3 Gates of the Dead (The 3 Gates of the Dead Series) (3 page)

Chapter Three

As I drove to work, my thoughts scattered around like the snowflakes outside my car. Traffic locked into a nonmoving body of steel as Ohio forgot how to drive in the snow. My road rage usually flared in these situations, but I barely noticed I had not made any progress in the last twenty minutes. I knew I needed to talk to someone else about my faith problem.

But who could I tell? One option was to hide it from everyone at the church. I was pretty decent at hiding my true feelings, a skill that had served me well in ministry. This was especially true in situations when someone insisted that contemporary Christian music was better than secular music. Although, when someone started talking about Kirk Cameron being one of the smartest apologists out there, I had to walk away. No one had
that
much control.

As I gripped the steering wheel, I doubted I could cover up something this momentous. It would get out eventually, either through my looks or side comments during Sunday school lessons. Pastors were sort of like the Lindsey Lohans of the church world. Everything we did, from blowing our noses, to what beverage we drank, was discussed and analyzed. Opinions were formed about you on every subject. People would destroy you even as they loved you.

I arrived at the church and parked. The church — a large warehouse-looking building — loomed in front of me. When I first came to Knox, I took one look at the building and almost got back in my car. Everything had been new: the carpets, the smells, and the coffee bar. The sanctuary looked like a modern college theater. For someone who grew up going to an old gray stone church in downtown Indianapolis, it had been a shock to the system. I loved the smell of aged wood, candle wax, and the musty air of the Sunday School Room. Knox had none of those things, but I came anyway.

This building was supposed to be the height of suburban beauty, but it looked like what would happen if a warehouse and an office building produced offspring from a booze-induced hook up. I could never express that to the people of Knox Presbyterian Church, however, who thought the building was a beautiful example of God’s grace to the congregation.

I turned off the engine of my 2000 Dodge, and it shuddered to a stop. My poor car needed a tune-up, but I hadn’t had the time. It also needed to be cleaned. Trash from Tim Horton’s and Chipotle burrito wrappers littered the floorboard. More examples of my terrible diet of the past six months.

After the conversation with Brian, I knew I had to talk to Mike. Actually, the more I thought about it, the better I felt. Mike had always been there for me. He taught me, mentored me, and had my back when I messed up. There had been the time I pissed off our children’s ministry coordinator by not returning one of her emails on some nursery policy. After she spent two hours screaming at me, Mike smoothed it all out and helped me avoid that sort of tongue-lashing in the future. His help seemed like a simple thing, but to me, it wasn’t. I had heard horror stories from seminary classmates about how their head pastors hung them out to dry. From then on, I latched onto Mike, drank in his every word and followed nearly all of his advice. I knew if there was one person who could help me figure all this out, it was him. Maybe he would suggest I take some study leave and just get away to the mountains to clear my head.

I got out of my car and walked toward the church. I went inside and right for Mike’s office. Mike had become the pastor of Knox ten years before after moving his family from Massachusetts. There, he had been the head pastor at a church that had grown from one hundred members to a thousand in the six years he served them. Knox begged him to come do the same, and after about a year of discussion, he accepted their offer.

After Mike agreed, he rebuilt the church, attracted more members, and was loved by everyone, that is until he dared to quote Anne Lamott in a sermon six months ago. From that point on, it all began to crumble. There had been weeks of emails, confrontations, and late night Elder meetings full of shouting.

I was about to knock when Mike’s voice carried through the door. He was talking on the phone. Not wanting to interrupt, I went to my office just down the hall. It was supposed to be my place of refuge, but with my gnawing doubts, sitting in it all day would prove to be nothing less than torture. Too much reminded me of everything I had been doing wrong. The wooden shelves lined with books that I never used. My Hebrew and Greek versions of the Bible gathered dust on the top shelf, despite the fact that I had sworn to use them at every opportunity. The books on two thousand years of church history and theology tended to be the worst. I didn’t have a great imagination, but sometimes I felt like the ghosts of St. Augustine, John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards stared at me, their eyes full of flaming wrath at my hypocrisy and doubt.

