Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

Diary of a Devout Man by Max Franklin

He wasn’t just an ordinary Peeping Tom. He had a job, a very important job.

Monday night:

I have decided to write this diary as though I were talking to you because you are a person who has always interested me, though you will never read these words.

You know me, yet you don’t know me. That is, you know my name, what I look like and that I am the son of one of your neighbors. But inside you don’t know me at all.

When you see me you probably think what a nice quiet lad I am. Shy and reserved, but always with a pleasant smile and a polite greeting.

Do you know I stood on your front porch for an hour last night watching through a window as you sat in your favorite chair under the lamp, reading?

You sensed it once or twice, I know, because you stirred and looked around uneasily. But you couldn’t see me outside on the dark porch and you couldn’t hear me because I have practiced moving without sound and standing perfectly still, hardly even breathing, for long periods of time.

Why did I watch you? Because I watch many people. But I’m not just a Peeping Tom. I’m an observer for God.

The knowledge that I am one of God’s personal servants grew in me slowly, for at first the voices didn’t make sense to me. They were in some strange language: ancient Hebrew, I now think, because that was the original language of God. When they first spoke to me out of the silence of my room, they were merely jargon, a meaningless discord of many voices. But as they returned on other nights I gradually was able to pick out a word here and a word there, and finally even to make out whole phrases.

It is a tremendous experience when the realization finally hits you that you are one of God’s chosen and are listening to the voices of angels.

My mission isn’t yet clear to me, but I know this much: I am to watch many people, of which you’re but one, and report what I see directly to God.

Tuesday night: The voices spoke to me again last night. I’m still not entirely clear about my mission, but at least I’m surer about what God wants to know about those I watch. He wants to know which are sinners.

Are you a sinner? You seem an ordinary enough person. I think you love your family and I haven’t noticed any signs of discord in your home. But how do I know what goes on in your mind? Maybe in your thoughts you’re committing sins of the flesh even while you’re talking in apparent innocence with members of your family. According to the Bible mental sin is as evil as the physical act.

I guess I’m going to have to learn to read minds.

Wednesday night: At breakfast this morning Mother fussed over me like a mother hen.

“Do you feel all right, son?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said. “Why?”

“You’re getting dark circles under your eyes. Sure you aren’t studying too hard? Maybe you need glasses.”

“I’m quite all right,” I told her.

“I’m sure you’re studying too hard,” she decided, examining my face worriedly. “It’s not natural for a twenty-year-old boy to spend so much time alone in his room. You ought to take Mary out some evening.”

I didn’t tell her I spent much less time alone in my room than she thought. I didn’t tell her that almost every night when she thought I was asleep I was prowling the dark streets, watching those whom God’s angels have ordered me to watch. My mother is a religious person, but she hasn’t any more imagination than most practical people. She can believe in the saints receiving direct communication from God, but I know she wouldn’t be able to believe her own son is an emissary of the Lord. Like too many people, her religious belief stops when miracles strike too close to home. I know if I told her about the voices, she not only wouldn’t believe me, she might even do something silly like insisting I go see a psychiatrist.

Suppose Saul’s mother had sent him to a psychiatrist?

Instead of attempting to explain, I just said mildly, “Final exams are in two more weeks, Mother. I’ll get out more when I’ve finished cramming.”

Mary fussed at me a little too when I picked her up on the way to school. As she slid into the front seat beside me, she studied my face critically before even saying hello.

Then she said, “What’s the matter with you lately, hon? You don’t look well. And you haven’t even so much as called me for over a week.”

“Called you?” I said. “I see you every day.”

“On the way to school and on the way home,” she conceded. “Fine romance. Ever occur to you a girl might like a little night life?”

“Two weeks before finals? Be sensible, Mary.”

“I know you’re studying hard,” she admitted. “So am I for that matter. But it wouldn’t kill you to take five minutes off every night to make a phone call.”

“I get so involved in law books, I don’t think of it,” I said. “Maybe I am studying too hard. But you can’t win a law degree without study. We’ll go out on the town the night finals are over.”

