Sacrifices of Joy

by Leslie J. Sherrod

  Windows and more windows. All boarded shut.

  I ran to the other side of the house and stopped.

  There was one window open.

  I walked up to it slowly, preparing myself for what I knew I would see.

  Striped curtains hung just inside of it. The curtains billowed in the afternoon breeze. A porcelain cat sat guard on the sill. My heart raced as the open window beckoned me.

  I came out of my frozen state and grabbed three cinderblocks that were scattered on the ground around me.

  What am I doing? I didn’t stop to answer my own question as I piled the cinderblocks on top of each other and used them to hoist myself up to the wide open window frame. I sat down on the sill and brought my legs inside.

  I was in the kitchen of the home.

  Everything was dusty. Cobwebs covered the kitchen table and chairs and rodents scurried underneath the floorboards.

  What am I doing? What am I doing? Now, I was out of breath, and I knew the lack of oxygen was affecting my common sense. I need to get out of here! But then do what?

  I looked around the kitchen that had been finished in all white. White walls, white chair, white dishes arranged perfectly in white wooden cupboards with frosted glass doors.

  The white made the ink stand out. A large stain of black ink was on the floorboards of the kitchen on the way to the home’s formal dining room. I stepped slowly across the floor to study the ink, but my eyes caught notice of something else instead.

  The dining room had a large table and a large, unusual contraption next to it. I scrunched up my face, trying to make sense of the tiny metal letters that were spread across the table, the large white paddle-looking things that had black ink smeared all over them. I looked back at the wooden contraption that was about half the size of the dining table it stood next to.

  An antique printing press. I remembered the explanation given by the rare bookstore owner about the printing process, and was convinced that was what I was looking at.

  And then I saw the book.

  A blue bound hardcover lay on the floor. I didn’t need to see the title to know what it was.

  I would have studied the contents of the dining room some more, but the living room got my attention.

  The walls of the front room were covered with crosses, crescents, stars of David, ankhs, every kind of religious symbol the world over. I was staring at the mind of someone in spiritual confusion, and it made sense. The spiritual leader in his life had been deceptive. Spiritual deception was all Jebidiah knew.

  I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

  Jesus’ words were simple, plain, and straightforward, and yet most of the world didn’t hear them, receive them. How much more difficult would it be to hear if you purposely covered your ears, deliberately closed your heart?

  Jebidiah was lost, but didn’t want to be found.

  I turned back toward the kitchen, but stopped in the dining room to pick up the book.

  This was all I’d have to give to authorities. I stared at the title: The Secrets to Deconstructing Heroism and a Critique of the Philosophical and Theological Views of Moral Evolution in the Finite Universe. I flipped through the first few pages and immediately understood why the bookstore owner wouldn’t want to keep it in his possession. Though presented as a philosophical argument, it was clear that each chapter detailed specific plots of death and destruction. There were more than just plans to bomb an airport. I shivered as I flipped through the pages, seeing the terrifying thoughts and illustrations of a madman, the ruminations of someone preparing to commit unimaginable horrors.

  Though his name was nowhere on the cover or the title page, he’d made notes throughout the pages, specifying dates, places, and concrete steps of action, including a detailed outline to carry out a bombing at BWI.

  This was his personal copy.

  I turned back toward the kitchen and retraced my steps to the open window to get out of there!

  But a sound caught my ear.

  It was slight, but enough to make me turn back around.

  Was that door cracked open before? The kitchen pantry door was ajar. I didn’t recall it being open. I heard the sound again and wondered if I was just seeing things, imagining things, and mistaking the loud thuds of my heartbeat as a sound outside my body.

  But I heard it again.

  A muffled whimper.

  Was an animal in there? My feet were stuck to the floor as fear suddenly consumed me. I couldn’t move. I forgot how to breathe. I couldn’t think, scream, or even tremble.

  I heard the muffled whimper again, and this time the pantry door slowly creaked open.

  Darci.

  She sat tied to a chair, her mouth gagged with a rag. She wriggled her head against the back of the chair, her eyes wide, her whimpers louder.

  “Darci!” I came back to life and ran to her, first undoing the rag from her mouth.

  “Sienna, run!” she yelled immediately.

  “What?”

  The pantry door slammed shut behind me and the small room fell into darkness, enclosing me and her in its bowels. I could hear my own heavy breathing and Darci’s whimpers.

  And, I realized in horror, a third set of inhalations, exhalations sounded right over my shoulder.

  He was in the closet with us.

  Chapter 47

  He began to clap, slowly at first, and then into a full round of applause.

  I could taste my own sweat and realized that every pore in my face was open and dripping.

  “I knew you were a hero.” His words cut through the darkness. “I knew that you would look for her, that you would find her, because you care. You care about people and don’t seek recognition for yourself. That’s why you are Sienna St. James, LCSW-C, CEO and founder of The Whole Soul Center. The hero always comes to save the day.”

  The flick of a match, the smell of sulfur.

  A candle lit the room.

  He set it down on a shelf next to a dust-covered white canister labeled FLOUR. “One day people are praising your name. The next day they want to burn you alive at the stake. It’s human nature. It’s been proven over and over again throughout history. Look what they did to Jamal Abdul. One day he is an American hero. The next a heathen terrorist. And he did nothing wrong.”

