A God to Fear (Thorn Saga Book 5) (21 page)

As if in answer, Marcus said, “Amy will be next.” He reached down, clasped Thorn’s head, and drew Thorn up to his eye level. “You are wrong. I am right. You are wrong. I am right.”

“Have you forgotten that I spared your life when I could have killed you?”

Marcus increased the pressure on both sides of Thorn’s head. “You are wrong. I am right.”

Thorn gazed upon Brandon and Heather’s dead bodies, eerily familiar from the Miami Sanctuary. They’d lived for only two days, Thorn realized. Such a short time had passed from the beginning of the Bristol Sanctuary until now, and that had been their entire lifespan. What had they known during that brief period? Panic, terror, bloodshed, grief? Thorn intensely regretted what he’d put them through.
And all for nothing, in the end.
He wished he could have at least shown them that he cared, that he loved them.

The pressure from Marcus’s grip grew unbearably great. Utter agony burst through Thorn’s skull. His vision blurred. His consciousness waned. Marcus drifted backward, away from him, yet his suffering did not cease.
Has Marcus crushed my head?

Thorn collapsed into the air just above the ground. He gasped for that air, but none came to him. He tried to ignore the pain. He tried to focus on Brandon and Heather, on the simple joy he’d felt when he’d thought they were safe.

Rain pattered against his suit and his skin. Marcus had left Thorn’s field of vision, but when Thorn turned to find where he’d gone, he couldn’t locate him. In fact, all of the demons and angels had gone.
To where?

Alone with Brandon and Heather, Thorn rested his mangled skull against the wet ground. The pain flowing through his head and his shoulder gave way to a sudden numbness. As the world went black, Thorn felt nothing. Nothing but a strange sense of heaviness, of tangible weight.

Am I human again?

Darkness took him.

Thorn blinked. His pain was gone, his arm was back, and his fingers on the end of that arm curled when he wanted them to. His eyes didn’t even have to adjust to the bright light, as if he’d never even left here. Brandon and Heather were standing next to him, alive and well, and confused.

Thorn was in Heaven. Again. He and the two humans stood on a cantilever platform attached to one of the Celestial City’s nearly vertical mountainsides. Many such platforms dotted the cliff face, and as Thorn watched, new—or newly deceased—humans appeared on some of them, greeted by angels. The golden city stretched outward in the wide valley beneath them.

Thorn swapped glances with Heather, then with Brandon. Both appeared floored, speechless. Thorn almost explained to them that because they’d both been rational people who’d done good deeds during their short life on Earth, they’d automatically gone to Heaven when they died. And so had Thorn, since he’d died as a human. But when Thorn opened his mouth, he found that he was speechless as well.

Near the mountainside, some twenty feet away, two white-robed angels stood behind a celestial console, digits and symbols streaming across its surface. They gaped as they observed the newcomers.

“Well this is awkward,” said Thorn.

Brandon tried not to look at the big wall of TV screens as he was led across the golden city. Heather, though, kept staring at the giant black monolith, like it confirmed a suspicion she’d long held. Even Thorn seemed mesmerized by the structure as they passed less than a mile away from it, surrounded by a dozen winged creatures—angels?—and walking on foot.

Brandon remembered that black wall. He’d glimpsed it briefly during his delirious flight from the plane crash. But he hadn’t seen it so closely then.

It was indeed composed of tens of thousands of small screens, each no larger than an average television set. Various digits and figures flashed across the screens, all the way from their base up into the clouds, where the top of the tower disappeared into white mists.

The monolith drew Brandon’s attention like a siren calling his name. He somehow knew that dark horrors waited for him inside the black structure, but as he walked by, he was helpless but to gaze upon it. And when he did, he felt it reach into his mind. It showed him things—things he’d only glimpsed in the periphery of his mind’s eye when he’d looked at it before. But here, so close, the visions were brighter than waking dreams.

This is what would have been.

Brandon saw himself seated in Good Shepherd Family Church, one of many guests at a service. Splotchy colored light poured through the stained glass windows, but it fell onto black garb and sad faces. A funeral was in progress. A collection of candles and photographs of the departed adorned the area behind the pulpit. Brandon spotted Tim’s face among the pictures.