I sat down in the chair and leaned back to think. Mentally, I tried to rebuild the dam. Maybe I didn’t need to leave because of my weak belief. Most of the people I knew worked in jobs they couldn’t stand, or they were employed by companies whose mission statements were made fun of in the lunch rooms. It didn’t take belief to make you halfway decent at your job. I didn’t consider myself any different than those people who started off believing in the company they worked for, only to find out years later the company no longer believed in them. But they still worked there because they were afraid of ending up somewhere worse.

Time to bury this crisis of faith
, I thought. Full of new confidence, I went to Mike’s office and knocked.

“Come in, Aidan,” Mike’s deep New England-tinged accent carried to the hall.

“How do you do that?” I asked, opening his door.

Mike’s space was what most people thought a pastor’s office should look like — full of books on every church-related subject imaginable — but with signs of his personality in key areas. A picture of George Whitefield, the revivalist preacher, hung on one wall, as well as a framed page from an early version of the King James Bible. Above his desk was a page of the Bible from one of the people hanged at the Salem Witch Trials. Mike told me he kept it there to remind him of what Christians are capable of doing when they forget Jesus. Still, it always gave me a strange feeling as it drew my staring attention during our meetings. The stain on the yellowed pages looked like an accusing eye. I always wondered if it was blood.

On his desk, Mike had pictures of his beautiful redheaded wife and three adorable honor-roll children. They all wore smiles and waved at the camera from the beach, Grand Canyon, or other family outings.

“Ah, well, one of the little known facts of aging, Aidan. You develop a magical sense.”

“Don’t tell the elders. They might fire you over that, or press you with rocks.”

Mike gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Funny you should say that. One of the things they want to talk about tonight is my Sunday School lesson on the Magi.”

I furrowed my brow. “What was wrong with it?”

Mike rolled his eyes. “Who knows? Maybe my top button was undone, and they thought I was tempting the ladies.”

We both laughed. Mike motioned for me to sit. “So, what’s on your mind?”

I claimed the seat and took a deep breath. “A lot. Not sure where to begin, honestly.”

“Take your time.” Mike leaned back in his chair, his six-foot-four frame stretched out and his hands resting on his shaved head. His goatee had a little gray speckled throughout the black hairs. The bald head gave him the gravitas needed to minister to older folks in the congregation, but the goatee told people, “Hey, I’m a bit edgy.”

I fidgeted with my hands as I fought to get the words out. “I guess, well, my faith has been a little weak lately.”

“So has mine, Aidan.”

“No, I mean, I have serious questions about my faith.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What kind?”

“I’m not sure I believe in God at all anymore.”

“Really? Why is that?”

I laid out everything I told Brian the night before, and he listened without interrupting.

“So, there it is,” I said as I stared at the floor. “I guess you can fire me now.”

Mike leaned forward and laughed. “I’m not going to fire you for being like everyone else.”

I looked up as the rock in my stomach softened. “But what if everyone finds out?”

Mike laughed. “Do you really think I’m gonna tell those guys?”

“It could be your job if you don’t, right? Won’t they question your integrity?”

Questioning someone’s integrity in the church was a death sentence, even if their integrity happened to be intact. They automatically came under suspicion. I didn’t want that for Mike after everything he had done for me.

“Maybe, but my job is not the most important thing here.”

“Then what is?”

“You trying to figure out what you believe. It’s a tough thing you are dealing with. I went through it myself.”

I rubbed my head in frustration. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

Mike got up and came around to sit in the empty chair beside me. He took hold of my arm. “You’ll pull through it, Aidan,” he whispered. “I did, and I can help you in whatever way you need. When did it start? When your parents died or maybe when Amanda left?”

I sat back and frowned. “Why does everyone come back to that? My doubts are separate from those things. My doubts are intellectual, not emotional.”

He smiled with sympathy. “I’m sure. I’m just asking what started it all.”

“I guess I’m just no longer ignoring the questions I have always had.”

