Soul's Gate

by James L. Rubart

  He motioned to the men on either side of him, and they circled around behind Reece to his sides and pinned him down with icy hands.

  Reece strained against their grip. “Then your hope is in vain.”

  Zennon ignored the comment and smiled again. “We have to confess, you took your little band a great deal further than was expected. So in response we’re going to take our retaliation further than you might have expected.”

  I need your power, Spirit.

  Zennon waved his finger and a thin layer of smoke or fog appeared just outside the circle of chairs.

  “It’s home movie time, Reece. Movies from your life. What’s really fun is when you watch them, they feel so real. As if you’re standing right in the scene yourself.”

  Reece knew what was coming. He tried to close his eyes but invisible fingernails tore at the top and bottom of his eyelids, keeping them pried open. The scene started with Reece convincing his wife and daughter that the three of them should go into the soul of another.

  Zennon pointed at the scene. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Reece watched himself sitting at his kitchen table with his wife and daughter. Watched them go into an unknown soul. Watched the soundless scream on the faces of his wife and daughter as they were slain.

  He’d played it over and over in his mind a thousand, ten thousand times over the past thirty years, but seeing it this way was like living it again for the first time. He struggled to break free but the demons’ grips were iron.

  “Let’s play it again. But this time, let’s get some sound going. How would that be?” Zennon stepped around the fire pit and ran his finger down the side of Reece’s neck, sending ice into his body and a rush of pain into his mind.

  “Some say sound is more powerful than sight, that hearing affects us to a greater degree than seeing. I believe that’s true. Did you know the area of a human’s brain that collects sound is bigger than the area that collects images?

  “Think about it from your practical experience. What makes a scary movie scary? It’s the sound!” Zennon stood and motioned like a conductor presiding over a hundred-piece orchestra. “Watch a scary movie without the sound and it’s just not that moving an occurrence. But turn up the sound and it seems to come alive. So let’s do that for you with the day you slayed your wife and daughter and see if it makes a difference.”

  Reece struggled again and jerked his arm hard. Pain shot through his right shoulder as if it had popped out of its socket. “Jesus!”

  “Tsk-tsk. Stop that.” Zennon waved his finger. “I don’t like it. Now we’re all out of popcorn, but I’m guessing you’ll enjoy the scene just as much without it.”

  The scene started again and the sound pounded into his mind as if he were surrounded by a circular wall of speakers pumping out noise at 120 decibels. He strained once again to break free of the demons clutching his arms, but he might as well have been trying to break free of a suit of concrete. Tentacles of panic pressed into Reece’s mind. Resist.

  He tried to call out to the Spirit—and speak Jesus’ name again—but as the words were about to escape his lips, a steel-like hand clamped over his mouth and drove his lips into his teeth.

  “Let’s not say that name for a few minutes, okay?” Zennon stood above him. He leaned down and poked his knife-like finger into Reece’s chin, lifting Reece’s head till the pressure on the back of his neck sent a sliver of pain down his spine. “It makes me uncomfortable.”

  Jesus.

  He screamed the thought in his mind as loud as he could, but the word turned to dust and floated away.

  “Now let’s play the scene one more time. But this time let’s do something truly special.” Zennon leaned down and whispered in Reece’s ear, “You are going to love this. I promise.”

  Immediately his wife and daughter stood before Reece, as solid and substantial as if they were alive again. Tears streaked both their faces. He couldn’t watch them die again. Not like this, not this lifelike. To see them go through that pain again . . .

  It’s not real! But the thought was swallowed up by emotion as he watched them die again. And again.

  “Stop!” he screamed through the hand grinding into his face and mouth. “I’ll do—”

  “Anything?” Zennon waved his hand and Reece’s wife and daughter froze. “You’ll do anything to stop it? Wonderful. If you swear on your life and the life of the Jew that you will stop training the three, I will leave immediately.”

  Zennon placed his finger under Reece’s chin and yanked it up. “But if you do keep training them, I promise, I will finish what I started with Marcus’s daughters, and the blood of two more innocent girls will be on your hands.”

