Behind the Darkness

by W. Franklin Lattimore

  There were a few quiet laughs and giggles among the older adults. Everyone seemed agreeable to the terms, and Brent was glad that he got to remain.

  The family stayed together, moving through each room meticulously. While all of the Moore children and their spouses—including Brent’s mom and dad—reminisced over the things located throughout the house, he realized that all of the grandchildren had stuck together as well, recounting their own memories. Neither Brent nor his cousins tried to grab at anything, at least until their parents left one room for another.

  Certain things that were not particularly special to the parents held great value to their children: a hat that had frequently been worn by their mamaw while some of them had attended church with her; an old BB gun that most of the grandchildren had fired at some point when they visited as children; little knick-knacks that had always caught one or another’s attention.

  On and on it went, from room to room.

  No one seemed to argue about anything, though there were certainly personal requests for certain items. A couple times Brent could hear a sound of disappointment, but it almost always seemed to be followed up by a trade of some sort or the suggestion of another item.

  As items were collected, many of them were taken out to cars by spouses in order to keep hands free to look at or take possession of other things.

  Brent was surprised when, after it was all said and done, the house didn’t look as barren as he had expected. Many things would be left behind, things that had once held some personal value to their Mother and Daddy—Mamaw and Papaw.

  As Brent had made his way with his cousins through his mamaw’s bedroom—the room that, back in the day, had doubled, back in the day, as a family and guest gathering room—he noticed that both his mamaw’s and papaw’s Bibles were gone, taken by someone else who must have also recognized their importance and value.

  Brent’s disappointment must have been easily seen, for Lydia walked up to him, took his right hand, and gave it a squeeze. At least he would come away from the old house with the old black-and-white photograph that had hung on the wall of the living room—the one of his mamaw and papaw when they were in their mid-twenties, the one that he gravitated to with each visit to the old home. At least he had that.

  SINCE MOST OF Brent’s aunts, uncles, and cousins, along with their spouses and children, had stayed at other locations—most of them in hotel rooms—they were already packed for their travels home. Most had much longer drives than did he and his family, so Brent’s mom and dad spent a good amount of time out in the front lawn saying goodbye to relatives that they might not see again for quite some time.

  Brent and Lydia did the same, but they and their cousins were much more emotionally removed than those brothers and sisters who used to live in the farmhouse. There were some handshakes and a few hugs among the younger generation, but that was really about it. Most of them seemed to be watching with interest as everyone’s parents said goodbye to one another.

  It wasn’t long before cars were filled with people and on their way out. Brent saw one car, though, that was entering the property. As it came to a stop, he was able to see through the windshield and determine that he didn’t know the woman behind the wheel; at least, he didn’t think so. Whoever this woman was, she waited to exit the car until the last of Brent’s relatives—except for his Uncle Mark and Aunt Susan—had departed.

  Sharon Lawton’s attention was drawn to the vehicle. She squinted to see who was inside. The car door finally opened, and out stepped a woman who looked to be about the same age as Brent’s mom.

  Sharon’s mouth dropped open and her eyes grew wide. “Sandy Colter?!” she called out, as she began to walk quickly toward the woman.

  “Sharon!” The two rushed into each other’s arms, laughing and acting like young school girls.

  Brent, Lydia, and their dad, along with Mark and Susan, migrated toward the two boisterous women. When the two finally let each other go, Brent’s mom turned to face them.

  She let out a short, excited scream and said, “I can’t believe it! Everyone, this is Sandy Colter. She and I were best friends all through school—kindergarten all the way up through high school! She skipped off after graduation and married our school mascot, Tommy the Tiger!”

  Sharon’s friend laughed. “I should’ve expected that’s how you’d introduce me!”

  Sandy turned her attention to Brent’s Aunt Susan and paused for a moment, concentrating on her.

  “Sissy? Is that you?!”

  The two of them walked into each other’s’ arms, as well.

  “Wow! The last time I saw you, Sissy, you had just graduated with my brother! It’s so good to see you!”

  Uh-oh, thought Brent. This is horrible timing for them.

  Sharon Lawton introduced Sandy to her children and to Keith. Then Aunt Susan did the same with Uncle Mark.

  It was right in the middle of Uncle Mark saying, “Good to meet you,” that his mom grasped what Brent had realized only moments before.

  “Oh, no,” Sharon bemoaned. “We’re leaving to go home in about an hour.”

  Brent saw the disappointment register in Sandy’s face, as well. The two old friends that had been jubilant only moments before felt instantly deflated.

  “I’m sorry that I came so late, Sharon,” said Sandy. “News may travel fast throughout the hollers, but not down in Pikeville. I only just heard about your mother yesterday, and I couldn’t come out here until I got off of work.”

  “It’s not your fault, Sandy. Don’t worry about that. I’m just sad that we’re having to say goodbye almost as quickly as we said hello.”

  “Can I at least help you pack?”

  “I’d be grateful for your company for as long as we’re still here.”

  Both families, along with Sandy, who was arm-in-arm with Brent’s mom, entered the house to continue making preparations to leave.

