“I’m going to kill you.”
He smiles. “If you do, Chris, we will watch and applaud and await.”
Then the pastor opens his arms as if giving the benediction at church.
And that’s when I plunge the twelve-inch hunting blade deep into the place where I imagine his heart might have been at one time.
I see Jocelyn’s face as I move the knife and feel the softness of skin and hear the gasping, choking breath as I thrust down.
I let go and see him looking surprised. Not in horror, but almost in utter delight.
“You want to know the truth, Chris?” a draining, coughing voice asks.
And then he tells me.
And suddenly I realize that he’s right and I’m wrong.
I realize this just as he staggers over the falls and drops below.
107. Defy
Somewhere in these woods I stagger. I know now it doesn’t have to be night to see darkness all around you. I understand that you don’t have to be drunk to be blind. I get that a single act and a single statement can leave you breathless and hopeless and reeling.
The trees watch me. Like those students in the hallways at Harrington. Like those walls in the cabin in Solitary. Like the unseen ghosts that are laughing at me. They watch as I stumble and hold on to them and walk in circles.
I still hold the bloody knife. I’m scared of what I just did. I’m scared of what I still might do.
There’s no way you leave these woods. You can’t run from this. You can’t escape what you just did.
I hear his last words and try to will them away from my mind. But I can’t. I can’t.
“Where is God?” Pastor Marsh asked. “Where is your father? Tell me.”
He just stood there, almost triumphant, with the blood gushing out of his chest, his face delirious and crazy.
“They call him God the Father for a reason. The reality, Chris, is that they both abandoned you. They both left you alone to live and die in this place. But I can show you—I can show you that you don’t have to fear death. Look at me. What do you see, Chris? What do you see on my face? I’ve been waiting all this time for you to make a choice. To see what I see. To believe what I believe.”
He spat out something dark and then said his final words. “We can live and die afraid, or we can live to defy, Chris. It is up to you.”
Then he fell back and out of my life.
I crumble to the forest floor and lean against a big tree. I look at the knife.
For a long time I just stare at it, wondering what to do and where to go. I know it doesn’t make sense, that it sounds crazy, that I should be running and sprinting and bolting out of here, but I can’t.
I’m just so tired. I stay there under that tree and drift off. And sometime, maybe minutes or hours later, I don’t really know—when I wake up, I find the knife that had been in my hand is gone.
Just like that.
Just like Pastor Marsh. Gone.
I’m not scared.
If someone had wanted to get me, he could have already done so.
If someone really wanted that knife, let him have it.
“I don’t care!”
I hope whoever took it hears me. I hope he hears loud and clear.
108. Too Much
I get back home. I always do. Somehow I just really can’t seem to get far enough away from the cabin or the town.
It’s afternoon, and I’m ready to sleep for twenty hours. Yet something is waiting for me in the driveway. It’s not Mom’s car. Of course not.
I pull up and see the silver-and-black motorcycle that was in the shed at the Crag’s Inn.
Instantly I expect that Jared is somewhere around. He’s dropping by to rub it in my face. Or to bring me to the cops after what I did to the pastor.
For a moment I think about taking the bike and riding away. But I’m exhausted and don’t have the energy to get on it. I really just don’t care.
There’s a white envelope taped to the seat. I see my name on it.
I’m not going to like this.
I hold the card in my hands.
Just get rid of it, Chris. Even if it has your name on it. This isn’t a birthday card.
The wind rustles. I wonder if school missed me today. Or if Mom did. Or if anybody really did.
I tear open the envelope and see the folded card inside. It’s special stationary that has a picture of the Crag’s Inn on it.
Iris …
I swallow. How did it get here, and why, and who—
Add them to the collection. The collection of HUH? stories that I’m starting to own.
I open the note.
Dear Chris,
The bike belonged to your uncle and now belongs to you. Keep it and learn to ride it. Just be careful when you do.
You know more than you think you do. You understand more than you believe you do. But you are at a critical juncture and you have to make a choice.
Just remember that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Remember those words even if you do not believe them.
Yes, it is dark.
But the Lord is a lamp.
And He can turn the darkness into light.
Iris
I fold up the letter and look around.
The breeze still blows.
I wonder why. Why me. Why now. Why.
I take the steps up to the cabin.
I don’t feel anything.
I’m too tired to feel. Too bewildered to understand.
It’s all just a bit too much.
109. Sealed Shut
I hear the sound of a jet nearby. It wakes me up.
And here I am, sitting in a seat on a plane.
I know I’m dreaming, because Jocelyn is sitting next to me.
