Reverend Thrower opened the door of the church and walked slowly, fearfully inside. He could not bear to face the Visitor, knowing how he had failed. For it had been his own failure, he knew that now. Satan should have had no power over him, to drive him from the house that way. An ordained minister, acting as the emissary of the Lord, following instructions given to him by an angel– Satan should not have been able to thrust him out of the house like that, before he even knew what was happening.
He stripped off his cloak, and his topcoat as well. The church was hot. The fire in the stove must have burned longer than he expected. Or maybe he felt the heat of shame.
It could not be that Satan was stronger than the Lord. The only possible explanation was that Thrower himself was too weak. It was his own faith that faltered.
Thrower knelt at the altar and cried out the name of the Lord. “Forgive thou my unbelief!” he cried. “I held the knife, but Satan stood against me, and I had no strength!” He recited a litany of self-excoriation, he rehearsed all his failures of the day, until at last he was exhausted.
Only then, with his eyes sore from crying, his voice feeble and hoarse, did he realize the moment when his faith was undermined. It was when he stood in Alvin's room, asking the boy to confess his faith, and the boy scoffed at the mysteries of God. “How can he be on top of something that ain't got no top?” Even though Thrower had rejected the question as the result of ignorance and evil, the question had nevertheless pierced his heart and penetrated to the core of his belief. Certainties that had sustained him most of his life were suddenly split through by the questions of an ignorant boy. “He stole my faith,” said Thrower. “I went into his room a man of God, and came out as a doubter.”
“Indeed,” said a voice behind him. A voice he knew.
A voice that now, in his moment of failure, he both feared and longed for. Oh, forgive me, comfort me, my Visitor, my friend! Yet do not fail also to chastise me with the terrible wrath of a jealous God.
“Chastise you?” asked the Visitor. “How could I chastise you, such a glorious specimen of humanity?”
“I am not glorious,” said Thrower miserably.
“You're barely human, for that matter,” said the Visitor. “In whose image were you made? I sent you to bring my word into that house, and instead they have nearly converted you. What do I call you now? A heretic? Or merely a skeptic?”
“A Christian!” cried Thrower. “Forgive me and call me once again a Christian.”
“You had the knife in your hand, but you set it down.”
“I didn't mean to!”
“Weak, weak, weak, weak, weak.” Each time the Visitor repeated the word, he stretched it longer and longer, until each repetition became a song in itself. As he sang, he began to walk around the church. He did not run, but he walked quickly, far faster than any man could walk. “Weak, weak…” He was moving so fast that Thrower had to turn constantly just to keep him in sight. The Visitor was no longer walking on the floor. He was skittering along the walls, as smooth and fast in his motion as a cockroach, then even faster, until he became a blur, and Thrower could not keep up with him by turning. Thrower leaned on the altar, facing the empty pews, watching the Visitor race by again and again and again.
Gradually Thrower realized that the Visitor had changed shape, that he had stretched himself, like a long slender beast, a lizard, an alligator, bright-scaled and shining, longer and longer, until finally the Visitor's body was so long that it circled the room, a vast worm that gripped its own tail between its teeth.
And in his mind Thrower realized how very small and worthless he was, compared to this glorious being that sparkled with a thousand different colors, that glowed with inner fire, that breathed in darkness and exhaled light. I worship thee! he shouted inside himself. Thou art all that I desire! Kiss me with your love, so I may taste your glory!
Suddenly the Visitor stopped, and the great jaws came toward him. Not to devour, for Thrower knew he was unworthy even to be consumed. He saw now the terrible predicament of man: he saw that he dangled over the pit of hell like a spider on a slender thread, and the only reason God did not let him fall was because he was not even worthy of destruction. God did not hate him. He was so vile that God disdained him.
Thrower looked into the Visitor's eyes and despaired. For there was neither love, nor forgiveness, nor anger, nor contempt. The eyes were utterly empty. The scales dazzled, scattering the light of an inner fire. But that fire did not shine through the eyes. They were not even black. They simply were not there at all, a terrible emptiness that trembled, that would not hold still, and Thrower knew that this was his own reflection, that he was nothing, that for him to continue to exist was a cruel waste of precious space, that the only choice left to him was to be annihilated, uncreated, to restore the world to the greater glory it would have had if Philadelphia Thrower had never been born.
It was Thrower's praying that woke Armor up. He was curled up by the Franklin stove. Maybe he stoked that stove a mite too hot, but that's what it took to beat back the cold. Why, by the time he got to the church his shirt was solid ice. He'd get more charcoal to pay back the parson.
Armor meant to speak right up and let Thrower know he was there, but when he heard the words that Thrower was praying, he couldn't find no words to say. Thrower was talking about knives and arteries, and how he should've cut up the enemies of God. After a minute it came clear: Thrower hadn't gone up there to save that boy, he'd gone up to kill him! What's wrong around here, thought Armor, when a Christian man beats his wife, and a Christian wife witches her husband, and a Christian minister plots murder and prays for forgiveness cause he failed to commit the crime!
All of a sudden, though, Thrower stopped praying. He was so hoarse and his face so red that Armor thought he might have had the apoplexy. But no. Thrower lifted his head like he was listening to somebody. Armor listened, too, and he could hear something, like people talking in a windstorm, so you couldn't never hear what they were saying.
I know what this is, thought Armor. Reverend Thrower's having himself a vision.
Sure enough, Thrower talked, and the faint voice answered, and pretty soon Thrower started turning around and around, faster and faster, like he was watching something on the walls. Armor tried to see what it was he was watching, but he couldn't never make it out. It was like a shadow passing across the sun– you couldn't see it coming and you couldn't see it go, but for a second it was darker and colder. That's what Armor saw.
Then it stopped. Armor saw a shimmering in the air, a dazzle here and there like when a pane of glass catches the sunlight. Was Thrower seeing the glory of God, like Moses saw? Not likely, looking at the parson's face. Armor never did see such a face as that before. Like a man's face might look if he had to watch his own baby being killed.
The shimmering and dazzle went away. The church was quiet. Armor wanted to run to Thrower and ask him, What did you see! What was your vision! Was it a prophecy?
But Thrower didn't look much like he wanted to answer questions. That look of wishing to die was still on his face. The preacher walked real slow away from the altar. He wandered around among the pews, bumping into them sometimes, not watching or caring where his body went. Finally he ended up by the window, facing the glass, but Armor knew he didn't see nothing, he was just standing there, his eyes wide open, looking like death.
Reverend Thrower lifted up his right hand, the fingers spread, and he laid his palm on a pane of glass. He pressed. He pressed and pushed so hard that Armor could see the glass bowing outward. “Stop it!” shouted Armor. “You'll cut yourself!”
Thrower didn't even make a sign that he heard. Just kept pressing. Armor started walking toward him. Got to make that man stop before he breaks the glass and cuts up his arm.