The War in Heaven (5 page)

“I’m not sure,” admitted Cordon. “Why do you ask?”

“Those dark angels wanted to know if that man in front of me knew anything about it,” replied Julie. “I think they called him Carson. You know, I never even knew his name. Isn’t that strange? We’d been here for such a long time together, but I didn’t even know what he looked like, all I saw was his feet. We’ve never even spoken. But this one dark angel, he did all the talking. I guess he liked what he heard because he had those little insect things cut away his chains. Then they took him away. I didn’t see him after that. That’s all I know.”

“Very good, Julie,” said Cordon. “I am indeed pleased with you. You have told me what I wanted to know.”

“Are you pleased enough to help me, like you said you would?”

Cordon smiled as he rose to his feet. “Yes, Julie, I am. I shall keep my promise to you. In a few hours I shall dispatch two of my guards to come for you. I will instruct them to be gentle with you. They will release you and take you to the place I have spoken of. So I have said it, so it will be.”

Cordon would waste no more time here. He had learned all he needed to know for the moment. He bolted into the sky on his batwings, amid a cloud of dust, headed for home. Things had gone better than he had thought. Other demons had been here before him, seen what he saw, why had they learned so little from the experience? Because their hatred for these humans was so great that they had failed to gather information from them as he had done. Yes, he would honor the promise he had made to this human. She had greatly assisted him in his investigation, and she would assist him still more. He would question her again in a few days, once she’d had time to digest the
whole experience. When the others around her witnessed her removal, her deliverance from this place, they too might speak of what they had seen. He would return to question them as well.

T
om Carson’s out-of-control world was reeling around him, a jumble of sights and sensations—a nightmare from which he couldn’t awaken. Where was he? His mind was like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle with thousands of pieces caught in a turbulent whirlwind. Eventually the scattered pieces of that jigsaw puzzle, the events of his life, and a horrendous afterlife, began to fit together in a somewhat logical order.

He found himself in a crowded hospital emergency room, his loving wife sitting by his side. He hadn’t really wanted to come here. It had seemed more like a bad case of indigestion than anything else. He’d wanted to continue playing hoops with his sixteen-year-old son Pete. He was down 7-9, but he was catching up. That was until the pain and shortness of breath hit him. He’d had to sit down. It had been his wife, Lois, who insisted that they go to the emergency room, just in case. If only he had realized the seriousness of his condition.

It came upon him abruptly. He felt the awful crushing pain in his chest. This time it couldn’t be confused with a case of indigestion; it was the pain of a second heart attack. His collapse to the floor set off a flurry of activity in the emergency room. Yet for him, the pain lasted only a fraction of a minute. The next thing he knew he was rising to his feet. The pain was gone. Confused, he looked around. A doctor, nurse, and orderly were kneeling over a man lying on the floor—he couldn’t see who the man was. He nearly freaked out as a second orderly rushed straight toward him and passed right through him. Then he realized that the man on the floor was him.

“Wake up, I’ve got to wake up!” he cried. Yet it did no good. This wasn’t a nightmare, it was reality. He turned to his wife, tried to get her to see him, but it was futile. She was looking on in horror at the man on the floor. No one could see the spirits of the dead.

Perhaps they would revive him, and he would slip back into his body. Perhaps he would become just one of the thousands of people who had a near-death, out-of-body experience. But as the minutes passed and they shocked his heart again and again to no avail, it became clear that he would become a different type of statistic.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to call it,” said the exhausted doctor. “He’s gone. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’ve got to keep trying!” screamed Carson. But no one could hear him.

Then he saw the swirling violet vortex forming near the corner of the emergency room. It was more real than everything else around him that now looked dull and faded, as if viewed through a smudged lens. The swirling phantasm was not some sort of projection; it had tremendous depth. It was a corridor that led right into the wall behind it. Not to the outside of the hospital, but into some other place, some place dark and vast. And there was something else, something that went beyond the fear-inspiring visual impression of it all. There was a sensation that found its origins in the depths of his primal soul. If there was a physical manifestation of evil, he was looking at it.

He backed away, yet it was pulling him toward it. It was like some other form of gravity, and it was growing more powerful by the minute. He tried to run, but he felt so weak—this new force was swiftly overcoming the fading gravity of the world.

“Help me! For God’s sake, someone help me!” he screamed.

No one responded. How could anyone in the emergency room help him? This horrible apparition was not part of their world. It was now part of his.

He reached for something to grab onto, to anchor himself. He reached for a support column that ran from the floor to the ceiling, but his hands passed through nothing but empty air. He slipped backward, toward the dark violet portal that now took up all of the space from the floor to the ceiling and more. His body was growing lighter and lighter, making it even more difficult to fight the powerful attraction pulling him into the dark undulating tunnel. Then his feet left the ground. Within a matter of seconds, he had been swept up like a piece of lint into the hose of a great vacuum.

He tumbled end over end through the billowing cloud-lined corridor, that was now very wide indeed; hundreds of yards at least. The dark clouds that rushed by him were filled with bolts of lightning that sometimes extended into the corridor itself. He screamed, but he could not hear his own voice over the roar of the wind and rumble of the thunder. He could feel the electricity, like a thousand ants, crawling over his skin.

As he watched in horror, his body looked translucent. He could actually see his own pulsing organs and bones through its milky substance. At the same time, it was becoming darker and darker around him, even as the roar of the winds began to fade. He felt a growing icy cold that penetrated his very being.

