The Girl Behind the Red Rope

by Ted Dekker

  “So be it,” Rose barked.

  Tanner quickly untied my wrists. He and Marshall spun me back around as two others dragged my mother forward.

  “Mother . . .”

  “Shh, shh. It’s okay, sweetheart.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “This is for the best.”

  I just stared at her for a moment, unable to accept her sacrifice for me. I would rather be dead than watch her suffer for my sin. She couldn’t possibly be thinking clearly.

  I whirled around to face the council, ripping my arms free. Then I rushed up to Rose, who watched, face flat, as the guardians tied my mother’s wrists to the dangling rope.

  I fell to my knees. “Please, she doesn’t understand what she’s doing,” I cried, tears blurring my vision. “I deserve to be punished for what I’ve done, not her!”

  “You’re right,” Rose replied, voice steely. “You deserve the blame. And so you’ll pay your own price.” She turned hard eyes to Claude, who held the whip. “Bring it to me.”

  I twisted back to see my mother hanging from the rope, wrists secured above her head. Claude stepped up to Rose and held out the whip.

  Rose snatched the long coiled cord and shoved it at me. “Whip her!”

  The air around me stilled.

  Rose grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. Shoved the whip into my belly. “Whip her or I swear I’ll kill her!”

  “No.” Her intention was finally sinking into my skull. “I can’t!”

  “You can and you will if you have any hope of seeing your mother survive.”

  Grace, you must do whatever is necessary, Bobbie’s voice whispered through my mind, and I knew she was close. Whatever is asked of you.

  I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t inflict this kind of pain on anyone, much less my own mother.

  If you don’t it’ll be much worse for both of you. Think of your unborn child. Think of the damage this could do.

  “No,” I said again, staring at the whip I held over my belly. “I . . . I can’t.”

  “Look at me, Grace.” My mother had twisted toward me. Light glistened in her eyes. If she was feeling fear, she hid it well. “Listen to me. I know what I’m doing. Do as Rose asks. It’s alright.”

  “I can’t hurt you,” I wept. “You can’t ask me to do this.”

  “It’s all going to be alright. You must do what’s best for your child, just like I’m doing for you.”

  Listen to your mother, Grace. Protect your baby. You have to do what is asked.

  I glanced back toward the other council members as they watched. Surely someone would intervene. Rebecca? Colin? Surely someone would stop this insanity. My eyes fell to my brother, who was staring at the horizon.

  “Jamie . . . Please, she’s our mother.”

  He said nothing. I knew he was lost to me, that I was alone now. I looked at Andrew, pleading, but he lowered his gaze. My tragic reality was setting in. I had done this. Whipping my mother was my price to pay.

  A sob escaped my mouth and I turned back to Rose. “Please, there has to be another way.”

  “There was another way,” she snapped. “But you chose the path of deception instead. This is where that path has brought you.” She closed my fist around the whip handle. “Do what must be done.”

  Do what she asks, Grace. It will keep you safe.

  “Honey, look at me,” my mother said, and I did, the whip heavy in my hand. “Let me take this burden for you.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Listen to your mother.

  “Now, Grace,” Rose said, shoving me forward.

  My mother gave me a confident nod, then turned around so only her back, barely covered in the thin material, was facing me. I stood frozen.

  “Now, Grace!” Rose shouted.

  With tears streaming down my face, I raised the whip over my head. “Forgive me,” I whispered to the sky, to my mother, to God. “Forgive me.”

  I brought my arm around and watched the long cord strike my mother’s back. She moaned, and blood immediately began to soak through the material over her back.

  “Again,” Rose said.

  Again I raised my arm and brought it down. Another crack. Another bloodcurdling moan. The blood began to spread through her thin gown. The rest of the world faded from my view.

  “Again!”

  Again I brought the whip down. And again, and again, and again. My mind went numb as it retreated to protect itself.

  By the sixth lash, my mother could no longer support her own weight, and she hung like a sack on the end of that rope.

  “Again!”

  “Please, I can’t,” I sobbed, falling to my knees. “I can’t . . .”

  Claude’s large hand reached down and swiped the whip from my grasp. Without missing a beat the lashing continued, harder and with more intensity. Over and over, each blow landed against my mother’s unresponsive body.

  I wept on my knees, grasped chunks of earth between my fingers. “Please, you’ll kill her,” I cried.

  But there was no relief. The forty lashes lasted for an eternity, and I knew then what eternal hell must be like.

  And then it stopped.

  I glanced up through my teary gaze and saw Rose had lifted her hand.

  “Tie her up.”

  Tanner scooped me up and carried me to the second rope. He yanked my hands up and tied my wrists tightly to the rope. I didn’t feel anything except torment for my broken mother. The world went dark as a hood was thrown over my head.

  “You will spend the night out here in the dark contemplating your sins,” Rose said close to my ear. “I hope in the morning you will understand the weight of your choices.”

  “My mother,” I croaked. “Please, she needs help.”

  But there was no response.

  “Please!” I called out again. I could hear them leaving.

  I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t feel anything.