  Reece strained against the vise-like grips holding him down. An impossible choice. He believed Zennon. If he didn’t stop, Marcus’s daughters would die, just like Willow had. But if he did stop, he’d be stepping back into the shadows, denying what Jesus had commanded him to do and halting what the three could bring to the world.

  His head fell forward, his body went limp, and his remaining resolve seeped out of him. No. It couldn’t end like this. But it was about to. Lord, speak to your servant. A barely discernible breeze stirred the tendrils of smoke that rose from the fire pit.

  You have to jump off cliffs all the time . . . and raise the shield of faith on the way down.

  Reece rose up straight and nodded.

  “Are you agreeing to give me your word you’ll back off?”

  He nodded again.

  Zennon tilted his head toward the demon to Reece’s right. The demon released his grip over Reece’s mouth.

  “Speak, Reece Roth,” Zennon whispered. “Let me hear your vow with clarity.”

  Reece sucked in a breath and shouted, “The blood of Jesus Christ—”

  The demon’s hand mashed into Reece’s mouth again.

  “I didn’t think so.” Zennon waved his hand and pain scorched across Reece’s head.

  Protect me, Jesus.

  “Let’s get back to the show.”

  His wife and daughter were on their knees, then on their sides, dying. His wife turned to him, her eyes wide with fear. “Why? Why did you murder us? Why, Reece? Why, Reece? Why, Reece?” Each time she asked, her voice grew till she screamed the question.

  He knew it wasn’t her but it didn’t help. Then Olivia’s eyes rolled back in her head and her head crashed to the gound. Something snapped inside Reece’s mind and the images around him blurred as if he were looking at them through water.

  Zennon and the other two laughed, but the sound faded as the sensation of falling washed over Reece and he held out his arms behind him to brace his fall. But the ground didn’t meet him and he kept falling. His shoulder didn’t hurt anymore. The pain in his head vanished and he couldn’t tell if the demon on his right still covered his mouth. He couldn’t feel anything.

  The red glow of the coals turned into a pinprick, the men turned to vapor, and Reece was floating or lying on something soft. The sides of his vision faded and he was in a tunnel with a faint glow a light-year away. Then the light was snuffed out and the blackness rushed at him, then into him, and he gasped for air.

  “First you, then the others.” Zennon’s voice sounded thin. “It’s time for you to go.”

  Jesus. The name echoed in his mind as if from a great distance.

  “Good-bye, Reece Roth.”

  For an instant he saw a flicker of light. Then the darkness swallowed him.

  FORTY-NINE

  MARCUS SCREECHED INTO REECE’S DRIVEWAY AND BRANDON and Dana already had their doors open before he skidded to a stop. He jammed the gear shift into Park, opened his door, and raced after Brandon and Dana, who were already sprinting toward reece’s front door. By the time he reached them, Brandon had pounded out ten knocks on reece’s door.

  “Do either of you have a key?”

  Brandon and Dana shook their heads.

  “Try it.”

  Dana turned the knob. Unl
ocked. They strode into the darkness of reece’s house and Dana shivered. It was colder in here than outside.

  “Reece!” marcus turned on the lamp next to the twenty-inch computer monitor and it pushed back the darkness. “Talk to us, Reece, are you home?”

  Marcus pointed down the hall. “Brandon, you check his bedroom and the bathroom. Dana, please take the kitchen, I’ll look in the garage and see if his car is here.”

  Twenty seconds later they gathered in the front room.

  “I’m not liking this.” Brandon counted on his fingers. “Not in the bedroom. Not in the bathroom. Kitchen. Garage. Den. And I don’t think he went out for any salsa at this hour.”

  Marcus glanced over Dana’s shoulder at the door leading to Reece’s backyard. “What about outside?”

  “It’s close to midnight. What would he be doing outside at this hour?”

  “When we left he indicated he would be spending time at the fire pit before coming inside.”

