Tunnel Vision

53

Roman found a listing for Zachary Kashian on a site devoted to “miracle people.”

He scanned through a bunch of newspaper articles, including “Miracle? Coma Victim ‘Resurrected from the Dead.’” And “He Spoke the Words of Jesus from a Coma” and “Doctors Baffled by Miracle Man.”

He also read blogs from people who had been at Zack’s bedside, some claiming to see images of Jesus in wall shadows or smelling roses of the Holy Virgin. There were nonsense examples of autosuggestion, of course. Besides, nobody knew what Jesus looked like or Mary’s favorite flower. However, some claims couldn’t be dismissed.

“We believe that signs and wonders were evident with Zack. He manifested unexplainable wounds on his body like those of Jesus Christ. His hands and feet. The bruise on his side. I felt the presence of Jesus in that room.”

Another claimed, “St. Paul has told us that suffering is our way of continuing Christ’s redemptive suffering.… I believe that Zachary was doing this for us—uniting his suffering to Christ the Lord.”

“I came because my daughter has leukemia and I wanted Jesus to help her. When I entered Zack’s room, I felt the Lord’s presence.…”

“I believe the Lord spoke through Zack, giving us a sign of hope and mercy. And he chose Zack because he was broken in body and in a state of total purity of spirit. Jesus spoke through him. I believe this with all my heart.”

There were many more of the same.

But down the Google list were other, darker responses—warnings that these miracle-seeking faithful were being brutally misled, and not by wishful thinking or autosuggestion, but by Satan himself.

“Remember the warning of the scriptures, Second Corinthians 11:14: ‘Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.’ And let’s not forget that Zachary Kashian is a professed atheist and member of the Secular Humanist Society of his university.

“I’m telling you that Satan’s deceptions are much like a kaleidoscope: As the tube is rotated, the same bits of colored glass will form new design. Those who claim seeing Jesus in that young man’s room are the devil’s dupes. That was not Jesus or the Blessed Virgin, but Satan himself—the Great Deceiver.”

The words sounded familiar to Roman, but he dismissed them as stock religious attacks—theological chestnuts. Likewise the name of the blogger meant nothing to him: Norman Babcock, director of the Fraternity of Jesus.

But what kept pecking at him was that the kid was born on the sixth of June, 1986. Were Roman a superstitious man, he would have wondered at the significance of those numbers: 666. The number of the beast.

For a moment Roman, too, was lost in the possibilities of what may have transpired in that hospital room—whether Zachary Kashian was channeling Jesus Christ or the Antichrist. Whichever, maybe it was time to meet this “miracle” man.