Foretold (5 page)

Pippin was blushing too and ready to burst. She’d seen Matty’s phantom! She’d walked with it and danced for it, told it foolish things and even tried to … 
Oh
.

“What? Cath, what is it?” Matty was watching her that close, he saw her flinch at the memory.

“If it came for me,” she asked, getting mad all over again,
“then why, might I ask, did it pull away when I tried to kiss it?”

He lit up like a light. “You tried to kiss it?”

Her cheeks got hot. Now, why had she gone and admitted that?

“Fool girl,” Matty teased. “You can’t kiss a phantom. There’s nothing there to kiss.”

Of course there wasn’t, she thought, and hadn’t she known he looked different? The green gone from his eyes—oh, but it was back now, bright and tart as apples—and he hadn’t once touched her, not her elbow or her wild hair or anything, and he’d even dodged that bag of flour instead of catching it.

“But if you’re brave enough to try again,” he said, daring her, “I promise you I’m real now.”

Brave enough? Matty had sent his phantom out for her! She was brave enough for anything. “I would but you’re too tall,” she told him. “You’ll have to lean.”

“I can do better than that,” he said, and he took her around her waist and lifted her to him, and there were his lips, and he’d told true: he was real. And he was warm, and electric, and good. He was Matty.

And he was her one true person, settled and sure, for life.

Tonight, the lodge will be shaken off its foundation by the power of our prayers. Tonight, it will glow with our devotion and burn with the strength of our love. Tonight, the souls of the faithful will rise from our bodies and enter the kingdom of heaven. We will be free from illness, from death, from the suffering that will befall the billions of unbelievers on this sad, sorry earth when they’re left behind. Tonight, everything I’ve been waiting for my entire life will come to pass.

The air in the lodge wavers before my eyes, thrumming in time to the rhythm of the hymns. Around me, the righteous sit with their families, hands clasped together, faces turned toward the rafters. Others stand, swaying to the beat of the
music that’s been playing ceaselessly since sunset. At least two of my sisters lie prostrate on the ground, overcome by the spirit. Earlier, they spoke with the voice of angels, but now they’re spent. I’m sorry for them, sorry they’ll be asleep and miss feeling the moment when we’re all swept away into the firmament, to glow forever among the ranks of the blessed.

“Any hour, any minute, any moment,” my father croaks into the megaphone. “Judgment will come.” His voice is beginning to fail him at last. In sixteen years, I’ve never known my father to lose his voice, and he’s preached for longer than this many times. I wonder if it’s a sign. Perhaps his voice will go first, and then his soul. “And then … we will be vin … dicated.”

He pauses, trying to summon enough moisture in his mouth to continue. He’s been fasting all day—the whole family has, since hunger brings clarity to our righteous purpose. It burns within me now, shining like a spotlight to illuminate my father and the faithful, dimming at the edges of my vision so as not to distract me from my focus.

I look around the room, shining this supernatural focus on the faces of each of the faithful, one by one. I know them all so well. I love them all and am grateful they’re joining us in the kingdom of heaven. There is Bethany, who cared for me in the nursery. There’s Sam, who always smiles at me in prayer circles, and little Erin, who never regained her sight after the illness that swept through the compound when she was a baby. I look at them all in turn, old and young, sick and well, happy, sad, anxious, joyful. Their faces shimmer with sweat, their hair hangs in wet snakes on their brows or frizzes up around them like the halos they’ll soon wear. Tonight, they’ll all be saved, and I’m so ecstatic with it I could burst. Spirit rises within me and I feel the need to cry out. I hold up my arms and my father gestures to me from across the stage.
Of all his children, he knows I am the most holy, the most committed to his cause.

“Come here, Bright.” His voice, ragged as it is, envelops me like a hug, carries me aloft to his side. “You have something to say?”

