Faith Wish (23 page)

Even in her listless condition, Anne-Marie knew how right he was. Rachel had told her that the time she envisioned her mother's death, she didn't actually know that was the specific meaning of the prophecy. At least not until after her mother was dead.

“I wish I could give you a certain answer to your questions,” said Abigail gently. “I have prayed about it fervently, I can assure you.”

“We have prayed about it together,” added Brother Jackson.

“Eventually, the answer will have to come from the Lord Himself, and no other way,” said Abigail.

Anne-Marie knew they were right.

“You look sleepy, dear. Do you need to take a nap?”

“Maybe after Bible study,” Anne-Marie replied.

“Are you sure the fasting is something which is going to benefit you?” Brother Jackson wanted to know. “Maybe the time has come to get some food inside you.”

“Maybe,” she answered. “But I need to keep the fast at least for the rest of today.”

It wasn't until after lunch and crafts that she found herself alone with Rachel. Anne-Marie was in the laundry room of the dorm, ironing her headband. She was using the tip of the iron to work on the wrinkles, being careful all the time not to scorch the letters. She didn't have much experience at ironing, and to try it on delicate fabric with close detail work was a challenge. Twice, fatigued, she sat down to rest.

“Are you okay?” Rachel asked her.

“I'm light in the head sometimes,” Anne-Marie admitted. She was still recalling the conversation with Brother Jackson and Sister Abigail. It was amazing how things that seemed so simple could turn out to be so complicated. But then, why should she expect the world of the Spirit to be simple?

“Are you still on the fast?” Rachel asked.

“Yeah, I'm still on.”

“Maybe you should get something to eat. Start another fast another time.” Rachel started folding towels.

“Not today. My promise to the Lord was that I would keep the fast for three days. Maybe tomorrow I'll have some fruit.” She got up to iron a little more, but then sat down again within two or three minutes.

“Rachel,” Anne-Marie asked, “when you dreamed the incubus and it was the beautiful man?”

“Mmm?”

“Was it Brother Jackson? Was it Brother Jackson's form the incubus took?”

“Don't ask me that.”

“But I need to know. It's the one thing I have to know.”

“But you just can't ask me that. Not that question.”

The one question I can't ask
? Anne-Marie tipped her head back. “But I have to know. If your vision was meant for me, I have to know.”

“Please don't ask me that. I'm not even totally sure it was a vision.” Rachel began folding the towels more aggressively, but to Anne-Marie, in her spent condition, she seemed to move in slow-motion stages. That MTV thing again.

“But I have to. Can't you see? I just have to.” She felt almost too weak to argue, but her urgency was so intense. “Did the incubus take Brother Jackson's form in the dream?”

“Do I have to answer that, Ruth Anne? Can't you just let it go?”

“No. I can't let it go. I'm begging you to tell me.”

“Begging?”

“Yes, begging. I
have
to know.”

Rachel kept her eyes on the towels. “Okay yes,” she said. Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

“You know what I mean: Was I in the dream, too?”

“Okay yes,” admitted Rachel, turning her back. Once again, her voice was very quiet.

Rachel dreamed about the pale horse and the footbridge. The Scripture passage was bold in Anne-Marie's mind:
And I saw, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him
. “How was I in it?” she demanded. “How?”

“You were just in it. Your face was. It was a scrambled dream, the hardest kind to interpret.” Rachel turned to face her. She put a hand on her hip. “Okay, yes. I dreamed the incubus and the pale horse.”

“And me, too. I was in it, too.”

“Yes.”

“Is this what you and Brother Jackson were talking about on the footbridge yesterday?” asked Anne-Marie.

“Yes, that was most of it. If it was a vision, it was one that scared me.”

“It's scaring me, too.”

“You see?” said Rachel. “You see why I didn't want to answer your questions? I can only hope the Lord will forgive me.”

“But why do you need forgiveness, Rachel? You're only sharing your gift.”

