This Present Darkness (62 page)

HANK FINISHED HIS
whole story and, with Marshall’s prodding, had also put away most of his dinner. Marshall began to ask questions, which Hank answered from his knowledge of the Scriptures.

“So,” Marshall asked and mused at the same time, “when the Gospels talk about Jesus and His disciples casting out unclean spirits, that’s what they were really doing?”

“That’s what they were doing,” Hank answered.

Marshall leaned back against the bars and kept right on thinking.
“That would sure explain a lot of things. But what about Sandy? Do you suppose that she—she’s …?”

“I don’t know for sure, but it could be.”

“What I talked to yesterday … that wasn’t her. She was just crazy; you wouldn’t have believed it.” He caught himself. “Aw, then again, you probably would.”

Hank was excited. “But don’t you see what’s happened? It’s a miracle of God, Marshall. All along, you were looking into all this racketeering and intrigue, and wondering how these things could be happening so smoothly and so forcefully, especially in the individual lives of so many people. Well, now you have your ‘how.’ And now that you’ve told me what you’ve found out and all that you’ve been through, I have my ‘why.’ All this time I’ve been encountering demonic powers in this town, but I never really knew just what they were up to. Now I know. It has to be the Lord who brought us together.”

Marshall gave Hank a wry smile. “So where do we go from here, Preacher? They’ve locked us in, they haven’t allowed us any communication with our families, friends, lawyers, or anyone. I have a feeling that our constitutional rights aren’t going to have much to do with it at this juncture.”

Now Hank leaned back against the cold concrete wall and thought about it. “That part only God knows. But I have a very strong feeling that He got us into this, and that He also has a plan for getting us out.”

“If we must talk about strong feelings,” Marshall countered, “I have some pretty strong feelings that they just want us out of the way while they finish once and for all what they’ve started. It’s going to be interesting to see what’s left of the town, our jobs, our homes, our families, and everything else we treasured once we get out of here.
If
we get out of here.”

“Well, have faith. God’s in control here.”

“Yehhh, I just hope He hasn’t dropped the ball.”

AS THE TWO
women sat there in the straw, in the dark, Bernice tried to explain everything to Susan: her battered face, her cracked rib, what she and Marshall had been through, and the death of Kevin Weed.

Susan digested it all for a moment, and then said, “It’s Kaseph’s
way. It’s the Society’s way. I should have known better than to have brought Kevin into it.”

“Don’t—don’t blame yourself. All of us are in this thing whether we really want to be or not.”

Susan forced herself to be unemotional and calculating. “You’re right … at least for now. Someday soon I’ll sit down and really think about it, and I’ll weep over that man.” She stood up. “But right now there’s too much to do and too little time. Do you think you can walk?”

“No, but that hasn’t stopped me so far.”

“My car is rented, and I have too many important materials in it to leave it sitting out there. Come on.”

With careful and very quiet, well-picked steps, Susan and Bernice made their way to the big barn door. It was very quiet out there.

“Want to go for it?” Susan asked.

“Sure,” said Bernice, “let’s do it.”

They started back across the expansive field toward the road where Susan had left her car, using one tree that jutted up against the starry sky as their heading. As they crossed the field again, Bernice noted how much shorter the trip seemed now that she was not fleeing for her life.

Susan led the way to where her car was parked. She had pulled it off the road a little way and nestled it in among some trees. She began fumbling in her pocket for the keys.

“Susan!” said a voice from the woods.

The two of them froze.

“Susan Jacobson?” came the voice again.

Susan whispered excitedly. “I don’t believe it!”

Bernice answered, “I don’t believe it either!”

“Kevin?”

Some bushes began to move and swish, and then a man stepped out of the woods. There was no mistaking that lanky frame and that lazy walk.

“Kevin Weed?” Bernice had to ask again.

“Bernice Krueger!” said Kevin. “You made it. Aw, that’s great!”

After a short moment of speechless amazement and surprise, the embraces came automatically.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Susan.

They piled into her car and put some miles between themselves
and Baker.

“I got a motel room in Orting, up north of Windsor,” said Susan. “We can go there.”

It was okay with Bernice and Kevin.

Bernice said very happily, “Kevin, you’ve just made a liar out of me! I thought for sure you were dead.”

“I’m alive for now,” Kevin said, not sounding too sure about anything.

“But your truck went into the river!”

“Yeah, I know. Some jerk stole it and crashed it. Somebody was trying to kill me.”

He realized he didn’t make much sense, so he started over. “Hey, I was on my way to meet you at the bridge like you said. I stopped at The Evergreen to have a few, and I bet some guy slipped me a mickey—you know, put something in my beer. I mean, I got
stoned.

“I was driving down the road to meet up with you, and I was really spacing out, so I pulled over at Tucker’s Burgers to throw up or get a drink of water or go to the bathroom or something. I fell asleep in the men’s room, man, and I must have slept there all night. I woke up this morning and went outside and my truck was gone. I didn’t know what happened to it until I read about it in the paper. They must still be searching the river for my body.”