Mike looked at his cell phone and sighed. “I have a meeting in five minutes. I don’t want to leave you like this.”

“No, it’s okay. I already feel better after sharing this with you. I think I’ll try working through it on my own for a bit. If I get stuck, I’ll come to you.”

Mike stood and looked out the window, his face crestfallen.

“Mike? Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m just thinking about the session meeting tonight. Maybe you shouldn’t come.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s unlikely to help your situation. It could get ugly.”

As tempted as I was to take his offer, I couldn’t let him face the wolves alone.

“Nah, I wouldn’t do that to you. I’ll stand with you, bro.”

His smile returned. “Thanks, Aidan.”

I stood up and began to walk out, then turned. “Mike, do you still have your doubts? I mean about God, the supernatural, all of that.”

He turned to me with a somber look on his face. “No, I totally believe in the supernatural. I have no more doubts.”

I nodded. “Thanks. I hated coming in here to tell you all of this.
Dreaded
might be a better way to describe it.”

“Don’t worry about it, Aidan. Just take some time, and let me know if you need anything. You can talk to me anytime, you know.”

“I know.”

U2’s
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
rang out.

“Excuse me,” I said as I flipped open my phone. “Hello?”

“Aidan? Is that you?”

“Olan?”

“How are you, boy? Get any sleep?”

I laughed. “Full three hours. Acid reflux gone?”

“Yep, Zantac worked wonders. It had to be the sausages. Edna got a touch of the runs not long after we got home. Don’t think we’ll be goin’ back to Jericho’s any time soon.”

I smiled and grimaced at the same time. “Uh, right, Olan. Sorry to hear that.”

“Nah, she’s okay. Nothing a little Pepto couldn’t handle.”

“Good. So, what’s up?

“Are you comin’ to the farm this mornin’? I need to show you something.”

“Actually, I thought about staying here to get some work done. Is everything okay?”

“Yes, but I need another pair of eyeballs.”

I frowned. “For what?”

“Footprints in the field behind my house.”

I tried not to laugh. As much as I loved Olan and Edna, they had a weird side. They believed the supernatural was always just around the next corner. Anything out of the ordinary meant, “Something strange is happenin’.” Olan once called me out to the farm in the middle of the night because he thought some unusual shadows on his barn wall were demons. After we investigated a bit, I realized the shadow came from empty chicken feed sacks that had been blown from the trash.

“Well, Olan, I don’t know. I have a busy day. Can I look at them tomorrow?” It was sort of a lie. There was nothing I had to do that couldn’t be put off. I just felt tired and didn’t feel like driving forty-five minutes to their farm.

“Nah, heavy snow’s comin’ tonight. Saw it on the weather channel. I want you to see them before they get covered up.” He paused. “Besides, Edna just made some blueberry pancakes that need to be eaten, so I don’t gain another ten pounds.”

It was hard to refuse Edna’s pancakes. I looked at the clock. “Okay, Olan. I will be out there in about an hour. Will that work?”

“Awlright den. See you in a bit.”

I looked up at Mike. “I have to go out to Olan and Edna’s farm.”

“What’s it this time? Were-chickens? Vampire pigs?”

I laughed. “No, not that serious. Some unusual footprints in the snow he wants me to check out.”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, at least you get some of Edna’s pancakes. I’m guessing that’s the real reason you’re going.”

I grinned. “Guilty.”

“Just be back for the session meeting tonight. I’m going to hold you to your promise.”

“No worries.”

I grabbed my coat and walked outside. The thought of Edna’s blueberry pancakes made my stomach rumble.

Chapter Four

My tires crackled over the gravel driveway as I drove up to Olan and Edna’s farmhouse. A pack of dogs — German Shepherd mutts — barked and ran alongside the car. I took in the scenery of snow-covered cow pastures as my canine escort followed me.

I pulled up next to the house and turned off the car, honking the horn as I did. No matter how many times I’d been here, the dogs only treated me as a friend if Olan was around.

Olan came out on the porch. He mouthed something to the dogs, and they abandoned their attack mode and surrounded him like guardians.

