A swell of black rage swept over Jamal. He blinked. “You will die, for that, my friend.”
More breathing in the earpiece.
“Forgive me . . . I am anxious.”
Abdullah had finally said what he had always felt, from the first day Jamal had approached the Brotherhood to give him logistical control over their plans in Venezuela. He had not come from their circles and they had questioned not only his loyalty, but his usefulness. It had taken him three months to gain their confidence and persuade them that his involvement was critical to the success of the plan. It
wasn't
critical, of courseâAbdullah would have pulled it off without him. But they knew as well as he that Jamal knew too much and was too powerful to ignore. And in all reality, Jamal had altered the plan to meet his objectives. As such it was a better plan. Infinitely better.
“Please forgive me.” Abdullah's voice was raspy over the line.
Jamal abruptly cut the connection.
For a few seconds he sat there, silent under the significance of what they had accomplished. A wave of heat washed through his chest. He peeled off his headset and put his face into his hands.
A mixture of relief and hatred rolled through his mind. But really it was more like sorrow, wasn't it? Deep, bitter sorrow. The emotions surprised him, and they were joined by another: fear.
Fear for allowing such emotion. He began to shake.
Jamal lowered his head and suddenly he was sobbing. He sat alone in his dungeon, trembling like a leaf and crying like a baby.
Wednesday
SHERRY'S EYES slammed open and she bolted up, her chest thumping loudly in the still morning. The sheets about her lay soaked with sweat.
For a few endless seconds the world seemed to have frozen and she wasn't sure how to make things move again. Half of her mind was still back there, in the jungle, where she'd just died.
“Marisa!”
Sherry threw the linens from her legs and swung to the floor.
“Marisa!”
The apartment echoed vacant. Marisa had already left for the university. The analog clock by her bed read 8:15, but it felt like midnight, and in all honesty, Sherry wasn't positive she was actually awake yet.
Panic swarmed around her mind. She'd come face to face with . . . what? What had she just seen?
“Dear God . . .” The prayer sounded like a groan. She ran for the kitchen and threw water on her face. “Oh, God . . .”
She had been back in the box. After eight years of nightmares, she had actually gone back. And her fingers trembled with the stunning reality of it.
Helen
.
Sherry jerked up and caught her breath. Yes, of course! She had to talk to Helen!
She paced the kitchen. “Okay . . . Okay, slow down.” She gripped her trembling fingers into fists and breathed deliberately. “You're awake. This is not a dream. It's morning.” No, this wasn't a dream, but neither was what she had just seen. Not a dream. She wasn't sure what it was, but it was real. As real as anything she had ever experienced. As real as the box.
Sherry ran for her bedroom and pulled on a pair of jeans. Helen would know, wouldn't she? She'd had visions.
Dear God, what are you doing to me?
Only when she pulled her Mustang into that old familiar driveway in front of Helen's two-story home did she think of calling first.
She walked to the front door and rang the bell.
No one answered. She rang again. Sherry was about to pound when the door swung open. Helen stood leaning on a cane, yellow dress swaying at her knees.
“Well, well, speak of the devil,” Helen said.
“Hello, Grandma.”
“You've finally decided to come.”
Sherry smiled, suddenly off balance. “I'm sorry. I know it's been a while. Butâ”
“Nonsense. Timing is everything.”
Sherry blinked. “I have to talk to you.”
“Of course you do. Come, come.” She shuffled back and Sherry entered. The house smelled of gardenias and the white roses Helen claimed came from Bosnia.
Sherry followed the older woman into the living room. Helen had taken her in and loved her like a daughter. But she hadn't been ready for love at first.
“Tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“Do you know why I frighten you at times, Tanya?”
“Frighten me? You don't frighten me.” Sherry sat and watched Helen settle into her overstuffed rocker. “And it's Sherry, remember? It was hard enough changing my name once; I have no intention of doing it again.”
