“Can you say we’ve been so wrapped up in ourselves we’ve never realized he’s not above it all? That he doesn’t have this whole thing figured out? That he needs prayer and deliverance just like anyone?”
“So what should our actions be going forward?” Marcus said.
“We should go backward.” Dana turned and pointed to Reece’s home. “Right now. I think it’s time to ask him for the full story.”
“What if he’s not in a sharing mood?” Brandon said.
“It doesn’t matter. We obey the Spirit and leave the outcome up to him. Let’s go.”
Dana turned and strode back toward the fire pit and Brandon and Marcus followed.
The low chatter of voices jerked Reece out of his meditation. Brandon, the professor, and Dana marched toward him, the light of the fire making their faces glow red. Not what he needed right now. He was drained. He’d poured much of himself into them tonight. It was a good celebration. It was rich being together, but now he wanted solitude. But their expressions said they had more than a quick question in mind.
“Didn’t we already say good night?”
“We thought so,” Dana said. “But the Spirit said otherwise.”
“I see.” Reece stared at the stoic looks on all their faces. “And did the Spirit tell you what we’re supposed to do?”
Dana folded her arms. “He wants you to tell us your story.”
Reece sighed as the three took seats around the fire. He’d known this time was coming, but right now wasn’t right.
It should be later. But the truth was the timing would never be right. He stared at the fire and began. “I was cocky in those days. Thought I knew it all.”
The memory swept over him. He’d stood on the vast lawn at Green Lake on a Sunday afternoon decades back, near the four basketball courts filled with pickup games and the beige community center building with a banner promoting the annual milk-carton boat race.
An in-line skater in multicolored spandex rolled by on the path around the lake and “Thriller” blasted out of a gargantuan boom box sitting on a picnic blanket thirty yards to Reece’s left. He paced in front of a semicircle of thirty of his followers, his voice ringing out with clarity over the distractions surrounding them.
“If we would believe what this book says is true, we would move mountains. We would walk on water, walk through walls, discover new dimensions all around us.” He grinned and whapped the top of the Bible with the palm of his hand. “The magic is real. But we have to believe. But belief is not enough. We must act.”
Reece continued to stride back and forth in front of the small gathering. “Who will join me?” He glanced at his wife and daughter, who sat to his right and smiled. His daughter raised her hand, but his wife pulled it down a second later.
Reece stopped and asked himself what the three others sitting at the fire with him would say when he told them the next part of the story. He stood and stirred the fire and breathed deep.
Dana whispered, “Did they? Join you?”
Reece nodded and closed his eyes as the events of the day after they’d been at Green Lake hit him like a flash flood.
“Why are you so against this?” Reece smacked the brown toaster on his kitchen counter with his palm. “I can’t push the others to join me if you won’t.”
His wife tilted her head back and sighed. When she brought it forward again she glared at Reece. “Going into someone else’s soul is dangerous. It’s not child’s play.”
“We’re not children.”
His wife pointed to their daughter, who sat at the table, her brown eyes wide. “She is.”
“She’s ten years old.” Reece walked around the table and took his wife by the shoulders. “Trust me. We’ll be fine. You know I’ve been doing this successfully for six months. Please.”
“I’m worried about her.” His wife looked at their daughter, who glanced back and forth between them.
“She’s more sensitive to the Spirit than anyone I’ve ever known. At any age.”
“I agree, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to go into someone else’s soul.”
“She can do it,” Reece said.
“I’m not disputing if she can, but if she should.”
“You and I will be right there with her.”
“Have you prayed about this? God has told you to take her in?”
“I don’t need to.” Reece slumped into one of the chairs at the table. “I know this is right. How are we going to show the others they have to keep pressing deeper if we’re not willing to go deeper ourselves?”
“Then go deeper. You go deeper. Not me. Not Willow.” Olivia put her arms around their daughter and pulled her in close.
“Trust me, Olivia.”
“I can do it, Mommy.” She looked up at Reece.
“I’m going to be safe, right, Daddy?”
“Very safe, honey.” He took her hand in his. “I’ll be there with you. So will Mommy. We’re just going to do a little exploring. That’s all. I want to show you what it’s like.”
“To be in the soul of another person?”
“Yes.”
“How do we get inside?”
“You don’t have to worry about that part.”
“What are we going to do for them?”
“We’re going to help them. When we see what’s inside, we know how to pray for them. It’s a way to pray for them on a deeper level.”
“Shouldn’t we ask to be there? Shouldn’t we get permission?”
“No, I don’t think we need to.” Reece stroked her golden hair. “We’ll go into the soul of a friend of mine. I know he’ll be okay with it.”
“I don’t feel right about this, Reece. It would be nice if you asked him first,” Olivia said.
“We’ll be fine.” Reece smiled and patted the chair next to him and Willow shuffled over to it and sat. “Hold hands.” He grinned at his wife and daughter. “Here we go.”
Reece, Olivia, and Willow stood in the center of a vast desert, with dark foothills on the far horizon. The last moments of day seeped away, but there was still enough light to see a man in the distance strolling toward them, his outline silhouetted against the sky.
