BP 253
As I mentioned several weeks ago, I will be sharing an excerpt from each of my fiction books in my Jack Sutherington series over this five-week period. Today’s excerpt comes from the third book which is entitled Riding with the King. In this excerpt, we enter the scene where Emily, a girl Jack secretly loves, is abruptly leaving the Academy for a mysterious reason that no one understands but her. As Jack runs out into the darkness in front of the school to look for Emily, he observes an SUV racing toward two men he had just recently met . . .
**
At 1:03 AM, Emily wheels her two suitcases to the edge of the road that runs in front of the imposing castle and looks for her ride. Three old streetlights provide minimal illumination to the dark campus driveway.
At 1:04, a nondescript black SUV occupied by two large men rolls up alongside the vehicle belonging to the DaFoe brothers.
At 1:05:00, Clyde and Donnie emerge from the double doors beneath the portico and amble into the dark night. Clyde’s grey truck is parked a block away from campus.
At 1:05:10, Jack bursts around the side of the Citadel nearest the lake and sprints toward the road in pursuit of Emily.
The first thing Jack sees as he approaches the campus drive that runs between the Citadel and the parking lot are two familiar figures. One is short and one is tall. The taller figure is wearing a trench coat and walks in an awkward manner that looks more like he is stomping. Even from forty feet away, he hears the bigger man say, “Shut up, Donnie!”
Jack is beginning to slow down as he scans the dark driveway for some sign of Emily. As he looks up and down the road, he hears tires squeal loudly and a powerful engine accelerate. A block away, a dark vehicle begins speeding toward Donnie and Clyde.
Sensing the evil intent of the SUV that is briefly illuminated by a distant streetlight, Jack immediately breaks into a dead run and begins yelling at the two men. He is within twenty feet of the cousins when glaring headlights–like the eyes of an angry demon–pierce the darkness and blind the two men.
Jack knows the oncoming vehicle is not going to stop. Its intent is to run down the two cousins. Jack does not hesitate. He races toward the speeding vehicle and the men who literally look like the figurative deer in the headlights. At the last second, he hurtles his body toward the nearest man. He hits him hard, just like he would tackle a linebacker returning an intercepted pass he had thrown behind his receiver. He hears an ugly thud and feels something unyielding strike his leg. Then he is in the air, spinning through the darkness.
**
Emily stares out the backseat window of the car into the bleakness of the night. She has made it clear to the driver that she is not in any mood to talk. As she watches the intermittent waterfalls of light pour down from the streetlights and pool on the road, she tries not to think because there is no safe place to go in her brain.
Her eyes refocus, and she sees a dreary image of herself reflected in the window. She recognizes the face but does not know who it is. The light in the young woman’s eyes has gone out.
Who am I? she cries out in her head.
Her anger, like a terminal cancer, has continued to grow inside of her in recent days, corrupting her heart. She is angry at Nancy Greenlay. She is angry at Embee. She is angry at men as a corporate entity.
More importantly, her anger reached a crucial tipping point when she was hanging out with some young women after church the previous Sunday. One of them was watching a video on her phone and made some off- handed comment about gay people and how God hated them and would surely send them to hell along with everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Emily did not say a word in remonstrance, but her heart burned, and something snapped inside her. She was so tired of feeling judged by people. Only hours later, she made up her mind to leave the academy for good—or for bad.
Emily closes her eyes and shuts out the night.
She cannot stay out of her brain completely. She shakes her head as if to clear it of cobwebs. This version of me doesn’t work, she thinks bitterly. I tried, and I can’t be this Emily. I can’t be the good Christian girl. I feel so different from everyone around me. I don’t fit in at the academy or in my family. I’m different than all of them. I’m queer. I have to be who I was born to be. I have to go where I belong, where I’m welcomed with open arms, where I fit.
Emily opens her eyes again and stares out at the desolate world. She thinks she should be crying at this moment, but there are no tears. She feels nothing.
“Goodbye Jack,” she mumbles. “Goodbye mom and dad.” She has a vague, fleeting awareness that she must see these ‘others’ as bad in order to justify her surrender to the ‘other Emily’, but the awareness is quickly whisked from her brain.
