The Book of Daniel (36 page)

“So where do you fit into all of this? I mean, you said you were there in Purgatory with me, watching.”

“I was. But like I said, I wasn’t allowed to let you know that, otherwise I could have shattered the illusion. And if you’d then realised what was going on, your chances of ending up here rather than in Hell would have been reduced. I know it wasn’t easy for you, Dan, but it wasn’t easy for me, either, even though I knew you weren’t in any danger… at least not from the inhabitants of your version of Purgatory. The only real danger was that you might have failed to reconcile your differences with God.”

“What about my friends? Were Harper, Thomas and Jack just part of the dream, too?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“What do you mean?”

“Two of them were and two of them weren’t.”

“Um, I know this is Heaven, and miracles probably happen all the time round here, but I assume that two plus two still equals four, and we’re only talking about three people. You can wipe that grin off your face, too.”

“Sorry,” she said, unremorsefully. “Try this on for size: in the same way that Purgatory itself was not real, God could also have arranged it so that everyone you met there was just part of the illusion, too, and made them act in such a way that you would have had no choice but to follow the path to Heaven. But that’s not what He wants. He wants the final choice to be yours, of your own free will, and interaction with real people, with free will of their own, is one way in which He gives you the flexibility to arrive at your own conclusions.

“Take Thomas, for example. He was real, just one of millions of other people going through their own personal version of Purgatory at the same time as you. You and he were introduced to each other at exactly the right moment to help each other out. You, as one of the Newborn, needed orientation, guidance, and so a brother-in-arms like Thomas—battle-hardened, slightly cynical, forthright—was just the right person for the job. Thomas himself was nearing the end of his journey, but wasn’t ready to move on until he had passed the torch of caring for Harper and the Newborn on to someone else. Just before he transitioned, God told him that you would soon assume that role, and that was all he needed to hear so that he could finally find peace and move on from Purgatory.

“Now, in addition to providing you with real people to interact with, God also knows that, just as with life back on Earth, He occasionally needs to intervene directly and steer you in the right direction. So some of the people you met in Purgatory weren’t real, but just facets of your experience presented to you by God—like Jack. God needed to make it clear to you that in the face of adversity, faith and trust in Him are the right response, not fear or bitterness like you had known. You almost certainly wouldn’t have listened if that came from God Himself—I know you—but coming from a fellow soldier who had just saved your life… that was the final push you needed to help you reassess everything that had happened before then.”

I mulled all this over for a while, trying to fit what Jo had just told me with what I remembered about my time in Purgatory. Jo sat by patiently, watching me with her loving eyes, waiting for me to catch up. It was hard work, trying to digest the enormity of what she was saying, but each memory of Jack or Thomas that I analysed brought me one step further along the road to understanding. The final thing Thomas had said to me, for example, about one day reminiscing over our time in Purgatory: he had not meant merely the sharing of war stories, or memories of the others we had met there. He had meant being able to look back on those things through the filter of understanding that came from recognising them as a part of a metaphysical condition, not a real place. And at last the mystery had been solved, too, of how Jack had managed to get me back inside the city even though the gates had been closed. After all, in a dream—or whatever it had been—anything could happen. It all sort of made sense… apart from the fact that Jo still hadn’t told me the answer to the riddle of why two plus two equalled three. As if on cue, she continued.

“Now, with Harper it gets a bit more complicated. Like Jack, she was also a fabrication, put there to give you someone to confide in and discuss your thoughts with, especially once Thomas had left. But at the same time, she was not solely an invention of God’s. There was also a real person behind her words and actions.”

It all suddenly clicked. Around the sting of realisation, I slowly managed to squeeze out four words. “You? You were Harper?”

She flicked her eyebrows a couple of times. “Pretty good, huh? I should have won an Oscar.” She rushed on. “Oh Dan, I’m so glad it’s all over now! You don’t know how heart-breaking it was for me to be so close to you and see you suffering so much, all the while just wanting to kiss you and tell you that I loved you and that soon everything would be all right. Heaven hasn’t really been Heaven until now!”