  “You don’t . . . you don’t have to hurt us.” I heard the pointlessness in my own voice. This man had already been responsible for the deaths of many, including his own brother and eight-year-old nephew. We meant nothing to him, nothing more than pawns to prove his twisted points.

  “Oh, I wasn’t going to hurt anyone.” He smiled, his blue eyes twinkling. “You are. Or rather, you have a choice to make, Sienna. First, give me my book.”

  I looked at the blue volume I’d tucked tightly under my arm.

  “Give it to me now, please,” he commanded. I had no choice but to pass it to him. That book was the one solid thing I had to prove who he was and what he’d done.

  And he knew it.

  “Good girl. Now, this is what you need to decide.” He pointed to a small device attached to the ropes that bound Darci to her seat. Her whimpers grew louder. “That’s a detonator attached to those ropes. It’s very sensitive. It’s counting down now. It started the moment you came through my window. If it gets to zero, boom.” He widened his arms in an exaggerated motion. “If she doesn’t get untied in the next, let’s see . . .” He checked a watch. “Forty-seven minutes now, she’s dead, and everything points to you. I set it up that way, and I’m good at what I do. Before you doubt my skills, consider this: I’ve committed what some view as a terrorist attack on American soil, and the government doesn’t even know I exist. They’re not looking for me. They’ve got a suspect in custody.” He turned toward the door, pulled on the handle, then stopped.

  “Oh, I said you had a choice.” He turned back toward me. “See, I know you’ll be tempted to simply get this poor mother of two free from the ropes, but I shoul
d point out that the ropes are attached to another detonator.” He pointed to several taut strings the width of dental floss that went from the ropes to another unfamiliar device. “If you undo the ropes to free her, that other detonator will go off and trigger a remote I’ve got set to your cell phone. If you untie her and allow the other detonator to go off, when your phone rings and someone answers, a much bigger, stronger bomb will go off somewhere in this great country of ours that will make the bomb I left at BWI seem like a firecracker in comparison.

  “The choice is yours. No matter which option, you still come out the bad guy. The good news is that you get to decide if you stand here and watch this nice lady you know die, or if you both go home and watch the news coverage of the slaughter of hundreds that you directly caused. It’s hard doing the right thing, the choices you have to make.”

  Every limb on my body shook in fear. My mouth opened and I waited to hear what words would come out of it. Despite my temporary paralysis, my voice came out solid and strong. “You didn’t have to choose to become this bitter against those who hurt you. Look what your anger has done to you. I know your story, Jebidiah.”

  “Well, fancy that. You know my story, and I didn’t even post it on Facebook. Good luck, Ms. St. James.” He opened the door and left. I watched as he hopped out the window and then I ran over to Darci’s side.

  “Darci, I am so sorry. I’m sorry.” I grabbed the box cutter from my pocket, looked at the complicated web of ropes that bound her body.

  “Sienna, you have to go!” Darci screamed as I hesitated. “There is no way I could live with myself if I went home and learned about hundreds of people dying. Don’t waste any more time on me. Sienna, please! Go! Please! He told me before you came that the other detonator will go off regardless of what you do. You’ve got to stop it. Don’t worry about me.”

  I stared at the ropes, trying to make sense of her words, the strings, our predicament. My brain had turned to mud and every thought that tried to form in it was stuck.

  “Sienna, you have time to get help. I beg of you, go! Now!” Her scream jolted me to action. I ran to the window of the kitchen. Forty-five minutes. I set the timer on Yvette’s phone.

  Didn’t need a signal for that function.

  “I’m going to get help. Everything will be okay.” I did my best to reassure both her and me.

  “Just kiss my babies for me. Tell them Mommy always loves them.”

  I paused at her words, but only for a second.

  Forty-four minutes.

  Clouds had gathered during the moments I’d been in the home. Yvette’s car was done and dead nearly half a mile away down the driveway. Dry cornstalks, which reached upward of six feet tall, blocked my view of anything beyond that cursed house and the road that led to it. I wasn’t even sure which direction Mordecai’s service shop was from my vantage point.

  And Jebidiah Bennett was somewhere nearby.

  I wanted to drop to the ground, curl up in a ball, wait for it all to end; but I knew that wasn’t an option. I ran around the house toward the driveway, but immediately turned around.

  Jebidiah was in view, fiddling with Yvette’s car in the distance. The hood was up. He was going to get it started, I was sure.

  The driveway was not an option.

  I ran back to the rear of the house. I closed my eyes, tried to imagine standing on top of my car to see where the house was in relation to the trees that bordered Mordecai’s service station.

  I couldn’t remember. My nerves were too shook up.

  Forty-three minutes.

  “I’m making this harder than I need to and I don’t have that kind of time.” I ran to the side again and jumped through the window.

  “Sienna, you’re still here?”

  I could hear the panic in Darci’s voice.

  “I have a plan.” Didn’t know if it was a good one, but it was the only one I had at the moment.