“Yes. Sherry. Forgive me.” Helen picked up her own glass of iced tea and sipped. She set it down and looked into Sherry's eyes. A knot rose slowly up her throat. It was like that with Helen. She hadn't even said what she'd come to say, and already Sherry was feeling the significance of her presence.
“Let's not kid each other. I do frighten you at times. But then if I were in your place, I might be frightened as well.”
“What place is that?”
“You're running. I ran once, you know. When I was about your age. It was a terrifying experience.”
“I don't think that I'm running. I may not be as spiritual as you, Grandma, but I love God and I understand that he has his ways.”
“No, you're running,” Helen said. “You've been running ever since your mother and father died. But now something has happened and you're thinking twice about running.”
Sherry looked at her. It was like speaking to a mirrorâthere was no fooling the woman. She smiled, suddenly unsure of what to say.
“I've been waiting for you,” Helen said. “It's not often that God gives us visions, and when he does, they mean something.”
“You know about my dream?” Sherry asked, surprised.
“So you
have
had a vision.”
Sherry sat forward, excited now. “I always dream. I guess you'd call them nightmares. But now in the last two nightsâ”
“Tell me your vision,” Helen said.
Sherry blinked. “Tell you what I saw?”
“Yes, dear. Tell me. I've been waiting a long time for this momentâI really don't want to wait any longer. You've been chosen for this and I've been chosen to hear this. So please, tell me.”
A long time for this moment? Sherry looked away and settled in her chair, seeing in her mind's eye the vision as if it had just happened. A tremor took to her bones and she closed her eyes.
“I fell asleep, but then I was wide awake, in another world as bright as day. Exactly like what happened in the box. The first vision I had was two nights ago. I saw Shannon . . .”
“So he's alive.”
“No. I don't think so. That's not why I came. I came about the second vision. The one last night.”
She thought very briefly about the search she and Marisa had made for Shannon yesterday. Marisa had identified the International Liaison for Missing Persons as their starting point for finding records on the Richtersons' deaths. The agency had sent them on a goose chase that had ended three hours later, on the phone with a public relations officer named Sally Blitchner. Sherry learned for the first time that, yes, there was a record of the Richtersons in Venezuela. Then she gave her a number for a man in Denmark.
The man had a heavy accent. Yes, of course he knew the Richtersons, he'd announced over the line. After all, he
was
a Richterson. The eighty-year-old man claimed his nephew had gone to the States twenty years earlier with his wife and son, Shannon. Then he'd decided that America was no longer a free country and he'd gone into the jungles of Venezuela, to grow coffee. Yes, that had been tragic, hadn't it? Should never have gone in the first place, the man said. And no, he had not heard of any living relative. They had all died. There were no survivors.
The words settled in her mind with welcomed finality.
There were no survivors
. So. Shannon hadn't survived. She'd known that all along and yet her bubble of hope had popped and her heart had dropped to her gut.
“Sherry . . .”
Sherry opened her eyes to see Helen resting, her head leaned back, eyes staring at the ceiling. Sherry took a deep breath and let the vision flood her mind.
“It was what happened last night that . . . scared me. It's not like real sleepâ even though I'm asleep. I'm on a long white beach between the towering trees and the ocean's blue waters.” She felt the pressure of panic rise through her throat at the vivid image, and she closed her eyes. “It's just me, standing on this long wide white beach.”
She stopped.
“Please go on,” Helen encouraged.
“I can actually feel the sand with my hands.” Sherry lifted her right hand and rubbed her fingers together. “I could swear I was really there, smelling the salty breeze, hearing sea gulls cry overhead and the waves splashing every few seconds. It was incredible. And then I see this man walking toward me, over the water.
On
the water, like he was Jesus in that one story. Only I know he's not Jesus because he's dressed in black, with jet-black hair to his shoulders. And his eyes glow red.” Sherry breathed deliberately now, feeling her pulse build momentum.
“I run behind a wide-leaf palm, shaking. I know that I'm shaking because I'm gripping the palm and its leaves are moving and I'm afraid the man might see the tree on the beach. Of course, that's ridiculous because all the trees are swaying in the breeze.”
