by Ted Dekker
“I don’t want to be—”
“Stop it!” Samuel yelled at him. “Stop it!” His face was red, and a single vein throbbed on his temple. “This isn’t about you anymore!” Johnny was dumbstruck. His heart pounded and his face felt hot, but more than either of these, his heart felt sick.
Samuel just stared, his face slowly losing its bright red hue.
The sickness in Johnny’s heart slowly rose to his throat. He was no longer sure whether the emotions that swallowed him were self-pity or profound anguish at his own pathetic excuses for not stepping into the role he was destined to take.
A tear leaked from his right eye.
“I’m sorry, Johnny. I’m truly sorry for what you’ve been through.” Johnny closed his eyes and fought the waves of remorse that crashed through his heart. He lifted a hand and rested it against his forehead, as if to hold back the pain in his head or to hide from it. He accomplished neither.
A cool hand touched his hand by his side. Samuel was standing next to him now, looking up at him with tears rimming his eyes. In that moment Samuel who was a man was only a boy. Johnny remembered this. He remembered Samuel this way.
“Will you trust me?” Samuel asked.
“Yes,” Johnny said without thinking. Then he asked a very stupid question. “Will it save Kelly?”
Samuel smiled. “You see, you’re still a child. Yes, I think it will. And it just might save you.”
Johnny nodded.
“You should know that if you walk where I’m going to ask you to walk, there will be a price.”
“I’ll be strange. Ostracized by society. Rejected.”
“Yes, that too. But more. I don’t know specifics, but it’ll affect you physically. Like me. I stopped growing.”
Johnny considered the implications. “You’re saying that I’ll never be normal. That I’ll be rejected by normal people. That I was chosen to be an outcast. And that if I manage to embrace this childlike faith of yours, I’ll wear my abnormality in some debilitating way?”
“Yes. But you’ll have the power to change the world.”
“A freak with a magic stick.”
“No magic. But a freak, probably. At least in the minds of most. In fact, the being-a-freak part will probably precede the power part.” “Will I be able to defeat Englishman?”
“Maybe. Maybe you’ve been chosen to die to rid the world of him. The rules are different in the supernatural reality.”
Johnny nodded. “All of this assuming I can become like a child and believe like I once supposedly did.”
“Yes. Will you?”
“I’ll try.”
Samuel let go of his hand and stepped back. “Okay. That’s good. That’s real good.”
Johnny felt stupid, but he didn’t know what he could do other than offer Samuel a stupid grin.
“Wow, that was easy,” Samuel said, smiling.
“Not as easy as you think. Now what?”
“Now what?”
“What do I do?”
“You believe,” Samuel said.
“Believe what?”
“Believe what you believed as a child. All of it.”
“How do I do that? Just believe?”
“Well, yeah. Just believe. Accept who you are. Remember Spider-Man? My father talks of Samson. Believe.”
Johnny wasn’t sure what that meant. “Do I close my eyes?”
“Why? If you think it will help you focus, but believing isn’t a matter of focusing. It’s just . . . You just believe!”
“What if I don’t?” Johnny asked.
“Well, do you?”
“What?”
“Believe. Do you believe?”
“It depends on what I’m believing.”
They stared at each other, caught in their circular questions.
“I think I believe,” Johnny said. “How will I know?”
Samuel stepped back. “Try it. Do what you do in your pit.”
Johnny nodded and closed his eyes, focusing his mind to form a tunnel. The long, dark space formed easily enough, but he didn’t know what to form as the objective.
He looked at Samuel. “What am I trying to do?”
“I think your gift involves affecting the physical world. Like the temperature. Or bullets. Stones. Anything physical. Probably not the free will of people, though. I’m guessing inanimate objects.”
“Samson,” Johnny said.
Samuel grinned. “Samson. But I like Saint better.”
This time Johnny turned to his right and rested his eyes on a stone on the sand ten yards away.
He was able to enter the tunnel again.
He was able to step outside the tunnel and see the rock on the sand.
He was able to imagine the rock lifting off the ground and flying toward him, and he was quite sure that it was doing just that.
For a long time he watched the stone fly to him and around him. His pulse surged. Maybe everything Samuel had said was true after all. Maybe he really did have a supernatural gift as written in the book twelve years ago. Maybe he could do what Englishman did.
Johnny opened his eyes.
The stone lay on the ground, ten yards away, unmoved.
He stared at it, stunned. “It . . . It didn’t move!”
No response from Samuel.
“I saw it move in my mind.” He spun to the boy. “I gave it everything! You’re wrong. I can’t—”
“You’re not believing,” Samuel said. “You’re focusing but not believing. This isn’t some random force that you can tap into because Yoda says so.” Samuel gripped his hand into a fist. “Believe, Johnny. Believe!”
“Believe in what? I believed that I was moving the stone, and it didn’t even budge.”
“Believe in the Maker of the stone to move it! Believe that he is alive and active and begging to move the stone if you allow it.”
“God?”
“Of course, God!”
“What kind of belief do you have?” Johnny asked. “What is your power?”