The words pour from my mouth into the microphone, but they’re not coming from me. They’re coming through me, filling my lungs and rushing forth by the mercy of a might not my own. My tongue is not equipped to shape the language of the angels and it comes out gibberish, but the meaning is clear in my mind:

“It’s coming. Can you feel it? Can you feel it coming? Judgment, coming, sweeping over this earth. We few, we here, we present now, we’re the only ones who have seen the light. Come to us now, and you will be saved. Join us, and you will be spared. This is the last day of Last Days, this is the night that will never give way to a day. The hour is near. The time is now. Declare your faith and live forever among the blessed!”

Hands are there to catch me as I fall, and the spotlight narrows, blackness closing in. Is it time? Is it now? Were those the last words I’ll ever speak? My limbs are shaking as the spirit gushes through me. I try to fight it, but it’s like fighting the current of a river.

No! I wanted to be awake. I wanted to be awake to witness the end.

The spotlight vanishes and I’m plunged into black.…

My skull feels like it’s been cracked with a hammer. I reach my hand to my head and try to sit, but the pounding increases as I change position. A wan, uncertain light comes from gaps in the wooden walls, and the slits beneath the eaves. I’m still on the floor of the lodge.

I’m still here. On earth. Alive.

The hammer moves down from my head, slams into my stomach with enough force to shatter my spine. I retch, hunched over, but there’s nothing to bring up, not even bile.

I’m still here.
I’m still here
. This can’t be happening.

I lift my head again and look around. There are a few other unconscious people scattered about the floor of the lodge, but the building is otherwise empty. The others must have gone to heaven, body and soul. And left me behind.

With effort, I push to my feet and stagger toward the door of the lodge, hands pressed to my head to reduce the pain of each jarring step. Outside, everything is white with mist. It must be dawn, if there’s still a dawn. I shuffle through the dust toward the creek—or where the creek used to be. Who knows anymore? My throat is desert dry. If the water hasn’t turned to blood, I’ll drink. I’ll drink, then figure out what to do next.

I wasn’t supposed to be here, to watch the world end. I was supposed to be saved. My father promised we’d all go to heaven together.

What did I do wrong?

The fog seems to part for her feet as she walks toward the creek, one hand pressed to her temple, the other held out as if for balance. She’s beautiful, even with her tangled hair and dirty face and chapped lips. Beautiful, beautiful Bright. I never let myself think about it before. After all, we’d be gone from this earth long before it would have a chance to matter.

It would be easy to be angry. Erin’s furious. But I’m not. Everyone makes mistakes. I walk toward Bright through the fog and she looks up at the sound of my shoes on the gravel.

“Sam!” she cries, and takes a few halting steps in my direction. “You’re still here, too.” She clutches at my elbows, putting more weight on them than I expected. I stand firm to give her support. “I’m so sorry, Sam. This wasn’t supposed to happen. We were all supposed to go to heaven together.” Her beautiful eyes are welling with tears, and they leave trails of color on her dusty cheeks as they spill down onto her chapped lips. She’s dehydrated—she must be after her fast, and yet she still weeps tears she can’t afford. For us.

“Don’t cry, Bright,” I say, hardly believing the words coming from my mouth. How can I offer comfort to Bright Child? She’s the daughter of the prophet. Her very purpose on this earth is to provide us with the comfort of his prophecies.

Even if they’re no help to us now.

“You’re right.” She sniffles and then forces a smile. “Is there anyone left other than you and me and the people sleeping in the lodge?”

“Where?”

“Anywhere.” She shrugs. “We have to round them up, protect them. Things are going to get pretty bad out there, before the end.”

“They’re already bad,” I reply. There’s violence like I’ve never before seen in the compound—stuff that Jeremy Bright would never have allowed before. Everyone is blaming everyone else, everyone looking for the root sin that kept us earthbound.

“Are they?” She makes a little choking sound in her throat. “Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you’re here with me, that you didn’t go to heaven with the others!”