Then she demanded to know if I had stopped loving her. Of course I said no, but in thinking about it later, I wondered if our plans to marry shouldn’t change now that I have a new mission. Is there any room for marriage in a life devoted to service to the Lord? Much as I love Mary, I can’t see that there is.

I haven’t mentioned the voices to Mary for the same reason I didn’t tell Mother. She’s a sweet girl, but I know with complete certainty she wouldn’t believe any more than Mother would that I’ve actually been chosen as a servant of God.

Then too I never know exactly how Mary is going to react to things I tell her. Sometimes things that don’t strike me as the least funny touch her odd sense of humor. She might even laugh.

Thursday night: I bought a gun today. I’m not exactly sure why. I seemed to be impelled to do it by some force outside of myself. Perhaps by the power of God’s will.

Mary had a chemistry lab, and she thought I was spending the afternoon at the college library, as I usually do on Thursdays until she gets out of lab. I didn’t lie to her. When I picked her up to take her home, I simply didn’t mention I hadn’t gone near the library that afternoon.

I didn’t buy the gun locally. I drove thirty miles to another town and got it in a pawn shop. I signed the name Howard Turpin because that’s about as unlike mine as I could dream up, and gave the man a fake address. The gun cost me twenty dollars and it’s a .32 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. It’s only five-shot instead of six, which struck me as odd. I was under the impression all revolvers were six-shooters.

The gun fascinates me because it’s such an ingenious mechanical contrivance. It’s what they call a hammerless resolver, and it breaks open by releasing a catch and bending the barrel downward. As the rear of the cylinder comes in view, a small pronged gadget thrusts backward from the center of the cylinder, ejecting all five shells at once. Then, when the gun is fully open, the gadget automatically snaps back into place so the cylinder may be reloaded. I’m not very mechanically inclined and I haven’t been able to figure out what makes the gadget work. I’d like to know, but the internal mechanism can’t be gotten at without taking the whole gun apart, and I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to get it back together again properly.

Before I returned to town I bought a box of fifty .32 caliber shells in a hardware store. The clerk didn’t even ask my name.

Saturday night: I fired my gun for the first time today. I drove out to the old stone quarry and shot twenty rounds at a tin can. I only hit it once, but I came quite close with all of the last five rounds. I think maybe I should have gotten a gun with a hammer, so I could cock it before firing. This one requires so much trigger pressure, it’s hard to hold the gun steady while squeezing.

It has a wonderful kick. Not hard, but definite. A loaded gun in your hand gives you an indefinable sense of power. I felt more exhilarated than I have in months when the stock jolted back against my palm each time I squeezed the trigger.

Mary was a little cross when she learned I’d gone for an afternoon ride without her.

“I thought you were studying,” she complained.

“I just felt like a little air,” I said.

I didn’t tell her I had been target practicing.

Sunday night: In church today, sitting between Mary and Mother, the voices came to me right in the middle of communion. I pretended to be praying so that Mary and Mother wouldn’t realize I was intently listening to something they couldn’t hear.

The voices have given me my complete mission finally. I know now what God wants me to do.

I am to kill sinners.

It gave me a warm sense of confidence to sit there in church and feel the pressure of my revolver under my belt and beneath my shirt.

Monday night: I watched you again earlier tonight through your front window while you saw a comedy program on television. Your laughter sounded clean and sinless to me, but I couldn’t penetrate your thoughts. I’m not yet sure about you, but I don’t think you’re a sinner because I can’t believe an evil person could laugh like that.

I’m learning to read minds, though, and before long I should be able to read yours.

I find already I can sometimes divine Mary’s secret thoughts.

Tuesday night: Tonight I walked the streets for hours, impelled by the same strange force which made me buy a gun. I didn’t feel like watching those I’ve watched in the past, because I’m gradually becoming convinced I won’t catch anyone sinning by peering through windows of people’s houses. It’s away from home that people perform their sins.

So I walked and I tried to penetrate the minds of those I saw on the streets.

