but nothing worse?”

“I don’t limit their imaginations.”

“You don’t seem to encourage them either. As though you’re being careful.”

“I don’t write specific prescriptions, if that’s what you mean.”

“You seem to be limiting your culpability by not suggesting anything violent. Almost as if you’ve had benefit of counsel on limits, on being a co-conspirator.”

“They can choose their evil.”

“It seems to be within limits.”

“That was hardly a Sunday sermon. I’m not telling them to run bake sales.”

“That thing of sexual freedom. I can see where it can be a big draw. Illicit sexual behavior as a sanctioned activity.”

“Whatever works. It’s all up to them. Truth is, they need encouragement. They need someone to tell them they can be empowered. And I’m the messenger. They’ll be better off for the message, doing unto others before they can be done unto, better off channeling evil, than they’d ever be mired in their helplessness.”

“So what all this is, really, is kind of a self-help course with Satan as the hook.”

“Oh, you’re just too, too sophisticated, aren’t you, Ms. Delaney? Our church is growing. People are helped.” He had a manila envelope on his desk. “Here are minutes of previous masses. Testimonials from members. Some general background we provide to people who inquire about membership.”

“Yes, I logged on to your Web site. It costs a thousand dollars a year to be in the cult, per person, fifteen hundred per family. That’s not nothing for people without means.”

“It’s nothing for the empowerment they get.” He handed her the envelope. “Try to go through this with an open mind. Give us the benefit of a fair-minded appraisal, without a ‘gotcha’ in it, if that’s possible. And visit us again if you wish, attend another mass. Call me if you have any other questions.”

“I will.”

“I’d like to ask you a question: Would you ever go to dinner with a satanic cult leader?” he said wryly.

“Thank you for your time.”

“Thank
you,
Ms. Delaney. And I’m serious about the dinner. As you may have noticed I’m very empathetic and supportive.”

She prepared to leave. He studied her with his mannered, probing look. She had taken herself to a Black Mass, interviewed the cult leader. She was not intimidated in the least by him, but as she left his office, she was unnerved by his closing remark.

“We might do something about that sadness I see in your eyes.”

The dream came again that night. The same elements. The little girl lost in the playground. The shattered glass. Something new this time. Cummings’s face. He was peering straight ahead. She awoke, cold and sweating at the same time. She was all right while she was at the church, but she presumed it must have frightened her on some level, the darkness of the place, the violence of the film, the invocations of evil. She was angry with herself. A year since the last time. She thought the dream was gone.

F
OR THE BACKGROUND RESEARCH
on the piece Ronnie entered the dark tunnel of satanic belief in America. Documented on Web sites and described in articles and speeches accessible on the Internet were the bleak views of people in emotional shadows. They believed in the power of Satan, and in conspiracy theories, that every year across the United States an unknown number of children and adults disappeared completely or for periods of time, kidnapped by satanic cult members, sexually abused or sacrificed in cult rituals, some supposedly murdered, some supposedly returned to their everyday lives with repressed remembrances that could only be unlocked by recovered-memory therapy.

The belief in these abuses had fallen out of favor since the discrediting of such alleged cases in the 1980s, but there were still people holding to the idea of ritual crimes by dark forces. Cults openly invited prospects to join with a fee for membership, as with the Dark Angel Church. Also available on the Internet were the opinions of law enforcement experts debunking the idea of satanic conspiracies, and the pros and cons of satanism were debated in Internet chat rooms. “A gloomy loopiness alive in the land,” Ronnie wrote in her notes.

Compared with most satanic Web sites, which featured gothic graphics and dark backgrounds, she found Cummings’s Web site to be conservative and well designed, with white space and a clean Bodoni typeface. The Web visitor to Darkangelchurch.org could find the Cummings stump speech, remarks “shared” by congregants, along with a series of images taken from the audio presentation, Cummings’s documentation of evil extant. Her overall impression was that Cummings tactically positioned himself as a moderate satanist, if there could be such a thing, nearly New Age in his approach.

On Thursday nights during the public school year Ronnie went to the Thomas Jefferson Recreation Center on 110th Street and Third Avenue to help children from the ages of about twelve to fifteen in creating a recreation center newspaper. Making the rounds of recreation centers was Peter Gibbins, a pediatrician volunteering with a nutrition class for teenagers. Gibbins came upon Ronnie in the lobby and they chatted. He asked her to join him for a hamburger after they were finished for the evening. He, too, was doing good deeds, her social life was dormant, and she accepted. They went to a pub on Third Avenue and Ninety-fourth Street. Gibbins was in his early thirties, five feet seven with soft brown eyes and an innocent, young face, who didn’t seem to Ronnie as someone out of college yet, even though he was working at Lenox Hill Hospital in pediatrics.

Ronnie’s roommate, Nancy, had been at her boyfriend’s apartment for the past three nights. Except for a brief phone conversation with Nancy, and the work with the children at the recreation center, Ronnie really hadn’t spoken to anyone for several days. When the conversation with Gibbins moved to her side of the table, her enthusiasm for the article she was working on, and her recent lack of adult contact, encouraged her to describe it all in an outpouring of enthusiasm. Somewhere in the middle of her monologue she became aware that this decent young man was squinting, apparently in distress, listening to her. She didn’t know what was causing the reaction—the subject matter, or her—and suddenly she had an uncomfortable feeling about herself, that she was carrying on like a lonely girl with no one she could talk to. But it wasn’t that, she told herself, it was as if she were trying out ideas for the piece, using this as a way of organizing the material. However, the squinting, the evident discomfort with her—it certainly wasn’t going very well.

“I’m boring you.”

“No, it’s fascinating. But—odd.”

“Odd?”

“You’re dealing with such odd people. A person who preaches Satan. Cult followers. Doesn’t it scare you?”

“Why would it scare me? It’s ludicrous.”

“You have to admit, what you’re working on, it’s not conventional.”

“It’s just an article I’m writing.
I’m
totally conventional. I don’t even have a tattoo.”

He didn’t smile. Doomed before it began. They went through the motions, small talk about movies they had seen. They both declined coffee or dessert and Ronnie passed on his offer of a taxicab home and went back to her apartment in a taxicab on her own.

“I spooked a young pediatrician,” Ronnie reported to Nancy upon arriving home.

“See, that’s where we underrated Michael.”

“How did we underrate Michael?”

“He’s a chef, which isn’t a traditional career, so he never had trouble with what you did.”

“How do you figure bringing up what was nice about Michael does me any good right now?”

“Sorry, I was just making an observation.”

“On the open market I scare guys off. Never occurred to me that a piece on a satanic cult was—odd.
Am
I odd?”

“No, you’re single.”

The concern of every freelance writer was how much time to spend on research before you were overextending yourself on an article. She had been doing the research for two weeks; time spent tracking the Satanic noise on the Internet, going through books on satanism in the library, conducting interviews by phone with a priest in San Francisco who had delivered a sermon on God and Satan that appeared on the Internet, and a professor of religion at the University of Michigan, who was an outspoken nonbeliever in Satan. After one more bit of research she was going to begin writing. Richard Smith was the author of
The Many Faces of Satan,
a history of Satanic worship she had purchased in paperback. She found it to be a good popular history. On the back cover the author’s Web site was listed. Ronnie sent an e-mail to him explaining the nature of her article, asking if he would answer a few questions, and he responded by e-mail that he traveled frequently, but would be in New York that week and he would be glad to meet her for coffee, writer to writer. She e-mailed back and they agreed to meet at a Starbucks on Eighty-seventh Street and Lexington Avenue.