The Redeemed (27 page)

“I gathered that much. But I hadn’t seen any notes. How did she communicate all that to you?”

Sarah watched the landscape pass by through her window.

“She’s mostly in my head now.”

That was greeted by silence. Parkman stole a glance her way.

“We can still use automatic writing,” Sarah said. “But Vivian has learned to insert thoughts into my consciousness. It almost feels like a twin is speaking to me through telepathy. I know the thought is in my mind, but it isn’t an original thought.”

“Wow,” Aaron said.

“The only problem is that I also get her memories from when she was here on Earth with our parents.”

“How is that a problem? You now have two sets of childhood memories with Caleb and Amelia.”

“Vivian was brutally raped and murdered.”

Another moment of silence.

Then Parkman said, “I’m so sorry.”

“I can almost see the man’s face when it happened.” Sarah watched a Ford Mustang pass them on the left, paying only enough attention to see it go by. “Sometimes I have a Vivian nightmare.” She focused on the Mustang again. “While I’m awake.”

“Oh man,” Aaron whispered.

“To quell those thoughts or help ease them, I need to find that cop. He has to pay for what he did.”

“What about Vivian’s murderer?”

“He died in Europe. I can’t re-kill him as much as I would like to.”

“Parkman is a solid investigator,” Aaron said. “He’ll help you with whatever you need, as will I.”

“I hate being haunted by these horrid thoughts that aren’t mine but I’m happy with how close I’ve gotten to my sister. We can talk without anyone listening now. Messages are faster and easier. But it hurts my heart so much to feel what Vivian went through in her last lonely moments as a flesh and blood body. I’ll kill every rapist I can for what happened to her.”

“Okay, Sarah, but first healing.”

She nodded. “First healing. I can’t chase the asshole like this.”

An image floated through her mind. She closed her eyes and held her temples.

“What is it?” Parkman asked.

The image intensified. A fist coming down. Blood. The man’s face. She recognized him. More blood. Vivian’s clothes ripped off. Her young body exposed. Her cry for her mother. Then …

Sarah forced her eyes open and clenched her fists. “I can’t handle it sometimes. It’s too much. Vivian tries to insulate me, but she can’t in order to keep our connection strong.”

“What did you see?”

“Death. Murder. Her rape.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah.”

“Me too, Parkman. Me too. Now that I’m redeemed, I feel like I’m The Haunted.”

“Sounds like it.”

The car raced toward Santa Rosa and a dismal future.

Afterword

Dear Reader,

I think it needs to be said that I have no personal issue, grudge against, or angst toward Catholicism as a religion, nor any other religion for that matter. Because Catholicism is one of the largest religions in the world with more than 1.6 billion members, and it’s one of the bloodiest religions, I chose it to be the focus of this novel.

When I read in the early part of 2014 that the United Nations had requested archived evidence on the abuse of tens of thousands of children by Catholic priests, I was astounded that the Vatican denied this request. Actually, I’m shocked that the denial is even allowed. The United Nations accused the Vatican of turning a blind eye on decades of sexual abuse of children by priests and ridiculed church official’s “code of silence” imposed on clerics as the Church moved abusers from church to church in an attempt to handle the abuse internally.

Child molestation is an absolute disgrace. The fact that it happens at all makes me ashamed to be human. How can an adult hurt a child in such a way, all in the name of a moment’s selfish pleasure? It’s an absolute abomination. Once this horrific act has taken place and investigators have enough evidence or a statement to name a suspect, that person needs to be held accountable for what they have done in the most brutal fashion afforded by law.

The fact that these suspects represent a church, whichever church that might be, is more than astounding. It’s atrocious.

But what’s worse is that the Church protects these individuals by, “Handling it internally.”

So I decided to fictitiously, in the novel you just read, kill off a few of these assholes.

As a writer, I often find my tales are based on something I’ve read in the news that has incensed me. Whether the content is positive or negative, scary or happy, my novels are all based on research, personal experience, beliefs, ideas, ideals, and ultimately, imagination.

For me, every story begins with a
What if …
 

I’ve been on a spiritual journey since I was very young. It started with Sunday school at the tender age of six or seven. Long yellow buses picked me up on Sunday mornings and drove me to a large building with huge windows—not a church—where they would scare the shit out of me. A yard stick, an agenda of fear, and a side serving of guilt for being born were my first experiences with religion.

By the age of nine I was told that I had to ask Jesus into my heart or I would die and burn in a lake of fire and I would never see my parents ever again. It was explained to me that because of what Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden, women were punished with the pain of childbirth and men were punished with the pain—supposedly in their backs—of providing and working to feed and clothe their families. Because of what happened in that fabled Garden all those years ago, we’re all sinners. Even as we’re born, we are born into sin, no matter how nice we are or how hard we try to lead a good, solid life.

