Bernard from my occult story Cusala is based upon a real person I met.

 

  I first saw him in a church. It was 1986, at the end of my fourth year studying law at Otago University. I had agreed to go to the church with my roommate Ann. She was from Dunedin and was studying psychology. It was the beginning of summer, and we were both bored. The masses of out-of-town students had left as usual at the end of term and the city felt almost empty. We lived in a four-bedroom flat on Castle Street, almost opposite Selwyn College. Our other two roommates had left, gone north to their hometowns.

I had chosen not to go home that summer but to work in Dunedin. Ann and I got on well and had a lot of fun. Not in a romantic way at all, more like brother and sister. She had a wicked sense of humour, and we got up to all sorts of happy mischief.

Her parents were affluent and she was something of a socialite. She seemed to know half the girls at university, so hanging around with her had other advantages. Two of her friends were Pentecostal church members. They were identical twins, both brunettes with curly black hair and gorgeous dark brown eyes. They had such clear healthy eyes, which could only be possessed by people who drank no alcohol, took no drugs, and only ate healthy food. But they were extreme believers. In fact, they were said to have the rare ability of speaking in tongues. That meant they spoke in some kind of sacred language when they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Ann feigned interest in them and their ability but behind their backs openly mocked them as was her way with many people. So, they had invited her to attend a church meeting one night. She invited me along. I was not religious in the least and had only attended churches at weddings and baptisms but I was bored and the twins with their beautiful angelic eyes interested me, so I agreed to go along.

The church was very large and ornate and was about three quarters full that night with loyal worshippers. The priest did some prayers and bible readings and things warmed up pretty quickly into some songs. I was standing at the aisle and next to me was Ann then the two twins. During one song Ann dug me in the ribs slightly with her elbow then flicked her eyes towards the twins. They had their eyes shut and were indeed speaking in tongues. Ann used her usual short high-pitched laugh reasonably loudly and I smiled but was too polite to laugh. It was kind of interesting, though it did appear to be completely faked. I guessed they believed that they were speaking God’s language but I was far from convinced.

The next part was the miracle of God part where people told the congregation of some wonderful experience. The first guy was a Maori, and he cheerfully got up and said that he had injured his leg terribly playing rugby but through his faith and the power of prayer and God he had become healed and could play again.

“Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!” Everyone echoed the words.

It also seemed very fake to me and I just scratched my head and smiled to Ann. After that, others got up and shared their great news.

About this time, I had lost interest and was more interested by the sounds coming from the rear of the church. It seemed there was some kind of argument going on which I thought was odd.

Before I looked back, he was beside me, arrogantly walking to the front of the congregation followed closely by two far smaller men who were trying unsuccessfully to stop him. He was very tall and a little fat and was holding a big bottle of Lion Brown beer.

He turned to face us, the congregation, while the priest tapped him gently on the shoulder and asked him to leave. He had a big head and unkempt brown hair and looked kind of mean. He took a swig from his bottle. There was complete silence in the church, and all eyes were upon him.

“I am the closest thing to the Antichrist you will ever see,” he said quite loudly and clearly.

It was the first thing in the church that night that I thought might be real. He did look very evil.

He laughed loudly, took another swig from his bottle then began mocking us. The priest reacted by getting most of the people to sing. And people started yelling, “Praise the Lord,” over and over again. It drowned his voice out and perhaps sensing defeat he started to walk back to the rear of the church.

I have to say a remarkable thing happened to me. I was overcome by some emotion and could feel the evil in him and the goodness of the people in the church, and I found myself joining in and saying quite loudly, “Praise the Lord!”

And when he was finally out of view, we all clapped and cheered in victory, including Ann.

After the service we talked little about it with the twins but when we got back to our flat Ann and I debated whether it had been a setup by the church, or an actual random event.

A few days later we had both pretty much forgotten about the whole incident. I finally got a job through Student Job Search. It was a selling job, going door to door selling prints of original paintings for the art gallery. There were six prints, all copies of famous original paintings held by the gallery. They were twenty-five dollars each and I got a generous ten-dollar commission for each one I sold.

The next Friday night I was in the front bar of The Cook with friends. We were stoned and drinking beer slowly. The front bar of The Cook was frequented with a different crowd than the rear bar. It had a rougher crowd with bikers, bodgies and musos plus the more alternative senior students. The bar was only about half full and the music was so loud we hardly bothered to speak to each other.

I was facing the bar and some guy sitting there vomited violently in front of him. It was a full-on power chunder and I counted the seconds waiting for him to be violently thrown out by the bouncers. But they never came. He just wiped his mouth and snorted a few times then continued drinking.

Then the barman, who was much smaller than the guy, turned up dutifully with a metal bucket and mop and began cleaning the stinking mess around him. They didn’t speak at all, and the big guy did not even move and just continued sipping his beer.

“Jesus, did you see that!?” I shouted to my friends.

“What?”

“That guy just vomited all over the front of the bar.”

“So?”

“He didn’t even get thrown out. Man, if that was a student, we would be out face first onto the concrete.”

They were stoned and didn’t seem too interested. But I watched the guy for a while and eventually he left to go to the bathroom. When he returned, I could see his face clearly. It was him again. Our man from the church!

Christmas came and went and Ann and I decided to attend an outdoor New Year’s Eve party. It was in a nice country setting and we knew quite a few people there. It started early so people were with their children having barbeques, playing soccer and so on.

We were pretty bored and were drinking wine and talking about heading back into the city before the countdown. Just then we heard a group of kids scream loudly. We looked down the hill to see what was going on. To our surprise it was him again. This time he was dressed all in black and his face was painted with green paint. He looked very scary and he had jumped out of the darkness to scare the kids. He did it again about ten minutes later to a different group and got the same reaction.

Later, we debated again, whether he had been paid to scare the kids, or was he just doing it of his own volition, and amusement?

I carried on with the door to door selling, and did make a small amount of money.

The following week I was knocking on doors in Dunedin north, near the steepest street in the world. It was an overcast grey day, with little wind but quite cold. On my third house I knocked and he opened his door. I was shocked and I think he sensed it. Here he was, an ordinary man living in an ordinary cottage. He seemed a little uncomfortable too and I quickly reduced my spiel and didn’t even take the prints out of the large plastic envelope as I usually did in my selling efforts.

“Hi, just selling some prints for the art gallery. Not interested?”

“No,” he replied, and that was all he said.

Later I felt guilty. I hadn’t really even given him a chance to buy any. The truth was I had been scared.

That was the last time I ever saw him, but the unknown antichrist made such an impression on me, that later I based my horror story Cusala around him.

It still puzzles me to this day, why I ran in to this complete stranger four times in as many weeks? Was there some kind of connection, to me? And I still wonder who he was, and what his story was? Was he just a bored, ordinary man, or was he as he had stated that memorable day in the church, the closest thing to the antichrist I would ever see?