The Demas Revelation

by Shane Johnson

  What have I done?

  “The board has reached a decision, and the duty of informing you of that judgment has fallen to me.”

  “And what has the board decided?”

  “That it would be better for all concerned if you immediately tendered your resignation, word of which will be released at once to as many outlets as possible. Any affiliation you have with Oldefield will be severed. You will receive the standard separation package, but no longer are you to have anything to do with this university, in any capacity.”

  Broden picked up his briefcase and walked around the table. Stopping before Anna, he looked down at her.

  “Your husband would have known better,” he said. “He’d have burned those texts the moment he uncovered them. He would have understood the ramifications of their existence becoming known.”

  He shook his head.

  “Look what you’ve done to his good name. What would he think of you now? Archaeology is a man’s game, not a place for feminine sentiment or delicate egos … It’s for those who can make the hard decisions, those who know what to reveal and what to keep buried in the past in order to protect the present.”

  She glared, hating him. Hating herself.

  Oh, Sam—I’m so, so sorry …

  Anna was crumbling inside, feeling the tears rushing to the surface, the breath catching in her lungs. Her fleeting composure was all but gone. But she refused to give the horrid man before her the satisfaction of seeing the toll his verbal assault had taken.

  As if sensing her wounds, he stepped up, leaning over her, pushing into her space. His professionalism fell away like a skin, revealing a long-held resentment for her, for the special treatment he felt she had received for too long.

  “Go home, little girl,” he said coldly. “You’ve done enough damage.”

  Then he spun around, pushed his way through the door, and was gone.

  Now alone, Anna dropped into a chair, grabbing for its arm. With Broden’s words like daggers in her mind, she lost all restraint. Her purse fell to the floor. Sobbing bitterly, she dropped her head and could not stop shaking, could no longer contain the despair and anger and self-doubt that had been building for weeks. It spilled forth, a torrent of misery, obliterating the fragile barrier behind which she had kept it at bay.

  After what seemed an eternity, she felt hands upon her shoulders. Becoming aware of her surroundings again, she looked up to find Mercer standing beside her, trying in silence and in vain to lend a comfort that no one, at that moment, could give. She leaned into him, shuddering as she wept, clinging to the sleeve of his suit jacket.

  He gently cradled her head, his heart breaking as, he knew, her own had.

  Nine

  The sun had dropped low in the Italian sky, rays of orange-gold bathing the countryside. Gentle breezes, sweeping inland, brought with them the scent of adventure, of distant lands beyond the curvature of the world.

  An older white-panel van, moving somewhat slower than the surrounding traffic, headed northward on the A3 Autostrada. Its suspension was strained, its engine taxed by its cargo, a crate nursed from moment to moment by the three men who had brought it to Italy’s shores. They drove past one sleepy village after another, ignoring the colorful, centuries-old structures and long-celebrated vineyards, having no appreciation for the living history all around them.

  There was a job to be done. A mission to be carried out.

  Theirs was a holy charge, demanded of them by a god of brutal vengeance.

  The traffic slowed, a sea of red taillights igniting ahead. Road construction, the bane of every motorist, claimed the next five miles of highway for itself, forcing the traffic into a narrower flow. The driver of the van studied the scene before him, scanning the heavy equipment, the cranes, the helmeted workmen, and the surrounding stockpiles of steel and concrete. He checked his watch.

  Their planning had been thorough. Unless the situation worsened, their time line would remain intact.

  Their cargo had suffered a fall aboard ship. A rope had slipped, allowing the crate to slam hard onto the hold’s deck. An inspection once the crate had been placed into the truck indicated that its precious contents had suffered no damage, so they had chosen to proceed.

  And yet they worried.

  A flagman on the shoulder waved them by, his attentions primarily absorbed by an animated conversation he was having via walkie-talkie with another unseen member of the road crew. A radio-controlled loader stood just off road, waiting for commands, its arms filled with structural bracing. Men in varied locations all communicated, working as one to carry out their assigned tasks.

  Suddenly the driver of the van was seeing radios everywhere, all around him.

  “I just sat there,” Anna said. “I sat there and cried like a baby.”

  “You had every right to,” Bonnie told her, taking her hand at a table in Rose’s Coffee Shop, a warm, comforting place they had cherished since their teenage years. “I would have too. What an awful man.”

  “I know, but …” She paused, hating the words she was about to say. “I couldn’t say anything to him. He was right. He may be a compassionless jerk, but he was right.”

  “He was not right.”

  “Yes, he was,” Anna insisted. “Everything he said was true. I’ve done more damage than I’ll ever know. The lives of millions of people I’ll never even meet have been destroyed. And I’ve disgraced Sam and everything he stood for—”

  “You have not, Anna,” Bonnie said firmly. “That isn’t true. None of it.”

  “Yes, it is. All those poor people. I’ve given atheists worldwide exactly the opportunity they’ve been waiting for—”

  “Anna …”

  “Because of me, the body of Christ has a gaping, open wound, and those who hate him are standing there pouring salt into it and dancing on his no-longer-empty grave. Well, I’ve done enough harm … and God took my job away so I couldn’t do any more. He wants me to sit down and shut up and just disappear.”

