by Ted Dekker
It took me at least ten careful minutes to reach the northern perimeter unseen. Then another five to pick my way west. Oddly enough, the silence bothered me as much as anything, because Bobbie’s voice, despite her absence, was always in that silence, demanding I turn back.
But I didn’t turn back. And when the tracks finally came into view, I was running again, desperate to be in the protection of the car that held Eli.
I raced along the tracks toward the car. Please be here. A quick glance south assured me I was still alone.
Then I was at the railcar, yanking myself up and in on my belly. Rolling to my knees.
“Eli?”
He stared at me with round eyes from the corner where he was seated. “Hi, Grace,” he said, smiling.
“We need to go.” I rushed over and began collecting the things I’d brought him the day before, which were now strewn about.
“Where are we going?”
“To some abandoned buildings east of town,” I said in a rush. “They’ve been searched and cleared. The search parties are headed this way. We have to move!”
“Okay.” No concern marked his voice. But I didn’t have time to consider whether it was his naïveté or his way of deception. We were going, and that was that.
He reached for the backpack and held it open so I could shove things inside. Soon we were packed up and he’d strapped the bag to his back. I nodded for him to follow and, as he always did, he moved without questioning me. This was another peculiar aspect of the boy, but not something I had time to dwell on. I dropped from the train car and turned back to help Eli down. I placed a finger over my lips, and he nodded.
I knew the abandoned buildings left by the mining company were marked as cleared, because Jamie had given my mother and me a full report after yesterday’s search had come up empty. They’d placed yellow tape on all the outbuildings that had been cleared. Sure, they would probably return to search them again in the coming days, but for now, it was the safest place I could think of. And closer to me if I needed to reach Eli.
I had no plan beyond moving Eli, but that was enough for me now.
“Ready?” I whispered. “As fast as we can.”
“Ready,” he said.
And then we were off, he following close behind as I raced back the way I had come.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
WE REACHED THE ABANDONED BUILDINGS WITHOUT being seen except by the birds in the trees. Tucked out of sight along the tree line, I pulled up, breathing heavily. Eli stopped beside me and looked at the scene.
Tall weeds and dying grass covered the ground. The back of the building—either an old house or a store—was falling apart. The wooden planks, once white and clean, were gray and rotting. All the windows were boarded up. Where there should be three steps that led up to the back door, there were only two. But the yellow tape over the door was all I cared about right now. The words “Keep Out” were printed in black along the two-inch-wide strip.
But I was going in.
I motioned for Eli to follow and crossed through the tall grass to the stairs. “Watch yourself,” I cautioned as I straddled the missing first step to the creaking second and then the third. The porch held my weight easily enough. Ducking under the tape, I pushed the back door open and stepped into the house.
“Close the door behind you,” I whispered, studying the room. The moment he did, we were plunged into darkness. I waited, hoping my eyes would adjust, until a small beam of light cut through the darkness from behind me. I turned to see Eli holding out the flashlight I had brought him, smiling proudly.
“Good thinking,” I said, and took the flashlight. “Follow me. And try to keep your feet in the prints that are already here, okay?”
“Okay.”
The bottom floor of the house was as I’d expected. Thick layers of dust were scuffed from the boots of those who’d searched the building yesterday. The stench of mold hung in the air. The house was empty except for the tiny creatures that scattered into hiding as we entered each room.
A single flight of steps led up, and they creaked from age as we ascended. On the second floor, we found a narrow hallway with a small bathroom and two bedrooms.
I tried the knob over the sink in the bathroom, and not surprisingly, nothing happened. No toilet either. The place was about as homey as the train car Eli had been stashed in, but safe. For now. We moved into the farthest room—a simple square space with a double window boarded up.
Eli looked around and placed his backpack on the ground. “I’ll take this room,” he said cheerfully.
“You’ll have to be careful with the flashlight at night,” I said, handing it back to him. “You don’t want to draw attention.”
“Got it.” He took the flashlight and flicked it off. A thin shaft of light broke through two boards at the window, giving us some light but not much. “How long will I stay here?”
“Until they’re done searching for you.”
“Who’s searching for me?” he asked.
“Everyone.”
“Why?”
I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, but I wanted answers as much as he did. “Because they believe you’re dangerous.”
Eli considered this for a moment. “But you don’t.”
Truth was, I didn’t know how I felt. “I think you’re just a boy,” I lied. That’s what I wanted to believe, even though everything about him suggested he was more.
Eli grinned. “And you believe you’re just a girl.”
“Well, no. I’m a woman.”
He stared at me and gave a funny chuckle, as if to say, That’s what I just said. He turned and squatted beside the backpack. Unzipped it. Then began to take the items out and set them on the floor around him.
“Who are you, Eli?” The words fell from my lips before I could call them back.
He looked up at me over his shoulder. “Just a boy, right?”
I wasn’t in the mood. Standing there in the dim room, I needed reassurance that I wasn’t unwittingly enabling the darkness.
“Are you dangerous?”
He stood and faced me, his expression relaxed and innocent. “Is the sunlight a danger to the night?” he asked.