I left that church—cult—in 1979. It wasn’t until six years later, at the age of sixteen, that I wanted to understand God, myself and religion more. So I began Bible study. I spent time at a Pentecostal church where they spoke in tongues. I examined the history of the Quakers who shook on the floor of the church. In my late teens, I learned about Mormons by spending a week in a Mormon family’s home and visited their church where we drank the blood of Christ and ate his body. I learned how a man named Joseph Smith saw an angel in the early 1800s and began the Mormon religion.

Religion began to seem a little crazy to me.

Ultimately this all led to my early twenties where I examined Buddhism, Judaism and Islam. Karen Armstrong is a wonderful author on Religion who wrote,
The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism
among others. I also found Deepak Chopra’s
How to Know God
to be a moving experience.

After visiting various churches, and reading a myriad of books on the subject, I found David Gersten’s
Are You Getting Enlightened, or Losing Your Mind?
This book debunked what a lot of modern religion stood for and explained how many were based on pagan religions and how even things like Easter was a pagan festival. The symbolic story of the death of the son on the cross and his rebirth was one told countless times in the ancient world.

A Sumerian goddess, Ishtar, was hung naked on a stake and was resurrected and ascended, as reportedly Jesus did, too. One of the oldest resurrection myths was Horus, an Egyptian, who was born December 25.

As this is slowly becoming a debate on religion, which I did not intend to have here, I will conclude that there was no mention of Easter in the New Testament. Easter’s date is not a fixed date. It is dictated by phases of the moon, which is quite pagan.

Having said all that, I’m not advocating people to walk away from their current religion or belief system. We’re all at a different level spiritually and I have seen the church help many people in their time of need. Mother Teresa is a perfect example of what modern religion is capable of.

Belief and faith are very personal things. As much as I won’t push my beliefs on someone, I don’t want their beliefs pushed on me. As said in the novel, beliefs are simply opinions you’re not willing to reconsider.

In my opinion, there is a higher power. Most of what I believe is what you heard Sarah tell Parkman in the hospital scene. We’re all here living our own blueprint and everyone in your life is there because you wrote it that way.

As Sarah said in the novel, religion is for people who don’t want to go to Hell and spirituality is for people who have been there.

I believe in the other side which is what led me to create Sarah and Vivian in the first place. Vivian was inspired by my brother who died when I was fourteen years old. I mention him in my novel that he inspired,
A Murder in Time.

My brother has come to me several times in dreams. When I was eighteen, I woke up one morning with a vivid dream of him stuck in my head. He had come bearing a warning that I needed to pack a spare pair of pants for work that day. I wouldn’t normally need a spare pair of pants at my job, but I decided to humor the memory of my brother, now gone from this world only four years at the time.

I rode my 18-speed mountain bike to work every day. On that particular day, as I negotiated the final turn into my workplace, the front tire caught on pebbles, slipped out from under me and I smashed into the pavement going at least twenty miles an hour. While sliding along the hard ground, my thick wad of keys caught on something sticking up and slashed the length of my pants. Unhurt for the most part, only a tiny cut or two on my hands that had by reflex saved my face, I stood up to examine the damage to my bike. As I got to my feet, my pants slipped off me, completely shredded. There wasn’t a single cut on my legs, though. Needless to say, I thanked my dead brother for saving my ass while in the act of slipping on my extra pair of pants.

So whatever you believe, whatever gets you through your day, I hope and I pray that you’re happy, motivated by goodness and not guilt. That you’re fulfilled or working towards fulfillment and that you’re healthy.

Dear reader, you don’t have to have faith. You don’t even have to believe in God, because he believes in you. As individuals, you don’t even have to believe in that.

All I ever ask is that you believe in Sarah and have fun with her as she moves onto The Haunted where she comes face to face with the man who molested her all those years ago.

Then we’re on to The Unlucky where Vivian takes on an intrusive role in Sarah’s life and makes her do things that will surprise the hell out of people.

Sarah is in for a world of pain, bad luck, anguish, torment and ultimately love as she finds her way, book by book, further into Aaron’s arms.

Keep reading because one day Aaron and Sarah need to get married. And what will a pregnant Sarah be like? And the catastrophe that befalls her during her pregnancy is mind blowing.

But I’m getting away with myself here. We shouldn’t be talking about the fifteenth book and the nineteenth book. They’re all coming in 2015 with another host of books in 2016 with my aim to take the Sarah Roberts Series to Book Fifty by the time I turn Fifty years of age in 2019.

Until the next book, I say farewell and I ask only one thing of you.

Ask questions.

That is all.

Just ask questions.

The more you ask, the more will be revealed to you.

Religion, as with many things, does not hold up well to scrutiny. Research. Learn. Digest what you’ve learned. Make your own conclusions. And then live your life the way you want to live it and not by someone else’s design.

Get caught reading …

Jonas Saul

P.S. Detective David Hirst was named after two of my high school friends. Dave Darling and Doug Hirst. I met them both in grade eight and we’re still friends. As in almost every novel, I like to honor a friendship in this way. Thanks guys for all the memories. The days of our youth are over, but the memories live on. Now, have a beer already.

Good reviews are important to a novel’s success. If you enjoyed The Redeemed, please leave a review wherever you purchased the book.

Sincerely,