In the fading light, something moved before him, something enormous. He saw it for only a few seconds, but that was more than enough time for its image to become forever imprinted in his memory. Then it erupted from the shadows like some great leviathan from the black depths of the sea. It was like a gigantic snake, only this one had short arms and legs. It had wings too, yet they were surely too short for flight. Yet, fly it did. In an instant it towered before him. He could see its dark brown scales, its glistening red eyes, and enormous three-feet-long teeth. Carson was drenched in the
creature’s foul breath. It took one look at him, and as its mouth curled back into a hideous parody of a smile, it was gone.

The journey continued. For a moment, he was certain that he was tumbling through some great rocky tunnel, yet it quickly faded to black as the last trace of light was extinguished. The total darkness and intense cold that now overshadowed his fear were profound. Never in his life had he felt so cold. There was no wind here, he didn’t even have the sense that he was breathing. In fact, he couldn’t even draw a breath, and he very much needed to. He wasn’t sure if he were flesh or spirit, so complete was the darkness. Spirits didn’t feel cold or need air. At least he didn’t think so. Some part of him must still be flesh and bone. He felt as if he might be going into shock.

Then the scene abruptly changed. The bright orange glare, the heat, the loud cacophony of the birds was almost too much for him to bear. What was happening? As incredible as it seemed, he must have fallen asleep for a time, reliving the events that had brought him here. Sleep on the altar of pain? It was a concept almost too incredible to believe. But now he was awake, and his waking nightmare could begin anew. His mind was awash in confusion. Something had happened, but what? The birds of prey were here. He could hear them. He could also hear the shrieks and screams of the multitude around him, yet the birds weren’t attacking him. Why?

A dark shadow momentarily swept across him; he could feel the gust of wind in its wake. He was so afraid. He didn’t want to be eaten again, no, not again. Tears formed. If only he could move, but he couldn’t.

“Oh, Lord Jesus, help me,” he cried, tears running down his cheeks. “Oh please forgive me. Please get me out of here. Have mercy on me, Lord.”

He had prayed so many times on this altar, prayed for deliverance, but it had never come. No, he was past all salvation or deliverance. This was Hell.

Again the shadow swept across him, but this time it didn’t depart. It seemed to hover above him. It was drawing nearer. It was a dark silhouette, surrounded by an aura of shifting light.

“No please, leave me alone,” he cried, yet his voice was barely above a whisper. “Please don’t hurt me, not again! Oh God, help me.”

Then something touched the side of his face. It was not the talons of a bird of prey, nor the brush of swift feathers; it was soft and smooth.

“Be still, Dr. Carson,” said a voice that seemed to come from everywhere. It was a woman’s voice, soft and reassuring. “No one is going to hurt you here, I promise.”

Here? But where was here? He wasn’t sure. The world about him seemed in flux once more. Slowly a new reality began to materialize around him. It was not the harsh world of the altars of pain. He was in a small room, the lights were dim, the air cool. A damp cloth in someone’s hand ran across his forehead. Beyond that hand he saw her face. It was the face of a young, dark-haired woman, a pretty one at that. Her green eyes were full of concern.

“Are you with us this time, Dr. Carson? Can you see me? Can you understand me?”

“With you? This time? Who are you?” Carson whispered.

A smile appeared on the woman’s face. “You are here this time. You’re coming out of it. You’ve had me really worried.”

Carson stared at the ceiling, beyond his comely companion, into a yellowish light. The fixture looked almost like some sort of giant quartz crystal. He was lying in a bed, a brown blanket over him, of that much he was certain. “Where am I?”

“We call this place Refuge,” was the reply.

Refuge? That didn’t tell him very much. “But how did I get here?”

“You don’t remember?” asked the woman. “Think back, the answer is there if you seek it.”

There was a long silence as the last of the pieces of the puzzle, which was the life of Tom Carson, fell into place. “Those dark angels and those things that they had with them, they freed me from the altar. They took me into a pool of stars. One of them, the one called Abaddon, said something about taking me to a place called Refuge. Then there was darkness, cold, I don’t remember anything else beyond that.”

The woman smiled broadly. “That all happened six days ago. Since then, you’ve been here with me. You’ve had a pretty rough time of it. You’ve been asleep through most of it. When you were awake, you didn’t make much sense. You went on about your home, about Lois, your wife, I assume.”

Carson nodded.

“And Peter, your son?”

Again Carson nodded.

“It was like you were in another world. And you were a handful from time to time too, when you were in the worst of your delirium, when you were on the altar. But you aren’t there anymore, and you’re not going back.”

“It seems that you’ve learned a lot about me already,” said Carson, doing his best to remain awake and focused.

The woman chuckled. “Oh my, where are my manners. I’m sorry. My name is Bedillia, Bedillia Farnsworth.”

“Happy to meet you, Ms. Farnsworth. Thanks for being there for me.”

“Oh, please, just call me Bedillia. We’re not much for titles here.”

“OK, and you can call me Tom. Not Dr. Carson. I don’t think I know him anymore. I think he died. And I’m sorry if I was any problem. I really don’t remember. I’m just thankful that I had someone to look after me.”

“No apology necessary, I assure you, and I was happy to be looking after you. I didn’t mind in the least. What happened to you is normal, totally normal,” Bedillia said. “So many cruel months of torment has a tendency to do things to your mind. When released, most people go into a type of
shock. It is almost like the effects of withdrawing from drugs. The sudden absence of powerful stimuli, emotion, and pain creates a sort of vacuum in the human psyche. Your body gets so used to having your senses continually pressed to the limits that a sudden removal has unexpected consequences. It’s like a thick rubber band, stretched to its limit for a long time, and then suddenly released—it flies apart, becomes undone. In the absence of intense pain, you feel empty. You don’t see this condition on Earth because that amount of pain would kill you a thousand times over, but here the effect is only too real.”