“This isn’t right.” Reece pulled Olivia and Willow close. “We’re not in the right soul.”
An instant later the man appeared in front of them. Dark hair, a white dress shirt, and black slacks. He smiled as he stared at them. “What are you doing here?”
“Who are you?” Reece moved his wife and daughter behind him.
The man shook his head as his smile grew wider. “No, no, no. We need to focus on my question first. What are you doing here?”
“I’m here by the authority of God.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” The man waved his finger at Reece. “You have no permission to be here. I suspect your education has not been thorough enough. In every system there are protocols that must be studied, understood, and implemented with precision. Your lack of adherence to these guidelines has landed you here.”
“This is the soul of my friend.”
“That’s where you’re wrong again.” The man raised his arms and glanced at their surroundings. “You went through the wrong gate.”
“This was the right gate.”
“Did you know there are many ways to go through the gates? Wrong ways and right ways? This offers certain opportunities for influence when dealing with an enemy. Ah, I can see you don’t know about that.”
“You diverted us.”
“Very good.” The man grinned. “We’ve been watching you, of course, and I’ve commented to the others how bright you are.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Zennon.” He bowed and pulled a gold coin out of his pocket and rolled it around his fingers so fast it blurred. “And I am going to prevent you from continuing to be a thorn in our sides.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’d worry more about what you’re going to do.”
“Explain that.”
“If I were you, I’d make sure I used the next few seconds to say good-bye to her and the little one.” Zennon pointed to Reece’s wife and daughter. “They’re about to go bye-bye.” He stopped rolling the coin and flipped it into the air. “Heads you lose. Tails . . . you lose.” Zennon snagged the coin as it fell and slapped it on his wrist. He lifted his hand half an inch and peeked underneath and shook his head. “I’m afraid you lose.”
“You have no right and no authority over me.”
Zennon laughed. “In here I do. You don’t have permission to be here. Even God has no permission to be here. Not in this soul. He hasn’t been invited in. So how could you? But I have permission. And in here, I have all the authority.”
His smile faded and darkness flashed in Zennon’s eyes as he waved his fingers at Olivia and Willow. They slumped to the brown dirt, their eyes wide, their mouths gasping for air.
Reece lunged at Zennon, who backhanded him to the ground. Reece struggled to his knees and crawled toward his wife and daughter, but Zennon flicked his finger and Reece was slammed onto his back. Pain flooded his eyes as if they were doused in acid as he stared at his wife and daughter, their outstretched arms growing limp.
Reece wrenched himself free from the memory and raised his head to the sky. “That’s enough.” He glanced at the others. “Now you know what happened, but that’s as far as it’s going to go. I’m not going to talk about it again. Good night.”
He stood and folded his arms and stayed silent as the others took the hint and slowly walked off. When they rounded the corner of his home and disappeared from sight, he slumped onto a chair and stared at the fire. Reece wished he hadn’t said anything. Reliving the memory was like a knife slicing across his mind and heart, and he didn’t know how to stop the bleeding.
Marcus sighed as he, Dana, and Brandon sat in his car. After leaving Reece’s home, they’d driven to Maltby Community Park to decide what to do next, but after an hour and a half of discussion they still hadn’t reached a consensus.
Marcus felt like a mule had planted its foot in his stomach with significant velocity. He clenched his steering wheel. “We have to help him even if his attitude would seem to preclude it.”
“We all agree on that,” Dana said. “It’s time to move on to a specific plan of action.”
“It explains everything.” Brandon pressed a button on the passenger side door and his window lowered. Cool air swirled into the Jeep. “He’s getting hammered all the time with that memory. He’s learned to live with it, but does he have to?”
“If he were us, he’d say no.” Dana sighed. “And I don’t think he’s learned to live with it.”
“The cobbler with no shoes for his own children.” Marcus fired up his engine.
“The answer is simple. Hard to do, which is why we’ve danced around it for the last ninety minutes, but it’s obvious.”
“War for him like we’ve warred for each other,” Marcus said.
Brandon rolled the window up. “You’re saying go into his soul.”
“Yes.” Dana sat up and glanced back and forth between the two men. “We go talk to him. Get permission to go through the gate. Free him from the chains. It’s time to go to war. Marcus?”
“Agreed.”
“Good.” Dana nodded. “And something tells me the sand is running out of the hourglass.”
Brandon tapped his chest right over his heart. “I’m getting the same thing.”
“Tomorrow night? First thing tomorrow?” Marcus asked.
“I don’t think so.” Brandon rubbed his knuckles against his palm.
“Right now,” Dana said. “I think we need to go in immediately.”
Marcus glanced at his watch: 11:25. “He’s probably asleep. Are we going to draw straws to see which one of us gets the honor of waking him up?”
They didn’t answer and Marcus revved his car. “Do we want to meet there or drive together?”
“Stick together,” Dana answered. “Hurry.”
Marcus roared out of the parking lot. Whatever kind of urgency Dana and Brandon felt, he now felt as well.
“Can’t you go faster?” Brandon said.
He glanced at his speedometer. “I’m already doing fifteen over.”