Samuel hesitated, then answered steadily. “I don’t have your kind of power, not since Project Showdown. For now I’m more than happy to exercise a gift called speaking the truth.”
“And yet you expect me to—”
“You are chosen! We are all chosen, but you for a specific task, which depends on your belief. Your gift is to believe in a way that makes ordinary people seem stuffy by comparison. So believe!”
We’re like two children arguing about which game to play, Johnny thought. He felt irritated, impatient. He knew how to focus on a level attained by few Zen masters, but he couldn’t just believe in some unseen, unfathomable Creator who refused to show his hand unless properly summoned! It made no sense. The stuff of a child’s fantasy. Unless you become like a child . . .
The midday sun blazed high above them. A hawk screeched as it flew in a lazy circle above the cliffs. Here on the bare ground stood two boys trying to enter a kingdom in a different realm, beyond the rocks and cliffs and sand, beyond the hawk that called to them.
“Say it, Johnny.”
“Say what?”
“Say you believe. Out loud. Shout it.”
“I believe?”
“Don’t mumble it like a question! Shout it out so that the whole world can hear it. You did it once; do it again.”
Johnny imagined himself standing in a busy city square, Times Square, shouting out his belief for all the wayward to hear. It was a terrifying thought. Why? Because he didn’t believe? Or because he was ashamed to believe?
Because he didn’t want to be a freak. He wanted to be normal, accepted. His desire to be accepted was stronger than his belief.
Samuel walked toward him, drilling him with a stare. “Say it. There’s no one here to hear you except me.”
“I believe,” Johnny said.
“Louder. Shout it.”
He hesitated.
“What’s the matter, Johnny? You’re enslaved by the same pathetic weaknes
s that holds the agnostic in chains? Hmm? It’s not that you don’t have the capacity to accept the truth. You don’t want to accept it, and you hide behind your own logic and intelligence while the truth marches by. Step out and join it, for goodness’ sake! Shout it out in full step! I believe! ”
Samuel shouted the last two words, startling Johnny.
He impulsively matched the cry. “I believe!”
A mischievous smirk tugged at Samuel’s mouth. “I believe!” he cried.
“I believe!” Johnny cried.
“I believe!” Samuel screamed, at the top of his lungs now.
“I believe!” Johnny screamed.
Samuel thrust his hand toward the stone. “Now move it.”
Johnny faced the stone and brought the full weight of his belief to bear on the small fist-sized piece of rock, confident that it would rise and fly. He focused, he willed, he clenched his teeth. When nothing happened, he closed his eyes and entered the dark place, focusing until the rock was zipping around in his mind’s eye.
When he looked again, the stone lay still.
For several long seconds Johnny stood in stunned silence. Then he closed his mouth, walked to a large boulder on his right, and sat down on top of it.
His utter foolishness swallowed him.
“We’ll try again in ten minutes,” Samuel said. “Time is running out.” “Then time has run out,” Johnny said. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“We’ll try again in ten minutes,” Samuel said.
36
Robert Stenton sat on the porch’s bench swing, gazing out at the twin rows of tall pines that bordered the long paved driveway leading up to the ranch house. He’d built the place when he was the governor of Arizona. Here, the stress of the presidency was a distant reality. At least for a few hours.
Here, he was just Robert. Bob. Wealthy and savvy many would say, but just Bob, the rancher, a political outsider who’d upended Arizona’s electoral traditions and taken the governorship by storm. The fact that he’d done the same in Washington never ceased to make him shake his head just to be sure it was all real.
It was. As real as the high-desert wind blowing hot through the trees that were scattered around the ranch.
A pile of huge boulders sat to the right of the house. At Jamie’s suggestion, they’d hauled in the rocks to form a cave that reached nearly a hundred feet into the pile, then reinforced the boulders with a steel mesh to prevent them from slipping.
This was Jamie’s Bat Cave. It said so on the wood sign at the entrance.
A tall electric fence that Robert had agreed to put up at the insistence of the Secret Service stood back three hundred yards and circled the house, the riding stables, and all of the outbuildings. Three hundred yards beyond this was another fence loaded with the most advanced surveillance technology available. Nothing within a thousand yards of the ranch house went unidentified.
Their lines of defense ended in a natural boundary three miles away. A long mound of massive boulders cut across the valley, offering both position and cover for more than a hundred men. Beyond the boulders, a ten-foot concrete wall nearly two thousand yards long connected the cliffs on either side.
The gentle hills behind the ranch house hid the fact that the property was technically in a box canyon. Six observation posts covered every square inch of the ranch from their positions on top of the hills. The Stenton ranch was as well protected as any piece of real estate in the United States.
David Abraham had come with them, but as was his normal practice when invited, he stayed out of the way, letting them “be a family,” as he put it.
The screen door behind Robert slammed. Jamie walked out in bare feet, trailed by Wendy, who held two tall glasses of iced tea.
“Drink, Commander?”
“Commander?” Robert reached for the condensation-beaded glass.
“Jamie was just informing me of the difference between a good commander in chief and a bad one. We both agreed that you’re a good one.”