We kissed again, and with each brush of her lips, my mind became calmer. My thoughts swam back and forth between Jo and Purgatory. Whenever my mind strayed towards the ordeal I had just gone through, I felt a dizzying sense of vertigo as I continued to try to make sense of it all. What had been real, and what had not? How many of the others I had met there were just God’s puppets? Saint Peter? Paolo? Abraham? My mind reeled. And the fact that Jo had been with me all along was the most earth-shattering thought of all. Everything I had been fighting for had been right there under my nose the whole time. But of course, if I had known that, would I have made half as much effort to try to straighten things out with God? And how difficult must it have been for Jo to maintain the charade for so long, or to stop herself from giving away too much information? Every time I felt that I was on the verge of going insane trying to figure it all out, one fact brought me back to my senses: the solid reality of having Jo in my arms once more.

Eventually, I felt ready to speak again. “So what happens now?”

“Well, there are loads of people that are dying to meet you; or that you’ve died to meet, I should say.”

“Very funny. If that’s what passes for a joke around here, eternity’s going to seem like a very long time.”

“I’m serious. There’s Thomas, of course, and Lewis, George, your mother—and your father, as well.”

That was unexpected. But then why shouldn’t he be here, too? Having all but erased the memory of my father and what he had done from my mind, even after being reminded of it during my resurrection, I found myself mildly surprised that the prospect of meeting him again didn’t fill me with the bile it once would have. Instead, a strange sense of enthusiasm filled me; after all, now that I had been granted access to Heaven, the apparent tragedies of my earthly life—all of them—seemed comparatively insignificant. The prospect of forgiving my father for his human sins and weaknesses and rekindling my relationship with him seemed straightforward and uncomplicated in view of the fact that my Heavenly Father had already done exactly these same things for me.

Jo’s next words were enough to stop the smile that I could feel forming on my face dead in its tracks. “And then of course there’s God Himself.”

“That should be interesting,” I said, guilt instinctively welling up inside of me. It was one thing to consider my relationship with God as somehow mended in an abstract sense, but the idea of meeting Him face to face was something completely different—especially after all the bad things I had said and thought about Him over the years. Just because I felt generous towards my earthly father, was I really right to assume that God felt the same way towards me? Despite the evidence of my own eyes, I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow I had been let into Heaven by mistake. I didn’t
feel
particularly holy or enlightened, and I still wasn’t sure exactly what it was that I had done—if anything—that had finally gotten me into God’s good books. Heck, I had been so caught up in the excitement of seeing Jo again that I hadn’t even thanked Him yet. I offered up a quick, shameful prayer, just in case.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Jo said, shaking my knee. “I know it’s a scary thought, and deep down, everyone’s worried what God will see when He looks into their eyes, but He’s pretty understanding. He knows everything about you already, and loves you exactly the way you are. He always has. And His desire to be reunited with you was just as eternal and relentless as your desire to get back to me.”

“I wish He’d made that clear to me a bit earlier on.”

“It’s all a matter of perspective, Dan. If you want to be negative about it, yes, God didn’t make it easy for you, and that’s true for millions of others, too. But if you think about it, was it really so bad? Back on Earth, once you left home, weren’t there always people around who were your friends and who loved you? Do you really think that all those people were part of your first life just by chance?

“It’s not only in Purgatory that God steers the rudder of your life, Dan. It might not have felt like it, but He’s
always
been looking out for you. Everything He does is according to a plan, even if the scope of that plan is beyond anyone else’s ability to comprehend most of the time. Take your mother’s death, for example. It seemed cruel and senseless to you, and of course it was hard for you to get over, but if it hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t have gone out into the world the way you did, with the thoughts and feelings you had, and become the man you are, perfect for me. And if I hadn’t been shaped through the experiences of my own life, I wouldn’t have been the person I was when we met each other again in the hospital. In the same way that you and I were destined to be together, so hundreds of other people’s lives are channelled towards each other—and God—as they all journey towards their common final destination, here in Heaven.”