  Brandon strode to the sliding glass door, opened it, and took three steps onto the redwood deck. “Reece!” He cupped his hands around his eyes and looked toward the fire pit.

  “Can you see anything?” He and Dana joined Brandon on the deck.

  “Nothing, and we’d see a glow even at a hundred yards. You’d think there’d be a fire if he was at the pit.”

  Marcus eased past him. “I think it wise to look there anyway.” He half walked, half jogged toward the fire pit, Dana and Brandon at his side, as the churning feeling he’d had in his stomach in his car on the way over turned into a full-out rugby match. His feet slipped on the dew-laden grass but he only increased his speed. Halfway there he spotted a dark clump lying by the circular stones and he picked up his pace.

  A few seconds later he reached Reece, who lay on his side in a fetal position, hands over his face. Marcus dropped down, his knees slamming into the ground, and grabbed Reece’s shoulder. “Reece, can you hear us?”

  Nothing. He gently turned the big man’s head and stared into eyes that no longer carried their color, let alone the fiery spark the three of them had come to cherish. Marcus waved his hands in front of Reece’s eyes. No reaction.

  “Is he breathing?”

  “Don’t say that,” Brandon sputtered.

  Dana put her ear up to Reece’s mouth. “I can’t tell. I think so.”

  “Check his pulse,” Marcus said.

  She fumbled to pull back his coat and laid two fingers on his carotid artery.

  “Does he have a pulse?” Marcus shouted.

  “Hang on.” Dana focused on her fingers. “It’s there. It’s steady and strong; it seems fine.”

  “Brandon, call 911.”

  Three minutes later the air was filled with the wail of sirens. In five an ambulance with Reece inside screeched away.

  “I can’t believe this.” Dana rubbed her lips, tears forming in her eyes.

  “I assume we’re going to follow him to the hospital?” Brandon said.

  “Correct assumption. Let’s go,” Dana said.

  They ran to Marcus’s car and raced back down the street.

  “Are we going straight there?” Brandon asked. “Or are we going to stop and get our cars?”

  “We stick together,” Dana said from the backseat.

  “No.” Marcus shook his head. “Since we live in opposite directions, the more prudent decision would be to meet there.”

  “If we’re together we can be warring for him on the way to the hospital,” Dana said.

  “We can still do that in separate cars.”

  “Fine.” Brandon flashed a thumbs-up. “Let’s just get there.”

  After Marcus dropped them off, Brandon turned to Dana. “Do you want to ride together? You’re only fifteen minutes from my place. I can drop you at home when we’re done, and I’ll bring you back here tomorrow to grab your car.”

  As she stared at him it felt like a tennis match was going on inside her mind. At the end of the rally, the score must somehow still have been tied Love-Love because she said, “I’m not sure I want to, but yes.”

  The part of Dana that had resisted riding with Brandon melted away thirty seconds down the road. It wasn’t because of any latent feelings toward him now that she’d been freed. It was because she didn’t want to be alone as the thoughts of what she’d just witnessed assaulted her. She’d believed Reece was dead, and as she fumbled in finding a pulse the thought of losing him had consumed her. It couldn’t happen. Her life had just begun and it was because of him.

  She checked her own pulse. Back to normal. Adrenaline and fear had pushed it to its limit, but now that she admitted there was nothing she could do at the moment, and probably nothing she could do even when they got to the hospital, her body allowed itself to relax. Sort of.

  And in the midst of a moment where her mind should be on nothing but Reece, she couldn’t ignore the realization that she did want Brandon’s friendship.

  “I’m glad I’m not headed there alo—by myself.”

  Brandon glanced over at her, blinking. Was he holding back tears?

  “You okay?”

  “Reece can’t be dead, Dana.” He popped the steering wheel with a balled-up hand. “Can he?”

  “No.” For the second time in the past minute she shoved her own tears deep down and swallowed hard. “He’s going to be okay.” She stopped, then added under her breath, “He has to be, Jesus. Please.”