“Because I'm scaring you and I don't know how to interpret the vision. It puts me on shaky ground.”

Anne-Marie was so tired she felt nearly exhausted. But she had to press on. “And did Brother Jackson know how to interpret the vision?”

“No. He urged me to wait for the Lord's guidance.”

“The bridge with the pale horse means death,” said Anne-Marie slowly. “The incubus appeared in the form of the beautiful man. What if I'm carrying the seed of the demon?”

“It may not mean that at all. That's only one possibility.”

“Yes, but what if? Does it mean I should like kill myself to kill the demon seed?”

“Of course the Lord doesn't want you to kill yourself.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because suicide would be just as big a sin as abortion. Now can we drop this? I feel terrible because I've scared you. I wish I hadn't let you drag it all out of me.”

“But your gift can only help me, Rachel.”
Could I interpret the dream myself
? Anne-Marie wondered.
The pale horse and the incubus and me? Is it possible the Lord is giving me the gift of interpretation
?

She asked Rachel that question: “Do you think the Lord would bless me with the gift of interpretation?”

“Praise God if he does, but you can only wait and see.”

Then Anne-Marie thought of the Rapture. She remembered the radiant smile on Brother Jackson's face from two nights before. Joining the Lord in the air for everlasting, holy bliss. “Do you think the Rapture could happen for one person?” Anne-Marie asked. “You know, like the Lord lifts us up as individuals after we have entered His Kingdom here on earth?”

Rachel took Anne-Marie by the shoulders. Her grip was tight. It hurt. “That would be a miracle,” she said. “Now we need to drop this subject. At least I do.” Her dark eyes were suddenly wild, flecked with green particles. She let go of Anne-Marie's shoulders. She was still moving in slow motion.

Now Anne-Marie was exhausted. She said, “Miracles are not so unusual. The Lord blesses people with miracles all the time.”

“You're scaring me, Ruth Anne.”

“I don't mean to,” Anne-Marie replied. The idea of death frightened her; she was not nearly strong enough to overcome the fear of it. “The Lord blesses people with miracles all the time,” she repeated. “There are miracles all throughout the Bible. Brother Jackson even had one on an oil rig. It changed his life.”

Rachel said, “Remember how you said that sometimes I scared you? Well it's the other way around now. You're scaring me. You've got to remember that I don't always know what my dreams might mean. Like the dream I had about my mother and the angels. I didn't know it was a vision until after she died. I told you that, remember?”

“I guess you did. I'm not sure what I remember right now.” Luckily, she remembered to unplug the iron. The headband was neatly pressed. “I think I need to go and take a nap,” she said.

“I wish you would. And I wish you'd start eating again.”

“Tomorrow I will. But I promised the Lord a three-day fast.” Walking slowly, she headed for her bed.

June 30

This was her time. She heard the Lord's call and she would answer.

She had to move carefully in the dark to avoid colliding with a bed frame or one of the hutches. Noise was out of the question because it would probably awaken someone, and this needed to be a private moment. It needed to be
supremely
private.

In fact, she moved more cautiously than the situation demanded. The steady hum from the window fans created a blanket of sound that would muffle any bump or stumble. Because she was so shaky from the fasting, though, she watched her steps with extra care.

There was enough light for maneuvering in the dark from the outside pole lamp, once her eyes got adjusted. She wasn't sure what time it was, since she had been dozing in fits and starts. It was probably two or three
A
.
M
. Her belly was tight and acidic. The concrete floor was very, cool on the soles of her feet; it felt good.

When she left the dorm, she was careful not to let the screen door slam.

Ruth Anne was headed for the mountaintop.

She was walking along the dark path in the direction of the footbridge, but the moon was full. She could navigate her way. She passed one of the shelters where evening testimony was held, as well as crafts and Bible study. It seemed so strange to see no faces, hear no voices. It was more than silence, it was
hush
. She took it as an underscore for her current spiritual mindset. It wasn't long before she could see light at the rear end of the footbridge, peeking among the dense foliage.