I could tell that it was going to take quite some time to adjust to life in Heaven, especially if my understanding was going to keep getting knocked off its feet every five minutes. I took a deep breath, filed away in the back of my mind all the questions and concerns that Jo’s latest revelation had raised, and settled for the wisest response I could come up with.

“Hmm.”

Jo laughed. “Oh, Dan, you don’t need to put on this stoic, infallible exterior for my sake, not anymore. I don’t need you to be my protector now, not here. But I can have something much better instead: you, as you truly are, with no need for all the complications and inadequacies of mere human relationships.”

“Hmm,” I repeated.

Mischief sparkled in her eyes, and if it didn’t make her so damn lovable, I would have dreaded what else it implied was still up her sleeve.

“He’s just like you, you know. Strong-willed to the end.”

“Who, God?”

“Well, yes—we were created in His image, after all—but I was talking about someone else, someone I really want you to meet. His name’s Jonathan.”

“Oh.” My heart sank, and I suddenly found myself wishing I was back in the Subterranean’s mouth. My first instincts had been right after all, and this
was
Hell. It had obviously taken me so long to make it to Heaven that Jo had tired of waiting for me, and had met someone else while she had been there. I had lost her. Her efforts to help me make it through Purgatory had only been through a sense of loyalty to what we’d once had, not because she still loved me. My mood went from utter contentment to indescribable agony in an instant. “Okay,” I said, although it most certainly wasn’t.

She carried on blithely. “He’s got all your best qualities: strong, brave, generous…”

“Do you love him?” I didn’t want to ask the question, but it just came out automatically.

“Well of course I do!” Finally registering the tone of my voice, her expression changed from impishness to horror. “Oh, Dan, no, it’s nothing like that. Don’t be silly! I may not need a protector anymore, but no-one can replace you. I love you.” She looked me dead in the eyes. “Jonathan is our son.”

The Trinity of surprises was complete.

The holy ghost of a Purgatory that did not really exist.

The unseen father who had been guiding my life all along.

And now the son.

My son.

“What? How? On the night when we died, you were still only pregnant! The baby…”

She held up a finger. “On the night when
you
died. I didn’t.”

“But I saw Sam run after you with his gun. I heard shots and screams. He killed you!”

“No. You saved me, Dan, just like God always said you would. The shots were from the police, not from Sam. They turned up just before he charged out of the house after me, and they didn’t mess around as soon as they saw what he was intending to do. They didn’t even have time to tell him to put down his weapon… but if you hadn’t delayed him for those few vital seconds back in the hallway, he would have got me first, no question. The screams were mine, sure; but after all that had just happened, are you really surprised?”

“So you weren’t killed?”

“Not even wounded, not physically.” She went very quiet. “But it took me forever to get over losing you, Dan.”

I felt numb. “How many years did you… outlive me by?”

“Thirty-four. Long enough to raise Jonathan and see him join the Army, just like his father. You would have been so proud of him. He was a good lad.”

“But if I died thirty-four years before you did, how come you got to Heaven so far ahead of me? I mean, I know that you always found it easier to get on with God than I did, but was I really stuck in Purgatory for so long? Long enough for Jonathan to have lived his entire life, if he’s here already too?”

She ruffled my hair. “It messes with your head, doesn’t it? You’ve got to stop thinking like a human now that you’re an angel. Time doesn’t really mean the same thing anymore once you’re dead. You remember what it was like reliving your Earth life just before Purgatory began, the way different parts of it sped up and slowed down? Well, if you extrapolate that...”

“Let’s not,” I groaned. “If what you’re saying is true, there’ll be plenty of time for metaphysics and headaches later. Right now, I’m just pleased that I’m back with you again.”