The Words I Speak (Anyone Who Believes Book 2)

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “Is it so incredible that such a person, with a long and fruitful record of helping others with insight from her God, would use that same sort of insight to help an abducted girl who is just days, if not hours, from the end of her tragic life?”

  To Willow, Kellan’s appeal fit perfectly into her worldview. For no one else in that court room was this true. The judge, for his part, declared that Willow would appear again in court in a week, after agents had time to follow some of their evidence. At that point, both sides would be able to address the specific evidence gained and the judge would decide whether there was enough to send the case to a grand jury.

  Because of the state’s case against Willow, also pending, the judge postponed the process of a bail review by a probation officer.

  Over all, it was a partial victory. Kellan explained to Willow how unusual it was for the judge to intervene at this point, implying that he considered the case too shaky to merit a grand jury just yet, pending further evidence from federal agents.

  But a partial victory is, by definition, a partial loss. The complication of the state’s case against Willow left Kellan feeling uncertain, and left Willow in jail. For the first time, Kellan thought he saw signs that Willow, too, was worried, after reviewing all of the oddities about the way the case was proceeding. The sort of supernatural glow that characterized this extraordinary woman had faded, discolored slightly by some obstruction blocking the light. More than abstract indignation at injustice, Willow was now in a position to actually fear injustice.

  Delivered from Bondage

  In the winter, prisoners in the city jail did not spend time in the recreation yard. It wasn’t more than a patch of concrete the size of half a basketball court, so the inmates weren’t missing much, especially with the temperature hovering just above zero. Instead of going outside, the women were ushered into the cafeteria for recreation and interaction an hour before visitors were to arrive.

  Willow sat with Cricket and Grace, the woman about Willow’s age who had commented on Cricket’s healing a few days before. Grace was awaiting trial for assaulting her husband in a domestic dispute. Her choice of a TV remote as her weapon allowed her to stay in the minimum security section of the jail.

  “I been angry as long as I can remember,” Grace was saying, as two other women sauntered over and took up places standing behind Cricket, who occupied one of the four bench seats at the table.

  The late arrivals were Alice and Candy, both arrested for prostitution, repeat offenders awaiting trial. They each knew Grace from her old neighborhood in Denver, where they were raised. She was a mother figure to all three of the younger women around that table.

  As Willow looked up at both Alice and Candy, she felt a sudden surge of indignation. It took her about a heartbeat to realize that feeling came not from any of the people present, but from a spiritual darkness that seemed to be stirred by the two new arrivals. But Willow knew, in the next instant, that Grace was the one carrying the dark spirit that she sensed, and she knew that the disturbance was related to the anger she had been describing.

  Assuming she wasn’t receiving this information for mere trivial knowledge, Willow decided to try something.

  “When was the last time you prayed, Grace?”

  If anyone else had asked that question, they would have been showered in obscenities and good-natured abuse. But this was the sort of question these women had come to expect from Willow.

  Grace puckered her lips and looked at Willow with wide eyes. “I assume you askin’ me that ‘cause you got somethin’ in mind, spooky lady,” she said. A stranger might not have known that this was a teasing attempt at avoiding the question.

  Willow knew that she had awakened a part of Grace that she would need for what came next. That sassy reply came from shame. Willow knew, in the same way she knew about Heather Tomlinson, that Grace was still pursuing the same life mission that had gotten her thrown in jail and into the bright red jumpsuit she now wore.

  Linking eyes with Grace, yet maintaining a slight smile, Willow stretched outside her comfort zone, given how little these women knew of her and how tenuous was their trust for her.

  “I see a spirit of shame on you, my sister. And it’s throwing around these little angry spirits like they were cherry bombs that blow up your relationships,” Willow said.

  All three of the other women swiveled their heads toward Grace simultaneously, prompted by the sound of a spiritual gauntlet hitting the hard tile floor.

  “How could you possibly know that?” Grace said through gritted teeth.

  “I know all about that from personal experience,” Willow said, opting for a small percentage of the full answer, the part that would help Grace see that Willow was on her side.

  “What did you ever have to be ashamed of?” Grace’s voice was low and her teeth still clamped tight.

  “Years of being drugged and forced to have sex with strange old men, when I was a teenager,” Willow said, again selecting a slice of the truth in order to cut to the point. She wasn’t there to judge. She was there to offer a hand up.

  Grace swore. “Looks like you fit right in here, then.” And she punctuated that with a few colorful terms for Willow’s abusers.

  “They used a spirit of shame to keep me from speaking out,” Willow said. She could feel herself blushing, but she knew that she was in far too deep now to let self-consciousness interrupt.

  Grace, whose jaw had relaxed for the six-pack of obscenities a second ago, now clamped back down. She started to growl. Alice and Candy both stepped back one giant step. Cricket ducked. Grace gripped the little round table in both hands as if it were her saucer sled that she was about to run right over Willow. Willow didn’t move. Her smile was gone, but she didn’t flinch.

