A God to Fear (Thorn Saga Book 5) Page 17

  “The Fun can’t last forever,” the cruel Brandon said. “If I die on a wild night out, that’s a good death. Live like a rock star, party hard, die young. Go out with a bang instead of a whimper.”

  Brandon yelled at his darker self. “You’re horrible! Any one of us could have been born into any life! Can’t you see that now? Why should you treat her as any less than yourself when you could easily have been her?”

  But Brandon’s other self just chuckled as if he’d made a clever joke. Then he turned and swung at the girl anyway.

  Brandon repulsed himself. Could he truly have ever become such a selfish and destructive person? The darker Brandon was so clearly under the control of cultural forces like the seeking of fame, and psychological forces like a lust for power. How could such a person fancy himself an independent thinker, intellectually superior to all others?

  It made Brandon wonder under what forces he was acting unawares in his current life. What assumptions had he made and never questioned?

  The horrific images of the high-rise condo faded…

  This is what should have been.

  For a moment, Brandon saw himself saying a calm goodbye to Crystal and Cole and leaving the condo forever. Or maybe he saw himself making peace with Karen at the end of his wedding reception, shaking her hand as the last guests left for their homes, late at night. He had no time to ascertain exactly which scenario this final vision portrayed, because an angel harshly prodded him into a tunnel at the base of a mountain. The huge black wall went out of his view, and the visions of other times and places—maybe real and maybe imagined—vanished with it.

  Brandon finally snapped back to the present. He, Heather, and Thorn were led into a circular room with a large, unbroken slab of stone for its floor. The walls extended upward many hundreds of feet, from this dim area to a blazing yellow light at its top.

  Even as Brandon marveled at the room’s height, the stone slab shifted beneath him, and he had to brace his knees against the sudden upward thrust of the heavenly elevator. With no obvious pulleys to operate the lift, Brandon found the contraption fascinating, and under better circumstances he might have asked to study it for an afternoon.

  He tried to catch Heather’s gaze, but her eyes remained frightened and facing forward. She breathed in and out slowly and deliberately, as if the mere act of breathing required all of her attention. She’s the one who believed Thorn’s tall tales, and she seems more surprised by this situation than I am. We’ve died and gone to Heaven, obviously. What’s simpler to understand than that?

  Brandon was more awake and alert now than he’d been on Earth, and his broken arm had been instantly healed. He also felt relief that his nihilistic views of the universe had been proven at least partially incorrect. There really was something out there greater than himself. And as the lift slowed at the top of the elevator shaft, Brandon had a feeling that he was about to meet that Something face to face.

  Yet in spite of Brandon’s current good fortune, he couldn’t help but think of how he and everyone he’d ever known had been subjected to such misery during their lives on Earth. God had never intervened. God had let the suffering go on and on and on. God had never answered his questions. God had never shown him that He cared. Brandon had never believed in God while he was alive, but now that he knew that God had existed all along, yet had allowed Brandon to wallow in ignorance and pain… Brandon was angry.

  The lift stopped and a doorway slid open, revealing a room bigger than Brandon thought a room could be. Several football fields could have filled the place. Sunlight slanted in through tall windows and numerous skylights, past marble columns and air thick with specks of pollen, coming to rest on the oasis of flowers and streams that carpeted the ground in all directions.

  Far more spectacular than this, though, was the view to Brandon’s right when he stepped out of the lift. Empty air filled the space where one of the walls should have been, revealing a vast panorama of what appeared to be Planet Earth, spinning in the vacuum of space. As Brandon watched it, the line of dawn crept languidly across the planet’s surface. From this perspective, most of the planet slept in nighttime, extensive webs of city lights cradling their fragile civilizations. But as daytime consumed the darkness, the night’s lights disappeared as if dwarfed by the far greater luminance of the sun.

  Brandon stopped and gaped at the spectacle. It was either the real deal, or the most impressive computer animation he’d ever seen. He took a step toward the rotating planet, but an angel gripped his arm and led him sideways, parallel to the striking view.

