by Ted Dekker
And yet this woman trying so sincerely to hide her passion for Englishman by avoiding his stare was making his boarding of the plane consequential.
Englishman stood and approached the podium, further angered by her refusal to confess her interest in him with even a casual glance.
He put both palms on the podium. “Pardon me, mademoiselle, but I’m growing tired of this silly act of yours.”
She looked up at him, feigning surprise. It took a serious amount of selfcontrol on Englishman’s part not to strike her on the cheek. He couldn’t use his power to make her slap herself or gouge her eyes out or begin screaming like a bloody lunatic, but he could do a few other things that would ruin her day.
“I want to board the aircraft now. Please give me whatever documentation I need to do so at this time.”
“Excuse me?” She was growing red. This pleased Englishman.
“Are my words too big for you? Let me restate. Please. Seat. Me. Now.”
For a moment she seemed too stunned to speak. Unfortunately for her, she overcame her shyness.
“If you don’t have a seat immediately, I’ll have to call security. Please sit and wait like everyone else. The flight is overbooked. Next time I suggest you avoid flying standby.”
She had no intention of putting him on, Englishman realized. He wasn’t going to his destination on this plane. And if he wasn’t, no one was.
“I must tell you something, mademoiselle. You are an ugly and pathetic woman. And you’re upsetting me.”
For an unbearable moment, Englishman forced himself into submission, ignoring the impulse to punch her in the face. Instead, he wreaked havoc with her keyboard, popping the keys out like popping corn so that they sprang loose and flew up to hit her on her chest and chin. He simultaneously fried the monitor so that smoke rose in a thin coil.
The agent jumped back and let out a startled cry.
Not trusting himself to stop there with her, he turned his back on the devil in the blue dress and walked to the window. The jet was parked just outside, taking on the last few bags from handlers who plopped them on a long conveyor belt that fed into the fuselage’s belly.
Englishman made all the suitcases he could see fly from the belt with enough force to send them tumbling and skidding on the tarmac for a hundred feet.
He popped the tires on the plane as well. Then he sent one particularly heavy-looking bag flying into the engine with such force that he was sure it did some serious damage. The ground crew scrambled for cover like rats.
Satisfied, Englishman walked toward the sign that pointed to the rental cars. It was a good night for a drive anyway.
37
Johnny slept on the sand outside the cabin, uncaring, unwanting, unmade. He dreamed of nothing. Just the black tunnel without a light at the end. Somewhere in the fog of nothingness, he realized that he had finally and firmly been reduced to nothing more than a blind mole. His light had been extinguished.
He slept in blackness. It was his only reprieve.
A voice called to him from the dark. “Johnny?”
I’m not Johnny.
“Johnny.” Something was shaking him. “Johnny.”
Kelly was calling him. His pulse spiked. He wanted to be held by Kelly. He wanted to be comforted and loved and made alive by her love.
Do you love me, Kelly?
Yes, Johnny.
Do you mean that? Do you really, really love me?
Yes, I do mean that. I love you, Johnny.
Then will you hold my head in your lap and brush my hair from my forehead and smile down at me? Will you breathe your undying love into my mouth and swear to love no other man the way you love me?
Yes.
Kelly was crying.
Do you love me, Johnny?
Yes! I love you more than life!
Are you sure?
It’s the only thing I’m sure of.
Will you kiss my cheek and my neck and hold me tenderly? Will you kiss my lips and breathe on my neck and tell me that I belong to you?
Yes.
Johnny opened his eyes. Someone was lying beside him on the canyon floor under the stars, crying softly.
Kelly was here?
He sat up, startled. “Kelly?”
She lay on her back, and her right hand covered her eyes. She was torn by sorrow or relief or another emotion so gripping that she felt unable to respond to him.
“How . . . How did you find me? Are you okay?”
No response.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
She still didn’t answer. There was nothing else to say, so he laid his head beside her shoulder. He was glad she’d come, but his guilt at having endangered her life and reduced her to this wasted soul on the sand was too much.
Was this a dream?
No. He could feel her hand touch his head now. Stroke his hair.
She shifted to her side and whispered, “I love you, Johnny.”
“Do you really, really love me?”
“I really, really love you.”
“Then will you hold my head in your lap and brush my hair from my forehead and smile down at me? Will you kiss my lips and breathe on my neck and tell me that I belong to you?”
Johnny said it all before he realized that he was actually saying it out loud.
“As long as I live,” she said.
They lay in silence a long time without speaking. What was there to say? Kelly was safe. As far as Johnny was concerned, she was all he had, and she was no small thing. He didn’t know himself, but he knew Kelly and that was enough for now.
“How did you find me?” he finally asked.
Where else would he go? She knew him, she said. She told him about her cross-country flight. She’d rented a car in Denver after missing a flight because of thunderstorms.
“Englishman is out there,” she said.
“He’s going to kill the president,” Johnny said. “No one can stop him.”
“You don’t have his power?”
Her bringing the subject up bothered him. He pushed himself to his seat and stared back at the cabin. To his surprise, Samuel was seated on a chair beside the front door, watching them.