Marcus propped his elbow on the door window and glanced in his mirror at the red taillights on the back of a car that zoomed past them traveling in the opposite direction. Were the three of them going the right way? Were they about to do something heroic or something foolish? Probably both. It didn’t matter. He would do whatever it took to rescue Reece from whatever prison he was in. No regrets this time.
A splatter of rain pinged against the windshield, then grew into a downpour. Marcus switched his wipers to high to be able to see. Give us eyes to see.
The man flipped his gold piece high into the air, the coin sending off flashes of light as it spun. On its way down he snatched the piece and slapped it onto the back of his wrist, his long fingers covering it from sight.
“Heads we take out Reece Roth now, tails we take out Reece Roth now.”
“It is time,” the other man standing next to him said.
“The self-proclaimed Roy Hobbs has hit his last home run.”
“How soon do we leave?”
“Immediately.” The man grinned and waved his hand, and a moment later they stood on the edge of Reece Roth’s land.
FORTY-EIGHT
FOR A LONG TIME REECE STARED INTO HIS FIRE PIT—THE red coals starting to dim, the heat that had warmed the four of them starting to wane—and asked the Spirit what the three would be facing and what his part in it would be. But he heard nothing.
He pulled out his current journal and caressed the worn leather cover. So much gold on the pages inside. Yes, there were insights in the journals he’d given them, but there was more. When they were ready, he would take them further, usher them into worlds and realms they couldn’t yet imagine.
They could do so much. The prophecy had been true. These three could change the world. They would change the world. Where Tamera fit into this, he didn’t know. Maybe at some point she would join them. Reece set the journal beside him and gazed at the millions of stars that had gathered to watch him ponder his future. His phone vibrated and Reece glanced at his caller ID. Doug Lundeen.
“Hey, friend.”
“Sorry to call you so late.”
“It’s not late.” Reece glanced at his watch. Almost eleven thirty, which was almost twelve thirty in the morning for Doug. Yes, it was late.
“How did the celebration go tonight?”
“It went well.”
“The four of the prophecy together.”
“The three at least. I was just wondering how Tamera will fit in.”
Doug chuckled. “I would have thought you’d have figured that out by now.”
“Figured what out?”
“Who the fourth one of the prophecy is.”
Realization swept over him. “No.”
“Oh yes.” Doug laughed again. “What do you love, Reece?”
“Taking pictures and hiking.”
“What have I watched you do for forty years?”
“Climb a million mountains.”
“You’re in better shape than most men a quarter of your age. You drink on extremely rare occasions, you don’t smoke, and a pinch of processed sugar passes your lips once a year, if that. Most assuredly, you are the temple, Reece.”
Reece blinked and let the idea settle. “How long have you known?”
“A long time.”
“But you let me think Tamera was the temple. Why?”
“You needed to bind your heart to the three without the pressure of being one of the four.”
They talked another three minutes, but he didn’t hear any of Doug’s words. He was one of the four? Yes. He was one of the prophecy. Joy and peace he hadn’t felt in decades settled on Reece and he soaked in every nuance of the sensation.
An abrupt burst of wind sent a smattering of emerald maple leaves fluttering down on him, and one landed on the coals. For a few seconds the leaf stayed green, the moisture inside fending off the power in the coals. Then the leaf turned black and curled up against the onslaught of heat.
“That’s you, Reece.” The voice seemed to come from all directions at once.
Reece snapped his head up, his heart pounding. Three men in dark, long-sleeved T-shirts and dark slacks sat around the fire in the same spots Brandon, Marcus, and Dana had sat in nearly two hours ago. There had been no noise, no warning—and the pungent smell in the air confirmed what he already knew. These three were not human.
As Reece stared at them, he brushed his journal off the bench. It landed silently on the ground behind him. Protect it, Lord.
The man directly across from Reece smiled as he folded and unfolded his hands. “I had a feeling that visit at the beach we enjoyed together five or six weeks ago wasn’t going to convince you.”
He reached into the fire, pulled out a coal, held it between his thumb and forefinger, and watched the skin sizzle. “Fascinating.” The smell of burning flesh filled the night.
“These bodies are so weak. But certainly useful in endeavors such as the one we’re about to embark on.” The man tossed the coal back into the fire and rubbed his fingers on his slacks. “Shall we get started?”
“Who are you?”
“Oh, come now. The great leader not knowing who sits before him? The teacher of spiritual mysteries forgotten or dismissed by most of the church can’t discern who has come for a visit? Thirty years isn’t that long, old friend.” The man pulled a gold coin out of his pocket and rolled it around his fingers like lightning.
Reece’s heart slammed against his chest, but his breathing was steady. The body might have changed, but the eyes hadn’t. He knew those eyes.
“Zennon.”
Zennon’s smile widened. “I’m flattered. You remember me.” He bowed.
“Jesus, come.” Reece spoke the words as he stared directly into the demon’s eyes.
“No, let’s not be doing that, Reece.” Zennon pressed the tips of his fingers and thumbs against each other till his hands shook. “It only serves to make me angry. My hope is we can convey what we need to and take the actions necessary without a lot of warring back and forth.”
Soul's Gate Page 31