  When Brandon finally wrenched his eyes away from the breathtaking sight, he found that he was being led past a great fountain, complete with griffins spewing spouts of water and a tall statue of a naked angel. They walked for another five minutes, beneath stately marble archways and past various animals, including two markhors, a family of ferrets, and what looked like a Komodo dragon slinking through the underbrush. Eventually they turned left and arrived at a filigreed gate of gold, its inlaid gems of black opal and alexandrite shimmering as angels pulled it open.

  Beyond this lay a long, purely golden room. The walls and floor were gold, as were the ceiling and the columns supporting it. Flames burned brightly in golden sconces along the walls, perplexing Brandon as to why the sconces didn’t melt. For all he knew, even the threads of the sunglow rug extending from the door across the room’s entire length were made of gold.

  There was no wall at the far end of the room, just another brilliant view of Earth. But looming in front of this view stood a pyramid of golden stairs, leading upward to the foot of a golden throne.

  Were it not for the reflected light from the sconces and the darkness of the planet behind Him, the figure seated atop the throne might have been a silhouette. But Brandon could see Him clearly, even from this distance. He wore white clothes wrapped in thin, leafy vines. Glowing volts of electric plasma sizzled outward from His gossamer hair and evaporated into the air around His head. His torso was hunched over, and His chin leaned on one of His hands for support. His eyelids sagged over His eyes. For all His glory, He looked strangely depressed.

  Is this God?

  The angels led Brandon, Heather, and Thorn forward like prisoners. One cherub ran ahead to whisper in God’s ear. God nodded glumly.

  “Heather, Brandon, I’m wondering where to put you,” God said before they’d crossed even halfway to His throne. His soft voice carried unnaturally far, and Brandon did a double-take to make sure God hadn’t somehow appeared right next to him. God’s voice was listless, though, and nearly apathetic. He had yet to make eye contact with them.

  God then turned to Thorn, whom the angels had separated from Brandon and Heather. Thorn approached the throne from the right, and they from the left. “I know exactly where I’m gonna put you,” God said to Thorn, with only a faint trace of interest.

  He continued to face Thorn as He said, “You humans, you’ve caused some trouble. You’ve been helping him, and I can’t tolerate those who aid My enemies. Yet you’ve proven to have the kind of minds I need up here in My Kingdom. Rational minds. Selfless, more or less. I can’t ignore that. I’d like to offer you a place here, in Heaven.”

  Silence followed, save for the fluttering of the sconce flames. Brandon looked at Heather, but she seemed too awed by God to notice his glance. When neither of them responded, God finally turned away from Thorn to look Brandon in the eyes. His passionless gaze was far less threatening than Brandon had anticipated.

  “Well?” God said.

  “Where were You?” Brandon asked in response.

  God blinked, swallowed. “Where was I?”

  “Where were You when my friends and family died? When Tim’s wife died in a car wreck? Where were You when I asked for Your help when I was in pain?”

  “I was testing you,” God said, His face devoid of apology, and of all other emotion.

  “Testing me?”

  The immense orb of Planet Earth turned be
hind God as He looked down on Brandon. “Is that really so awful?” He said, scowling a little. Then He actually laughed. “I used to be so proud of the system I’d created. But now it’s all just…”

  His voice trailed off into nothingness. He shook His head, and His shoulders sank lower. He stared blankly at His bare feet. One of the vines that coiled around His arm slithered toward His hand, then licked at it with a thin, forked tongue. Brandon tried to hide his surprise when he realized it was not a vine.

  “It doesn’t matter,” God said at last. “We’re all just infinitesimal specks circling one small star in all of space, after all. Why should any of it matter? It’s all so arbitrary.”

  Before Brandon could formulate an answer, Thorn shook off the angels who’d been holding him. They moved to capture him again, but a wave of God’s hand stayed them. Thorn remained where he stood as he spoke.

  “You’re just like Wanderer,” he said.

  That got God’s attention. He jolted to His feet and straightened His back. The snake twined tighter against His arm. “What did you say?”