I step back from her, which is when she reaches out and captures both my hands with her own. Her skin is dry as parchment but warm—warmer than any hands I’ve ever held. Her touch seems to burn right through my flesh. She’s
held my hand before—in prayer circles, during the greeting at worship, but this is different.

“I don’t know why we’re still here,” she says, and there are tears choking her voice. “But there must be a reason. My faith is strong. Is yours?”

“I—” I don’t know what to think anymore, not with Bright Child hanging on to me like I might dissolve and her eyes dancing with those strange lights and the hitch in her voice that makes it sound like she’s pleading—with
me
.

“Maybe we’re here to minister to those who are left,” she says. “Are there very many? Anyone from your family? Maybe we remain to help guide them through the coming tribulation and onto the path to redemption before the very end of days.” She perks up a little. “That must be it. There’s still a place for us in heaven. We’ll be reunited with our families again. We just have to make it through the end of the world.”

I blink and do my best to keep my mouth shut as I realize what she’s saying. What she believes.

“And I know we can do it.” Her voice has taken on that tone, that special Child tone that only the prophet and his family know how to use. The one that makes my heart pound and my breath catch. But none of the others affect me as much as Bright, and never before as much as when she interlaces our fingers and adds, “Together.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

She straightens, and she hasn’t had a drop of water, but she looks alive again. She has a purpose. That’s Bright. “We should gather up the survivors. There are some in the lodge. Do you know where the others are?”

I do, but in the split second before the words cross my lips, I reel them back and recast them. “Yes. But I was running away from them when I found you.”

“Why?”

I don’t know if I can lie to her, no matter how much I want to. “They’ve changed, Bright. They’re angry … dangerous.”

She takes it all in, and her lip trembles until she clamps her mouth together to stop it. I caused that. I hurt her.

But they would hurt her more.

“My father’s prophecy warned of the changes that would come at the end of days. I never thought it would start so soon.”

My head bobs in agreement. I’ve heard Jeremy Child’s promises for years. War: not just the standard fight of country against country that’s been going on since the beginning of time, but war within nations, within families. People’s hearts would grow hard and hating, and they’d become savages and turn upon their own. Bright has a point. What I saw this morning definitely looked like the end of the world.

Bright closes her eyes and goes still, so still the fog starts curling in to reclaim her, but then she opens them again and stares at me. Her gaze is as gray as the mist. “Okay, then,” she says. “We have to do our best to prevent anything worse. Come with me.”

She tugs on my hand, and seconds later, we’re splashing across the creek and toward the woods. I look behind us at the water and beyond that, the compound. The mist is beginning to clear and I can just barely make out the outline of the buildings. They’re still and silent, for now.

There’s no turning back.

My father’s prophecies were quite clear: before the end of days, we chosen few would be lifted into heaven and spared the pain and suffering the rest of humanity would experience as the world was consumed. He wasn’t the only one who
thought that, of course, but his was the only path that was right. He was the only one who knew the hour of our salvation, his followers the only ones who’d be included.

The apocalypse would never touch us. We spent a lot of time talking about what we’d be missing so we’d better be able to communicate to our recruits the dangers they’d face if they didn’t join us. The dangers that face us now—me and Sam, and anyone else left earthbound. Wars, plagues, famines, and other terrors beyond our reckoning. Demons with human faces. Hell on earth.

I used to pity the nonbelievers. They were foolish, and ignorant, and they deserved whatever they’d get when the end times came. But now, as I walk with Sam through a silent forest on the face of our doomed world, I wonder at my own sense of superiority. After all, as hard as my father tried for all those years, there were people his message couldn’t reach. Perhaps, if they’d heard him, they would have joined us. And there are babies and children, too. They don’t all deserve to suffer—and neither do Sam and I. But we will suffer, here on this earth, and I can mope about it, or I can mobilize and prove that I am equal to the task set before me—that of shepherding the innocent and the righteous who’ve been left here with me. People like Sam.