Pacing along the sanctuary’s center aisle beneath the chandeliers, Karen stopped by each one of the old, worn pews to comfort the folks who sat there. She cried with them and prayed with them, their anchor in the gale of grief. “Jesus will give you the strength you need,” she said. Then Brandon watched her approach him, dressed in blacks like the rest of them, but seated near the back, silent and shaken. She sat with him, wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Brandon felt small next to her kindness, beneath her caring arm. In that moment, he felt terrible for every snide comment he’d ever made about Karen, or about any Christian.

As she consoled him, the black monolith replaced the church with a different, darker vision.

This is what could have been.

Brandon saw himself wearing stylish apparel, in a high-rise condominium near the waterfront. He watched as he tried to manipulate another, shorter man—Cole?—then terrorize a panicked girl. Was he raping her? He looked away in disgust, but the vision moved along with his gaze as if punishing him for these deeds that he never would have done in his right mind. And then he was downstairs in the lobby, trying to kill the same girl. As he raised a golf club to swing, he turned and locked eyes with himself.

“The Fun can’t last forever,” the cruel Brandon said. “If I die on a wild night out, that’s a good death. Live like a rock star, party hard, die young. Go out with a bang instead of a whimper.”

Brandon yelled at his darker self. “You’re horrible! Any one of us could have been born into any life! Can’t you see that now? Why should you treat her as any less than yourself when you could easily have
been
her?”

But Brandon’s other self just chuckled as if he’d made a clever joke. Then he turned and swung at the girl anyway.

Brandon repulsed himself. Could he truly have ever become such a selfish and destructive person? The darker Brandon was so clearly under the control of cultural forces like the seeking of fame, and psychological forces like a lust for power. How could such a person fancy himself an independent thinker, intellectually superior to all others?

It made Brandon wonder under what forces he was acting unawares in his current life. What assumptions had he made and never questioned?

The horrific images of the high-rise condo faded…

This is what should have been.

For a moment, Brandon saw himself saying a calm goodbye to Crystal and Cole and leaving the condo forever. Or maybe he saw himself making peace with Karen at the end of his wedding reception, shaking her hand as the last guests left for their homes, late at night. He had no time to ascertain exactly which scenario this final vision portrayed, because an angel harshly prodded him into a tunnel at the base of a mountain. The huge black wall went out of his view, and the visions of other times and places—maybe real and maybe imagined—vanished with it.

Brandon finally snapped back to the present. He, Heather, and Thorn were led into a circular room with a large, unbroken slab of stone for its floor. The walls extended upward many hundreds of feet, from this dim area to a blazing yellow light at its top.

Even as Brandon marveled at the room’s height, the stone slab shifted beneath him, and he had to brace his knees against the sudden upward thrust of the heavenly elevator. With no obvious pulleys to operate the lift, Brandon found the contraption fascinating, and under better circumstances he might have asked to study it for an afternoon.

He tried to catch Heather’s gaze, but her eyes remained frightened and facing forward. She breathed in and out slowly and deliberately, as if the mere act of breathing required all of her attention.
She’s the one who believed Thorn’s tall tales, and she seems more surprised by this situation than I am. We’ve died and gone to Heaven, obviously. What’s simpler to understand than that?

Brandon was more awake and alert now than he’d been on Earth, and his broken arm had been instantly healed. He also felt relief that his nihilistic views of the universe had been proven at least partially incorrect. There really was something out there greater than himself. And as the lift slowed at the top of the elevator shaft, Brandon had a feeling that he was about to meet that Something face to face.

Yet in spite of Brandon’s current good fortune, he couldn’t help but think of how he and everyone he’d ever known had been subjected to such misery during their lives on Earth. God had never intervened. God had let the suffering go on and on and on. God had never answered his questions. God had never shown him that He cared. Brandon had never believed in God while he was alive, but now that he knew that God had existed all along, yet had allowed Brandon to wallow in ignorance and pain… Brandon was angry.