“You can’t stay here,” she says.
I look at her and feel myself blushing. I feel like a kid next to her. I am a kid next to her.
“Where is here? They use planes and airports in my imaginary heaven?”
“This isn’t imagined and this is not heaven. This is just a place in between. Otherwise it’s too startling.”
There’s that expression again. But shouldn’t it be space in between?.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“About what?” she says.
“About the pastor. About my uncle. About Iris.”
“I can’t tell you those things, Chris. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Then how does it work? When is any of this going to make sense? And—and why do you look grown up?”
Jocelyn only smiles. “Does everything need to make sense in your world? Did everything make sense when you lived in Chicago?”
“A lot more than now.”
“Like with your parents splitting up? Your father abandoning a career after finding faith? And all the countless little moments you chose to ignore on a daily basis?”
“No.”
I don’t want to acknowledge what she said, because I can’t.
There’s no way she can know that. There’s no way my dreams can even know that.
“You’ve felt something all your life and yet have done nothing about it,” Jocelyn says. “And it’s only since coming here that it’s come to the surface. This empty feeling deep down. Those fears. The questions.”
“Stop,” I tell her.
“We don’t have a lot more time.”
I fumble with my seat belt and then stumble out into the walkway.
“I need to wake up.”
“Yes, you do,” Jocelyn says.
“And you—you—whatever you are—whatever thing you are. I want you to leave.”
Jocelyn watches me with eyes that haunt and hurt. She remains quiet.
“I don’t want any more maybes in my life,” I say. “Any more might-have-beens. I’m tired of them and tired of
thinking. Tired of wondering what might have and should have and any of that. I’m just mostly tired, Jocelyn, and I don’t—I can’t—keep seeing you here, or keep showing up here, or keep doing whatever it is that I’m doing to get here.”
“Chris—”
“No. No. Please. Just let me leave. Let me be. It happened and it was magical, and then someone ripped it away from me and the world crumbled. And I don’t want to wake up every day going through piles and piles of crumbs to try and find something. I’m tired of it. I want something that I know. I want something that is real. I want something that doesn’t make me sick with sadness.”
She looks at me and nods. No anger or frustration or confusion on her beautiful face. She nods and then looks out the window next to her.
I don’t want to say anything else because there’s no use.
I start walking away, not sure where I’m going or what I’m doing.
You know more than you think you do.
But it doesn’t matter.
You understand more than you believe you do.
It does not matter.
You have to make a choice.
I want it back. The part of me that doesn’t care. The part of me that doesn’t fear tomorrow.
I just want to move on with it.
“Got it?”
I keep walking and hear the sound of the door to the airplane seal shut behind me.
110. The End Is the Beginning
“We’re leaving.”
Just like that, another story is over.
Just like that, another chapter ends.
“What?”
“This is how it works,” Poe tells me. “I’ve seen it with others. I mean—it just happens. People suddenly leave. Someone loses a job, and then their family moves. Or they get a bigger or better job somewhere else.”
“It’s over,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s over.”
It’s been three days since it all happened. I haven’t been back at school. I’ve done nothing the last few days. That includes sleeping. That also includes keeping my sanity.
I left it by those falls when the pastor fell over to his death.
It’s graduation day, and I’m meeting Poe outside by the track field.
“What’s over?”
“The pastor. He’s dead.”
Poe laughs.
“I’m not kidding.”
“Shut up, Chris.”
“No. The day after I saw you—it happened. I saw it because—because I did it. I killed him.”
So I tell her in a hurried whisper. I tell her while she looks at me and shakes her head and keeps shaking it.
“That’s impossible,” Poe says. “Why are you making this up?”
“I’m not.”
“It’s not going to change anything.”
“What isn’t?”
“This—your story.”
“I’m not making this up, Poe.”
“I might never see you again after today, and you’re doing this.”
“I’m not doing anything.” I don’t understand why she doesn’t believe me. “Listen—it really happened. Just like I said. Remember when you wouldn’t believe me about Jocelyn.”
“So go inside.”
“What?”
“Go inside the gym. Then come back and look me in the face and tell me you’re not lying.”
“Poe—”
“I saw him this morning.”
“You saw who?”
“The pastor.”
Now it’s me who thinks she’s lying.
But I’m already running to the gym where the ceremony is going on, where the graduates have already marched, where somebody is probably giving them a nice pep talk before they head out into the big dark world.
Even before I enter the open doors, I hear his voice.
I stop and listen and know this cannot be happening.
It can’t be.
It’s not real.
I move through the opened double doors and see the crowd and the platform and then I see him.
