Chapter 116

GOD WEEPS

The One Who Made Everything watched as this little corner of his creation came apart.

His children fought, and their battle wreaked havoc and destruction.

It always did. It wasn’t the first time he’d sent someone against the up-elo, the first evil. But at least today it was a better match.

Thousands of years ago, a blink of an eye to him, he’d sent a man called Noe. Noe had been created good. He’d been fashioned by The One Who Made Everything as a perfect man. But even Noe had sin in his heart. That was the problem now. The blueprint had been set down, and it had this flaw in it—a flaw that came about because the designer got angry after his wife rejected him. But The One Who Made Everything wasn’t about to take the blame for that. It was man’s fault. He had free will. He could choose. And most times he chose evil. He chose sin.

Man’s fault, not mine, he told himself.

But there were high hopes for Noe.

He had a heavy dose of goodness in him. He’d been made especially to face up to the up-elo.

But sin was strong. Noe got a taste for drink. He was ratty and rude. And when the up-elo came after him, the world paid a heavy price.

Their battle unleashed a flood that drowned the earth. It destroyed virtually everyone and everything.

Noe and his family escaped. The up-elo laughed and said to his father, “Don’t you have better adversaries for me to play with?”

The story of Noe and the flood threw up fables. They were mostly to do with an ark Noe was supposed to have built to survive the deluge. Another myth. There was no ark. The ark was Noe’s heart, where goodness dwelled. It had to survive there or after the flood there wouldn’t be any of it left on earth. But sin survived too. Sin always survived. It would always be around, a dark stain in the human heart.

After Noe, The One Who Made Everything decided that up-elo was too powerful. The world was decaying even after being purged by the flood.

Back then, he didn’t want to kill that First Evil. In a way, it had brought some balance to creation. More darkness made more light. The worse some men behaved, the better others acted. Goodness followed in evil’s wake.

But slowly up-elo was getting the upper hand. And although The One Who Made Everything couldn’t wreck his own creation—that would be an admission of failure—he could at least balance things out.

So what he did was send male angels to breed with human women.

Their offspring he named nephilim. They had the foresight of angels and the craftiness of man.

The One Who Made Everything set out the laws under which they would live. The nephilim and their children were seers who had mind powers enabling them to track down up-elo. When they caught him, they should contain him with a curse.

But up-elo had a way out.

All he had to do was tap into the sin in men’s hearts to secure his release, and then, if he could kill and claim the souls of five seers while he was free, the world would be his. If he was captured and contained before he’d got to five, the seers he’d killed would not count—he’d have to start all over again once he was free.

But there was a catch. There was always a catch.

Up-elo was not allowed to lay a hand on the seers himself. That would have been too easy. He had to recruit a ripper. He had to call to the part of himself that lay in every human heart.

The battle went on for centuries, back and forth. Over time the creator grew weary with his own creation. His attempt to generate balance had failed. He was sad and angry that sin had corrupted the world. He had tried to control it but failed. Finally, there was only one thing to do.

Up-elo had to go. He’d grown arrogant. He was wily and spread a little too much of himself around the world. Even when he had been trapped by the seers, the sin he had distributed during his freedom had tainted the world. War, famine, and plague swept creation. It seemed unstoppable. The earth was dying.

There was only one way he could get rid of up-elo without throwing things completely out of balance. He would have to replace it. He would nurture a fragment of the first evil thought and give it life. Send it to earth and give it a destiny. Carve out a path for it so that one day it would come face to face with its brother.

Now was that day.

The One Who Made Everything had to let them fight. He had to be fair to the up-elo, to the original sin.

But in truth, he favored his second son.

He would be a good evil in the world. An equalizer to the goodness that The One Who Made Everything had, at the beginning, tried to instill into everything he’d made. But creation needed balance. It was better that way. It had to continue.

There would always be evil, he decided. Only sometimes it would be a new one. And here it was. Its human name had been Charlie Faultless. Its true name would be unspeakable. It would suffer, and it would bring suffering. It would tempt men to sin, testing them to see if they were worthy of a place in heaven.

It would be the lord who gapes. It would be the lantern of the tomb. It would be the moth eating at the law.

The One Who Made Everything sat back on his throne in heaven and watched the destruction below.

A tear ran from his eye.