tragic accident happen on Christmas Eve, of all nights. He refused to
believe it had been accidental.
He made up his mind that Conrad was evil and had set the fire on
purpose.
From that day until Conrad finally ran away several years later, his
life was hell. Papa constantly badgered and accused him. He was not
allowed to forget what he had done. Papa reminded him of it a hundred
times a day.
Conrad breathed guilt and wallowed in self-hatred.
He had never been able to run away from his shame. It came back to him
every night, in his dreams, even now that he was fifty-two years old.
His nightmares were full of fire and screams and the scarred, twisted
face-of his father.
When Ellen became pregnant, Conrad had been certain that, at last, God
was giving him a chance to redeem himself. By raising a family, by
giving his own children a wonderful life filled with love ! and
happiness, perhaps he would be able to atone for the death of his
mother, his sisters, and his brothers. Month by month, as Ellen became
heavier with child, Conrad became increasingly sure that the baby was
the beginning of his salvation.
. Then Victor was born. Initially, for just a few hours, Conrad
thought that God was heaping more punishment on him. Rather than give
him a chance to atone for his sins, God seemed to be rubbing his face
in them, telling him in no uncertain terms that he would never know
grace and spiritual comfort.
After the first bitter shock had passed, Conrad began to see his mutant
son in a different light. Victor hadn’t come from Heaven. He had come
from Hell. The baby was not a punishment from God, it was a great
blessing from Satan. God had turned His back on Conrad Straker, but
Satan had sent him a baby as a gesture of welcome.
That might have seemed like tortuous reasoning to a normal man, but to
Conrad, desperate to find release from his guilt and shame, it made
perfect sense. If the gates of Heaven were forever closed to him, he
might as well face the gates of Hell with eagerness and accept his
destiny without remorse. He longed to belong somewhere, anywhere, even
in Hell. If the god of light and beauty would not give him absolution,
then he would obtain it from the god of darkness and evil.
He read dozens of books about satanic religions, and he quickly
discovered that Hell was not the place of brimstone and suffering that
Christians said it was.
Hell was a place, said the satanists, where sinners were rewarded for
their sins, it was, in every respect, the place of their dreams. Best
of all, in Hell there was no such thing as guilt. In Hell there was no
shame.
As soon as he accepted Satan as his savior, Conrad knew that he had
made the right decision. The nightly dreams of fire and pain did not
stop, however, he found a greater measure of peace and more contentment
in his daily life than he had known since before that fateful Christmas
Eve, and for the first time in memory, his life had meaning. He was on
earth to do the devil’s work, and if the devil could offer him
self-respect, he was prepared to labor long and hard for the cause of
the Antichrist.
When Ellen killed Victor, Conrad knew she was doing God’s work, and he
was furious. He almost killed her. But he realized that he might be
imprisoned or executed for murdering her, and that would keep him from
fulfilling the role that Satan had written for him. It occurred to him
that if he got married again, Satan might send him another sign,
another demonic child who would grow up to be the scourge of the
earth.
Conrad married Zena, and in time Zena bore him Gunther. She was the
devil’s Mary, but she didn’t realize it. Conrad never told her the
truth.
Conrad saw himself as Joseph to the Antichrist, father and protector.
Zena thought the child was just a freak, and although she didn’t feel
comfortable with it, she accepted it with the equanimity with which