I am still on the plane and I had a dream so vivid I actually thought it had really happened, long after it was over and I was semiconscious.
In this dream I am a reporter and I have gone to write about a very charismtic preacher who is well known for being a bit syncretistic. I am travelling with my friend K., a German writer married to an Indian, and a small group of other friends including Trisdee.
The preacher welcomes us at the doorstep and invites us warmly to step through a wooden, curved door into a huge, dakr, cruciform cathedral. We go inside and the congregants are dressed in strange, archaic robes. In thje center of the cross, dark and shadowy, is a tableau of Thai scultptures including a menacing Totsakan (the ten headed demon king of the Ramayana. "Look," I say to Trisdee, "something Thai in the midst of all this!"
I walk further into the smoky darkness. There is incense. But the closer I get to the Thai tableau, the more it changes. It becomes something more ancient, half Tibetan, half Babylonian, or maybe like a Phoenician Baal/Moloch, a gaping head, golden and glinting but mostly swallowed up in darkness..
The chanting begins. It's a barbaric sound, with clanging insttiments and guttural moanings. It's infectious, scary. I wonder where K. is and go further into the cathedral.
I hear her screaming. She ermerges from an inner room where she has been trying to interview the preacher. Her clothes are torn and she is bruised. "Did he hurt you?" I ask her.
"Yes..."
"Did he sexually attack you?"
"Yes..."
We carry her outside to the door. Our team is all there including the preacher's teenage son, who is a apostate from the sect and has joined the team. K. is weeping and clearly has been deeply violated.
The preacher's son is furious. "That's what happened to me," he says.
I say "He is an evangelical, isn't he?"
The son nods.
"But this church contains no symbols of christianity at all, I said …more like satanism." I say, "I am going to write this story, I don't care what happens. As soon as I go home, I am going to start typing it into Facebook."
When I woke up, I was already typing this....