  I ran up the stairs, nearly falling through them on a couple of loose steps. I ran to a bedroom and looked out a window. Jebidiah was in the car, driving. Is he coming back to the house? My heart skipped a beat as the car rolled toward us, but then stopped. He hopped out and popped the hood again.

  I had to get out of there for both of our sakes, or there would be no hope for either of us or for the people in the zone of his planted bomb.

  I ran to another bedroom and looked out the window. Mordecai’s green barn showed through a row of trees about two miles away.

  Rows and rows of dead cornstalks were between here and there.

  I dashed down the steps, jumping over the open holes left from my previous ascent.

  “Okay, I’m getting help!”

  I dashed out the window and picked up one of the cinderblocks and ran toward the fields. I started out in the direction of the trees, but quickly saw why cornstalks help create good mazes.

  Even in their deteriorating states, I was lost within three minutes of entering the fields. I looked up at the sky and saw clear blue. At least the clouds had left, I considered, as challenges worse than rain entered my mind.

  What if I’m still in these fields when it gets dark? Are there any wild animals or snakes I need to watch out for? How will I ever get out of here?

  I realized that these were the scenarios that had played through Jebidiah’s mind. He didn’t kill me because he probably thought I’d never make it out of the maze of his family’s old cornfields.

  Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic. I took a deep breath, slowed down my heart rate.

  I’d brought the cinderblock for a reason, I remembered. I set it on the ground and then, fighting through the overgrown stalks, I ran and sprung up from off the top of it. For that quick second of my jump, I saw treetops in the distance. Landing back on my feet hurt as the dried plants smacked me in the face. Some of the leaves and ears crumbled at contact.

  Yes, this could work!

  And so I ran through the old cornfields, pushing the crumbling stalks out of my way, gagging on the pungent smell; coughing, tripping, jumping, falling, and getting up and going at it all again.

  It took me almost twenty minutes to get in view of the line of trees that bordered the property.

  That’s when I heard the rustling, the footsteps.

  I froze.

  Nothing.

  Maybe it’s all in my mind, I decided, looking at the timer. I didn’t have time to stand there and figure it out.

  “Jesus, help!” I prayed aloud.

  It was a deer at the edge of the field, I realized as I stepped into a small clearing. I watched as the deer darted off and I saw green wood peeking through the trees.

  The barn.

  I ran like I never had before, praying that all would end well.

  Mordecai was not in the lot.

  Nobody appeared to be around.

  I burst into the shabby building and looked around for a phone. There was no sight of either a phone or Mordecai.

  “That’s right, he’s keeping a front of having no technology.” My heart sank, but then I remembered the back room. He said he had a satellite dish to keep him connected. A phone, a computer, something to communicate with the world had to be in there. I rammed into the closed door with the cinderblock, nearly knocking the wood door off its hinges.

  “Help!” I screamed.

  I heard Laz’s voice.

  “Laz?” I stumbled through the tiny room, trying to make sense of it all. “Laz, are you here?”

  A television.

  A small flat-screen television sat inside an open dresser drawer, its cord dangling and plugged into what looked like a small portable generator that had about seven other cords pressed into it.

  This man had all kinds of fire hazards on his property.

  Laz was on TV.

  “Authorities have confirmed that they are looking for the owner of a black Honda Accord as new security footage shows the car being driven on the Delaware Turnpike at the time the driver was purporting to be on the West Coas
t the day of the BWI bombing. Officials have not released any names, but are actively seeking this new person of interest as other key evidence potentially ties this person to the scene of the bombing. This person may now be driving an older model Buick Century and is believed to be somewhere in Pennsylvania. That is all we are being told. This is Laz Tyson reporting live in DC. Back to you in the studio, Ray.”

  “And that is the coverage we have from one of our local affiliates,” a newscaster on CNN somberly stated. A still shot of a black Accord, my car, going through a toll on the turnpike filled the screen, followed by a stock photo of an older-model Buick Century.

  My car was seen on the Delaware Turnpike last weekend while I was with Roman in San Diego? So I wasn’t crazy. It had been stolen.

  When would the nightmare end?

  I heard a click behind me and knew that it would not be anytime soon. I turned around slowly. The barrel of a long hunting rifle pointed directly at me and Mordecai Bennett was the triggerman.

  “Who are you and why are you here?” he asked as I raised my hands in the air. He looked from the television screen to me and back, the rifle steady though his hands appeared to be shaking.

  “Please, don’t shoot. I’ve been tracking down your nephew Jebidiah and he’s been behind everything. He’s got blond hair, blue eyes, and deep dimples when he smiles. Think about it, how else would I know what he looks like if I haven’t seen him myself?”

  Mordecai’s hands shook even more as I saw the battle in his eyes, him trying to decide if he believed me. I kept talking.

  “There’s a woman attached to two bombs in that old house in the fields. It’s going to go off in twenty minutes and many people will get hurt. Killed. That’s what your nephew said. Please call the police and tell them to get here quickly.”

  He studied me for a few more seconds and then slowly lowered the gun. “I already called the police. They’re on their way.”

  Chapter 48

  They caught him in my sister’s car. The sputtering vehicle had died once again only three miles down the road, and authorities were specifically looking for a Buick Century.