  I could only hang there and weep.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Three

  AT SOME POINT DURING THE NIGHT I HEARD MY mother’s fight to keep breathing end. I would carry that moment with me for the rest of my life. I screamed for help, but no one came.

  I slipped in and out of consciousness after that. Each time I came to, I’d call for her. And each time her silence reminded me she was never going to reply again. My mother was dead.

  When I heard the birds start their morning chirping, I dared hope that when I opened my eyes I would find myself in bed at home, waking from a nightmare. But I wasn’t at home. I was hanging from a rope, paying the price for my deception.

  They came to collect me when the sun rose over the horizon. They cut down my numb hands and pulled off the hood so I could watch as my mother’s body dropped lifeless when they cut her free. I just stared, too broken and numb to react.

  I was escorted back to the prison and locked back inside my cage, where Tanner told me I would be expected to repent before the congregation the following day, so I should prepare. I hardly heard his instruction. I curled up on the cold ground, pulling my knees close to my chest, hoping to block out the world and escape into darkness.

  For the next few hours I just lay there, a single paralyzing thought consuming my mind and reminding me of who I was. I had murdered my mother. There was no way around it. Every path led me back to the damning conclusion. I had killed my own mother.

  I was slightly aware of movement sometime later, but I didn’t respond. There was a rattling of tin and locks, but I didn’t raise my head from the floor to see. There wasn’t any point. I was going to spend the rest of my life in this cell, and after what I’d done, I deserved to.

  Eventually, a chill set into my flesh that had me shivering. I shifted to search for warmth and was surprised to see that it was night. I could make out a fresh plate of food and a water jug in the corner. And just beside it, a folded heap that looked like a blanket.

  I pushed myself up, arms shaking. I crawled over to the blanket, pulled it across the f
loor, and wrapped it around my body. The material was rough, but it added a layer of warmth, and after a moment my bones stopped knocking against each other.

  All I saw was darkness. All I felt was cold. I couldn’t imagine warmth or light. I had been stripped of them both.

  Can darkness steal your light?

  The thought popped into the farthest corner of my mind, and I answered.

  Yes. It has.

  Has it? Or have you just forgotten who you are? Can the light be threatened? Another small question, followed by another automatic answer.

  I’m not the light of the world. I was wrong. He was wrong.

  Then who are you? This time the thought was stronger, stirring something in my chest.

  I’m just a girl.

  Who were you before you were born a girl?

  I ignored that question.

  “I’m just a worthless girl who killed her mother,” I whispered.

  Who was she before she was born a girl and became a mother?

  I didn’t know how to answer such a strange question.

  She is the light of her Father’s eternal light. Death has no power over her.

  “You’re wrong,” I said louder. “I watched her die.”

  What is death?

  The thoughts were materializing, growing in volume and power. Taking on a familiar tone. I sniffed in the darkness, overcome by how real the conversation felt, even though I knew I was only talking with myself.

  “I don’t care what death is,” I whimpered. “My mother’s gone.”

  “She’s always with you, more alive than she ever knew she could be. And now she knows love without fear in the same way I do.”

  The voice had taken form now. Whether it came from inside or outside of me, it filled my ears and disturbed the silence in the prison basement. I knew Eli’s voice well. But it couldn’t be the boy, because he was dead too.

  I looked in either direction but saw only darkness. My heart started to pick up speed. All this time alone with my grief was messing with my mind.

  “Careful, Grace,” another familiar voice said behind me. I turned to see Bobbie sitting, legs crossed, on the wooden bench in my cell. “Remember the consequences of forgetting wisdom.”

  “The wisdom of the world dresses up as helpful protection while binding you to fear,” the boy’s voice said. I couldn’t see him, but it was as though he was sitting beside me.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Bobbie said. “He’s dead.”

  Eli’s voice answered. “Death is only a shadow. Is a shadow real? Can you pick it up?”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the cell beyond the bars. I squinted, then gasped.

  His blue eyes were bright, his round face and short stature clear. I scooted back, stunned as Eli stood before me, hands easy at his sides, watching me with a smile. Only a line of steel bars separated us.

  I stared, unable to conceive of what I was seeing, strung between fear and hope. Fear, because people didn’t come back from the dead. He could be a perversion of what he’d once been, a Fury manipulating me again. Hope, because my heart longed for the peace he’d shown me.

  I pushed myself off the ground and let the blanket fall to my feet, eyes fixed on his.

  “Hello, Grace,” the boy said.

  A hand grabbed my shoulder as if warning me not to accept what I was seeing. I knew it was Bobbie without having to look; I could feel the tremble in her fingers.

  “This isn’t right,” she whispered. “Think about what you are seeing.”

  “You can’t be here,” I whispered to Eli, at a loss.

  “Because I’m dead?” Eli asked.

  “Yes. You’re dead.”

  “But there is no death, remember?”

  “Yes, but . . . your body . . .”

  “Don’t worry about this body.” He smiled. “I only borrowed it. Your problem is that you worship the death of the body. You think it’s the final watershed that determines everything. It’s not. It’s no more than the shedding of a costume.”

  “I worship death?” I was still trying to comprehend his appearance. Had I lost my mind?

  “Yes,” Bobbie cut in. “You’ve lost your mind.”