At two A.M. I had my first opportunity to serve the Lord, and I failed. But even as I failed I knew I was forgiven, for the voices came to me soothingly rather than in anger. Maybe I was made to fail on purpose, as some kind of test.

I knew the instant I passed the couple in the parked car that I’d found the first sinner I was appointed to kill. He had a girl in his arms and was kissing her in such a sickeningly passionate manner, the sight nearly made me ill.

Sins of the flesh are the evilest of all sins.

Neither paid any attention to me as I walked quietly by, being too preoccupied with each other. A few yards beyond I faded into the deep shadow of a large elm and simply waited.

After a time the couple got out of the car and went up the steps to a porch. It was too dark to see what either looked like, but I got an impression they were both young. Perhaps college students like myself.

Their figures merged on the porch, then separated and I heard a soft goodnight from the girl and a deeper-toned reply from the man. Then her front door opened and closed, and the man came briskly down the steps.

The gun was in my hand, steadied against the bole of the elm, and a great feeling of elation built within me. As he reached the sidewalk only ten feet from where I stood, I began to squeeze the trigger.

But something happened to distract me. The night was overcast, but just for a moment the clouds shifted enough to let bright moonlight shaft downward. And as the unexpected light struck the face of the man I was on the verge of killing, I recognized him.

He was George Haber, who sits in front of me in my class on criminal jurisprudence.

Of course the mere fact that I knew the man shouldn’t have changed my purpose. A sinner’s a sinner, regardless of name, and George Haber should have died. But recognizing him startled me enough to make me relax pressure on the trigger, and then it was too late. Haber was in his car, the motor was running and he was pulling away from the curb.

I wasn’t confident enough of my marksmanship to risk a shot at such a rapidly moving target.

But the voices assured me there would be future opportunity to kill George Haber.

Wednesday night: I’ve now managed to develop my mind-reading ability to the point where I know what Mary is thinking about almost constantly. The experience is a revelation.

I’ve always thought of Mary as a clean, fresh girl incapable of anything evil. But when she talks of our future marriage and how happy we’ll be, I’m shocked to discover part of her thoughts are on the wedding night. She actually looks forward with a kind of frightened but pleasurable anticipation to being in bed with me.

Thoughts of sex have never occupied my mind. I suppose subconsciously I knew men and women engaged in carnal acts after marriage, but it never actually occurred to me Mary and I would do such things after marriage. Not that I don’t know the facts of life. I simply hadn’t ever thought beyond the marriage ceremony.

I know it sounds ridiculous for a grown man to say such a thing, I now realize when I try to analyze my relationship with Mary, but I literally haven’t ever had a single sexual thought about her. I think my picture of married life must have been a vague notion that things would go on much as they had, with me taking Mary for rides, going to an occasional movie or dance, and occasionally indulging in a chaste kiss which was no more than a brief pressure of lips against lips.

I know now I can never marry her. The thought of actually sleeping in the same bed with a woman is revolting to me.

In the eyes of God sinning in your mind is as evil as actual sin.

Thursday night: It is part of my duty to God to remain free to perform His service. The history of Christianity is bloody with martyrs who have died because of bigotry and misunderstanding. I know Society wouldn’t understand or believe I’m a real emissary of God, and therefore it’s part of my duty to prevent Society from finding out my function.

I planned Mary’s execution for her sins accordingly.

After lunch today I told Mary my mother wanted me home to run some errands, so I wouldn’t be able to wait for her to get out of her chem lab as I usually do on Thursdays. Then I drove home, put the car in the garage and entered the house by the back door.

Mother was surprised to see me so early.

“I’ve got to study this afternoon,” I explained. “I’ll be in my room till supper, and I’d rather not be disturbed.”

“Of course, dear,” she said. “I won’t call you until supper’s on the table.”

Mary’s lab lasted two hours, from one until three. I waited one hour, then quietly left my room by the window. There is a tall hedge between our house and the one next door, so I was able to make the garage without being seen.

Fortunately the alley slants a little toward the street. Releasing the emergency brake, I pushed the car out into the alley, quietly closed the garage doors and then let the car roll to the street a quarter block away before starting the motor.