  “Sweetie, don’t you think—”

  “I got Jack hurt,” she interrupted. “And because of me, Albert and a lot of other good people have been threatened.”

  Bonnie just held her sister’s hand, hurting along with her.

  “If only Sam had lived,” Anna mourned. “We were going to have a family. Did I ever tell you that? We were finally going to settle down, and we’d have had beautiful babies, and I’d have stayed at home and raised them, and … we’d have been happy.” She looked at a couple across the room, new parents blissful and aglow with youth, sitting at a table with a toddler in a high chair. Anna’s hand went to her abdomen and lightly stroked it as she watched the blonde, curly-haired child, a girl.

  “I have these dreams, Bonnie. Still. Different dreams, different nights. Not always, but often enough. Sometimes I’m teaching my class in maternity clothes, and I’m out to here, and I feel the baby kick. Or I’m at a shower you and Mom are giving me. Or I’m giving birth with Sam standing there … holding my hand …”

  “Oh, sweetie …”

  Anna felt agonizingly empty. Her life, her flesh, her soul. Bonnie, watching her sister eye the toddler, knew hers was a pain not easily allayed.

  “The chairman was right,” Anna said. “I should never have gone into archaeology in the first place. Look at me. I’m not cut out for digging in caves. I hate the dust, and the snakes, and the desert, and the jungle, and the isolation of being a jillion miles from nowhere. I’m no Lara Croft.”

  “Well, no one is, Anna.”

  “I’m Vyse and Belzoni, that’s who I am. Destroying whatever I touch …”

  Bonnie subtly waved a hand. “Laywoman here …”

  “Sorry. It was back in the nineteenth century. Howard Vyse used dynamite and gunpowder to clear Egyptian tombs, then picked thro
ugh the rubble for artifacts. Giovanni Belzoni wasn’t much better, using hydraulics to crack apart statues and chamber walls. They ruined so much in their misguided search for quick treasure.”

  “You’re nothing like them. You’re a trained archaeologist.”

  “The board of regents would disagree with you,” Anna sighed. “I don’t belong out there. I mean, what kind of archaeologist ever worries about breaking a nail?”

  “Most of us would kill to have nails like yours.”

  “Just my point,” she said, wiggling the long, wine red gems at her fingertips. “Who am I kidding? The closest I should ever have gotten to fieldwork was exploring the makeup counter at Creighton’s.”

  “Anna Dawn Meridian,” Bonnie insisted, “you stop that right now. You’re a wonderful professor. You hate the dust and the snakes and the desert … fine. But you love a mystery, and you love uncovering the answers to questions the world forgot thousands of years ago. You love your students and they love you, and you love knowing you’ve made a real difference in their lives. You have a talent for making a subject come alive that any teacher would envy. So what if you enjoy the softer things? So what if you’re beautiful?”

  “Beautiful? Have you seen these hips?”

  “Beautiful!” Bonnie repeated. “Who says you can’t embrace being a woman while doing what you do? Who says you have to throw away who you are in order to be an archaeologist?”

  “I know,” Anna said, “but—”

  “But nothing. You’re one of the smartest people I know. Girl, you hold two degrees! You’re kind and loving, and you’ve been given the gift of being able to share your knowledge and compassion in ways that are meaningful. What a blessing that is.”

  Anna sat quietly for a few moments, sipping from her cup as she considered her sister’s words.

  “I wish Mama and Daddy were here,” she said. “I miss them so much.”

  “I know, sweetie. Me, too.”

  “They always knew just what to say. And there wasn’t a problem in the world that could stand up to Mama’s hot cocoa and Bing Crosby.”

  Bonnie smiled. “Yeah. Mama loved those old records of hers.”

  “I just wish I could have had kids before she and Daddy …” She stopped, letting the thought hang there. “I hope Ellie remembers them.”

  “She does.” After a moment Bonnie steered the subject in a more cheerful direction. “You know, speaking of settling down and starting a family, that Jack of yours is something special. He’d make a wonderful father.”

  “Jack isn’t mine.”

  “He could be. Maybe he already is, and you just don’t want to see it.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you think loving another man somehow makes you disloyal to Sam. It doesn’t. It’s been more than fourteen years. It’s time to be happy again. You need to be happy. Sam’s happy … I promise you.”

  Anna clinked her spoon as she stirred more cream into her cup.

  “It’s just so hard, Bonnie. You don’t know. You can’t imagine how it was.”

  Bonnie took her sister’s hand again. “Was, honey. No, I haven’t been through a loss like that. But I can see how things are now. I’ve seen you two together, you and Jack. You light up when you’re around him, and he can’t take his eyes off you. Sweetie, that man is in love.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Trust me. And he’s gorgeous.”

  “I know,” Anna said, smiling. “I have eyes.”

  “Sometimes I wonder. You say how much you want to have a baby, and yet here you are at your age, still putting off a relationship. We aren’t teenagers anymore.”

  “I know, I know. ‘The clock is ticking,’” she said, repeating a phrase she had heard too often from Bonnie.

