by Mat Ridley
“Of course, I know now that there wasn’t any bear, but I can understand why we were led to think that there was. It was just God’s way of getting us to build that shelter as quickly as possible. If we hadn’t cocooned ourselves up like that, we would probably have frozen to death long before you found us. Even as it was, I can’t remember ever feeling so cold; we were warm enough all the while we were building the shelter, but once we’d finished, it didn’t take long for that heat to wear off. As we got colder, that was when I started to pray, like I’d never prayed before. Nothing profound, of course—I was only seven—just simple prayers, asking God over and over again to save us, save us from the bear, save us from the cold, just to save us. And then all of a sudden, I knew that we’d be safe, that God would send someone who would find us. Just like the parable of the lost sheep.”
Her words were like a splash of ice water, vocalising the dream I’d had that night; but she mistook my surprise for scepticism.
“I know what you’re thinking, that it was just my mind going into shock, but it wasn’t like that. I can’t explain it. Suddenly, bam, I just knew. Out of nowhere, an image came into my head of a man with a huge shield on his arm, protecting me from arrows and dragons and lightning, and God said to me, actually spoke, ‘I am sending you a man who will be your husband. He will be your protector. Not just today, but forever.’ Seconds later, I heard the sound of someone running up to the tree and digging in the snow, and then a voice, your voice, called out that you’d found us. Suddenly the nightmare was over and there were people everywhere, all of them talking about what a miracle it was we had been saved, and about how God had told you where to find us.
“I didn’t pay any serious attention to what God had said about you one day being my husband until much later, and even then I’ve always been doubtful. But the very fact that you’re here with me now, against all the odds… surely that proves it was true and not just something I dreamt up. When you suddenly appeared in the hospital here, I thought all my doubts had dried up and blown away like dust. The way you came back into my life, I thought nothing would ever be able to shake my faith again. But, Dan, to hear you say what you did just now about God, after you were so strong in your faith before… I… I just don’t know…”
She trailed off, crying softly, and the sight of her distress melted away the last of my negative feelings. Of course I hated God, but I didn’t see any reason why that meant Jo should suffer because of it. Did it really matter if she believed that God had brought us together, while I thought it was just a wonderful twist of fate? The important thing was that we had found each other, and I hoped that the reassuring embrace I enveloped her with conveyed that.
“Oh, Dan, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s just that—when I’ve imagined it, you coming back into my life again was supposed to be such a joyful, uncomplicated event. The happily ever after. And now look at it… what a mess.”
We held each other for longer, both of us lost in our own thoughts. Eventually, she pulled back slightly, and I looked down, straight into her eyes. They were still as blue and piercing as I remembered from our younger days, but now they held a new power over me. “Do you think you can ever go back to not hating Him, Dan? It’s never too late to turn back; you remember the story of the prodigal son. And whatever else you feel now, I know that you were guided by God that day. You must feel that too. With His help, you did a great thing.”
I pushed away the memory of the dream as it elbowed its way to the front of my mind again. I did not share Jo’s certainty. Although at the time I had felt the dream was from God, it was just as possible that Jo or one of the other girls had some kind of latent telepathic power that had manifested itself when their lives were in danger. No-one could prove one theory over the other—and to be honest, I didn’t care either way. I was no more likely to become a proponent of telepathy than I was to wholeheartedly embrace the being who had so royally fucked over my entire life. But I didn’t want to tell Jo that.
So I lied.
In our few short years together, it was the only real lie I told her, and even now it still feels sour in my mind. I told her that I didn’t know, that maybe over time I could learn to trust God again, that perhaps the dark years were over, that I believed a man could fly. Even as I opened my mouth and the words came out, I knew they were going to be false. Jo believed me, of course; her sweet nature and her faith conspired against her, and it was pretty much exactly what she wanted to hear. But the words were hollow. It may not sound like much of a lie to you—it’s not up there with ‘She’s just a friend, darling’ or ‘I’ve never seen this person before in my life, Your Honour’—but to me, it was a big deal. I had wanted to keep my relationship with Jo free from lies, and now, I had spoilt that. And once again, God was to blame.
That was our first argument, and the topic was one that we would revisit often over the years. And yet, however many times we fought about it, the outcome always boiled down to the same three things: Jo loved God, I hated Him, and neither of us was likely to sway the other’s point of view with rhetoric. Don’t get me wrong: from what I’ve just said, you might think that we were constantly warring with each other, and that our relationship was far from perfect, but I would disagree with you. Apart from the whole God thing, it was perfect, and over time we both learnt to accept the fact that we were not, ahem, singing from the same hymn sheet. Jo continued to hope that I would be ‘healed’, but was very good at not pressuring me about it. For my part, I didn’t consider that I needed any kind of healing beyond what was required to get rid of the extensive scarring that twisted the side of my face, but Jo said she liked it that way. She said that whenever she looked at my face, it reminded her of how we met. One time she even said that it reminded her of how God had saved my life… but you can probably imagine the scale of the argument we had after a statement like that.
