Prophet

by Frank Peretti

  Lake waited to reply. He’d gathered some new thoughts. “But you’re not prepared, Martin.”

  “I’m in.”

  “But I’m not out. Not yet.”

  “It’ll sink in. Just give it time.”

  “You think I didn’t see you working on this ever since you came on staff? You think I didn’t do some preparing myself?”

  Devin thought for a moment, then chuckled derisively. “Hey, take it easy, Ed. You’re scaring me.”

  “Remember last April? I was in on that, you know. Sure, you thought the governor was trusting you with everything, but perhaps you didn’t notice me standing in the doorway of your office when he gave you that material to destroy.”

  Devin grew sober. No more chuckling or smirking. “What about it? I tossed it, threw it out.”

  Lake’s eyebrows went up in challenge. “Oh, did you now? Maybe not. Maybe you kept it in your desk instead of destroying it. What were you thinking, Devin? Were you thinking of writing a book someday, a terrific exposé by someone who was really there in the halls of power?” He laughed at the thought. “Eh . . . that material would have been a nice addition to a book like that.”

  Devin tilted his head as his face grew tight. “So you took it?”

  Lake smiled in happy surprise. “Oh, so you did miss it. I was beginning to wonder.”

  Devin just about grabbed Lake by the collar. “Why you—”

  Lake held up a hand. “Careful!”

  Devin backed off. “You took it?”

  “First chance I got. I couldn’t let you have something so destructive all to yourself.”

  “But that was months ago!”

  “I’m a patient man. I knew the day would come when I might need some leverage, when I’d have to make you squirm. Looks like that day has come all right.”

  Devin was holding back his anger. He talked quietly. “So this is where the bargaining starts, is that it?”

  “What was it you said? ‘One man’s dirt is another man’s capital’? Well, I do have capital, and it is dirt all right. Dirty enough to cost you your job.”

  Devin thought for a long moment and then said grimly, “You’re walking on very dangerous ground, old man.”

  “I assure you, sir, I am up to the challenge.”

  They had a short stare-down. The old man was still bold and strong.

  “Okay,” Devin finally agreed. “We’ll talk.”

  Lake nodded slowly, grimly. “Yes, I would give it some thought if I were you. You don’t want to be too hasty in your decisions, eh?”

  Devin forced himself to keep looking confident and in control; there were still people around. “Okay, tell you what. It’s getting late. Let’s take the night to think about it. I’ll think about it. You think about it. We’ll talk again Monday morning. All decisions can wait until then.”

  Devin put on an overly nice, hopefully pacifying smile and waited for Lake to agree.

  Lake did not return the smile, but only replied grimly, “Monday morning then” and walked away, angrily releasing the balloons to float into oblivion.

  “YOU HAVE SEEN . . .” Pause for effect. “. . . with your own eyes . . .” Another pause. “. . . the kind of people we are up against in this election!” The governor was shouting into the microphone, his hand pointing toward the concrete planter. The crowd began to stir, voicing its acknowledgment. “What better way to illustrate the gravity, the mission of the campaign that begins here today!”

  The crowd went absolutely nuts, banners and flags waving, KEEP ABORTION LEGAL signs rocking and bouncing like bluebells in the wind.

  It looked great on television. The governor seemed to know exactly where the cameras were. He played to that crowd, and he especially played to those cameras. Mel’s camera, over by the planter, didn’t miss a drop of his venom.

  Nine o’clock. In his apartment overlooking the city, John Barrett sat and watched it all, some of it several times, his VCR remote control in his hand.

  “Bob Wilson, listen up!” said the governor. “We believe in freedom! We believe in choice! We believe in the fundamental right of every American to chart his own course and choose his own path!” Applause, cheers. “So rest easy, Bob Wilson. We will not send mad prophets to break up your rallies and infringe on your rights.” The crowd began to stir, anticipating a real zinger. “We will not send worthless ruffians and hoods to batter your supporters!” The emotion, the fire in that crowd came across even on television. “We will not infringe on your God-given freedoms, Bob Wilson!” Just the right pause to let the crowd cook up its impending storm, then the zinger. “But God help you if you think you can infringe upon ours!” The crowd began to roar its agreement, and the governor yelled his final line over the tumult. “Mr. Wilson, this governor and the people of this state will not allow that!”