She was wearing her white Jesus shirt and her overalls. She had on clean underwear, because it seemed important to be presentable in the unlikely event they ever found her body. As a matter of fact, during the several hours or so since she had made her final decision to take her burden up to El Shaddai, the question of clothing had been a distraction:
What will you look like if they find your body
?

But it was more or less irrelevant, because if her own death was indeed her final answer, she wouldn't really be taking her own life, she would be flying to the Lord. That would be her personal miracle, to join Him in the air. Even dying would not be death in any conventional sense. She would be gone, but she would be in loving arms where no one left on earth could ever see her. The Apostles' Creed said the “resurrection of the body,” not just the soul.

There was a chance she would be vanishing without a trace. The Lord would lift her up on His own terms. When there was triumph over death, death was not a factor. If they did find her in the gorge, they wouldn't find a corpse; they would find a glorified body rather than one of earthly substance. Nothing anyone could touch or experience like flesh—even if the corpse was still
in
the world, she herself would no longer be
of
the world.

She was scared. Very scared. But just as determined. Damp and clammy clay formed the pathway. At another time, under different circumstances, the sharp pebbles which gouged her feet would have been painful. But now, navigating her way in the dark, weakened and woozy, it was all she could do to concentrate on watching her step. Under other conditions, she might have smelled the petroleum odor of the weather-treated footbridge.

As she approached the bridge, nausea bubbled in her chest. She belched some viscous vomit into her mouth, swallowed, and then there was that bitter, metallic aftertaste like that of a penny resting on her tongue. It was fear that caused her to quicken her pace, but as soon as she did, she found herself so fatigued she needed to stop and rest against the railing.
Whatever happens to me up on the high mountain shouldn't be fearful, since I'm simply answering the Lord's summons. “If God is for me, who can be against me?”…“Whither thou goest, I will go.…
”

She rested her head on her forearms for a few moments, waiting to recover her strength. She heard an owl hooting in the cottonwoods. They had owls here, and they had hawks. But no Canada geese. She hadn't seen a single goose since she'd been here. This was the bridge that was the setting for Rachel's recurrent vision of death. In so short a time, it had already become a bridge filled with memories.

At first, listening to Rachel's vision and trying to imagine how it might apply to her, Anne-Marie had thought of abortion. Even though the Lord hated abortion, and so did she, it might be different if she were carrying the demon seed. In the demon seed was the Antichrist. If Brother Jackson wasn't really the father, if the incubus had visited her in her sleep and impregnated her, it might be the one exception which could make abortion acceptable in the sight of God.

But then she'd pondered that perhaps the vision of death was more probably intended for her than for her fetus. If she took her own life, she would take the demon seed with her. Suicide was a sin and might jeopardize her place in the Lord's mansion, but maybe the circumstances that consumed her would, again, be acceptable in the sight of God.

But still: What death? In whose service? What kind? In what sphere? How glorified? Anne-Marie recognized her reeling questions for what they were: panic. It was her mission now to trust in the Lord and pray that those who might be left behind would be able to do the same.

She spoke out loud for the first time: “But why do I presume death at all? Of any kind? My most fervent prayer is that on the mountaintop the Lord will give me an emphatic and bold answer to my prayer for understanding. I'll have closure. I can move forward in the Fellowship without lingering doubts.”

If she did die, she knew that Sister Abigail would understand and would even use her death somehow to exalt the Lord. It was obedience. It was faith.
And death shall have no dominion
.

She moved with care along the planks, fingering the crude handrail gingerly as she went. She didn't want any splinters in her hand. On the far side of the bridge, standing beneath the other feeble pole light, she stopped long enough for a few deep breaths. It was time to put the headband on before she went a step farther. She tied it neatly and deliberately; the two strands of excess ribbon hung limp at the back of her neck, except when the breeze fluttered them.