Susan and Kelan had a late lunch of macaroni and cheese. Although it was quite tasty, the cheese tangy, Susan ate little, picking at it with all the hunger of a woman who has just been told she looks fat.
Kelan spoke only once. “It’s so cold in here.”
Susan fetched him a thick sweater. She sat silently as he wolfed down two full plates and a tall glass of chocolate milk. Apparently, the business of hammering thoughts into people’s brains worked up quite the appetite. When he finished, she told him to brush his teeth when he went upstairs to play.
She was doing the dishes when a chilling draft swept over her shoulders. A plate slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor. She shuddered. She had not felt such a draft since the episode in the upstairs hall.
Susan backed away from the drawers before she did something stupid like reach for a knife. She stood trembling, a scream poised on her lips.
It was all around her, hovering like a phantom. Something cold and dead. She shuddered again, and this time a small shriek escaped her. Whatever was there had teased the nape of her neck in a sly kiss.
She grabbed a knife.
“What do you want?” she whispered. Then her mouth slipped open.
Frost consumed the patio door. She went to it and took a small step back. A brown spider lay stuck to the glass, twitching slightly in the throes of death. She watched with revulsion until its last leg stopped moving.
In the living room, she checked the thermostat. Of course it read seventy.
She gasped as she drew back the drapes. Ice had formed above the window sill, a dozen black spiders peppering the glass like dark sores. A thin sheet of frost ran the sill to the floor, and scores more of the hairy things stuck to the wall. A lazy one crawled from the floor vent, and she stomped on it in disgust.
She went upstairs and passed Kelan’s room. He was quiet, too quiet, she thought, but at least she knew where he was. She stepped softly into her bedroom. The frost had thickened on her window, turning the light a somber gray. Her dolls lined the dresser like corpses, their hard eyes stony white from the cold.
And it was cold that whisked by her; a formless thing with dead fingers that curled around her body. She almost screamed as she rushed to her bed, and only then did she realize that the knife was still in her hand.
She turned to the door. What would Kelan have thought if he had seen her? She set the knife on her night stand, then sat with hands clasped as if in prayer, waiting for the presence to finish her.
She stared at the bible.
A book of deceit; a book of lies. What could her father have possibly seen in it? To take it up in her hand, to open up to it, to be touched by its hypocrisy … that was insane.
Still, she set it on her lap. The black leather was worn, as brittle as old bones. It seemed as ancient as the stories within, stories which for an instant she imagined might hold the secrets of her dark universe … perhaps the answers to all. It was folly, of course, pure and of the simplest kind, but had she not considered it more than nonsense these last few days? Had she not faltered in desperation, held it close to her heart?
Yes. Yes she had.
And what had she felt?
Fear.
Of her lack of understanding. Of her disbelief.
But there was more.
She knew now that nothing could save them. She had held the book until her cramped fingers could no longer hold it, had held it until her silent prayers had cried her to sleep. No answers had come, no epiphany, no blinding light from above. She had chalked it up to what she already knew, that it was all just a sham, a big stick to keep the sheep from going astray. How could she possibly believe in this storied God, a god who had left her without Paul? A god who had abandoned her and her children?
She held back a tear. Ran her fingers along the edge of the binding. The book felt cold, suddenly. Empty.
She nearly set it aside, but she wavered. She opened it at the bookmark.
REVELATION titled the page, the passage set in old type. The text started not at any particular beginning, but rather in continuation from the previous page, and she simply began reading at the first complete paragraph.
Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. Although the dragon and his angels fought back, they were overpowered and lost their place in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent known as the devil or Satan, the seducer of the whole world, was driven out; he was hurled down to earth and his minions with him.
Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have salvation and power come,
the reign of our God and the authority
of his Anointed One.
For the accuser of our brothers is cast out,
who night and day accused them before our
God.
They defeated him by the blood of the Lamb
And by the word of their testimony;
love for life did not deter them from death.
So rejoice, you heavens,
and you that dwell therein!
But woe to you, earth and sea,
for the devil has come down upon you!
His fury—”
Susan stopped there, her breath cut off as if severed by the blade at her side. Slowly, she read the last sentence again.
She recalled the words Mark had told her yesterday; the words of a madman. The message—a warning, as Mark had suggested, what she had thought entirely absurd—was now entirely clear. But Ellis Finley was only the messenger.
This was a warning from God.
But it can’t be. It can’t … be.
No. This was just a coincidence, nothing more. The bookmark just happened to be at this passage.
Yeah, and Dad’s bible just happened to be where you found it, girl. Just happened to be where you—and it—had no business being.
She stared at the line again. No matter how hard she tried to deny it, no matter how impossible this really was, her mind raced at those two words Mark had told her, words carved into a ceiling above a shrine of crosses, words forged of the insane.
“His fury knows no limits,” she said, “for—”
Susan stopped then, in utter disbelief … but she had to go on. Had to hear it all.
“—he knows his time is short.”