As the car hurtles through the darkness, she adds, “Farewell, Jesus. I’m going to miss you.”
The only divorce she fails to acknowledge is the one that has been transacted within her own heart. She has detached from the Emily she has been since birth. No surgical amputation has ever been more severing.
In that moment of farewells, the dogged dissonance finally melts away and she feels free for the first time in years. Since she has now exiled ‘good girl’ Emily with all her pain and bad memories and pathetic weakness to a dungeon so deep inside herself that she is virtually inaccessible, the longstanding tension of being a house divided against itself resolves. There is no more shame. No more need to repent of her sin. She is only the one Emily now that her true self has been expelled.
The cost of this false peace is high. Freedom has been purchased at a great price, at the greatest price: Divorce from God, others and her own heart. The unholy trifecta has been realized.
Like a tarry sludge, a tangible darkness fills the car Emily is riding in. It drives out all the remaining light. The young woman is unaware of it because she is no longer aware of spiritual presences.
The same profound darkness descends over the academy as well. It floats down soundlessly, like a giant shroud falling from the sky. It is not a bright sheet radiating hope and purity. It is as black as the cave where Philip DaFoe’s body lies entombed. Its name is death.
Thirteen students comfortably asleep in their dorm rooms experience nightmares later that night. On the drive home from the meeting of the Grave Reapers, Nancy Greenlay asks her husband to pull over to the side of the road because she is suddenly overcome by a wave of nausea. Dr. Embee Livingstone is rushed to the hospital by her husband, Sonny, for what turns out to be an emergency appendectomy.
The sound of rumbling voices begins to echo through the night outside the world of physical hearing. It is a victory chant. The unearthly chorus is beyond eerie. It is terrifying.
**
The prophetess, Miriam, is kneeling on the living room floor in her small house only blocks from the academy. She is alone–physically, that is. The room is dark except for three candles burning unwaveringly on the coffee table.
Something disturbs the prayers of the elderly woman, and her eyes open wide. She hears the voices. A shiver rolls through her body. She knows why they are chanting.
Minutes pass. The flames of two of the candles bend oddly. Then they die. The woman finally speaks.
“Yes, Lord,” she says quietly, “I hear your voice above all the others. The great battle for your precious one has intensified. And yes, I will pray for the daughter whom you love so deeply–the one living in great darkness; the one guarded by a legion of dark warriors.”
The prophetess closes her eyes again and prays, “Jesus, open her ears to hear your voice so that she might turn back to you and know your love. Arouse her to come to her senses so she might escape the snare of the devil, the dark, defiant one who has taken her prisoner to do his will. But give her endurance because deliverance will not come immediately.”
The woman who is old and weak in body but young and strong in spirit pauses and groans softly. Then she nods her sagacious head with its silver crown and says, “Yes, you have plans for your lost daughter that not even she knows of yet. Send forth your mighty messengers to ensure the fulfillment of these plans, for the enemy is strong and she is so weak.”
Miriam raises her eyes to the ceiling and smiles. “What is impossible for a child of the flesh is possible with you, Lord. Nothing is too hard for you, my dear Jesus.
“Nothing.”
Hell flinches at the prayer of the prophetess and the prince of darkness raises a defiant fist toward heaven.
“Watch and see,” the creature of sin and death growls. “This time, I am a step ahead of you, oh, mighty ruler,” the voice utters, dripping with hatred. “Like a furious lion, I will scatter and devour the pathetic sheep you appear to love so deeply—so inexplicably.
“How sad,” the voice from the darkness mocks. “How very, very sad. Their rejoicing will be turned to mourning and their day will become as the night.”
The flame of the last candle is extinguished, and the room is swallowed by darkness.
**
Thanks for reading this excerpt from book three in the Jack Sutherington series. If you enjoyed it, I invite you to check out the entire series beginning with book one, The Rumbling Beneath. This series is God-honoring, integrates faith and psychology in a manner relevant to real life, and is built on deep character development. Check out my author website at Davidgkirbyauthor.com for more details about all five books.
My face is red with weeping, and on my eyelids is deep darkness . . .” ~ Job 16:16
“The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone” ~ Isaiah 9:2