  Sandy drew in a quick breath of amazement. “Oh, Sharon, this house is still so familiar to me! Next to nothing seems to have changed.”

  And thus recommenced a friendship that had been lost for nearly thirty years.

  Uncle Mark and Aunt Susan left the two of them to get reacquainted while they resumed their packing. Brent was about to run upstairs to pack all of his things, when his dad walked up to the two women.

  “Sharon, I had already taken tomorrow off from work so that I could have it as a day to relax. You know, before having to endure a two-day work week,” he said with a smile. “How about we use tomorrow as a travel day instead?”

  “Really?”

  His dad gave her a little smile and nodded.

  A look of genuine appreciation covered her face. “Thank you, Hon. Thank you very much.”

  Keith Lawton turned away, allowing the ladies to begin an evening of not having to pack a single thing.

  It struck Brent just then that Joshua may have done the very same thing for him: providing a break from packing and allowing one more chance to save the lives of two girls he had grown to care about so deeply.

  Elizabeth—Day Three

  True to his word, Garian had protected Elizabeth for the remainder of the night.

  Looking at her as she walked through the halls of her school, Brent could see, though, that not all was well. She once again wore that demon of suicide around her neck.

  Brent could sense that this third day of trying to help Elizabeth was going to be epic. Everything that he knew about her and her friends… Everything that he knew about himself… Everything that he knew about the character and heart of God… It was all going to come into play on this day.

  As he walked next to Elizabeth, he decided to put the spirit of suicide on notice. “You’ve lost many of those that you’ve tried to kill in the past. Today you will lose another.”

  The pug-nosed spirit continued to stare at Brent without a word or reaction.

  Brent had been with these two since she awoke. Just as quickly as Elizabeth’s eyes had fluttered ope
n, the spirit of suicide appeared and reclaimed its ground.

  Frustrating.

  In addition, he could tell that Elizabeth’s lack of sleep, due to the interruption the night before, was going to play against her…and probably him. She was tired. Lethargic. She was also quiet, though he didn’t know which was the more likely cause, her lack of sleep or her depression.

  Today she even dressed for depressed. She wore a pair of dark blue denims with a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Colored in gray, the word “PHANTOM” was printed as a diagonal background across the shirt in extra-large letters, with a white, two-thirds mask resting next to a red rose in the foreground. Normally in a ponytail, her long brown hair was left to hang down around her face and shoulders.

  Elizabeth’s four classes leading up to lunch had proven to be much the same as the day before. She sat in a fog, not really listening to what was being taught. She gave only a half-effort on a Western Civ. test after the demon at her ear told her that trying to get a good grade was pointless, considering she wasn’t going to be around to find out the result anyway.

  Brent had been forced to listen to the words of the vile thing throughout the morning as it whispered to her. Garian hadn’t been around to do anything about it.

  Now Brent found himself listening to her own self-counsel, debating on whether to do lunch with Tina and Colleen.

  “The last thing I want is more religious talk. Has Tina always been this much of a do-gooder? I can sit with someone else. I’ve got other friends.”

  Great, thought Brent. Now what?

  He willed himself into the presence of Colleen who was sitting alone outside in the Courtyard. With her last class right next to the exit of the South Building, she was usually the first into the sunshine. Brent sidled up next to her and knelt down.

  What do I say to her? He thought for a moment. What else is there to say?

  “Look for Elizabeth!” he shouted. “Where is Elizabeth?”

  Brent wished that he could just direct her attention using the ‘blinder’ technique, but since Elizabeth wasn’t in eyeshot, he was stuck with trying to get her to listen. Which…didn’t seem to be happening. Colleen pulled out her CD Walkman, popped in a Taylor Dayne disc, and, with the placement of the headphones over her ears, effectively made herself deaf.

  “Plan B,” he sighed.

  Brent mentally pictured Tina’s location and sent himself there. She was stowing her books in her locker and grabbing her lunch.

  “Wonder if Elizabeth’s going to take a chance at eating with us today?” she asked herself. “I honestly think I’d be too embarrassed.”

  Brent walked right up to her as she closed her locker and in the first-person said, “I should look for her. I should make sure embarrassment does not stop her.”

  Please let this work, thought Brent.

  He said it again, louder this time. “I should look for her! I should make sure embarrassment does not stop her!”

  “Yeah, maybe I should go find her,” thought Tina.

  Her first thought was to go look out the North Building doors into the courtyard to see if she was already there. There weren’t that many kids outside yet, so Tina decided to take a stab at Elizabeth’s last known whereabouts: the Western Civilization classroom.

  The room was on the second floor, and there were three sets of stairs that led to it from the main floor in the North Building. Tina knew which stairwell Elizabeth normally took to join Colleen and her for lunch, but she had a hunch that she’d shy away from them if she was, in fact, in avoidance mode. So, instead of the closest set—those in the middle—Tina went for the stairs at the end of the East Wing.

  And there she was.

  Tina was a bit nervous. She didn’t want Elizabeth to think that she’d been sought out.

  “What do I do? She’s coming this way.” Then she saw it—a way for Tina to make everything seem casual.

  “I’LL JUST GO hang out at the baseball diamond,” thought Elizabeth. “Always a bunch of people hanging out there in the bleachers.”