I timed my arrival at school for five after three. As I expected, I caught Mary walking alone on the street running alongside the campus when she was about halfway between the Science Building and the bus stop. Only one or two other students were in sight, for there are no lectures on the campus in the afternoon, only lab sessions, and not very many students take laboratory courses. I saw no one I knew, and no one paid any attention to the attractive coed getting into the car which pulled up alongside of her.

“This is a happy surprise,” Mary said.

“I finished my chores early,” I explained easily.

I swung through the park as usual, but then instead of turning left toward our homes, I turned right.

“Where we going?” Mary asked.

“I feel like a ride,” I said. “It’s only a little after three.”

“All right,” she said agreeably.

When we reached the ancient and rutted road leading to the stone quarry, Mary seemed surprised that I turned down it.

“The Old Ox Road,” she said. “I haven’t been here since high school. Don’t tell me my sedate lover wants to park and neck.”

If I had been tempted not to carry out my purpose, her remark would have steadied me. More and more recently Mary’s thoughts and conversation have hinged around disgusting physical relations between us.

I said noncommittally, “I just want to show you something.”

I parked right at the entrance to the quarry. Mary seemed puzzled when I got out, but she got out too and we walked hand-in-hand over to the deep pool in the quarry’s center.

“I’ve heard this is over a hundred feet deep,” she said, peering down into the clear but seemingly bottomless depth.

I took out my gun.

“Where’d you get that?” Mary asked, her eyes widening.

“Bought it,” I said. “Do you believe in God, Mary?”

“Of course,” she said. She was looking at me curiously, not afraid, or even uneasy, but thoroughly puzzled.

“Then I want you to pray,” I said.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“I want you to pray God forgiveness for your sins. Now. You have about three seconds.”

Her eyes grew as big as saucers, but she still seemed to think it was some kind of joke. With her mouth shaped into a small O, she simply stared at me in astonishment. Even what she must have seen in my eyes failed to make her believe I was going to kill her.

She was still looking astonished but unafraid when I fired five shots into her chest at a distance of two feet.

It may be years before they find her weighted body on the bottom of that pool. If they ever find it.

And even if they find it at once, nothing points to me. I got the car back in the garage and myself back in my room without incident. When Mother rapped on the door at six, I was deeply engrossed in my law books.

Friday night: I was up nearly all last night with both Mary’s folks and my own, waiting for some word from the police. Of course no word came.

I believe I act as convincingly worried as the others.

Saturday night: The police questioned me for a long time today, but seemed entirely unsuspicious. Since I have a perfect alibi and both Mary’s folks and mine told them Mary and I got along wonderfully, they haven’t any reason to be suspicious. Most of their questions were about whether anything had been on Mary’s mind recently, and particularly whether there was any possibility of her having eloped with some other man.

I told them the suggestion was preposterous, that we were engaged to be married and she never went with other men.

Monday night: Mary’s mother is confined to bed. Emotional upset, the doctor says. Last night, as we all sat around at Mary’s house waiting for the phone to ring, she suddenly screamed, “It would even be a relief to learn she’s dead! I can’t stand this not knowing another minute!”

Then she started to sob and was still sobbing when the doctor came.

I suppose it will be some time before Mary’s folks and mine stop talking about the mysterious disappearance. But eventually they’ll have to. You can’t sit up night after night forever waiting for news which is never going to arrive.

And I must be on with the Lord’s work.

Tonight: This is the first time I have watched you since Mary’s death. What would you think if you knew an agent of God was staring at you this very moment? Would you be frightened?

You should be, for at last I am able to penetrate that pleasant outer manner of yours and see the real person inside. I’m sickened that you can sit there, reading your magazine with such a serene expression on your face, when your mind is a sewer of carnal thoughts.

You look very comfortable sprawled in that chair. Do you know how I am watching you? Over the sights of my gun, which is centered on your neck just below the ear.

It’s time for you to start praying now, because my finger is whitening on the trigger...