  “You just want to be in control,” Thorn said. “When You can’t have it, You explode into a rage or You sink into despair. You’re a child.”

  “And you’re a virus! You’re no larger than a molecule next to Me! I could crush you in—”

  “Go ahead. Crush me! Run Your tests and ‘save’ us all from ourselves. You’ll never create the great races of humans and angels that You want, because You can’t admit that You don’t know what’s best for everyone, and that people who think differently from You—people ‘beneath’ You—might have worthy ideas.”

  “I am fair and just in all things.”

  “Then why work to create reasonable people when they’re only allowed to think one way? When You intend to punish everyone who disagrees with You? You want people to be free on Your terms, under Your rules, just like Wanderer. Using dogma and deception to manipulate people into Your version of freedom is not true freedom.”

  “And you know better?” God said at almost a yell.

  “You’ll never find out if You keep striking down or imprisoning anyone who dissents.”

  God huffed, then plopped back down onto His throne. His face was turning red. “You won’t listen to Me. It’s all your fault, you know. None of you demons would listen to Me.”

  “Maybe if You stopped condescending to us and started loving us like You claim to, we’d be more inclined to listen.”

  The beginnings of a tear formed in God’s eye. His breathing became shaky, labored. The snake raised its head off His arm, then looked around as if probing to ensure its safety. God saw the motion, lifted the snake, and unwound it from His arm. He set it on the gold beneath His throne, and it slithered down the steps, smudging the gold with the greasy trail left in its wake.

  “You Yourself said that we’re good people,” Brandon said. “We just want to live our lives on our own terms. Is that really so awful?”

  Thorn strode halfway to the throne’s stairs, his elegant black shoes clanking against the golden ground. “End this,” he said. “End the ignorance, end the dying. What do You say?”

  Heather’s slim fingers slid through Brandon’s, and she held his hand, her eyes still focused on God. The Creator watched the snake make its way down the stairs, then soil the golden rug as it began its long journey across the room. “I say…”

  Several of the angels in the room leaned slightly forward. Brandon held his breath. Thorn’s fists were clenched, his whole body tense. God’s tear quivered in His eye, but refused to fall.

  Finally, He leaned back in His chair, sighed, and smiled.

  “No,” God said.

  He flung His hand toward Brandon and Heather. A blinding burst of energy erupted from it, engulfing them. Brandon gripped Heather’s hand like a vise as the room’s walls receded, falling away into blackness. His sense of balance spun out of control. Every direction was up, but also down. Heather’s arm pulled taut against his. He tried to hold on to her, but she was ripped away. She screamed.

  13

  Something was pressing into Brandon’s neck, something rough and cold, disturbing his sleep. Someone nearby was talking too fast for him to understand. Was it those demon-things again? I need to run. They’re gonna kill me if I don’t run.

  Memories of dead family members and ominous other dimensions pulled Brandon up into the waking world. But when he opened his eyes and saw the fading light of late dusk, the sidewalk speckled with dried black gum, and the man in the business suit yakking on his wireless headset about some client’s account, Brandon’s dream world beckoned him back down into slumber. His blood was still rushing from the nightmare, but no nightmare could be worse than his reality.

  He tilted his neck to the left and reached his bad arm around to feel a rusty old bolt protruding from the streetlight’s pole. It had left a sore indentation in the back of his neck. How long was I out? The sun had been high in the afternoon sky the last time he’d seen it, and now the sky was darker than the sleep he’d just woken from. Thank goodness he’d dozed off under the shade of the shopping plaza. Had he not, he might have gotten sunburned again and been forced to live near the river’s cooling waters for a week or two.

  The businessman carried grocery bags in one hand—likely something he’d picked up for his wife or kids on his way home from work. He didn’t seem to notice that Brandon was there until he paced a little too close to him. Then he puckered his nose and scuttled away to escape the stink. Brandon didn’t even bother to hold up his jar of change. Busy rich folks never gave him money. Only the poor, who could partially understand his situation, ever helped him out.

