And onward they went, Elijah at the wheel this time driving down a country road darkened by towering trees and stretching limbs, flanked by rows of onions dotting black soil while Gina enjoyed a break in the passenger’s seat. He balked, of course, but she wasn’t having anything of it. Had a needling headache in the middle of her forehead and needed a breather from the crazy.
Could really use some sleep after the day they’d had. But the show must go on, as they say. Especially when you’ve got an inexplicitus case involving a suicide cluster that seemed to be spinning out of control into a suicide contagion.
So she settled for quiet contemplation with her head resting against her window.
As her partner drove, some trumpeter doing his jazzy thing from the radio instead of her favorite soprano doing her operatic thing, Gina pulled out her phone for a scroll. Funny how that sort of thing was so automatic. Like a bodily appendage begging for attention, her fingers tingling for a pop of dopamine at a like or share or morsel of newsy gossip. Or was it gossipy news?
Either way, she understood the psychology behind social media engagement, with the fear of missing out and all baked into the product. Even felt the device buzzing at her leg sometimes when nothing was there. Phantom buzzing, they called it. The mistaken feeling a notification was begging for attention. Reminiscent of the psychological condition of amputees, actually, who sometimes struggle with phantom limbs after they are removed, the feeling they are still attached and begging to be itched or scratched or used.
Sounded about right.
Yet, scroll away she did, the familiar WeShare digital sharing space offering a surprising dose of community, as false as it was. Old college friends shared about promotions and newly published journal articles (an unfulfilled personal dream of hers). Former FBI colleagues shared photos from ski resorts in Switzerland or Alaskan cruises (she hadn’t had a vacation in a decade). Others posted ironic jokes and witty memes she didn’t understand (her autism tripping her up with those sorts of things).
The more she scrolled as Eli drove on, the more Gina’s anxiety about her own unfulfilled dreams and miss-outs, the in-joking and in-crowding, the window into lives more interesting and clever than her own bloomed into the feeling she was a big, fat zero—capital Z.
Driving her to start twirling her hair even as she popped two sticks of Doublemint in her mouth, the phone on her lap glowing with invitation to further her descent into the rabbit hole.
The intense spearmint flooding her taste buds and nostrils helped bring some measure of calm to the rising overwhelm, as did using her jaw to grind the polymers, plasticizers, and resins of the gum base that made up her stimming technique into a pulp.
Gina knew she should stop, knew she should shove the device back into her pocket—of all people, knowing the harmful psychology behind the social feedback loops WeShare engenders to fuel self-esteem and share self-referential thoughts to garner likes and shares that further the loop. But she couldn’t—especially with the new posts coming into view.
Ones that mirrored her own doubts about her recently chosen profession (“OMG, did I make the biggest mistake of my life taking this job!” from a friend of a friend), and fears about nearing the Big Four-Oh without any romantic prospects on the horizon (“Just me and my four cats on a Friday night, with a pizza, watching Gilmore Girls. Nope, not a nun. Just a 39-year-old doomed to socially imposed celibacy!” from another shared post), and general feelings of malaise (“Why did no one tell me life would suck this bad??? I would have slit my wrists a decade ago. LOL! JK!! <3 <3 <3”)
For a split second, she agreed with Mandy Fosdick’s self-confession, whoever she was—just some random acquaintance connection from a friend. But there she was, verbal vomiting on her ShareFeed. It was as if the darkness Gina had been surrounded by with this inexplicitus case had seeped down inside, stirring up her own dark, despairing, desperate thoughts.
The self-defeating ones that told her she was still that double-wide trailer-park trash that would amount to nothing but her stoned mama.
The self-doubting ones that said she’d made the biggest mistake of her life joining Group X, wasting her life in service of the Church instead of catching the real bad guys, the flesh and blood ones terrorizing the country.
The despairing ones that kept her attention on the headlines shouting about rising inflationary indexes and stock market corrections, tension in Eastern Europe and suicide bombers in the Middle East, police shootings and urban lootings, the next variant leading to the next pandemic.
The anxious ones that feared she’d missed her chance to marry and have 2.5 kids and find the Happily Ever After she and her sister had giggled about as girls, then early teens, until…
Now her mind slumped fully into the darkness, those haunting memories of Grace swinging from the carved-out ceiling, the cloying smell of deathly rot already blooming in the stuffy, stifling double-wide.
She tried to climb back out, but it was no use. Tendrils of despair had wrapped themselves around Gina’s very soul—the more she scrolled, the more her memories surfaced of all the darkness from her life, past and present.
