In chapter 3 of Genesis, Satan makes his first cameo. By that point, God has commanded Adam to eat freely of every tree in the garden, with one proviso: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Appearing as a serpent, Satan approaches Eve instead, echoing those fateful words on his forked tongue, “Yea, hath God said, ‘Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’” So begins a chain of doubts and deceptions, tethering itself eventually to Father of Lies, the first novel by Brian Evenson.

Eldon Fochs is base but not basic. As a provost representing the local “Bloodite” Mormons, he commands respect, trust, and honor within his community. Yet the serpent’s voice rings in his ears like the vibrations of an empty skull. Empty is the operative word to describe Fochs, who serves as a willing vessel for that most ancient of mariners, steering the flesh into one fatal port of call before the winds of protection fluff his sails onward to the next.

Monitoring his disembodied crew of “loud thoughts”—not voices, he insists—is therapist Alexander Feshtig, at whose urging he unravels some of the fray of his childhood, passing off acts of violence as “dreams” and lightening his dark load in the face of uncertain accountability. Feshtig’s notes and battle of letters with his superiors (all of whom have a stake in keeping allegations of child abuse and murder under wraps), along with Fochs’s self-indulgent accounts in the first person, make for a morbid compass, the magnetic north of which points directly to the alter ego Fochs calls “Bloody-Head.” The latter’s interventions guide him into territories so wicked that he cannot help but come full circle into correction—or so he tells himself whenever the quotidian world seems poised to catch up with his perversions. Bloody-Head is neither a consequence of dissociative disturbances nor a projection of internal desires. He is, instead, the great tempter whose name and visage have been rendered for millennia on rock walls, stretched canvases, and human skin. And once he’s settled, no one dictates how long he can stay.

As a character study, Evenson’s narrative is a half-step removed from lived experience. His debut short story collection, Altmann’s Tongue (1994), prompted a critical response from his own Mormon leaders, who felt its frank sexual and thematic material went against the grain of doctrinal propriety. Refusing to succumb to their pressure to stop writing, he left a teaching job at Brigham Young University and the religious organization it represented. Although the seed of Father of Lies was already planted, this turn of events seems to have provided the increase. Here, he returns to those broken pieces, scrutinizing them in the light of retrospection and fashioning a catharsis of fiercely intimate proportion.

Seeing how far the church will gladly protect Fochs, lying to avoid soiling the undergarments of the Faith, hits close to home for me, too, as a survivor of spiritual abuse. When Fochs insists, “I know sin inside and out,” I believe him, if only because he is able to engage in that most horrific of illusions whereby he simultaneously swerves the wheels of innocent lives into oncoming traffic and sits behind the headlights that blind them moments before death.

Turning the secret into the sacred—or, if you prefer, treating the wrong as if it were right—is the only method of forgiveness by which Fochs can operate. Every killing is a “favor” to save a wandering sheep from reprobation, an act of such profound sacrifice that only a man of his supposed courage can bury the conscience so deep that its voice is muffled beyond recognition. And even when flowers of truth begin to bud from the rot, they are robbed of their fragrance before being given a chance to bloom. Thus, Fochs’s place on Earth is assured by the dint of a metaphysical contract. He knows his destination. Might as well destroy as many lives as possible on his way down. Feshtig puts it best: “Hell is crammed full of godly men.”

There’s no surprise in the ending, if only because we’ve seen it play out too many times in reality. The only spoiler here is Fochs, whose actions touch upon a sobering truth of the human experience: our addiction to crisis. Ignoring all the little (and not so little) signs that something is off gives us an excuse to swoop in as the savior when our complicity hits the proverbial fan. Therefore, what on the surface appears to be a slow burn of Mormonism soon forges a mirror in which we are asked to regard ourselves accordingly. Killing the body is one thing, killing the soul quite another—and how often we deny our readiness to flirt with that second sin!

The end effect of our time with Fochs is a scar. Whether in the anger one feels over the shuffling of apostolic cards or a child’s cry for salvation finding only the ears of her perpetrating father, the royal flush of revelation will abrade your heart as the conclusion lays its winning hand. After all, at the betting table of life, there’s nothing more frightening than a dealer who thinks himself righteous beyond reproach.