I jumped out. “Hey, Olan. How’s things?”

“Fine, preacher, just fine. The Mrs. feels much better. Come in and eat.”

I made my way through the house and into their living room. The TV blasted in Japanese as ninjas cut their way across the screen. Olan loved ninja movies and had one of the largest collections I’d ever seen. In direct contrast to the images of ninjas chopping each other in half, Edna’s watercolor of the Painted Desert hung above the TV. She sold her art at the local farmers market in the city. The hipsters ate up her stuff and called her a “rustic mustic.” I had to assure her they meant it as a compliment.

“More ninjas, Olan?” I said with a smile.

“Oh yeah, new one from Japan, and rare. Just got it yesterday. It’s a powerful movie for the ninja genre.”

“Nothing more groundbreaking than slicing people in half.”

“Ha! That is why I like you, boy; you got a sense of humor. Unusual for a preacher.”

I smiled. “Well, it’s hard not to take ourselves too seriously as God’s Kingdom depends on every little decision we make.”

“Thank God that’s not true.”

I headed back toward the door. “So, footprints. Let’s see them.”

Olan waved his hand. “Nah, let’s eat first. Edna will have my hide if I take you tromping around the farm before your stomach is full.”

We went into the kitchen where Edna hovered over the hot pancake griddle. The kitchen was the only expensive-looking place in their house. The décor and contents would have done justice to a Martha Stewart magazine. I smiled at the pots hanging from the ceiling, granite counter tops, and every kitchen appliance that could be bought from the Home Shopping Network. Olan said it was the only nod Edna made to material wealth, and he had no reason to complain when he received all the benefits.

I gave Edna a hug. “Hey, beautiful lady.”

She wiped her hands on her apron. “Now, I appreciate the hug from a handsome young man, but I’m covered in pancake batter. Sit your butts down. The pancakes are about ready. Do you want juice? Tea? Olan, could you please turn that bloody mess down?”

Olan grinned at me as he disappeared into the living room.

Edna scowled at her husband and then smiled at me. “Old man hasn’t been tamed in fifty years of marriage. Thank you for staying with us last night. Now, juice or tea?”

“Both would be great, thanks.” I sat down at the table.

Olan came back into the kitchen and poured himself some coffee. “So, ready for the elder’s meeting tonight? Should be a barnburner from what I hear.”

“Olan, how in the world did you know…”

“Boys, no unpleasant talk at breakfast.” Edna frowned. “I’ll not have it.” She swiped at Olan with a hand towel.

“Yes, dear,” Olan said, giving me a little wink. “Sorry. Still, I hope…”

“Olan!” Edna thumped him on the head with a wooden spoon.

“Ow! Woman, you’re gonna kill me one of these days doing that.”

“Then I’ll have some peace at the breakfast table, won’t I?”

I hid my smile under the pretense of wiping my mouth with a napkin. Olan and Edna seemed to be always having a fight of one type or another. If I didn’t want to think too deeply about it, I might have called it foreplay.

“No, I’d come and haunt you,” he shot back.

“If you did, I would get the house blessed by…”

“Edna!” Olan’s face changed from a half smile to a frown.

Her eyes widened, and her face went pale. She covered her mouth with her hand.

“What?” I said, looking from Olan to Edna.

“It’s nothing, Aidan, nothing,” Edna said. “Eat your pancakes. You are far too skinny.”

She wanted to change the subject, and I couldn’t help but wonder why. Who would bless the house? It wouldn’t have been me or Mike. Presbyterians didn’t exactly go around blessing houses.

We ate the rest of the meal talking about the Buckeyes and their chances in the national championship game, a must-have table conversation for anyone living in Central Ohio.

At the end of the meal, Olan pushed back from the table and looked up at me. “Well, let’s have a look at those footprints.”

As he put on his coat, he handed me a pair of rubber boots that flopped in my hands. “Here, put these on. There are too many cow pies where we are going for your shoes to handle.”

We walked out behind the house, and Olan jumped over the barbed-wire fence with ease. My pant leg snagged on the top wire, and I almost fell to the ground face first.