  “You can’t hurt me, you vile spirits,” Willow said, reverting to the way she had heard an old Pentecostal pastor address demons. She was about as far out of herself as Grace was, but the spirit that was rising up in Willow was not going to be intimidated by anything or anybody.

  Because no one had raised their voice yet, that little group had not attracted the attention of any of the other tables, or of the guards. That changed now. Grace’s growl stretched into a scream as she tore at the table with supernatural strength. Some of the bolts snapped, clanging like a blacksmith pounding on a horseshoe.

  Cricket spun off her bench and jumped aside. But Willow leaned on the table and stuck her angular nose in Grace’s face. With quiet force she smothered the rising storm.

  “I love Grace, no matter what, ‘cause that’s what Jesus is doing right now. He will never be ashamed of Grace.”

  Though no one in the room could hear all of what Willow said, the monster taking over Grace’s actions heard it and attempted a maniacal laugh. The attempt stopped in a choking sound. Within just a few seconds, Grace’s face turned deep purple and then she passed out face-down on the table.

  Willow knew a delay tactic when she saw it. She leaned down and whispered into Grace’s ear, holding one of her hands as she did so. “Jesus loves me, this I know,” she said in a childish sing-song. She repeated it three times.

  By now, two guards—one male and one female—stood behind Willow, their eyes locked wide open, their knuckles white around the batons they gripped impotently. Though it seemed that Willow had little time to prevent the crisis from becoming physical, she showed no sign of panic, or even urgency. She slowly stroked the side of Grace’s face with her free hand, still holding one of Grace’s hands in her other.

  The stunned delay of the guards lingered when both Alice and Candy started to weep, crying like little girls who have just lost a puppy or kitten, or perhaps their innocence.

  Willow had targeted Grace, not just because Grace had spoken of her anger, or because Willow saw the source of that anger. She targeted Grace because she recognized the spiritual power the motherly inmate held over the bedraggled young women at that table. Having established a connection with Grace, Willow sought to wrap
up the session. But, as she started commanding shame, anger, violation and violence to leave Grace, Cricket began to gag and wretch, where she stood behind Grace. Alice followed by collapsing to the floor and trembling in a violent seizure. Candy stood petrified, her face as pale as a woman could be, whose roots ran deep into the continent of Africa.

  Without planning to do so, Willow reverted to something she had seldom done since she was living in Kansas, under the command of the pagan leaders lurking in that church basement. She began to call the spirits by their names, not the English words that described their attributes as she normally would have, but pronouncing their proper names. To those around her, it seemed that Willow was speaking in some foreign language, though some of the words she used sounded similar to names they knew.

  After uttering a dozen of those names, seizing power over the key antagonists against her in the room, Willow told them to wrap up together and vanish from that place. This latter command she spoke in a low and almost weary tone, as if she was tired of their nonsense and would not abide contradiction or even hesitation.

  Grace sat up, like a zombie rising from the dead, her eyes unnaturally wide and her face gone a pale gray. But she didn’t say anything, instead simply exhaling an impossibly long breath for nearly twenty seconds. Alice rolled over onto her side, curled into a fetal position, weeping quietly. Cricket stopped retching and just fell to her hands and knees, panting as she recovered.

  Candy, the tall queen-like girl with her hair in cornrows, stepped over to the table and sat down next to Willow, reaching her hand out to join with Grace’s hand, still in Willow’s grip.

  Grace laughed. But this wasn’t the hysterical, insane laughter that Willow had heard in similar situations before. It was a laugh of relief, and even restoration. It was the laugh of a woman who has found what she’s been looking for all day long, or probably longer.

  “Let the peaceful, healing spirit of Jesus rest on this place and everyone here,” Willow said, looking around, as if applying her words to each person that she arrested with her eyes.

  The two guards broke from their paralysis to find that they were no longer needed. And small mutterings began around all of the tables that had grown suddenly silent at the height of the action.

  Though Willow naturally hoped to quietly survive her ordeal in jail, she had nowhere to hide now. Even as she awakened new life in four other inmates, she surrendered her own desire for an anonymous life behind bars. She had risen from the least intimidating prisoner in that jail to the one that no one dared harass.

  Help from the Press

  As Kellan had hoped, Anna Conyers’s editors agreed that she should investigate Willow’s case. The magazine didn’t particularly favor Christianity, but they did favor controversy, especially when the government seemed to be mistreating someone based on their beliefs. The editorial staff would have been equally interested if Willow had been a fortune teller or online psychic.

  Anna Conyers visited Willow in the jail cafeteria three days before her second hearing. Anna had added a level of sophistication to her look, to match the increased prestige of her job. Her dark hair medium length and stylishly cut, she wore small designer glasses when she read or wrote. She sat with her reporter’s notebook and a digital recorder, glancing at Willow over those glasses when she answered questions.

  “You seem to have a sort of celebrity status around here,” Anna said, toward the beginning of their interview.

  “Having a reporter interview me like this might exaggerate that a bit,” Willow said with a wry smile. She sat with her elbows on the table, her hands folded in front of her. She felt immediately comfortable with Anna, who felt like a lost little sister as soon as they met. Willow knew Anna was sympathetic to her cause, but the connection between them transcended that level of affiliation.

