AS DANA CROSSED THE THRESHOLD, BRIGHT SUNSHINE flooded down on her and she found herself standing on a two-lane winding country road with birch trees lining both sides, the sun filtering through lime-green leaves. The air was fresh and crisp. Black-throated gray warblers perched on the branches. She turned to find the doorway behind her, but when she spun all she saw was the road curving off into the distance.
“I like this place muuuuuuch better.” Brandon glanced at their surroundings. “Which way?”
“Forward,” Reece said.
They strode down the road, the sun at their backs—warmth creeping back into her body. After a few paces, Dana stared at the curve in the road fifty yards ahead. Something gray seeped around the corner and swallowed the sunlight. As they rounded the bend, a thin fog swirled through their legs and up their bodies.
“On alert,” Reece said.
Their pace slowed and Dana glanced back and forth to her right and her left. A minute later an old wooden bridge made of thick beams and cable supports appeared out of the mist. They stopped where the bridge and the road met, and Dana peered into the fog. There. Fifteen yards ahead. A man stood leaning over the bridge, his chest on the railing, arms hanging down, his body jerking as if something were trying to pull him up and over the edge. She jogged toward the figure and the others followed. it had to be the professor.
Yes—it was him.
The professor was at the center of the bridge, thin ropes slicing into his bare wrists and forearms. Attached to the ends of the ropes were weights of iron, thick rusted chains, and dark gray barbell plates.
“There’s no way we can lift those,” Dana said.
Marcus’s body continued to shake and his speech came in stilted gasps.
“I don’t know how . . . to let go.”
“You don’t need to,” Brandon said. “Look.”
On the railing just on the other side of Marcus lay a silver blade with an inlaid pearl handle that seemed to throw off light.
“I can never reach it,” Marcus sputtered.
Brandon danced around the back of Marcus, plucked the blade off the railing, and didn’t hesitate. In four swift motions he sliced through the ropes and the weights streaked into the chasm. Marcus pulled back from the edge and slumped to the wood planks at his feet.
“Thank you. Thank you.” Marcus turned to Brandon, then stared at his arms and swiped at the cords still tied around his wrists and arms. The thin ropes fell off as if made of dust and floated to the wooden planks.
Dana didn’t doubt the chasm they stood over was bottomless. Those insidious weights had vanished forever. But once again a niggling in her heart said it wasn’t enough. There was more, but what?
Brandon set the knife down on the dark beam. “It’s over.”
But just as in the media room—it wasn’t. Wispy strings grew around the professor’s arms and thickened until they were as wide as before. They snaked over the railing, waving in the breeze coming up from the depths. Then tiny weights appeared at the end of the ropes, the size of lead weights used by fishermen. Within seconds they grew to the size of grapefruits, then watermelons. Their combined weight yanked Marcus back to the railing, his arms again over the side, his body straining to stay on the bridge.
“No!” Brandon snatched the knife off the railing and sliced through the ropes again. This time the weights came back faster. He turned, his face contorted in frustration.
“What are we supposed to do?”
Once again they were going after the symptom, not the cure. Dana turned to Reece, who had stood by with folded arms from the moment they’d spotted the professor. “Help us.”
Reece nodded toward the end of the bridge. She sprinted to the end, then spun on her heel in a circle searching for clues. Dana scanned the trees along the steep slope that poked through the fog and spied a few caves that burrowed into the hills and thick rocks covered with jade moss that jutted out over the entrances. Something in the caves? No, that wasn’t it. There was nothing here. What did Reece want her to find?
“What!” She screamed back the way she’d come, but the only answer was soft moans from Marcus.
“Show me, Jesus.”
She did another slow spin and stopped as the faint edges of a huge sign nailed to the side of the bridge filled her vision. Of course.
“Let me see, Jesus.”
The fog cleared around the sign and she gasped. On it were listed hundreds of Marcus’s regrets. Every choice he wished he could make over. Every moment missed with his daughters. Every moment missed with his wife.
“Brandon!”
He reached her in seconds and she pointed to the sign. He scanned it and turned to her. “What are you thinking?”
“We burn it.”
“No, that’s not enough. Nature abhors a vacuum. We need to put something in its place. We need to cover this—erase it—remove the words and fill the sign with thoughts to take the place of these.”
“Cover it?” Dana spun in a circle. With what? Dirt? Take a rock and scrape the writing off the sign? “How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we take it down and a new sign will appear.” Brandon reached up and grabbed the edge of the sign and yanked, but it didn’t budge. He stepped back.
“Look!” Dana pointed to where Brandon’s hands had been. Smudges of white in the shape of his fingers covered the sign.
She stepped forward, slapped her hands on the sign, and smeared them in sweeping circles. Brandon joined her and in seconds they stared at a white canvas.
“Now what?” Brandon said.
“Somehow we have to fill the vacuum.”
“How?”
She stepped up, placed her forefinger on the sign, and drew it along the bottom. A bright crimson line appeared. Dana turned to Brandon and smiled. “Ready? You take that side, I’ll take this.”
