Douglas Linkenheimer

The Scapegoat

He stood in a white room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of a material that he could not place but was warm to the touch. He had no recollection of where he was or how he got there. When he thought of himself no name or title came to mind. Not even an essence of who he is or was. He studied the palms of his hands; they were large and thick with callouses but still no whisper of identity came to him. He looked up from his hands and noticed a door. It wasn’t there before. Above it, floated the word Leviticus followed by the numbers 16:21-22. There was some significance to them but he could not recall what it might be. All he knew was that he must walk through that door.

The door opened into a hallway, made with the same warm, white material as the room before. On either side of the hallway, were five doors. Out of nothing more than curiosity he tried to open the first door on his right, but it would not budge. Behind him, he heard a door creak slowly open. Something about the grinding of its hinges frightened him and he froze, not daring to turn to see what was on the other side until he heard a voice. It was a man’s voice, gentle but firm, as a command from a loving parent would be. Look, you must look, was all the voice spoke and with that he obeyed.

On the other side of the door was a child. A boy sitting naked in the mud, his skin clinging to his ribs and hips. His bones looked as if they were trying to burst through his skin, to be free of him. He was crying but the man could hear no sound. Jutting out of the black space behind the boy were pairs of eyes staring angrily at this wretched child. The boy looked up at the man, as soon as one’s gaze met the other the eyes behind the boy sprung upwards to stare at the man and the door slammed shut on its own.

A hollow loneliness tugged at his stomach. He felt rejected, abandoned, unwanted. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he fell to his knees. His heart began to pound relentlessly in his chest, no, it was in his ears. Pounding so loudly it seemed to shake and rattle against his skull as if it was trying to burst forth into the white nothing of the hallway. He clasped his ears but the sound wouldn’t stop. It was too loud, too loud for him to even think. Then suddenly it was silent again. He heard another creak and the second door opened. Every part of him fought against the urge to look but he remembered the voice from before and turned to face whatever horror awaited.

It was the same boy, but this time he was clothed in white and surrounded by a soft golden light. Standing before him was an angel adorned with white wings that flickered with a brilliant red tint. The man could not make out the angel’s face but he noticed its arms. Countless they were and with each slow, sweeping movement more seemed to spring into existence. Two of the arms, the largest of them, held a goat’s head. The boy knelt and the angel placed the goat’s head upon the boy’s own, to wear as a queer sort of helm. The boy wore it proudly and the door shut softly on its own.

The man was shocked to see that no terror or torture waited behind the second door. He was even more shocked to find that the suffering brought on by the first door vanished at the sight of the angel. Instantly they were replaced with acceptance and a warm sense of security. The emotions from the first door, while dreadful, felt familiar, like he was used to being steeped in them. But the second door had left him feeling something totally foreign, he felt loved. Just as a smile had begun to adorn his face, the sound of a third door’s hinges wiped it all away.

The scene behind the third door began right where the last had ended. The boy stood before the angel with a thousand arms, only the horns on his goat’s head had grown somewhat. No longer were they the small round stumps but fully fledged horns that showed the slightest hint of curling backwards. This tranquil scene did not last. The man could now see the angel’s face, smooth and featureless as if it’s face had been sanded away. The warm golden light that once surrounded them disappeared, replaced by the same black void as before. The angel’s arms lunged at the boy, grabbing him and lifting him in the air. They smothered him, wriggling about his body, groping and tugging. The only part of the boy visible to the man was the goat’s head which sat above the sea of undulating fingers. Parts of the black void behind them began to open. It was the eyes, widened with excitement, staring at the scene unfolding before them. Darting up and down, back and forth, all of them moving closer and closer together until there was no space between them. This tangled nest of gazes shot apart to form one single pair of eyes. The man felt his skin prickle and his stomach churn, the eyes were staring right at him, past the boy and the angel. There was a familiar horror to the eyes. Then he began to hear it. It was unmistakably the voice from before only this time alive with some lustful madness. Carry my sins, carry my burdens, it echoed endlessly until the words roared in his head. The same as the pounding from before except now that pounding had manifested in a chant, carry my sins, carry my burdens, carry my sins, carry my burdens. It would not stop, the man tried to shut the door but it would not budge. He slammed his shoulder into it over and over again. Tears filled his eyes, unseen hands gripped at him with cold fingers. Still the words still echoed in his ears. He screamed for it to stop but he could not hear his own voice over the chant. He fell to the ground pleading for it to cease, his tears splattering on the floor soundlessly. The door slammed shut and all was quiet.