Pastor Jeremiah Marsh.
Talking and saying something that sounds really seriously wonderful.
And as if he knows, as if he can just feel that I’m in the room, he grins.
111. A Fine Ending
If this were a fairy tale or a story about a good person, then this would be his moment. The moment where he would seek the water for baptism. Where he would give himself up and finally give up. When he would embrace this thing that his father so fully accepted, this thing that Jocelyn so freely gave herself over to. He would stand in this flowing stream and kneel and ask for forgiveness and just let go.
That would be a good story and a fine ending.
But this forest doesn’t belong in a fairy tale, and standing in this stream is no good person.
I hold an old backpack containing the items I have to offer.
A Bible that once belonged to my father. One he claimed had answers for me. A Bible I gave to someone else to use, only to receive it back with claims that echoed my father’s statement.
They were both wrong.
Also inside is a leather band once given to me by someone I had just begun to know. Something that meant the world to her. It was like the Bible, a present a parent gave a child, a present with deep meaning.
Then there’s the picture of Jocelyn and me, a faded color printout of another time and another life.
Faith is believing in someone or something. And this is my moment of finding faith.
You want me to make a choice, Iris? So be it.
I know what I believe now.
I believe in anything and everything that I can do.
I believe that the world is messed up and that there’s evil and that there’s madness and that there’s mystery.
But there isn’t a God up above. He can’t be watching, not with all this madness around me. Not with everything happening. It’s okay if He wants to abandon me, but there are too many others for Him to not abandon. Too many. If He is up there, He abandoned us a long time ago.
I lift the bag and then chuck it over the falls.
If the dead can be raised, then so can other things.
I stand and look out to the surrounding stranglehold of woods.
I believe that I can and will be free.
No more sadness and no more sorrow. No more secrets and no more spying.
I’m tired of trying to be a hero in a story I don’t belong in.
So here I am. Here I am.
I’m a new person, a new soul. And this soul is open and free and ready to start living.
And if God is up there, then it’s up to Him to hunt me down.
112. Little Bird
Sometimes I wonder if the bluebird watches me.
I’ve seen him too many times to wonder if it’s just random. Too many times around my house and on my deck and by my window.
I know it’s him. I just wonder why he’s still around.
Sometimes I think the bluebird is a ghost of Jocelyn that’s haunting me, trying to get me to understand its language and find the key.
Sometimes I think it’s Iris looking at me with questioning eyes, wondering how I could have entered her life only to see it all burn to the ground.
Sometimes I think it’s an angel wondering what happened to me and where I went wrong.
Sometimes I think it’s a demon out to get me, out to corner me and pin me down and peck my eyes out.
And sometimes I think it’s just a bluebird out there, flying because it has nothing better to do.
I like the last thought the best.
Yeah.
But that doesn’t mean I believe it.
Also by Travis Thrasher
The Promise Remains
The Watermark
The Second Thief
Three Roads Home
Gun Lake
Admission
Blinded
Sky Blue
<
br /> Out of the Devil’s Mouth
Isolation
Ghostwriter
Every Breath You Take
Broken
40
The Solitary Tales
Solitary
Gravestone
… a little more …
When a delightful concert comes to an end,
the orchestra might offer an encore.
When a fine meal comes to an end,
it’s always nice to savor a bit of dessert.
When a great story comes to an end,
we think you may want to linger.
And so, we offer …
AfterWords—just a little something more after you
have finished a David C Cook novel.
We invite you to stay awhile in the story.
Thanks for reading!
Turn the page for …
• Three Recommended Playlists
• Behind the Book: The Empire Strikes Back
• A Snapshot
Three Recommended Playlists
GRAVESTONE PLAYLIST #1 For the Walkman
1. “A Forest” by The Cure
2. “Domino” by Genesis
3. “In a Lonely Place” by New Order
4. “Walk through the Fire” by Peter Gabriel
5. “The Ghost in You” by The Psychedelic Furs
6. “Millimillenary” by Cocteau Twins
7. “The Hurting” by Tears for Fears
8. “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” by The Smiths
9. “Someone Speaks” by Anything Box
10. “Shouldn’t Have Done That” by Depeche Mode
11. “Save a Prayer” by Duran Duran
12. “Mad World” by Tears for Fears
13. “New Day” by The Cure
14. “The Seventh Stranger” by Duran Duran
15. “Song to the Siren” by This Mortal Coil
16. “Faith” by The Cure
GRAVESTONE PLAYLIST #2 For the iPod
1. “Story” by Great Northern
Gravestone Page 32