‘Well, that’s what you say. And I suppose you want us to accept that. But there is a pattern of events here that cannot be overlooked. The poor crop, your inattention to your sacred duties: scripture, prayer, purity of heart…and concomitant with that, the terrible pestilence that is afflicting your mortal bodies. Only a fool would disregard the connection.’

They waited now, breathless for deliverance.

‘If you’re New Church, as you say you are, you’ll know that Hell is not a place God sends you to. It is a state of being, an internal and corruptive state that manifests in these sores and outbursts.’

He had turned the room. Their attention to him was desperate in its intensity.

‘What can be done?’ the man pleaded.

‘You must begin by slaughtering the livestock.’

The poor couple looked at him in speechless horror.

‘Yes, that is essential. Do not eat anything from them: make a pit and set the corpses aflame and then refill it, and do it all away from water supplies. And burn the stubble on the field out there. It will be dry enough in coming weeks. Take all of the grain in that silo of yours and throw it in the same pit with the animals. And when I say all of it, I mean every last seed.’

‘What is the purpose of such destruction?’ asked the man, defiant again.

‘There is no way forward here but abject sacrifice to the Lord.’ Gideon’s manner had turned dark, and although I thought his performance to be a false one, I could not dispel the notion that he had access, inside himself, to deep currents we could not imagine. ‘Exodus twenty-nine, sir,’ he rumbled. ‘You know the passages. I do not need to remind you of them. Jeremiah, particularly, tells us that sacrifice is worthless without an immediate turn to piety. Change your ways, all of you, or worse will come.’

Gideon stood, and he filled the room.

‘Burn it,’ he repeated. ‘Burn all of it, and repent.’

He turned his eyes towards Munro and me, and those eyes were so convincingly filled with hellfire that I thought my own conscience to be under examination.

~

We ate at Munro’s table that night.

My father had slept in the afternoon, and he seemed brighter now. To my surprise, he’d had no liquor in our absence.