  Spontaneous demonstration, the crowd going wild. Cut back to Leslie Albright, live, closing the package.

  “And as you can see behind me, the rally is still going strong, with a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of support. If this rally is any indication of the tone Governor Slater intends for the rest of his campaign, we’re in for a fiery campaign indeed. John?”

  John Barrett, news anchor, faced the screen that wasn’t there with Leslie on it and asked, “Well, Leslie, has the challenger Bob Wilson had anything to say in response to the governor’s words tonight?”

  John grimaced and hit the Pause button. His image froze on the screen. He looked at John the news anchor’s hands. Did he always wiggle his thumbs like that? He rewound the tape. He hit the Play button.

  John Barrett, news anchor, faced the screen that wasn’t there with Leslie on it and asked, “Well, Leslie, has the challenger Bob Wilson—”

  Pause button. John cursed. Those thumbs! They looked awful. Distracting. He made a note of it on a yellow pad: “Watch those thumbs!” He must have been nervous. He could remember wondering how long this report was going to be. The excerpt of the governor’s speech seemed long enough.

  Play button. “—nything to say in response to the governor’s words tonight?”

  Pause. Did I sound natural? Rewind. Play. “Well, Leslie, has the challenger Bob Wilson had anything to say in response to the governor’s words tonight?”

  Pause. Yeah. Okay. Need to relax more, but . . . okay. It’s a good thing I got that question in time to tailor it a bit, he thought.

  Play. Leslie on full screen. “John, we understand that candidate Bob Wilson will be making a brief statement in an hour or so.”

  John at the news desk, seeming to look at the screen with Leslie on it. “Yes, at about 8 o’clock we understand, and we’ll be covering that on NewsSix at Eleven tonight. Thanks, Leslie, you’ve had quite a day.”

  “Thanks, Joh—” Pause. Great, John, brilliant. You knew the answer to the question and you let everybody know it. He made another note: Remember: You don’t know the answer to a scripted question.

  John dropped the yellow pad on the coffee table, hit the Off button on the remote control, and leaned back in his soft couch, letting his eyes drift toward the ceiling. He put his hands behind his head and let out a deep sigh.

  Yeah, really, I’m better than that. I’ve had better days. Today was tough. Too many distractions. Well, only one big one actually. I mean, give me a break. Do the riot, do the rally, get the great shots . . . just don’t stick him in the middle of it all and then give me this professional, objective news gathering malarkey.

  He sat forward and stared at the blank television screen. What a business. For a moment John tried being honest with himself and admitting that had he been Rush or Pete, responsible for the content, or Tina Lewis, responsible for all the shows together . . . well, yeah, he would’ve run that stuff. The viewers would have loved it. Even if they didn’t like it, even if they wrote and complained, they still would have stayed glued to their sets, and that would have made the Advertising Department happy. Yeah, to be honest and downright practical, material like that you don’t pa
ss up.

  And the material from that rally was spicy stuff, no doubt about it: wild gestures from everybody, yelling, grappling, arms and legs flying everywhere, cops pulling people off each other, dragging others away, including the old man.

  The old man. Yep, he had to be famous now. He’d be recognized on the street. John didn’t know what that would do for business at the old man’s warehouse. His customers had to have recognized him. What a way to advertise.

  John heard something outside, some kid crying or something. Kind of late for a child to be out on the street. Go on, kid, go home. I’ve got things to think about here.

  John was wearing his sweatpants and NFL T-shirt. He’d had his dinner, then a nice glass of wine, and he’d planned to relax, review the day’s work, take it easy. But tonight was not relaxing. Reviewing the day’s work on the VCR wasn’t the usual enjoyment either. Seeing it all again was miserable, frustrating, and maddening and stuck in him like a sliver he couldn’t pull out.