Helen remained speechless, and Sherry continued, “So, I watch the man walk right onto the beach, about fifty meters from my tree, and he begins to dig a hole in the sand with his hands, like a dog burying a bone. I watch him throwing that sand between his legs, wondering why a man who could walk on water would dig like that. And then I hear children laughing, and I think,
Yes, that's how children would dig a hole
. But as soon as I think it, real children, not just their laughter, are running onto the beach. I can't even tell you where they come from, but they're suddenly everywhereâand then adults too, thousands of them crowding the white sand, tossing balls, talking, laughing.
“But the man's still there, in the middle of all these people, digging that hole. They don't see him. And if he sees them, he doesn't show any sign of it. Then the man drops an object, like a coconut, into the hole; covers it with sand; and walks off the beach, onto the water, and over the horizon.”
She continued quickly, aware that her heart now pounded steadily in her ears.
“At first nothing else happens. The people are just out there running over the sand, right over that spot. But then suddenly a plant pokes through the sand. I can actually see it grow. It just grows and the people are walking around it as if this is some everyday occurrence. They're walking around it so I know they must see the plant, or else they would step on it, right?”
Sherry paused, not really expecting Helen to answer.
Sherry felt her lips twitch and it occurred to her that most people sitting in Helen's chair would be narrowing their diagnosis to schizophrenia about now.
Her fingers were trembling and she closed them. “It grows like a mushroom. A giant mushroom that keeps growing. And as it grows, I sink to my knees. I remember that because a sharp shell dug into my right knee. The mushroom towers over the whole beach, like a giant umbrella blocking the sun.”
Sherry swallowed.
“Then the rain falls. Large drops of flaming liquid, like an acid that smokes wherever it lands, pouring down in torrents from the mushroom above us.” Her voice was wavering a bit. She folded her hands and struggled to sound sane.
“The drops . . . melt . . . they melt everything they touch. People are trying to leave the beach in a panic, but they can't. They just . . . they just run around in circles being pelted by these large dropsâacid drops that melt their flesh. It's the most horrible sight. You know, I'm yelling at the people to leave the beach, but I don't think they can hear me. They just run through the rain and then fall in a heap of bones.”
Sherry closed her eyes.
“Then I see that the acid is on my skin . . .”
Her throat seized for a few seconds.
“I begin to scream . . .”
“And that's the end?” Helen asked.
“And then I hear a voice echo around me.
Find him
.” Sherry swallowed at the lump in her throat. “That's what I think I heard.
Find him
.”
They sat in silence for a few seconds, when Sherry heard a creaking. She opened her eyes to see Helen rise slowly to her feet and hobble to the window.
Helen looked out for some time. When she finally spoke, it was without turning.
“You know, Sherry, I look out of this window often and I see an ordinary world.” Sherry followed her gaze. “Ordinary trees, ordinary grass, ordinary blue sky, sometimes snow, coming and going, hardly changing from one year to the next. And yet, even though most never see it, those of us with any sense know that an extraordinary force began all of this. We know that even now that same force fills the space we can't see. But sometimes, once in a great while, an ordinary person is allowed to see that extraordinary force.”
Helen turned to her now, smiling. “I'm one of those people, Sherry. I have seen beyond. And now I know that you have as well.”
Sherry sat up. “I'm not a prophet.”
“Surprising, isn't it? Neither was Rahab, in the Old Testament. In fact, she was a prostituteâchosen by God to save the Israeli spies. Or what about the donkey who spoke to Balaam? We can't always understand why God chooses the vessels he chooses. God knows it makes no sense to me. But when he does choose a vessel, we'd better listen to the message. He wants you to go back, dear.”
“Go back?” Sherry shook her head. “To Venezuela?”
Helen nodded.
“I can't go back!” Sherry said. “I don't want to be a vessel. I don't want to have these visions or whatever they are. I'm not even sure I
believe
in visions!”