The man laid there sobbing, his shoulders shuddering with each breath he took. All he could think of was how cruel this was, to give him a guardian only for it to turn on him. Was it his fault? It had to be, it had to be his fault. He had corrupted the angel with his own filth.  A loving guardian that he had transformed into something else. That had to be the answer, he could not accept that the feelings of love and acceptance that were so real when he first tasted them were simply a lure to reel him into a fate much worse than the hell he lived before. As he lay there sobbing he tried to erase the third door from his memory, to put it in a locked box and shove it in the deepest recesses of his mind. Yet try as he might this was no longer an option, not here in the white hallway.

When he looked up to stare at the doors, holding the slightest hope that maybe he could reopen the second one and live that moment again, he noticed that they had vanished, leaving behind nothing but an empty wall. He prayed that the voice from before, the one that had coaxed him to begin this nightmare, would give him a hint but it was gone now. It too had abandoned him, and he could not blame it, he would only corrupt it just as he had the angel. He turned to return to the empty room he had sat in before this had all started and noticed that the name above the door had changed. Where Leviticus 16:21-22 had floated before, the word Nazareth had taken up refuge. The door itself had changed as well, now showing a distressed brown wood paneled door that sat in solitude among the white hallway. The man walked over to it and stood before it, expecting it to open on its own as the others had but it remained closed. He reached a tentative hand towards the knob and was surprised to find that he was able to open it. Behind the door lay a thick curtain of grey fog. He did not need to wait for a voice to tell him to enter, he knew that this must be an exit from this nightmare and stepped through with no hesitation.  

As he entered the fog he found himself standing in the middle of a dirt road before a large gate way where a crude sign swung slowly. Welcome to Nazareth Tennessee it read in worn carvings. As the man walked past the gate another sharp pain jolted through his forehead sending him to his knees. Memories followed the pain, blurs of him sitting in mud as the townsfolk walked past him, most refused to acknowledge him, others cast down looks of malice and scorn. Some beat him, spat on him, mocked him, but no one offered him a hand to help him out of the mud. Except a young priest with watery light blue eyes hid behind tangles of crimson hair. The priest soiled his garments as he lifted him up from the filth, clothed him, and brought him to his church.

The pain relented and the man pulled himself to his feet. He remembered now, still his own name escaped him but he could remember that this was his home, Nazareth. He had been abandoned for reasons he did not know, no parents or distant relatives to care for him, hate and scorn was all he knew from this town. Except the priest, who had cared for him, the only person to ever show him kindness. He scanned his surroundings to see if any of the townsfolk were near but the dirt pathways that coiled through the town were devoid of any traffic. The few derelict houses that framed the pathways were seemingly abandoned as well. Not knowing what else to do the man took a self guided tour of his former home, the only one he ever knew.

As he traveled through the town the sound of a shovel striking soil could be heard. At first it was nothing more than a faint klunk but the deeper into town the man strolled the louder it became. Finally the man happened upon a graveyard filled with tiny graves. In the middle of all of these graves it was the boy from before, dressed in dull grey mud splattered clothes. He was digging one last grave in the center of them all. The man cautiously approached, a strange guilt gripped at him. The closer he got to the boy the more intense this feeling became, until the boy looked at the man with eyes stained with tears. Pain shot through the man's forehead once more and with it more memories.

It began with himself and the priest, living together, eating together, praying together. These were the happiest moments of his life. He had been given shelter, a guardian, and purpose as the priest was preparing him for life in the clergy. Then everything changed with one unwanted touch, the abuse he suffered began and never stopped. With each day the invasions grew more and more, he did not understand what he was doing to deserve such treatment but it did not stop. Not until he had grown too old for his guardian and then he was given a different task, to bring others into this hell. He did as he was commanded. He could not think of another option, this was the only way he could cling to the illusion that he still lived in his happiest moments, that nothing had changed. Slowly the graveyard of Nazareth filled with small empty coffins and with each new grave came a new surge of guilt and self hatred until he was completely consumed by it.