Until a dot of light spoke through it. Just a pinprick, really. A ray of truth slicing through the swamp and climbing toward the surface of her consciousness. A set of verses, from the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians:
Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.
The verse jostled her from doomscrolling through her ShareFeed, awakening her from the mindless enslavement to her thoughts—the dark ones, the despairing ones, the hopeless ones.
Take every thought captive to obey Christ…
Indeed.
Gina stuffed the phone in her pocket and cracked the window, the blessed scents of onions and celery from the farms racing by grounding her in this reality—not the fake one crafted in the digital nether. Those dueling scents were joined by woodsmoke and manure. Heaven…
The jazzy trumpeter switched to a bluesy organ and tenor saxophone. Not her style, but the change in sound helped unwind those tendrils the darkness had wrapped around her heart and mind, the aural shift re-centering.
She considered those weapons of our warfare the Apostle Paul spoke about. Ones he goes on about in our journey with Christ to remain victorious against the Devil—our quest as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven to stand against the Darkness as the Book of Ephesians speaks about, wearing the whole armor supplied by the good Lord himself: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit.
All of it is given to empower God’s children with the strength of Christ to take their stand against the darkness, their own personal darkness during the evil day when the Devil and his minions rise with menacing purpose.
Like in that moment, in that Escalade barreling down a country road, the trees parting some now to show forth a bright moon spraying soft silverlight across Warner’s fields and the small town assaulted by this present supernatural darkness.
Buildings from that town were coming into view as well, another mile down the way. Houses with husbands and wives trying to hold their marriages together in the face of those assaults. Children nestled in beds and dreaming dreams too wicked for words.
A shiver ratcheted up and down Gina’s spine at the thought, knowing the truth of that wicked assault. The personal truth of that wicked assault.
The Apostle James exhorts believers to resist the Devil, promising he will flee from those who stand against the darkness.
So she joined that promise with a prayer:
Dear Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: I hold up all my weakness to your strength, my failure to your faithfulness, my sinfulness to your perfection, my loneliness to your compassion, my little pains to your great agony on the Cross. I pray that you will cleanse me, strengthen me, guide me, so that in all ways my life may be lived as you would have it lived, without cowardice and for you alone. Show me how to live in true humility, true contrition, and true love.
“Amen,” she muttered, crossing herself.
That tension eased some inside her chest now, and light slowly faded into a strong hearing, the Word of God and Spirit of Christ chasing away the darkness.
For now.
She did feel lighter, though, like she could breathe again.
Sniffling and batting at her eyes, she thanked the good Lord above for his—
Something suddenly came into view out front.
On the road.
The headlights slicing through the nighttime darkness dowsing white beams against—
A woman. Blond and young.
Stepping out from the shadows.
Arms crossed against her chest.
Facing them with eyes closed.
Standing dead-center in their lane.
With only seconds to react.
“LOOK OUT!!!” she screamed.
Her partner joined her with a high-pitched scream of his own, joined by squawking brakes and squealing tires and a spinning world as Eli tried to avoid running the woman over.
Didn’t work.
Gina glimpsed the woman’s face just before it smacked against her window with a hideous slapping thud that would stay with her for days.
Right before a rumble underneath the car, the body crunching under the front tires and thudding against the undercarriage.
Brakes squawked, tires squealed, the world went twirling as Elijah sought to right the ship and keep from capsizing.
Then it all stopped. The rumbling, the crunching, the thudding, the squawking, the squealing. Only sound left was the echo of their cries and a mournful, haunting sax.
“Did I just hit someone?” Elijah asked in a rush on a horrified breath, the sound of his hyperventilating breaths joining that damn sax. “Did I just ram this Caddy into some poor soul out for an evening stroll?”
He was heaving desperate breaths, mouth open as if in a question and eyes just as wide.
“I believe so,” Gina said. She startled at her answer, then she spun to him. “I mean no! This was not your fault. She stepped out into your path. You didn’t do anything wrong. There wasn’t anything you could—”
Eli threw back his head in a primal scream that sent an electric charge of horror skating across her skin and belly slumping to the fine leather seat beneath.
Then he threw open his door and bolted from the SUV, tearing across the road and into one of Herb Warner’s fields.
“Eli!” Gina called after him, head pulsing with wicked pain and confusion and indecision—and paralyzed with what to do.
Could things get any worse?
Actually…watching Eli scramble over a downed portion of a fence butting the road, Gina knew they could.
And would, if she didn’t go after him.
She had a hunch what was coming.
And it would be no good for anyone.