Just like any other relationship, we muddled our way through, and, to cut a long story short, within the space of a couple of years we were married. In a church, too. Of course I wasn’t ecstatic about that, but I would have done anything for her, and the smile on her face was totally worth it. Every time I lost myself in Jo’s eyes, I was all too aware of the gamble I was taking with letting her so close to me, but it was clear that I would have been a fool to have pushed her away. In rare moments, I even wondered if God had had a hand in bringing us together after all; but these moments were rare, and were only ever idle, sunny day thoughts with no firm theological shift behind them.
I had quit the Army shortly after leaving the hospital and returning to the UK; my previous enthusiasm never did come back. I’d had enough of death, and wanted to focus instead on more constructive goals, like starting a new chapter of my life with Jo at the centre. Jo, too, decided that the intensity of the Army Medical Corps was too much for her after all, and put in for a transfer to go back to England. She got her wish, and it was quickly obvious that she had found her rightful place—her calling, if you like—in the hospital where she was stationed on our return.
It took me a little longer to find my feet. I tried my hand at several different jobs, but none of them seemed right. Not only was I woefully under-qualified for most of the positions I applied for, but in addition, there was the scarring on my face to contend with. Be honest, if you were an employer and were approached by an uneducated, ex-Army type with heavy facial scars, you would probably clear your throat politely and suggest that perhaps I look for something a little more… appropriate to my set of skills. But of course, outside of the Army, there wasn’t much call for my particular set of skills.
In the end, and you know this already, I managed to find a job as a night watchman at the UPF courier warehouse. The pay wasn’t anything spectacular, and I certainly wasn’t doing anything noble to further the enlightenment of my fellow man, but I had to do something to help pay for food and rent. And in many ways, I was perfectly suited to the job: not only was I strong e
nough to shift the boxes around as and when necessary, but because I worked the night shift, the managers were also happy that I wasn’t going to scare away any of their paying customers with my fearsome appearance. As for those customers of a less welcome persuasion—the kind that came at night, armed with crowbars—well, the managers were much happier for me to meet with them. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one of the reasons I was given the job in the first place was because of my looks. It didn’t take long for me to prove my worth, either: within a month of starting the job, I managed to catch a burglar who had broken into the warehouse a couple of times previously, and who good old George, with his less than athletic physique, had been unable to apprehend.
Yes, George now comes back into my tale once again; the end, or rather the beginning, is in sight. You’ll see what I mean soon enough. But as far as George is concerned: originally, I had looked forward to the prospect of those long, lonely nights in the warehouse, plenty of time to myself, no risk of forging anything beyond a casual acquaintance with anyone, and therefore no risk of betrayal or loss. But George, well, he was unstoppable. Like one of the destroyers he used to work on, his charisma cut through the cold waves of my indifference, and as soon as he learnt of my army history, the volley of jibes that followed was too infectiously good-natured to ignore. Time spent hanging out with George rapidly turned into the highlight of the job.
So my life had finally reached some kind of equilibrium, a relatively mundane yet happier plateau than at any previous point. I went to work every evening, came back to my wife at the end of my shift, ate, slept, made love, watched a bit of TV. Normal life. I guess a part of me missed the old days, and I would still try to keep in shape by going to the gym a couple of times a week, but that wasn’t nearly enough to fend off a little bit of padding that I put on around my waist. Jo used to joke that if I wanted a baby so badly, all I had to do was ask, but it seemed I didn’t even have to do that; one wonderful day, exactly four years, seven months and thirteen days after we got married, Jo told me that she was pregnant. That was four months before I died. Little did I know that we would never get to experience the joys of parenthood, and that the fuse was growing short on the life that Jo and I had together.
As the moment of my death approached for the second time, the wounds of that terrible evening opened up fresh once again. I watched helplessly as everything and everyone I had come to treasure was ripped mercilessly out of my life, and as before, there was nothing I could do to stop it.
George was killed.
The warehouse burned.
The police failed to protect us.
I failed to protect Jo.
I died.
Jo died.
So much for God’s promise that I would be her protector.
Jo.
Jo.
POST-MORTEM
Chapter 9
“Jo!”
I came back to consciousness with a start, gasping her name. My panic catapulted me to my feet, but before I was even fully upright, the anxiety I felt about Jo was suddenly forgotten, however impossible that seems. The avalanche of confusing thoughts and realisations that came crashing down upon my mind left no room for anything else.
The first pebble of the landslide was the surprise that I could call out to Jo at all, considering that Sam had just shot me through the neck. I reached up and felt carefully around. Everything seemed to be in place, and I could feel no trace of blood on my fingertips.
Other rocks began to tumble: the fact that I could stand, for one. I had just been killed, and outside of cheesy horror films, dead people don’t tend to get up and walk around. And I hadn’t simply been killed, I had been slain, carved to pieces by the evening’s catastrophic events until I had been finally, decisively dispatched by Sam. Yet I didn’t feel any pain. Quite the opposite: I had never felt so healthy, or so powerful. Even simply turning my head from side to side, looking for Jo and then taking in my surroundings, I could sense an underlying strength in my muscles that had definitely not been there before.