  Grinning back at Willow, Anna launched into her list of questions about what had happened and why she was in jail. Anna had plenty of facts already, from Kellan and from the police department, but she wanted to hear Willow’s version. She reached for a personal glimpse of how Willow experienced the vision of Heather in captivity.

  “How did you feel when you saw that vivid image of this unknown girl’s terrible ordeal?” Anna said.

  “I screamed and broke out of the vision,” Willow said. “It was gruesome to see her bound like that and her eyes so frightened. I felt her fear and it launched me out to my chair in my living room. But I knew God wanted me to see it, so I went back in.”

  “You make it sound like a building or a room that you enter and exit.”

  Willow twisted her mouth a bit to one side, considering how to describe her experience. “Well, actually, it’s more like when you start daydreaming about something, or recalling a strong memory, and someone comes along and breaks you out of it, or the phone rings. The only difference is that there is a sort of outside source for a vision like this, it doesn’t just depend on me forming the images from memory or imagination. But it feels a lot like it happens to the same part of my mind as my imagination.”

  “That must make it hard to tell if it’s something real, then.” Anna’s voice remained sympathetic, her tone low and her inflection up with each question. She seemed more curious than investigative, as if pursuing a personal interest.

  Willow nodded, in answer to the question. “That’s exactly right. But, over the years, I’ve learned two things. First, to trust my imagination more. And, second, to stop and listen for whether there is a message in what I’m seeing.” She looked at Anna to see if she was understanding. “So, I don’t discount something just because it seems like it might be coming from my imagination. God uses my imagination on a regular basis.”

  Anna scribbled something she wanted to ask about later, and gave Willow an encouraging nod to go on.

  “But this image of the girl taped to the kitchen chair was like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life. I know it wasn’t a memory. I don’t even watch movies like that, purposely, so as not to corrupt my imagination.” She paused. “I’m not saying corrupt like in it’s a sin or something, just that it would make it harder to tell where the idea came from. I do watch movies, but I’m just careful what kind.”

  Anna nodded slowly and she looked into the corners of her eyes for a moment. “That makes sense. And I like the way you don’t make a rule about it. That reminds me of Beau and of Jack Williams.”

  Anna had established her national reputation out of interviews with Beau Dupere and his family the previous year, in their house on the Malibu coast. Beau had become famous, and infamous, as one of the most acclaimed healers in the world. His good looks and huge fortune added to the mystique, as did his friendships with Hollywood luminaries. Anna had been baptized by Beau, accompanied by two of his family members, in a swimming pool at a fancy party in Beverly Hills. Her conversion to faith like Beau’s—and by association like Willow’s—was ongoing.

  “But you knew this was a message, a picture of something that was real?”

  “It sure felt real, and it felt current. Sometimes I’ll see something of someone’s past, or of their future. This had a very current feeling to it, though I can’t explain exactly how I knew that. I think a revelation like this comes not just in a thin line, like a toy train rolling toward me on one track. It came more like several trains at once, all converging. One of those was the feeling that it was about something happening now. Another of them was that I was expected to take action on it.”

  Anna furrowed her girlish brow at this last comment. “You say, ‘expected.’ Does that mean you didn’t feel like you had a choice to follow through and contact the police?”

  Willow tipped her head, as she slid past trying to figure out whether this was the interviewer asking, or it was a note of concern from the new Christian sitting across from her. Maybe it was both.

  “For me, there are only two people I will always listen to. There’s myself and then there’s God who comes to me as the father, and as Jesus and as the spirit. I have
to listen to myself, because I’m all I have for an interface with the world. So, I have to pay attention to what’s going on with me.” She paused to sit up straighter, feeling the strain on her back from no support on that bench. “When I get a message like that from my father in Heaven, I know what he expects most of the time. Once in a while, I’ll try to convince myself that I don’t know, so I don’t have to directly face my desire to ignore what he wants. But usually I just assume I’m gonna do what he wants.”

  Willow’s brow deepened now. She remembered the look on Heather’s face and then the sound of her voice calling for help. “As soon as I knew this was real, and that it was current, I was fully in agreement with the father that I had to do something about it.” She hesitated here, tempted to tell Anna about her experience as a teenager who found a girl tied to a chair in that church basement. But she thought better of letting that out to a reporter, not comfortable enough with her guilt and forgiveness to make it public.

  Anna asked some questions about life in jail, laughed at some of Willow’s stories and insights, and then wrapped up quickly when recreation time was called to a close.

  “Thank you so much, Willow, for talking to me. It was a great honor to meet you,” said Anna, offering her hand.

  Willow looked past that hand, into the eyes exposed when Anna took off her glasses and set them on the table. Without a word, she reached both hands to wrap Anna up in a hug.

  A true introvert knows another introvert when they meet, and especially when they connect deeply, as these two women had. In a way, the realization that this hug was an emotional stretch for Willow made it more acceptable to Anna.