Someone in the House [antikvár]

Chapter One God only knows how it all began. After all the searching and seeking, the rational debate and wild, intuitíve guessing. I'm not sure we really arrived at the truth. If there is such a thing as truth. We poor humans are so imprisoned in narrow boundaries of space and time, so confined by five meager senses. We are like ants, running frantically back and forth on meaningless errands that consume our years, taking a few square inches of earth for a universe. Father Stephen would say that God had nothing to do with it. In the early centuries of the Church he'd have been excommunicated for the error of Mani-chaeism. That's one of your classic, recognized heresies—the idea that the powers of good and evil are equal in strength, waging an unending war for the salvation or damnation of the world. His God is an aristocratic, bearded old gentleman in a nightshirt, and the Other One is a cross between Milton's lofty, tormented dark spirit and a Hallowe'en devil with horns, tail, and pitchfork. Father Stephen believes that he and the old gentleman in the nightshirt won this fight. Bea agrees with his generál premise, but takes a little of the credit to