And then the final boulder of the avalanche came plummeting down, incontestably burying my concern for Jo and all other confusion beneath an impossible weight. The realisation began when I started to push myself to my feet. Instead of the soft brown carpet beneath my palms, I felt the mild chill of smooth stone—and by the time I had stood all the way up, there was no doubt.
I was no longer in the hallway of 91 Highfield Road.
Instead, I appeared to be standing in the centre of a huge cathedral. Elaborately sculpted walls, rich with icons and other Christian imagery, towered above me, arching together to form a ceiling so far overhead that it was almost beyond my field of sight. The cathedral was brightly lit, not so much by the candles that danced gently in their niches on the walls, but by the radiance that blazed through the stained glass windows stretching upwards on all sides. Yet despite the luminous colours of the glass, the overall light in the cathedral had an icy blue, almost fluorescent quality that crystallised the stillness of the atmosphere. The only sound was the echo of my cry to Jo, reverberating through the cool air. I felt like I had thrown a brick into a pond.
As the echoes of her name slowly lost themselves in the cathedral, the fact that I had lost Jo herself leapt to the front of my mind once again. I tried to ignore the strangeness of my surroundings, focussing instead on looking around for any sign of her and calling out her name, but it quickly became obvious that wherever I was now, Jo had not followed me. I actually thought I was alone at first, until a slight movement at the side of the cathedral suddenly caught my eye. A hooded man stood against the wall there, seemingly looking in my direction, although it was impossible to tell for sure with his face buried in the depths of his cowl. I was sure I had looked over that part of the building several times already, but whether I hadn’t spotted him because he hadn’t been there previously, or because he was so still that, in his grey robe, he had appeared to be just another statue amongst the other carvings that surrounded him, I couldn’t say.
I began to walk towards the man, and he, sensing my intent, moved to meet me. I was again struck by how strong I suddenly felt, striding towards him across the flagstones, and by the complete lack of pain as I experimentally flexed my muscles. Those in my (new, amazingly whole) throat began to tense, ready to unleash a salvo of questions, but the man gently raised one hand, palm towards me in a stopping gesture, and I found that I couldn’t speak.
“Silence is the beginning of all wisdom, Daniel, so let me help you get off to a good start. I am sure you have many questions to ask me; the Newborn always do. But let me first try to set your mind at ease, at least as much as it is within my power to do so. Not that the first thing I have to tell you is particularly calming, I’m afraid, and that’s that you’re dead. You already suspected as much, I’m sure. I am sorry to put it so bluntly, but as I hope you can already tell from the fact that you’re up and walking about, it’s not necessarily such bad news. Once everything else I have to tell you has sunk in, the fact of your death will probably seem trivial by comparison.
“I know that your primary questions relate to your wife, but I can tell you that you do not need to worry about her. She is beyond the pain of the mortal world now and has already passed through this place, as must all people, and everyone who arrives here is safe and healthy, just as you yourself are. Even though she is also dead, Joanna is in no danger.”
Hope surged forward, allowing me to force a few words out. “You mean she’s okay? Where is she? Where am I?”
The silence that had been imposed on me reasserted itself with renewed strength. “Daniel, she is fine, do not worry. But she is not here. As I said, she has already moved on to a different place, as will you eventually, although not necessarily the same place as she. I know you are confused. You are asking yourself: ‘How can she have been here and already left when she died after I did? Surely she ought to be here now, or be about to arrive in just a moment?’ But as you probably reali
se from the revision exercise you underwent before you awoke, time passes in unusual ways for the dead, and each of the Newborn undergoes death and resurrection at a different rate.
“Perhaps things will begin to make more sense if I explain where you are.” The man spread his arms to indicate our surroundings. “You are standing in the Temple of Rebirth, the first stop on the journey through the afterlife for all the recently departed. Your arrival here comes at the end of your soul’s passage from the mortal world, and as I’m sure you have gathered, this passage is somewhat unusual…” I could hear the gentle smile in his voice, even though I still could not see his face. “Think of it as being like an in-flight movie, if that helps, but with one important difference: here, the movie is not something to make the journey pass more quickly; rather, the movie is the journey. Its purpose is to remind you of what you have done wrong and what you have done right during your time on Earth, and also to remind you how you have responded to those things which have been done unto you. Reflection upon the past is at the very core of your being here, and what better way to be reminded of an event than to relive it again first-hand?
“When the journey is complete, the soul is resurrected here at the Temple. You are given a new body, still recognisably you, but in the peak of physical condition. You are given this new body for two reasons. The first is that you would not very easily be able to focus on the information I am giving you now if you were still in pain from the rigours through which your body went immediately before you died. And the second, more important reason is that this new body is a tool with which you are being equipped for the rigours which are to come.
“Your new body shouldn’t come as a surprise to you, Daniel,” the man said, obviously reading the expression on my face. “Do you not remember the first letter to the Corinthians?”