  Fatigue caressed the backs of Brandon’s eyelids. Something urgent about his nightmare stayed lodged like an ice pick somewhere in his mind, but then, his nightmares were always like that. One of his squad was always stuck in some ratty old shack in rural Zabul, taking fire, impossible to get to. Or sometimes it was Brandon himself cornered behind the walls of his OP, screaming for help as enemy bullets tore through his flesh. He’d wake from those nightmares panting, a cold sweat glistening on his skin. This nightmare had been tame by comparison. And weird, too.

  His stomach was clawing its way out of his belly. Had he eaten today? Maybe not. He checked his jar. Two and a half dollars could buy him a little bit of fast food, at least.

  The grease on Brandon’s tattered clothes made a slurp as it separated from the metal of the streetlight he’d been leaning on. He’d needed a shave more than he’d needed new clothes, but that had been a week ago, and now he cursed himself for spending money on something as trivial as a razor. His joints protested as he stood on his little cardboard mat, torn from a box he’d found in a dumpster yesterday. Where was his cardboard sign? Had it blown away while he slept? While halfway to standing, he spotted it under a nearby bush, so he slunk back to the ground, to his hands and knees, to crawl over and grab it.

  “Hey there.”

  The voice stopped him in mid-crawl. A woman was standing over him, tall and blond, but wearing sneakers and a T-shirt that downplayed her natural beauty. Brandon plopped his butt back on the sidewalk, then closed his arms and legs inward, scrunching his body up into a ball. In high school he might have had a chance with a girl like this, but damn, did she have to walk up to him now, weeks after he’d last bathed, as he wormed across the concrete to find his “homeless please help” sign? He didn’t even want her money. The embarrassment was too great.

  “Hi, hon. Do you remember me?”

  Brandon glanced briefly up at her, then back down. “Nope,” he said, although the brightness in her eyes and the slight upward curve of her lips did seem familiar.

  “It’s good to see you,” the woman said. “I feel like I’ve never even met you before, though. This is so wild.”

  Brandon started to rock back and forth and hum a meandering tune. If this lady thought he was crazy, maybe she’d go away.

  “There’s not much time
,” she said. “I found the transit door we came in through—it’s not far, and it wasn’t locked. It might get us back to Thorn, but I need you to show me the way. Will you come with me?”

  Whoa. Playing crazy ain’t gonna get me out of this one. Kids liked to tease Brandon by testing the limits of what he’d do for money, but this woman hadn’t offered money, and her voice was bereft of derision. She seemed too old for the games of teenagers anyway.

  “My name is Heather. I know you. I know you very well. Please. This is worth fighting for.”

  “Ain’t nothing worth fighting for,” Brandon said, wobbling his head back and forth in a loose interpretation of a head shake. “A man in power says we gotta fight this group of people one year, then the next year we gotta fight that group of people. ‘They ain’t us,’ the big man always says. ‘They don’t think the way we do. So we gotta grind ’em into the dirt they came from.’ Dirt’s all it is, you know. All anything is, or ever will be. I got no reason to fight over a bunch of dirt.”

  Heather’s trace of a smile bent downward. She kneeled next to him, reached her hand toward him…

  He flinched away. Why was she trying to touch him? Why wasn’t this pretty girl running away? Everybody ran away whenever Brandon started talking about the war.

  Her fingertips lighted on his oily hair, then combed through it ever so gently, without touching his scalp. “Oh, Brandon,” she said. “What’s happened to you?”

  Being touched again after all this time felt like spiders crawling on Brandon’s skin. He ducked his head away from her hand. “Lady, I was just another corn-fed, churchgoing Florida boy, told I was special. Told I was doing the Lord’s work. But that turned out to be a boldfaced lie. Ain’t no Lord’s work, and there ain’t no Lord. And without Him, I’m weak, I’m nothing, and nothing matters. That’s what they told me anyway, and now I live like that’s the Bible truth. I guess I’m proving ’em right, huh?”