  “Better to lose your mind than to lose your identity,” the boy said as if he’d heard her, which I was certain he had.

  “My identity as the light,” I said, already knowing where he was going.

  “The light you’ve always been. Better to lose your whole life in body than to remain lost to the light that you are. But you cling to your experience of this life and fear loss. See? You’ve made an agreement with fear to keep you safe. It’s your master.”

  I blinked as his words washed over me. Having faced my mother’s death, I drank them in like water.

  “And you can only serve one master,” I whispered, the words bubbling up from deep inside my gut.

  Eli gave me a nod. “Exactly. But don’t feel so alone—most people place their faith in fear instead of love.”

  “In darkness instead of light,” I said as understanding filled my mind.

  “This will only bring you suffering!” Bobbie said, her tone fearful and panicked. “Remember what happened last time you listened to him.”

  “Surrender your attachment to safety, Grace,” Eli said. “When you attach yourself to this life, you blind yourself to who you are, and in that blindness you believe you’re separate from the light and can be threatened. You’ve unwittingly made an agreement with fear to keep you safe. It’s time to awaken to the light in which you’ve always been safe.”

  “Follow wisdom,” Bobbie said. “This boy’s heresy will deceive you. Protecting yourself is the only way to ensure holiness.”

  “To say you need to be protected from darkness only empowers the darkness as a threat,” Eli said. “Through your belief in it, you live in darkness.”

  “Fear,” I said as it all came back to me. “But didn’t I become evil at the fall?”

  “You embraced the knowledge of good and evil, judgment, which blinded you to the light you are and have always been. You’re the light, only lost in darkness, that’s all. But you can be reborn into the perception of light. Jesus called that perception ‘seeing the kingdom of heaven.’ Like being born all over again into a different way of seeing and being. Becoming like a little child.”

  I blinked. Then was everyone the light, just blind to it? What about other religions?

  “Why focus on others when you’re blind yourself? The blind can’t lead the blind, and I can assure you, you’re quite blind just like most, regardless of religion. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be in fear.”

  “This is madness!” Bobbie spat. “Heresy! Don’t you see he is trying to deceive you?”

  “Still, I’m already born again,” I said, ignoring Bobbie. “Otherwise I would go to hell. I’m a Christian.”

  Eli gave me a patient smile. “Seems to me you’re already in a kind of hell called fear and judgment.”

  “I mean when I die.”

  “Being reborn is a lifelong journey from darkness to light, blindness to sight, that has little to do with the next life. Until you’re born again, you can’t perceive the light, which is everywhere—the kingdom of heaven. You see darkness instead of light and are lost in fear rather than in love. As you’re reborn into the kingdom, you see light where you once saw darkness. Do you want to see?”

  I could hardly imagine a more beautiful thing, but my mind was screaming danger at me. Or was that Bobbie?

  “How?” I whispered.

  “Simple. Surrender. Repent. But true repentance is changing what you’ve been taught to believe about reality. Everyone thinks they’re right. So changing your mind is much harder than changing your behavior by following a set of laws and saying the right prayers. That means nothing unless it awakens you to love. Changing what you think feels like a kind of death to the old self who rules your life in judgment, but as you repent, you awaken to the light you’ve always been. Being bo
rn again.”

  “Enough of this!” Bobbie said. “He’s overturning everything you know!”

  “And now you’re feeling the fear of being wrong, which is another kind of hell.”

  “Heresy!” Bobbie hissed. “He’s deceiving you!”

  Eli stepped forward and passed through the bars so that he was now standing in my cell, not three feet from me. Bobbie quickly jumped to the corner behind me. I took a step back, dumbstruck.

  “Can we be rid of her for a moment so I can show you something?” Eli asked.

  A look of stark terror had paled Bobbie’s face. Who was she, really? So wise in so many ways, but so full of fear. The opposite of Eli.

  “Trust me,” Eli said.

  I turned back, heart pounding. Then gave him a shallow nod.

  He lifted his arms and clapped his hands.

  With that single clap, the world around us changed. The dark cell we were in vanished. I was in a white room, and I shielded my eyes as they fluttered and adjusted to the sudden shift from darkness to light.

  I looked around, stunned. There was nothing but whiteness in all directions. White before me, behind me, above me, below me, and to either side. It was solid under my feet, but I couldn’t tell the floor from the walls or ceiling. I just knew I was standing on something firm.

  And there was me. And Eli. I could see my dark shoes on the white floor, and my hands . . . My hands and arms! They were somehow different. Part of me, but a translucent white, as if they were made from the same stuff as everything else.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

  “I . . .” I couldn’t get over how my skin looked. “Is this real?”

  “You’re here, so it must be,” he replied, then gave a shrug. “Not the you that you thought you were, but the you that you’ve forgotten. The you that all your treasured beliefs have blinded you to.”

  “Are we still in Haven Valley?”

  “We’re still in the cell.”

  I rubbed my fingers together. They felt the same as always. “I don’t understand. How’s this possible?”

  “I have stripped away everything you think you are so that you can discover who you actually are. The only thing I’ve left is your old questioning mind.”

  He smiled, clearly amused by the deepening confusion on my face.