  Now all she had to do was get to her locker and use the bathroom. Both of them were conveniently across from each other.

  As she approached her locker, the bathroom door opened and out came Tina.

  Elizabeth’s heart dropped. “Oh no,” she thought with a sigh.

  “Elizabeth! Hi! Ready for lunch?”

  “I umm…I was going to…” Elizabeth stopped. What was she going to tell her, that she was intentionally going to ditch her and Colleen? “I was going to…grab my lunch and then go to the bathroom first.” “Maybe I’ve got another shot at skipping out.” “Why don’t you and Colleen head out to the courtyard, and I’ll be there in a few minutes?”

  “That’s okay,” said Tina. “I don’t mind waiting for you.”

  “Of course you don’t.”

  OUTSIDE IN THE courtyard, the three girls once again took a place in the grass. Brent once again decided to listen and observe from a distance. It had proven to be the right thing to do the last time, so he wasn’t going to fix what wasn’t broken.

  There was an uneasy silence between the three girls. Verbal silence, anyway. The combined thoughts of the three girls were anything but.

  “…almost wish I’d kept my Walkman turned on.”

  “…something to say, Lord. I feel like I’m a religious nut job to her.”

  “…at any minute, one of them is going to launch into the Jesus stuff again.”

  After a few minutes of listening to the ‘silence,’ he watched as Elizabeth became preemptive.

  “Okay, listen,” she said. “I know that the two of you don’t think I’m religious enough. And I get that it’s all very real for you. And if there is a God, I hope that he looks at me with a whole lot of forgiveness. It’s just not something that works for me. Okay?”

  Colleen and Tina stared at her, both of them with producing dumbfounded looks.

  “And another thing, I don’t need to be rescued. Okay? I’ll find a way to deal with all of the crap going on in my life, so you two can relax. None of what happens in my life is on you. See that? You can be stress-free now.”

  “There. I said it.”

  “What in the…?” Tina was stuck.

  “Oookay… Didn’t see that coming,” thought Colleen.

  Even Brent didn’t see it coming. The demon on Elizabeth’s shoulder sought him out, locking eyes with Brent. The thing twisted its lips into a smirk.

  Touché, thought Brent. What now?

  He craned his head back and stared up into the sky. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and let it out. He reopened them and began to walk. Not to anywhere specific, just a small circle in the area in which he had been standing. That’s when he saw Kyle sitting up against the brick of the South Building. He was watching the girls as they ate and “talked.”

  Maybe it’s time Kyle made himself known to the girls.

  Brent walked over to the teenager. He was eating from a snack-size bag of Doritos.

  Tag.

  “…alking about? Boys? Classes? Getting pregnant?”

  Brent was taken aback by his use of the word. Did he know? How could he know?

  More likely, Brent had just discovered a character flaw in Kyle that had not previously known. After all, every Christian had a specific area of vulnerability in his or her life. Maybe his was sex. Was he, maybe, being a bit impure in his thoughts at the moment?

  “Do her friends know? Is that what Elizabeth was upset about while they were out here yesterday?”

  So he does know! He does know!

  But how? How could he… It suddenly struck him. Of course! How could I have forgotten? Yesterday! Kyle had somehow heard me yelling into Jason’s ear in the classroom.

  Okay, so what does that mean in all of this? Obviously Elizabeth being pregnant isn’t pushing this young man away from her. That could only be a good thing. But could anything push him to her?

  “Kyle! Kyle Russell! Talk to Elizabeth!”

/>   Brent was down on one knee beside Kyle, yelling into his left ear, trying to jump start some initiative.

  “Go over and talk with them! Just a casual hello! Introduce yourself!”

  “I want to go over there,” thought Kyle. “But then…”

  Brent could tell that anxiety was starting its ill-timed work within him.

  “Okay, but what could it hurt? I mean, the worst thing that could happen is a cold shoulder. Right?”

  “Right! That’s right!” Brent was getting excited. “Nothing bad is going to happen!”

  “But to just walk over there…” Kyle sighed. “I don’t know. They’re probably involved in something deep over there. I probably shouldn’t bother them.”

  Oh man. No, no, no. Brent closed his eyes. Opening them again, he thought, Okay, one more time.

  “Kyle Russell! It’s time to man up! Go over there, man! Show some courage, some backbone! You can do this! ‘You can do all things through Christ who gives you strength!’”

  “I can do all things through Christ,” thought Kyle. Another sigh. “All things but this, apparently.”

  Brent shot back up to his feet, angry. “Come on!” He abruptly walked away from the boy. How was it that the kid couldn’t do something as simple as walk up to three girls?

  Now Brent sighed again. There was nothing simple in the mind of most boys about walking up to a threesome of very pretty girls. Well, two pretty girls, but Colleen was about to rectify that by getting rid of that insanely-fake black hair.

  Yet another sigh. He admonished himself. Brent, sometimes you need smacked upside the head for the way you see things.

  Back to the issue at hand. If Kyle wasn’t going to voluntarily walk over, and if the girls didn’t know him from Adam, was there still a way to get this connection to take place?