It was a strange question. “They don’t exist at the same time, so no.”
“But imagine all you knew was night and had never seen the sun. If a sun came up and chased the darkness away, would you feel threatened?”
“If all I knew was darkness? I suppose so, yes.”
“Well, think of me as the sun,” he said.
I shook my head. “But Haven Valley doesn’t live in darkness.”
“Then fear, which is the same thing. Does Haven Valley live in fear?”
“Fear isn’t darkness,” I said. “It keeps us from putting our hand in the fire.”
“You don’t have to rely on fear to keep you from putting your hand in the fire. You can make that choice without fear, only because you still want your hand. But I’m talking about deeper fears. The fear of failure or loss. Being afraid that you aren’t good enough. Fearing evil. Understand?”
I didn’t know how to answer.
“Are you afraid, Grace?” he asked sweetly.
“A little fear is good for you.”
“Because it keeps you safe.”
“Yes.”
“Because you can be threatened?”
“Yes.”
“Because you’re just a girl?”
“Yes.”
I could feel my bottom lip quivering, though I couldn’t explain why. There was something unnerving about the energy in Eli’s tone, the look in his eyes.
“Like I’m just a boy.” He flashed a grin, spun around, and grabbed something off the ground. “The truth is, you’re the light of the world.” He bounced back around to face me, now clutching something in his palm. “You’ve heard this?”
“That I’m the light of the world?”
“Yes.”
It sounded familiar
, but it wasn’t a phrase I could pin down. What was I supposed to say? Light of the world. I wasn’t even sure I understood what that meant. Besides, Jesus was the light, not me.
“But you’re made in the likeness of God,” he said as if hearing my thoughts, just like Bobbie could. “Like God. Do you think that means eyelashes and fingernails?”
I’d never considered the question.
“No,” Eli said. “He’s the light without darkness.”
Warning bells issuing charges of heresy clanged through my mind, and in that moment I thought Eli really was the darkness masquerading as light. He was suggesting that I was like God?
“I was made like God, but we fell into darkness,” I said, voicing what I’d been taught.
“Exactly. Into blindness of the light. Blindness to who you’ve always been. Darkness. But that doesn’t mean you can’t see again.” His eyes brimmed with excitement. “Want to see something?”
I hesitated, leery of his naïve beliefs, but his enthusiasm was infectious. “All right.”
He opened his palm, and in the center sat a single match. He grabbed the match with his other hand and scraped it against his denim pants leg. The match caught flame and flickered between us.
“Even a small amount of light chases away shadows. What can threaten this light?”
“It’s just a small flame,” I said.
“Then let’s make it bigger!” He swept his free hand around the front of the match, blocking it from my vision, then opened both hands so his palms were spread out like a tray. There in the center where the match had been hovered a ball of light.
I gasped and stepped back.
The ball was a perfect sphere the size of a baseball, slowly rotating in the air. Eli had turned a match into a ball of flames. But not like yellow or red flames I’d seen before. It almost looked electric to me. Like a powerful light bulb without the glass.
“Bigger light,” Eli said. “Nice?” He smiled at me over the turning sphere.
“That’s . . . that’s impossible,” I croaked.
“Yes,” he said in a playful tone. “If I were just a boy.”
I looked past the brilliant light sphere into his kind eyes and felt my pulse begin to slow. His face was filled with knowing and peace.
“Impossible,” he began again, “if you were just a girl. But if you’re the light of the world, then not so impossible.”
I shifted my eyes back to the light, drawn to its surface. I wanted to reach out and touch it, to let my fingertips feel its power.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“It’s safe?”
“Of course.”
I stepped closer, losing myself in the wonder of it all. Usually it was me sharing wild stories with children; now a child was sharing one with me. Only this one was real. Right?
Eli watched as I reached my hand out. I could feel the warmth, but more, I felt it drawing me closer, closer, like a magnet drawing steel.
The moment my fingertips touched the sphere, they began to tingle just under the surface. And then, without warning, power swelled and shot up my arm and down through my body—into my lungs and deeper still into my very bones.
I gasped. But I wasn’t afraid. It was comforting. Warm but not hot. Powerful but not painful. For a split second, I felt certain that the light and I were one. I belonged to it and it belonged to me. It was in me and I was in it. And in that moment, I wanted to fall deeper into the light and forget the rest of the world.
“Now tell me,” Eli said. “What can threaten this light?”
What blots out light? I dropped my hand and looked at him. “Darkness,” I said.
“You think? Well, let’s see.” He hurried to the farthest, darkest corner of the room. But the darkness was no more, naturally. It was now the brightest part of the room.
“Is the light threatened here?” Eli asked, turning back.
“No,” I said. “But—”
“More darkness, then,” Eli cried. “Bigger darkness!” He rushed from the room, calling over his shoulder, “We must find bigger darkness!” I’d never seen him so excited as he rushed down the stairs with the ball hovering above one hand.
“Eli!” I hurried to catch him, but he was already down and around the corner. “Be careful!”