  He slapped the couch resolutely. “Dad . . . we’re gonna have to talk. Yeah. You and me. We’re gonna . . . I mean, we are really gonna have it out!”

  He rose from the couch and went toward the telephone, then hesitated. This may not be the best way to do it. Maybe I should call him tomorrow. Maybe we should just have lunch. I need time to cool off, get over this.

  The phone was on the kitchen counter, near the sliding glass door to the balcony. He could hear that kid again. No . . . Now it sounded like two kids. Maybe three.

  But it sounded like an adult crying as well. Or was it two adults? Or three? What in the world—He slid the door open and stepped out onto the iron-railed balcony.

  It was a pleasant evening with a warm land breeze wafting down the hill, weaving through the iron-and-glass forest of The City’s downtown, now a festival of amber, yellow, and silver lights below. To the west, cut into short pieces by the skyscrapers, a bright layer of pink sky showcased the jagged silhouette of the distant mountains.

  John listened raptly. Traffic noise was pretty steady around here. Though the apartment building faced a small residential street, there was a major arterial at either end of the block and the interstate only a few blocks down the hill. Strange, he thought, that I would hear those kids crying in the first place with all this noise out here. Maybe it was some sirens or a loud radio. Maybe it was mating season for cats . . .

  No, wait a minute. There it was again. Someone crying. Heartbroken wails. One voice. Now two. Anguished wailing. Three?

  Maybe someone was having a domestic struggle of some kind. Brother. Why didn’t they close their window if they were going to carry on like that?

  Yes, there were several voices out there, he was sure. But where were they coming from? He cocked his head this way, then that. For some strange reason he couldn’t tell the direction. It just seemed to be everywhere.

  More voices—some quietly weeping, some wailing, some speaking words. Women’s voices, men’s voices, high, low, soft, loud . . .

  Oh brother. It must be a TV show . . . TV sets all over the neighborhood, all tuned in to the same show, some weird movie or something. Sure, that’s it.

  But it sounded so real. He listened some more, fascinated, perplexed. He’d never heard anything like it.

  One of the voices was saying something, just weeping out the words over and over. He couldn’t make out the words; there were too many other voices crying at the same time, too much traffic noise, too much breeze.

  Curiosity started setting in. Then he checked it with the question of whether this was any of his business. He overcame that with a reminder that he was a newsman—or at least he used to be before he became an anchor—and there could be a breaking story happening out there. So what do I do? he wondered for just a moment.

  Well, I’m in my sweats, I’ve got my running shoes on, it’s a nice evening for a walk . . .

  He went inside and grabbed a sweater. Then, on impulse, he grabbed his cellular phone. If there was a breaking story out there, he’d want to be in touch with the assignment desk right away, or even Owen Wessel, the Eleven O’clock producer. After all, here he was, on the spot, right where it was happening.

  He ran out the door, down the hall, and down the stairs to the street, figuring times and schedules in his head all the way down. Let’s see, it’s about 9:30 . . . that’s an hour and a half before news time. If we got a crew here within half an hour we could get the tape back to the station by 10:30, but that would be tight. We may need to send a remote truck out here, use a microwave to do it live. Yeah, yeah, go for it—that’ll work, if it’s a story. But who do we have available at this hour?

  He ran out onto the sidewalk. No need to strain to hear it now. It was clear as a bell, all around, on every side, up and down the street. Wailing, weeping, crying, sobbing . . .

  “. . . help me . . .” he thought he heard. Then again the words, barely discernible through all the other sounds, all the other voices, “. . . help me . . .”

  That was no television. Good grief, someone was in trouble!

  “Hello!” John shouted. “Can you hear me?”

  “. . . dying . . .” He could hear that word, he thought. It came from another voice, a deeper voice.

  “Where are you?” John called. Then he thought, Good question. It sounded like they were everywhere. And who were they? And what was happening to so many people at the same time? Something about this whole thing just wasn’t right. Careful, John, careful.

  He stood silently, cautiously, and listened some more.