“What do we write?”
“No time to think about it. Write whatever the Spirit brings to mind.”
For the next ten minutes the only sound was the squeak of their fingers on the sign and the clomp of Reece’s footsteps coming toward them. He stood to their right, his eyes bright, and offered a single nod in appraisement of their work. Dana reached the bottom of the sign with her words and stepped back. Brandon was already finished.
I am a child of the everlasting King.
I am forgiven.
I am a warrior.
I am cloaked in righteous armor.
I was made for adventure.
I was built for battle.
I am part of a larger story.
My true and lasting affirmation comes only from my King.
I am unique above all creation—planned and perfect in design.
I have been created for a glorious destiny.
All my ways are established by you, my King, and I walk in them.
My life and actions are real, authentic, and without compromise.
I am quickened and made alive through the power of your Spirit.
My whole life is before me.
I am a shining gift from God to this lost world.
I know my name, I understand my calling, and I am worthy to walk in it.
I am strong, brave, and courageous in the face of my enemies.
Whatever is good, whatever is pure, whatever is true, dwell on these things.
My sins are scattered as far as the east is from the west.
I am a good husband to my wife.
I am a good father to my daughters.
The past is over,
And the future glimmers with radiant light.
I will look to the new day,
The dawning of hope.
I will step forward with the truth before me and will no longer look on the day that is gone.
The past is over; the future has begun.
Brandon laughed and turned to Dana. “Where did those come from?”
“You know exactly where.” She smiled back, then pointed toward Marcus. “Let’s try cutting the cords one more time.”
After the weights hurtled into the chasm, they waited. The professor’s arms stayed free of the ropes and the wonder that filled his face seemed to burn into the light fog still hovering over the bridge. Then the fog lifted, shafts of sunlight cut through the dissipating mist, and Dana blinked and shut her eyes against the brilliance. When she opened them again, Brandon, Reece, and she were back at the fire pit—each of them breathing deep.
Marcus sat on the back porch of his home in Seattle’s Belvedere Terrace neighborhood, his eyes closed, praying for freedom. Praying for the others. He knew they were warring for him. Possibly even inside his soul at that moment. Going into areas he hadn’t faced in years. Areas he didn’t even know were there. But he felt nothing. He opened his eyes and glanced at his watch. Nine o’clock. At nine fifteen he’d go inside. He turned at the squeak of the screen door behind him.
“How are you doing?” Kat leaned against the wall to the right of the door in her dark sweats.
“I’m okay.”
“If they’re supposedly going into your soul, shouldn’t you be feeling something by now?”
“I don’t know. The data to draw from at this point is extremely limited.”
“I’ll keep praying.” Kat smiled and opened the screen door. “I do think God is going to do something.”
Why hadn’t he felt anything? But as the screen door shut and the clop of Kat’s shoes faded into the house, Marcus realized something had happened. Something felt different. As if a match had been lit deep in his soul and the light was growing. Over the next ten minutes the sensation intensified till his chest pulsed with an energy he’d never felt before. His cell phone rang and he squinted at the caller ID. Dana.
“How are you feeling?”
“As if my chest is about to explode. It’s like I’ve swallowed a thousand gallons of light and have no power to keep it contained inside.”
“I’m not surprised.” She laughed, and the sound of it reverberated through his heart and the light inside grew even more. “I’d say we had a significant victory, but you have to take the final step.”
“Whatever is required, tell me.”
“I’m going to text you a series of statements. Read them, out loud if you can, and let them sink deep into your mind and heart and soul and spirit.”
“Anything else?”
“You have to choose to believe them.”
Marcus hung up and stared at his phone till Dana’s text arrived. For the next twenty minutes Marcus read the list over and over again, and the light inside him exploded.
“ . . . the past is over; the future has begun.” He finished the list for the seventh time and closed his eyes. So much weight had risen off his shoulders, he was surprised he wasn’t floating up to the top of the Douglas fir trees in his backyard.
Freedom like he’d never known swirled about him and all he could say was, “Thank you.”
The screen door squeaked again. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but the girls just went to bed if you want to come say good night.”
Marcus waited for the words to fly across his mental screen—“You missed so many times of saying good night that will never come again!”—and lance him with guilt. But when they came, no pain came with them. No guilt. No regret.
His friends had made it inside—fought for him, set him free. He grinned at Kat as he reached out his arms and walked toward her. She stepped into his arms and he hugged her tight, then released her, took her hand, and stared up at the diamonds in the night sky. “I would love to come say good night.”
“Your face tells me you’ve had quite an experience since I checked on you last time. Am I going to have to become a believer in your new wild and wonderful methods?”
He turned and looked deep into her eyes. “I’ve become a good father.”
She stared at him for a long time, a smile growing on her face. “Yes, you have. A great father.” Kat wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. “And a great husband.”
That night Marcus dreamed of bridges and weights and sunlight and freedom, and he didn’t want the dream to end.