“Sorry, Olan, we ministers aren’t used to cow pie boots.”

“No, but I bet they would be useful on occasion.” He helped me back on my feet.

I laughed. “You’re right.”

We trudged through the frozen mounds of earth and cow pies. The sky turned from partly sunny to Central Ohio winter gray, which had a tendency to be unrelenting. I was convinced this weather had a heavy influence on Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson. Both lived in this area of the country at one point in their lives and somehow turned their Seasonal Affective Disorders into lucrative careers.

I looked up. “Here comes the storm.”

Olan squinted at the sky. “Yeah, I think you’re right. Glad you could get out here before the snow hits.”

“So, how did you notice the prints way out here?”

He didn’t answer.

“Olan?”

“I want you to see ‘em first.”

He slowed down. “Over there, by the woods. You’ll have to step carefully. They’re hard to see at first.”

I walked to where the field turned into the woods, the in-between place just like a hallway. I shook my head and realized I had too many Irish legends running around in my brain. Still, I’d always felt a little weird about this part of Olan and Edna’s property. Olan always wanted to show me the woods, but each time, I found an excuse not to join him.

When I looked at the ground, I couldn’t see anything at first. As my eyes adjusted to the bright glare, I could just make out some light indentations in the snow. I bent down to examine the marks.

No boots. No tennis shoes. Not even sandals. Bare footprints. Not only bare footprints, but small, like the feet of a child.

I traced my finger along the faint impression, hardly touching the outer lines of the heel so as not to upset the imprint, up to the ball and then to the small toes.

I looked up at Olan. “I don’t understand. Who would let their kid out in the middle of a snow storm?”

Olan gave me a crooked smile. “No one around here, Aidan. Ain’t no one that stupid.”

“How did you find them?”

Olan stooped down beside me. “Edna had a bad dream last night … or early morning I should say … after we got home from the hospital.”

“A dream about footprints?”

“No, not exactly. Her dream was about our son who died.” His voice cracked a bit, and he rubbed his hands over his face. I had only seen him get this emotional at the funeral of a close friend.

“I don’t understand.” I tried hard to remember if Olan had mentioned any children other than their sons. I hoped that in my self-absorbed pity of the past few months, I hadn’t forgotten something so important.

“I guess we never told you about Joseph. Don’t find it easy to talk about him.”

“You don’t have to,” I said, touching his shoulder.

“Nah, should have told you sooner, and the dream won’t make much sense if I don’t.” He stared off at a car moving along a distant road.

“When we first started trying to have kids, we had a hard time. We tried for three years. Nothin’. Then Edna got pregnant, and we were pleased as punch.”

“I bet.”

“Everythin’ went fine. Remember, there were no ultrasounds then.”

I nodded. “Right.”

“Well, baby was born, crying was good, but he wouldn’t eat. They did a bunch of tests and figured out that the baby had no esophagus.” Olan stared at the footprints, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Nowadays, there’s a surgery that fixes it pretty nicely. Then, there wasn’t no surgery. My boy starved to death. I had to listen to him cry for three days.” He paused and rubbed his face again. “There’s nothin’ more horrible in the world, Aidan.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

“So, we had the funeral. Edna … I thought she would never be the same. The second pregnancy was terrible, full of fear. But James turned out all right, even if he did go to Michigan.” He gave a small smile.

I chuckled. “Well, we are all sinners, Olan.”

He wiped his eyes. “So, you asked how I found these. You’ll also want to know how I know who made them.”

I nodded.

“Edna sometimes has dreams, only thing I know what to call them. Anyway, she had a dream that she was walking in this field, and she saw a little boy walking barefoot in the snow.”

He reached down to touch a print. “She called out to him and asked what he was doing there.” His voiced cracked again. “The boy turned, and Edna saw his face. She knew him even before he said anythin’.”

“But how…”

“The mother thing, Aidan. Anyway, the boy spoke.”

“What did he say?”

Olan frowned. “Well, that’s the strange part.”