  Now, beyond those immediate voices, he could hear throngs of other anguished cries, and beyond those . . . far beyond those, still more, blending together in a long, ceaseless moan like a mournful wind, like a distant, whispering ocean.

  His heart began to race. His muscles tensed, ready to run. This was getting to him. He was afraid. Fear, real fear, was creeping up on him. Up to this moment he had no idea there was anything to be afraid of, but now it hit him: I’m right in the middle of something. There’s something dreadful happening out here, and I don’t know what it is, and it’s harming a lot of people, which means it can harm me too.

  He looked all around, up the street and down, up into the utility wires and tree limbs, the windows of the apartments, the lights of the city. He saw nothing strange, nothing sinister or threatening. That only made the whole experience more sinister, more dreadful.

  The sound continued. He felt he could talk out loud and not be heard over it.

  Enough. He was sold. He believed it. He ducked behind a utility pole for safety from whatever was going on out there and banged out the newsroom number on the cellular phone.

  “Hi. This is John Barrett. Got a story breaking here. Let me talk to Owen.”

  He sold Owen on the idea. NewsSix had a cameraman on call. They would send him over. John would do the stand-up, reporting the story himself.

  Then, having called the station, John called the police and reported a strange disturbance.

  Then he looked himself over. Brother. He couldn’t do a stand-up in a T-shirt! He ran back into the building, up the stairs, back into his apartment, breathing hard and starting to sweat. He stripped off the T-shirt, wiped his sweating body down with a damp washcloth, then groped through his closet, finally settling on a casual shirt he would wear open at the collar, and a red windbreaker.

  As he pulled the shirt on, he rehearsed. “The evening quiet was broken tonight as a major disturbance erupted in this Baker Hill neighborhood . . . uh . . . the peace of this Baker Hill neighborhood was disturbed tonight . . . abruptly disturbed . . .”

  Looking in the mirror, he wiped the sweat from his face, ran a comb through his hair, even checked his teeth for leftover salad. Yeah, good, good. This would look like a remote, on-the-scene, spur-of-the-moment stand-up.

  He grabbed the ringing cellular phone off the bed. It bleeped and he dropped it, startled, then picked it up again.

  “Yeah?”

  “John,
this is Benny. I’m pulling out of my garage. I need to verify where you are.”

  Benny was the on-call cameraman for this week. He drove home after work in one of the NewsSix camera cars so he’d be ready to cover any fast-breaking story on a moment’s notice. Now he was rolling and calling John on his car phone.

  John gave him the address and directions as he scurried out the door, down the hall, down the stairs—he almost lost contact with Benny while in the stairwell—and back outside onto the sidewalk.

  A squad car had just gone by and was moving slowly down the block, apparently looking for the trouble. Sure. They had to be as perplexed as John was. With all these voices wailing on every side, where do you even start to check it out? They’ll be calling in backups for sure.

  John had to make sure he got these guys on camera, got reactions from them, information on what was happening. He stepped into the street and waved his arms, shouting. “Hey! Hey, back here! John Barrett . . . NewsSix!”

  The car’s brake lights came on. It came to a stop, then reversed, backing up the street toward him. John shot a quick glance up the street. Nuts! Benny wasn’t too far away, but it was all happening too fast. They weren’t going to get it on camera.

  The squad car backed to a stop just opposite John, and an officer rolled his window down. “Hello. Did you call the police?”

  John looked both ways and then dashed across the street. “Yeah. Hi . . . John Barrett, NewsSix. This all started up about . . .” He checked his watch. “. . . fifteen minutes ago. I haven’t been able to pinpoint the source of the problem . . . Maybe you can get a better handle on it.”

  The officer looked at his partner, then back at John. Then both got out of the car.

  “You’re with the press?”

  “Right. I anchor the news on Channel 6. I’ve got a cameraman on the way, and we’re going to be covering this.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  John could still hear the weeping and wailing up and down the block and beyond. He threw up his hands. “Beats me. I haven’t the slightest idea what this is all about. I’ve never encountered anything like it.”