“Englishman told me to tell you that your end is in yourself. That you’ll hate yourself.”
“And if you ever see him again, you can tell him that I already do.” “I think I know what he meant,” Kelly said. “You don’t feel loved. Your mind is too preoccupied with your own worthlessness to accept love.”
“I know that you love me. How can you say that I can’t accept love?” “Why do you need to ask me, then?”
“To know, to really know.”
“Exactly. Because you’re unsure.”
“I wanted to hear you say it.”
“Why? To reassure yourself, which is the same as asking to know. You can’t believe that I love you because you’re absolutely certain that you’re unlovable.”
Johnny blinked in the moon’s dim light. She did indeed know him better than he knew himself.
“Maybe you’re right. But I don’t see what that has to do with my not having Englishman’s power.”
“That’s not what I care about,” Kelly said. “Englishman can go rot in hell as far as I’m concerned. But I want the man I love to know how much I love him. I know now that unless you can believe you’re loved, you’ll ruin yourself, just as Englishman said.”
“You don’t want Englishman’s power,” Samuel said. He stood less than ten feet away. “Trust me, you want nothing that Englishman has. But I think Kelly’s right, and I think love might be the key that unlocks your power, Johnny.”
Kelly sat up and stared at the boy with Johnny. Samuel could take the slightest suggestion and turn it into a ray of hope; it was his nature to do so. But this is a last desperate attempt, Johnny thought. What did love have to do with power?
And then he thought about Samuel’s own story.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’
t think you know how to love,” Samuel said. “I don’t mean to hurt you, but I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of the problem, trying to understand why you can’t seem to believe the way you once did, and I think Kelly’s right—it’s love. Your inability to accept love, yes, but as a result, your inability to love.”
Was that true?
“Not that I blame you, Johnny, but I don’t think you really care about anyone other than yourself. You’ve had to focus almost exclusively on yourself in order to survive. As a result, you don’t care about having the power to fight evil unless it threatens something you care deeply for, which no longer includes you because you don’t even love yourself anymore. Make sense?”
“No. Yes.”
Samuel rounded them, bright-eyed despite the darkness. “That has to be it. You can’t believe because you are too preoccupied with yourself, which is the opposite of love. You have to learn to love so you can believe. You have to become selfless to fill the shoes you are meant to fill.”
“Now I can add the inability to love to my list of failures?” Johnny said. “Splendid.”
“You have to learn tonight,” Samuel added.
“I think you’re being just a bit unfair, don’t you?” Kelly asked.
“Unfair? No. Direct, yes. We don’t have time to be less direct.”
“Your being direct will only push him away. Is this the way your father taught you how to love?”
No! She doesn’t know what she is saying, Johnny thought. She couldn’t understand how cutting and terrible her words were. Samuel watched her like a wise man looking on with patience.
Maybe Samuel was right. What did Johnny really know of love? What could a man learn about love while strapped to a hospital bed as those who claimed to love him shot electricity through his bones?
Love. He didn’t remember everything about Project Showdown, but he was now remembering enough and had certainly been told enough to know that in the end it was all about love. About the discovery of love, no matter how terrifying the path might be.
“Love,” Johnny said. He pushed himself to his feet, inspired by the notion that Samuel had hit upon something.
“Love,” Samuel repeated. “Do you believe?”
“That would mean I don’t really love Kelly at all. I need her comfort and I need someone to comfort so that I feel useful, but that’s not true love. I don’t love her at all.”
Samuel’s eyes flitted to Kelly.
“No, I do love her,” Johnny said. “I do love you. And even if I don’t, I want to more than anything, because you’re the world to me. But what if Samuel’s right and I’m really loving you for my own sake? That’s not real love, right?”
“Do any of us really love?” she demanded. “This kind of talk can only conclude that there is no love in the world!”
“But there is love in this world,” Samuel said. “I see it every day. Johnny’s just had it beaten out of him.”
“By me,” Kelly said.
“No!” Johnny cried. “You were only doing what you thought was best for me. What else is a girl who’s been sold into slavery as a child supposed to think?” He waved his hand angrily through the air. “Forget it. I love you. And if I don’t, then I choose to love you now, from this moment forward.”
“Love,” Samuel said. “It’s always about love.”
“Love,” Johnny repeated. There was something very familiar about this exchange. “Will you love me?” he asked Kelly, not wanting her to feel isolated.
“I do love you,” she said.
“Samuel’s right—this may be our only way of surviving Englishman. Englishman said I’d hate myself, so maybe I should learn to love myself.”
“But then aren’t you loving for your own sake again? So that you can survive Englishman?”
“No,” Johnny said after a long pause. “I choose to love for your sake. To save you from Englishman.”
“Tonight,” Samuel said.
“Is love something you can just turn on with a switch?” Johnny asked.
“Yes, I think so. It can be. It has to be. Is knowledge a switch? Knowledge can turn the world on with a single throw of the switch.” Samuel put his hands behind his back and circled to their right. “Do you have the power?”