When the man came to, he found himself sprawled out in the mud among the graveyard. The boy was gone and the grave he had been digging was now filled, only a small cross of sticks tied together with twine marked his work. The man lay there for a moment feeling sick, now fully understanding the horror of his sin. These graves that surrounded him were all his doing. He crawled to his knees, folded his hands together and began to pray, not for himself but for the children whose lives he had traded for his own false happiness.

“In your hands, O Lord, I entrust to you these brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. Fail them not as I have but deliver them from the darkness to which I gave them. I ask not for forgiveness or mercy but ask that you offer those gifts to those who lay before me. Grant them the peace and rest that I will never see. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

He realized that this was the first time he had heard his own voice. It was soft, no hint of the malice of which he lived his life. As he listened to his own voice as he prayed he realized that the voice from before, the one that urged him to look into the first door, was his own. Some part of himself had wanted this, the torture of reliving his wretched life. Whether this small remnant of his conscience did so for self preservation, redemption, or simply to torture himself he did not know. What he did know is that he was prepared to end this trial. Just as he came to his resolution he heard the loud ring of a church bell. He turned to see the source and found that a small, modest church had sprung into existence behind him.

As he reached for the church doors a vague fear gnawed at the back of his mind. He could only guess what final test lay in wait for him. However, what he saw before him was far from anything he had expected. There squatted an impossibly large monstrosity with the head of a goat and the body of a man. It’s horns curled until they dug into the beast’s own back. It’s jaws, unhinged like a snake, prepared to devour the angel who was gripped in both of the monster's hands. The angel’s once featureless face had now taken on the likeness of the priest. It’s wings had been shorn off and now in their place were nothing but bloodied stumps. As the man watched this demon slowly raise the angel to its gaping maw, he heard his own voice, the voice from before, whisper a name to him, David.

He bellowed the name at the top of his lungs, feeling it shake in his throat and ring off the walls. The goat whipped its head to face him, it’s eyes full of a wild hate. Slowly it lowered the angel, but did not let it go as it stood and began to lumber down the chancel to walk through the pews. Until it towered over the man, bringing its gaze down to meet his. The angel still in the goats hands wriggled in desperate futility.

“So that’s our name,” said the man, “David, Hebrew for beloved.”

Something flickered in the goats eyes but its gaze remained fixed on David. The man, now knowing his name, given to him either by the priest or some forgotten parent who abandoned him, felt like he was finally in control. For the first time in his death and his life he finally felt like he had some control over what happened next. He stood firm and reached out a hand to the goat’s muzzle.

“I know what you’re about to do and I know it seems like it’s the only answer. But if you devour him,” David pointed a finger at the angel that had now slumped in the beast’s grip, “you’ll make him a part of you forever. We finally have a chance for this to all be over. The others are at rest and though we will never join them, we have a chance to try again.”

The beast’s grip loosened on the angel, dropping the crumbled being to the floor where it shuddered, clawing at its torn wings. The goat then reached up to grab gently at its own neck, where hide met flesh, and began to pull the head off. As it did it seemed to shrink, smaller and smaller until when its head was completely off it was the boy standing with the goats helm in his small hands.

“You can leave that here with him,” said David nodding at the fallen angel, “I don’t think either of you will be needing it anymore.”

The boy smiled at David, and took his outstretched hand. The two walked away from the church until they were at the door, the boy turned towards David, his eyes free of any sorrow or pain.

“So what happens now?”

David smiled back at the boy and gave a small half hearted shrug, “I’m not entirely sure to be honest but I think that's the point.”

The two walked through the doorway to the church. A thin grey fog, neither warm nor cool weaved around them until the priest, the church, the town of Nazareth, and themselves had disappeared. 

About Douglas

Douglas Linkenheimer is an English major in his junior year at Temple University. Thanks to a particularly supportive creative writing group, he has rediscovered his passion for writing and is excited to share his work.