“It’s obvious Kaseph and his Network have us all marked,” said Susan, “but … I think somebody’s looking out for us. Kevin, something very similar happened to me: I ran away from Kaseph’s ranch on foot, and the only reason I got away was because all the security personnel went chasing somebody else who was trying to get away in one of the big moving vans. Now who in their right mind would try that, and at just that precise moment?”

Bernice added, “And I still haven’t figured out who in the world that Betsy was.”

Susan had been formulating her theory for days. “I think we’d better start thinking about God.”

“
God?
”

“And angels,” Susan added. She quickly recounted the details of her escape, and concluded, “Listen, somebody came into that room. I know it.”

Kevin piped up, “Hey, like maybe it was an angel that stole my truck.”

And then Bernice recalled, “You know, there was something about Betsy. It made me just cry. I’ve never run into anything like that before.”

Susan touched her hand. “Well, it looks like we’re all running into
something
, so whatever we do we’d better pay attention.”

The car continued to speed along back roads, taking a slightly roundabout route toward the little resort town of Orting.

LIKE TWO COMRADES-IN-ARMS,
Marshall and Hank were beginning to feel they had known each other all their lives.

“I like your kind of faith,” Marshall said. “It’s no wonder they’ve tried so hard to get you out of that church.” He chuckled a little. “Boy, you must feel like the Alamo! You’re the only thing standing between the Devil and the rest of the town.”

Hank smiled weakly. “I’m not much, believe me. But I’m not the only one. There are saints out there, Marshall, people praying for us. Sooner or later something’s going to break. God won’t let Satan have this town that easy!”

Marshall pointed his finger at Hank, even shook it a little. “See there? I like that kind of faith. Good and straight, laid right on the line.” He shook his head. “Sheesh! How long has it been since I’ve heard it come across like that?”

Hank seasoned his words with salt, but he knew the time had come to say it. “Well, Marshall, since we’re talking so straight here, right on the line, what do you say we talk about you? You know, there could be some more reasons God put us in this cell together.”

Marshall was not defensive at all, but smiling and ready to listen. “What are we going to do, talk about the fate of my eternal soul?”

Hank smiled back. “That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about.”

They talked about sin, that aggravating and destructive tendency of man to stray from God and choose his own way, always to his own hurt. That brought them around to Marshall’s family again, and how so many attitudes and actions were the direct result of that basic, human self-will and rebellion against God.

Marshall shook his head as he saw things in this light. “Hey, our
family never did know God. We only went through the motions. No wonder Sandy wouldn’t buy it!”

Then Hank talked about Jesus, and showed Marshall that this Man whose name was so casually thrown around and even trampled upon in the world was far more than just a religious symbol, a lofty untouchable personality in a stained-glass window. He was the very real, very alive, very personal Son of God, and He could be the personal Lord and Savior of anyone who asked Him to be.

“I never thought I’d be lying here listening to this,” Marshall said suddenly. “You’re really hitting me where it hurts, you know that?”

“Well,” said Hank, “why do you suppose that is? Where’s the pain coming from?”

Marshall took a deep breath as he took the time to think. “I guess from knowing that you’re right, which means I’ve been wrong a long, long time.”

“Jesus loves you anyway. He knows that’s your problem, and that’s what He died for.”

“Yeah … right!”

THE MOTEL IN
Orting was nice, quaint, homey, just like the rest of this town situated along the Judd River on the border of the national forest. It was a stopping place for sportsmen, built and decorated in a pleasing hunt-and-fish, hike-in-the-woods motif.

Susan wanted no trouble or attention, so she paid for two more occupants for the room that night. They went into the room and pulled the shades.

They all made a stop in the bathroom, but Bernice remained just a little longer, carefully rewrapping her ribs and then washing her face. She looked herself over in the mirror and touched her bruises very gingerly, whistling at the sight. It could only get better from here.

In the meantime, Susan had flopped her big suitcase on the bed and opened it up. When Bernice finally came out, Susan took a small book from the suitcase and handed it to her.

“This is where it started,” she said. “It’s your sister’s diary.”

Bernice didn’t know what to say. A diamond would not have been a greater treasure. She could only look down at the little blue diary in her hands, a last surviving link with her dead sister, and struggle to believe it was really there. “Where … how did you get this?”

“Juleen Langstrat made sure no one ever saw it. She had it stolen from Pat’s room and she gave it to Kaseph, from whom I stole it. I became Kaseph’s girl, you know; his Maidservant, he called it. I had
regular access to him all the time, and he trusted me. I came across the diary one day while I was straightening up his office, and I recognized it right away because I used to watch Pat write in it almost every night in our dorm room. I sneaked it out, read it, and it woke me up. I used to think Alexander Kaseph was … well, the Messiah, the answer for all mankind, a true prophet of peace and universal brotherhood …”

Susan made a face like she was getting sick. “Oh, he filled my mind with all that kind of talk, but somewhere deep inside I always had my doubts. That little book right there told me to listen to the doubts and not to him.”

Bernice thumbed through the pages of the diary. It went back a few years, and seemed very detailed.

Susan continued, “You may not want to read it just now. When I read that diary … well, it made me sick for days.”