I followed the light, naturally. It couldn’t be hidden. It illuminated every dark space and danced across surfaces that had been cast in deep shadow. Through the kitchen, across the main room, and into what looked to be a storeroom. Windowless.
He stood in the center of the room, a couple feet from me. Slowly he extended the ball of light toward me, and as he did, the light grew. It reached out with long wispy fingers around us, then spread to all four corners. All traces of darkness were gone in its brilliance.
A room that had been encapsulated in darkness was now fully illuminated, and all from the sphere in Eli’s palm.
“There can be no darkness where this light is,” Eli said. “And its source is infinite, with no limit or end. What can possibly threaten that light?”
“Nothing,” I said, my eyes fixated on the light still dancing in Eli’s hands.
“Nothing. When you don’t see the light, you feel threatened. Close your eyes.”
I looked at him, then closed my eyes.
“Keep them closed,” he said. “What do you see?”
“Darkness.” Fear began to creep back into my chest, but I kept my eyes closed.
“You’re blind to the light,” he said with a small chuckle. “That’s all. So you see darkness and feel fear, and so goes the whole world, lost in darkness. But the darkness isn’t actually threatening you. Your blindness is.” A beat. “Open your eyes.”
I did, and light flooded my vision. I blinked, staring at the sphere. Tears sprang to my eyes. How beautiful the light was in that moment of seeing.
“The biggest lie is that fear will keep you safe in the darkness, but fear is the darkness. So round and round you go, fighting darkness with darkness. Better to open your eyes and see the light. In that light, there is no darkness. So you’ve always been safe. You just don’t know it because you’re blind to who you are as the light.”
I stood there for a long moment, his words ringing in my ears. They defied all I believed about the world. About my identity. Could it be so simple? No, I thought, it didn’t make sense.
But there stood a boy who seemed to know no fear.
Eli pressed his hands together and the ball of light vanished, plunging us back into darkness. In the space of less than a breath my familiar friend, fear, was whispering in my ear.
I had to get out and back home! This was all wrong, I could feel it in my bones.
Something touched my hand and I jumped. Eli’s hand wrapped around my fingers and gently pulled me forward. Then out of the room into the deep shadows of the house. But at least I could see.
He smiled up at me and dropped my hand. I wanted to ask him questions. I wanted to understand how anything he’d just shown me could be true. I wanted to know he wasn’t deceiving me. But all I could do was stare at him as he smiled at me.
“Cool, huh?” he said.
I nodded, but I wasn’t so sure. “Cool.”
“That’s you, the light. So why are you afraid?”
I LAY ON MY BED AS DARKNESS STOLE THE LIGHT OUTside my window. I had been there for hours, although it felt like minutes.
I’d managed to get back home without being detected, and as I put distance between myself and the house where Eli was hidden, the buzz of the experience faded. By the time I sneaked back into my room, the experience itself was a distant memory, replaced by a logic that demanded I figure out what was really happening.
I remembered little Stephen saying Eli could do magic. And now I’d witnessed something like magic with my own eyes, something that shouldn’t be possible. What other power did he have? What if that power was exactly what Rose and the rest of Haven Valley feared? Weren’t they justified in that fear?
But I c
ouldn’t deny the way the light had called to me. The beauty it held, the joy and love it had given me. Deception? Truth? What had my father learned that he could no longer tell me? Who was Eli?
Round and round I chased in the same mental circles, from uncertainty to desire, from fear to peace and back into fear. My mind wanted to rationalize it all, but I couldn’t, and my heart was torn between acceptance and rejection.
Bobbie had spent a good hour with me, sitting on the end of my bed, before finally leaving me alone. We’d fallen in and out of the same rounds of conversation, much like the rounds that were happening in my mind.
Bobbie: “You should be more afraid of him now than ever.”
Me: “He said I was the light of the world.”
Bobbie: “He’s a dangerous child who will send you to hell. You can’t trust him.”
Me: “I want to believe him.”
Bobbie: “That would be foolish. Use your wisdom. Think this through.”
Me: “Can I be threatened?”
Bobbie: “Don’t be ridiculous, of course you can! Have you forgotten what lies beyond the perimeter? Can you be threatened? He threatens you!”
Me: “What if he’s right and I am what he says?”
Bobbie: “What if he’s wrong? You’ll lose everything. Are you willing to risk that?”
Me: “I saw it with my own eyes.”
Bobbie: “That’s how deception works. He’s defying everything your teachers have taught you from the Holy Book.”
Me: “What if those teachers are wrong?”
Bobbie: “What if they’re right? The devil is playing games with you. Use your logic, Grace. Use wisdom!”
Me: “So this is deception.”
Bobbie: “You have to stay away from him.”
Me: “You’re right.”
And then after a while, we’d start all over again to the point of Bobbie’s incredulous exhaustion. Eventually, she’d given me one last warning and left me alone.
When I first heard the commotion downstairs, I nearly ignored it. But then I thought I recognized Rose’s voice and sat up. There was no mistaking it. Rose was downstairs!
I rushed to my door and pressed my ear against the wooden surface. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I recognized my brother’s voice as well. And then my mother’s softer tone. I took a deep breath and eased the door open a sliver.