The lift stopped and a doorway slid open, revealing a room bigger than Brandon thought a room could be. Several football fields could have filled the place. Sunlight slanted in through tall windows and numerous skylights, past marble columns and air thick with specks of pollen, coming to rest on the oasis of flowers and streams that carpeted the ground in all directions.

Far more spectacular than this, though, was the view to Brandon’s right when he stepped out of the lift. Empty air filled the space where one of the walls should have been, revealing a vast panorama of what appeared to be Planet Earth, spinning in the vacuum of space. As Brandon watched it, the line of dawn crept languidly across the planet’s surface. From this perspective, most of the planet slept in nighttime, extensive webs of city lights cradling their fragile civilizations. But as daytime consumed the darkness, the night’s lights disappeared as if dwarfed by the far greater luminance of the sun.

Brandon stopped and gaped at the spectacle. It was either the real deal, or the most impressive computer animation he’d ever seen. He took a step toward the rotating planet, but an angel gripped his arm and led him sideways, parallel to the striking view.

When Brandon finally wrenched his eyes away from the breathtaking sight, he found that he was being led past a great fountain, complete with griffins spewing spouts of water and a tall statue of a naked angel. They walked for another five minutes, beneath stately marble archways and past various animals, including two markhors, a family of ferrets, and what looked like a Komodo dragon slinking through the underbrush. Eventually they turned left and arrived at a filigreed gate of gold, its inlaid gems of black opal and alexandrite shimmering as angels pulled it open.

Beyond this lay a long, purely golden room. The walls and floor were gold, as were the ceiling and the columns supporting it. Flames burned brightly in golden sconces along the walls, perplexing Brandon as to why the sconces didn’t melt. For all he knew, even the threads of the sunglow rug extending from the door across the room’s entire length were made of gold.

There was no wall at the far end of the room, just another brilliant view of Earth. But looming in front of this view stood a pyramid of golden stairs, leading upward to the foot of a golden throne.

Were it not for the reflected light from the sconces and the darkness of the planet behind Him, the figure seated atop the throne might have been a silhouette. But Brandon could see Him clearly, even from this distance. He wore white clothes wrapped in thin, leafy vines. Glowing volts of electric plasma sizzled outward from His gossamer hair and evaporated into the air around His head. His torso was hunched over, and His chin leaned on one of His hands for support. His eyelids sagged over His eyes. For all His glory, He looked strangely depressed.

Is this God?

The angels led Brandon, Heather, and Thorn forward like prisoners. One cherub ran ahead to whisper in God’s ear. God nodded glumly.

“Heather, Brandon, I’m wondering where to put you,” God said before they’d crossed even halfway to His throne. His soft voice carried unnaturally far, and Brandon did a double-take to make sure God hadn’t somehow appeared right next to him. God’s voice was listless, though, and nearly apathetic. He had yet to make eye contact with them.

God then turned to Thorn, whom the angels had separated from Brandon and Heather. Thorn approached the throne from the right, and they from the left. “I know exactly where I’m gonna put
you
,” God said to Thorn, with only a faint trace of interest.

He continued to face Thorn as He said, “You humans, you’ve caused some trouble. You’ve been helping him, and I can’t tolerate those who aid My enemies. Yet you’ve proven to have the kind of minds I need up here in My Kingdom. Rational minds. Selfless, more or less. I can’t ignore that. I’d like to offer you a place here, in Heaven.”

Silence followed, save for the fluttering of the sconce flames. Brandon looked at Heather, but she seemed too awed by God to notice his glance. When neither of them responded, God finally turned away from Thorn to look Brandon in the eyes. His passionless gaze was far less threatening than Brandon had anticipated.

“Well?” God said.

“Where were You?” Brandon asked in response.

God blinked, swallowed. “Where was I?”

“Where were You when my friends and family died? When Tim’s wife died in a car wreck? Where were You when I asked for Your help when I was in pain?”

“I was testing you,” God said, His face devoid of apology, and of all other emotion.

“Testing me?”

The immense orb of Planet Earth turned behind God as He looked down on Brandon. “Is that really so awful?” He said, scowling a little. Then He actually laughed. “I used to be so proud of the system I’d created. But now it’s all just…”