  “You’ll make such a wonderful mom. I’ve always known it. I’ve seen how you are with Ellie. But I’m afraid you’re going to let something that happened about fourteen years ago rob you of it all.”

  Anna was silent.

  “Sweetie,” Bonnie said gently, “I love you so much. I just want you happy.”

  “I know,” Anna replied, squeezing her hand. “I love you, too.”

  “If you do … if you really do … please stop beating up my only sister.”

  Anna nodded, seeing things, if only darkly, through someone else’s eyes.

  They sat quietly for a few minutes, watching the people around them. Some they had known for most of their lives—the town was not a huge one, and no one remained a stranger for long.

  It was then Anna realized that she, too, was being watched. And the faces turned her way weren’t happy ones. One man in particular concerned her. He was staring, unblinking.

  “Not again,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Maybe we should go,” Anna worried.

  “Why?”

  The man rose and approached her, an older gentleman in well-worn coveralls. The sisters knew him only as Luke, a longtime handyman who, years before, had been hired by their parents on occasion for work around their house.

  “Hello, Luke,” Anna said, hoping for a pleasantness she knew would not be forthcoming.

  “Why did you do it?” Luke asked, his pain evident. “Why did you have to go and do it?”

  No words came to her. Bonnie tried to intervene.

  “Luke, Anna didn’t mean anything—”

  “Tell that to my wife,” he said, almost breaking down. “She’s been in tears ever since. That church was her whole life, and you took it away from her.”

  “I didn’t …”

  A waitress came over and took the man gently by the shoulders. “Luke, please come and sit down. How about if lunch is on the house today? Okay, honey? Anna wasn’t trying to—”

  “Some things are better left buried!” Luke barked as he allowed the waitress to turn him back toward his table.

  “They aren’t true,” Anna said boldly. “The confessions aren’t true.”

  “How do you know?” he asked, as if responding to a sudden ray of light in a sea of darkness. “You have to tell me so I can tell her. How do you know?”

  “They can’t be,” she insisted. “It’s impossible.”

  “Then why did you pull ’em out of the ground in the first place?”

  She had no answer. The coffee shop was deathly silent.

  “I want to know too,” a woman spoke up, rising to her feet. “What did it serve to tell the world that Jesus was a lie? We didn’t want to hear it!”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Anna began. “I didn’t release them … we didn’t. One of them was stolen—”

  “But you’re the one who found them,” another man said.

  “Well, I’m glad she found them,” said a young man seated near the door. “I’m glad we know the whole thing was a sham. There’s no big brother God watching, ready to hurl lightning bolts every time we screw up or decide to have a good time.”

  A few nodded and murmured in agreement, which only made Anna feel worse.

  “I’ll make this right,” she promised.

  “How?” the woman wanted to know. A long silence followed, dozens of accusing eyes piercing Anna’s soul.

  “I don’t know,” she finally admitted.

  “It’s just talk,” said the woman. “Even if God’s up there, I don’t think he cares anymore.”

  Anna had no response. The words, only a short time before, had been her own, spoken in frustration and anger then as they were now. Amid the silence, the diners turned away almost as one, excising her in that gesture from their lives, their community. The waitress guided Luke away. Even as he returned to his seat, Anna could feel the unspoken censure in the room still pressing in upon her, stealing away the very air.

&nb
sp; The sisters paid their bill and left. Anna dropped into the passenger seat of the car, her face buried in her hands.

  “They don’t understand,” Bonnie tried to assure her, closing the door, sealing out the world.

  Anna sat back, pushing her hair aside to reveal smudged makeup and wet eyes.

  “Neither do I,” she said, defeated.

  “They’ll get past it, Anna,” her sister said hopefully, passing Anna a small box of tissues. “It’ll just take time.”

  “No, they won’t. And I wouldn’t expect them to. Bonnie, I can’t stay here. Not anymore.”

  “We’ll go back to the house. It’ll be okay.”

  “No, it won’t. I’m a pariah here.” She drew a breath. “They all know me, and right now I can use all the anonymity I can get.”

  “Where? Where will you go? You’ve been on television and in the papers for weeks now.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll find someplace. Color my hair … change my name …”

  “Honey …”

  Anna forced a weak smile. “Look, I’ll stay another day or two. Okay?”

  Bonnie nodded and started the car. As they drove down streets they had known since childhood, Anna became aware of a spiritual pestilence in the town, a creeping malady that had taken hold, swiftly, surely, lethally.

  And its mortality rate, if left unchecked, would be total.

  A couple of the town’s church buildings, of different denominations, had been abandoned and vandalized. Spray-painted acts of fury and hatred, words cursing the name of Peter and the apostles, splashed their sides. Signage had been ripped away and smashed. Windows had been shattered. Statuaries had been toppled. Doors set afire now stood charred and black.

  “Oh, Anna,” Bonnie said. “I wasn’t going to drive down here. You didn’t need to see …” She grew visibly upset. “I meant to turn on Mariposa Way. I wasn’t thinking. With all that back there at Rose’s …”

  “It’s okay,” Anna whispered, touching her arm to calm her. “Was anyone hurt when it happened? At the churches, I mean.”