Jamie lowered himself gingerly to his seat on the swing beside Robert. He wasn’t as strong as he’d been even last week, and his skin seemed paler, but it was hard to tell with his ghost-white complexion. “With potential to become the best,” Jamie said.
Robert smiled and smoothed his son’s hair. Pulled him close. “I’ll try not to disappoint.”
Wendy sat down on his right. This was the Stenton family, three abreast, sitting on their front porch grappling with the latest of many challenges they’d faced over the years.
Although the struggles facing them now promised to be more intense than most. A sniper had just put a bullet through Robert’s chest. Jamie was dying. Wendy was about to lose a son and feared for her husband’s life.
“How’s your chest?” Wendy asked.
Robert touched the bandage under his shirt. “Not bad considering a bullet passed through it three days ago. The painkillers help.”
“You’re sure this is the best place for us?” she asked. Her eyes always smiled, even when she was sad or afraid. An amazing thing, her eyes. At times Robert was sure he’d married Wendy for the mystery behind her eyes alone. They were certainly what prompted his interest in the beginning. No woman could have such a radiant face and not be as kind as she looked. So far she’d proven him right.
“No one knows we’re here—that’s a start,” he said. “Sam’s holding a press conference.” He glanced at his watch. “Correction: just held a press conference, during which he made it clear without actually saying it that we are in the White House.”
“Wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to track us down.”
“Blake told me that we have over a hundred National Guardsmen directed by a unit from the Special Forces,” Jamie said. “And that’s on top of the Secret Service. Do you know they have aerial reconnaissance on us at this very moment? Two unmanned Predator drones. Nobody gets within a hundred miles of here without us knowing.”
Robert winked at his wife. “Yeah, Wendy. Quit your worrying. We’re armed to the gills.”
JOHNNY DID try again, half a dozen times, to no avail. One time the rock moved, possibly—Johnny couldn’t be sure. Otherwise he experienced nothing except growing frustration and unbelief. If not for the image of Englishman, doing his tricks, gunning for them all, Johnny would have given up after the first attempt.
The afternoon wore on. Samuel didn’t press too hard after the first failure, just enough to persuade Johnny to try again. And again, six times.
They talked about the past—about good times, about bad times. Slowly, like a cold honey pouring out, the memories began to come back. Unless they were simply new memories being informed by the details that Samuel fed him. No, it was more, Johnny thought. The more they talked, the more he recalled specific unrelated events.
“You do realize that when you find your power, more will be required from you,” Samuel said after a particularly long pause. He was unrelenting. “I don’t want you to walk into this blindly. You won’t be able to come head-to-head with someone like Englishman and expect to defeat him with a bigger rock.”
Johnny dismissed the notion with a quick word. “Sure.”
Even though the superhero-making had been decidedly derailed, Johnny took some comfort in his friend, whom he evidently once loved like a brother. It was still amazing that such a wise, mature person could be embodied in such a young body.
Several times he took Samuel’s hand and felt his young skin, awed by the appearance. If the power Samuel spoke of had done this, perhaps he could believe. Encouraged, he would agree to try his hand at stone-moving again.
Not even a budge.
With the setting of the sun, Johnny felt his own mood sink. Then fall. Then crash to pieces on the ground.
He was lost. He wasn’t Carl, and he was proving that he wasn’t Johnny either, not any longer. He couldn’t be what he was meant to be because he’d become someone else over time. Recapturing his true childlike faith was impossible because a
different life had beat it out of him.
Johnny excused himself from the cabin when it was night. He walked into the darkness, comforted by it. But then he remembered that he would never go back to the pit. The pit had been a lie.
Still, he liked the darkness.
Johnny lay down on the large boulder at the small canyon’s entrance, stared at the stars, and let himself feel completely hopeless.
BY THE time Englishman reached Denver, his blood was very nearly boiling. And he still had another flight. The fact that a few thunder-storms had caused such delays could only be explained by the spineless nature of people who thought they were wiser than they were for shutting down the system to avoid a few bumps in the air.
He hated airports.
He hated the people who worked in airports.
He hated most of all gate agents who clicked away incessantly on hidden keyboards, rarely raising their eyes, summoning people, informing whomever they wished of whatever they wished, all of it bad. Gate agents were powerless power mongers.
Englishman sat in a hard plastic seat staring at the dark-haired, dark-skinned, dark-hearted, dark stain of a gate agent whose head jerked ever so slightly with her every keystroke. She’d told him twice already to have a seat and wait for his name to be called.
He had no intention of waiting in his seat for his name to be called. The plane was at the gate and they were boarding the first-class passengers and she was still ignoring him. This devil in the blue dress fastened by eight brass buttons that ran from her skinny brown neck to her knees was thinking of him even now, consumed by thoughts that immobilized her—all very flattering on any other day, but today he hated this devil.
He knew a thing or two about devils.
He also knew as an absolute matter of fact that unless the story was about a man stuck in an airport terminal or an airplane—such as The Terminal or Airport—movie stars never sat for two hours waiting for a devil in disguise to let them on the plane. In reality, most movies skipped the airport scene altogether, because everyone knew that it was no more interesting or eventful than pulling on your socks or underwear after rising each morning. For the most part these details were inconsequential.