  “I heard that.” Brandon peeled around a corner, pressing her into the truck’s passenger door.

  Dana glanced at Brandon’s speedometer. Twenty-five miles an hour over. He glanced at her, then the speedometer and tapped on his brakes. “You’re right. Getting pulled over on the way to the hospital would definitely slow us down.”

  “I should have ridden with him in the ambulance.”

  “Why?”

  “I could have prayed for him.” She rested her head on her fist.

  “We can do that now.”

  When they finished Brandon softly said, “That brought back some memories.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of us praying together.” He glanced at her.

  No. She wouldn’t allow herself to think of those days. Not out of pain, but out of . . . She shook the memory from her brain. But it wouldn’t stay buried and her mind was flooded with the times they had spent together walking along the Edmonds waterfront, taking excursions up into the San Juan Islands, and skiing together at Stevens Pass. She admitted it. Whatever she felt now, there was a time when she loved him and that part of her had never completely died.

  “Hey, you want some seeds?” Brandon held out his ever-present bag of sunflower seeds.

  She hesitated, then held out her hand. “Sure.”

  They rode for the next three or four minutes in silence, the slice of Brandon’s tires through the wet road providing the sound track for their late-night drive.

  As a sign for Evergreen Hospital flashed by them, Dana found words spilling out of her mouth. “I didn’t get that much of a chance to thank you for what you did. Thanks for coming after me. For freeing me from the lies . . .”

  He didn’t speak for probably a minute. When he did his voice caught and he didn’t start again for another thirty seconds. “You’re welcome.” He glanced at her, eyes moist. “Your forgiving me was . . . it was incredibly freeing.”

  She reached for his hand and squeezed it and he squeezed back. No feelings surfaced, no urge to play the squeeze game they played in another life, just warmth and peace shared with a friend.

  Then the realization of where they were going and why they were going there swept back through her and Dana’s stomach tightened. “What if he dies?”

  “He won’t die. He’s Superman and the Incredible Hulk and Billy Graham all rolled into one. He’s going to live forever like he said at Well Spring.”

  Marcus was waiting for them in the hospital lobby, and for the next forty minutes they sat doing nothing. Not exactly nothing. Brandon tried to we
ar a path in the carpet.

  “The tedium is about to send you over the edge, isn’t it?” Marcus asked.

  Brandon stopped, bent down, and stared at the tropical fish as they skittered back and forth in the fifty-gallon aquarium next to him. “I’ve never been great at doing absolutely nothing while a person I’d give my life for is lying somewhere above me and no one wants to tell us what’s going on.”

  An hour crawled by like snails sprinting. Then two. Brandon stood. “That’s it. I’m going to get some answers.”

  “They said they’d come tell us when they knew anything,” Dana said.

  “They have to know something by now.”

  But before Brandon could get two steps, a doctor shuffled up to them who didn’t look a second over twenty. Dana couldn’t tell if the doctor was tired or had bad news for them.

  “Are you the friends of Reece Roth?” she asked, a clipboard in her hand.

  Brandon folded his arms. “The look on your face isn’t instilling me with a lot of confidence.”

  The doctor waved her hand. “No, no. That’s not it. It’s just that we can’t find a reason for him to be in this coma. His vitals are strong. His pulse is fine, his breathing is good, his blood pressure is right where it should be. If I was looking at his chart and hadn’t seen him, I’d swear he was sleeping, not buried in a coma. I’ve never seen one like this.”

  “Which means . . . ,” Marcus said.

  “That he could be in it for another ten minutes or another ten years.”

  “There’s nothing else unusual going on?”

  “Actually, there is.” The doctor lifted the top paper on her clipboard and studied the one underneath. “His brain patterns have been in REM since he got here.” The doctor looked at her watch. “That’s going on three hours. Highly unusual.”

  “Rapid Eye Movement. The state your mind resides in when you’re dreaming.” Marcus glanced over her shoulder at her clipboard. She saw him and snatched the clipboard to her chest.