I tried not to laugh at that one. The strange part, as if the rest of this didn’t border on weird already.

“He said, ‘They’ve begun, Mommy. The dark men have begun. They want to awaken the Grinning Man. He’s bad, Mommy. Get the Father.’”

“What did Edna say to him?”

“Nothing. She found she couldn’t speak. She was only able to think about how much she loved Joseph.”

“How did, um, Joseph respond?”

“I don’t cry much, Aidan, never have. But this one, well, could have me weepin’ for days.” He looked at me, tears running down his heavily lined face. “He said, ‘I love you too, Mommy. We’ll be together soon.’ Then she woke up.”

“And she had you come out here?”

“Yeah, she did. I can’t refuse her anything. I know I seem gullible to some folks, but even I had a hard time believin’ her, especially at five in the mornin’ after a sleepless night. I came out here anyway.”

“And?”

“I’ve a strong heart as you found out last night — heart of a man half my age, so the ol’ saw bones told me — but I could feel it seize up in my chest when I saw these.” He pointed toward the prints. “Exactly where Edna said they would be.”

“Olan, I mean … I don’t know what to do with that.”

He frowned at me. “Do you think I do?”

“No, but…” I stopped and thought of the other incidents I’d been called out here for.

“You’re thinking of the chicken feed bags, aren’t you?”

My face warmed. “Um, yeah, to be honest.”

“Thought so. I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

I put my hands up. “It’s not that. I mean, maybe Edna just had the dream, and someone was running around in their bare feet. Maybe as a joke or for some odd reason, they liked it.”

He cocked his head and looked at me with an almost pitying glance. “Aidan, think about what you just said, boy.”

“I know, but the other explanation is just…”

“Too supernatural? I thought preachers were supposed to believe in this sorta thing.”

He was getting too close. The thing about Olan was he might’ve talked like an uneducated country person, but he never missed anything. He graduated from Purdue with honors and then went on to become one of the most successful farmers in Ohio.

“Besides,” he went on. “How would they have done it? And where are their footprints?”

“Covered by snow?” I said, searching my brain for a possible explanation.

“Boy, didn’t they teach you common sense at that seminary school? If those tracks were covered up, why aren’t these?”

He had me, and he knew it. He looked me right in the eye. “Aidan, don’t you believe such things are possible?”

“I do, but I mean, not to be blunt, it’s hard for me to swallow that your son’s footprints are out here in the middle of the snow.”

“Why?”

I shifted my feet and wrapped my arms around my body. “Well, because, I just don’t think it’s possible.”

Olan nodded, his head still facing the same row of trees. “Mmm hmm.”

“Look, Olan, I mean, God just doesn’t allow dead people to walk around the earth. I mean, I hate to be that harsh.”

He ignored my lame attempts at pity. “Really? The Bible say that?”

“Well, no, not exactly,” I said, avoiding his gaze.

“Not exactly is right. Didn’t they at least teach you
that
at seminary school?”

I frowned. “Yeah, but maybe I was asleep when we talked about ghosts.”

“Remember Saul talking to Samuel?”

“That was probably a demon or something.”

“Bible say that?”

I opened my mouth then shut it. Come to think of it, the passage didn’t say that at all. In fact, the Bible told interesting stories of the dead walking the earth. Samuel upbraids Saul for using a witch to call him and then for disturbing his rest.

“No, you’re right. It doesn’t say that, but it also doesn’t say that God sends ghosts to carry messages for him either.”

“Point taken.”

We both stared at the footprints. I hated to admit it, but I didn’t really have an explanation for them. The crazy redneck explanation didn’t work. I knew all of Olan’s neighbors. It took a stretch of the imagination to picture any of them doing anything like this, much less let their kid walk around barefoot in the cold night. But I also knew there was no way it could’ve been Olan and Edna’s dead son.

Olan patted me on the shoulder. “Let’s walk back to the house.”

We trudged back over the field.

“So, what do you think?” he asked, holding down the barbed wire for me to step over.

“About?” I turned around to hold it for him.