Johnny stared off into the night, focusing on a pile of stones fifty feet away. Not one of them stirred. After a minute he gave up.
“Evidently not.”
“Then forget about the power,” Samuel said, turning back to the cabin. “Focus instead on love. True love. Selfless love in your heart.” “How?”
“Love Kelly, of course.”
38
The night was failing in the high desert, giving way to a pale early-morning sky in the east. He’d driven from Denver to the safe house in Grand Junction, collected all he needed, and then broke every possible speed limit on his way to Arizona.
Twice the highway patrol had tried to pull him over. Twice he popped their tires and melted their radios. He was such a major stud.
It was cool outside, but the black asphalt still held some heat after baking in the sun for twelve hours the previous day. Englishman drove with the Honda Accord’s windows down, left arm stuck out so that he could feel both the heat from below and the cool from above. Opposites.
Life was about opposites. Hot and cold, mostly hot. Hate and love, mostly hate. Fiction and flesh, mostly fiction.
That was him, anyway. Made by the monk, Marsuvees Black—quite literally made. Englishman had been given one objective in life: He was to watch Johnny Drake. If this person named Johnny ever began to manifest any unusual powers, Englishman was to destroy Johnny.
There were more like Englishman, created to wreak havoc at the appropriate time. Barsidious White, who’d played games with unsuspecting travelers in abandoned houses, for example. A killer with interesting dimensions, to say the least. Black had failed in Paradise; White had failed in Alabama. Englishman would not fail. And neither, for that matter, would the others. Learning, always learning and growing smarter.
Englishman had wandered aimlessly for years, prowling like a lion, until the day when Johnny had indeed manifested an unusual power. Just as predicted.
Englishman killed Dale Crompton and made himself exactly like the man. He liked Dale Crompton’s body very much. Not only had it been conveniently located in the same camp with Johnny, but Crompton’s body was quite a magnificent specimen of lean and finely sculpted flesh. He would keep it if everything worked out.
Whenever a car pulled up behind him, Englishman slowed, then cut into the left lane when they attempted to pass. After several attempts he let them pass, blasting their horns. He did this because it gave him power over them without so much as moving a finger or throwing a thought. He wrought misery by merely sharing the same space with these motorists.
He turned onto a gravel road and headed north, farther north. If they were worth half the salt paid for them, the security forces who had dug in to save the president had already spotted his car pulling off the highway. It was the only road that led to the ranch forty miles ahead.
Forty miles till showdown.
Englishman was happy.
39
Samuel awoke to the sound of screaming.
He jerked up and listened. Silence. The door to the bedroom flew open and Kelly stumbled out. “What was that?”
Then it came again, a fuller sound now. “Elieeeee!”
“Johnny!”
Samuel rolled from the mat and dropped out of the loft, bothering to touch only one rung as he did. Johnny must have awakened early and gone out by himself. Samuel yanked the door open and was through before thinking to let Kelly out first. Never mind, she was on his heels.
Dawn had broken. The small canyon was empty, no sign of Johnny.
His scream came again, echoing through the outer canyon, a furious howl that screeched with such intensity that Samuel felt momentarily frozen by fear for Johnny’s life.
He ran barefoot
over the sand, ignoring the rocks that dug into the soles of his feet.
Kelly kept up. “Samuel? What’s—”
“I don’t know.”
Again the piercing scream. He still couldn’t make it out.
He tore around the huge boulder on the west side of the canyon’s mouth and pulled up sharply. Kelly clipped his shoulder and slid to a stop.
There, not thirty meters away, knelt Johnny, tearstained face raised to the sky, eyes clenched, arms spread wide, hands squeezed into fists, screaming.
“I belieeeeeeve!”
Samuel gasped. The canyon was a hundred yards wide here, like a dry riverbed littered with hundreds of rocks that ran its length to the edge of the mountain.
But the boulders were not on the sand.
They were floating twenty meters above Johnny’s head.
A thousand boulders, at least, all at the exact same height, moving very slowly toward the canyon mouth, as if defying gravity were a regular morning exercise.
Johnny screamed his belief.
Samuel’s heart crashed.
Kelly grabbed Samuel’s arm.
Johnny had found his power. Did he even know? And if not, would the canyon rain boulders if he became distracted?
The floating rocks above them looked like an asteroid belt that floated lazily, undirected except by a general force that came from Johnny.
Samuel wanted to shout out with glee. He wanted to jump up and down and pump his fist into the air, crying victory.
“Say nothing,” he whispered.
He said it between Johnny’s screams. But the sound of his whisper had been too loud. Johnny lowered his head and opened his eyes.
The boulders did not fall.
Samuel exchanged a long stare with his friend. He still didn’t know?
“You’ve found your power?” Samuel asked.
Johnny slowly lowered his arms. “No. I don’t care about the power. I just want to be Johnny again.”
Samuel took a step toward him. “Then do you at least understand love now?”
“Yes, I think I do.” Johnny’s eyes darted to Kelly. When he spoke again, his voice was choked with emotion. “I really think I do. Forgive me for not truly loving you before. Forgive me, please.”