Nineveh, they repented and God spared them. He needed to feel the power.
Tom knelt by the altar and prayed out loud God's wrath on Lori Waithe and James Makinen. Still enraptured in the ecstasy of prayer, Tom felt a force grab him and throw him against the wall. Tom laughed aloud. God had answered him! He was one of the prophets! He controlled the wrath of God on earth!
Tom opened his eyes. At first, they wouldn't focus. His breath had been taken away when the heavenly energy had thrown him against the wall. He smiled to himself. When his vision cleared, he would be looking at the face of God or one of his angels. He saw the face and tried to scream but not enough air had filled his lungs yet. Hands, filled with a force Tom had never experienced before, held him against the wall. The mouth on the face opened and through the enveloping blackness of shock Tom heard the words. 'Fool! Trying to use God to fulfil your own petty desires. Well, learn about the real world!'
James looked at the unconscious preacher. The idiot had fainted. Something had snapped in him when he entered the church and heard the preacher praying for Lori's death. He was glad he had been able to stop before hurting the fool. James searched the preacher's pockets for his keys. He went to the office and unlocked the door. Another key fit the file cabinet. James had to admit the fool was organized. He found files on all the deacons and on Jefferson Shermon nearly immediately. There was a photocopier in the office, so he copied the information and put the files back.
When James got back to the preacher, he was curled on his side snoring. He slipped the keys back in his pocket and left. Back at Jeffrey Waithe's house, he started to call the churches that Shermon had previously gone to asking questions. As darkness fell, he left the papers and prowled the neighborhood.
* * * *
*Click.* _The silent darkened room echoes. Hands remove a card from the
deck._
Upon a white horse rides a skeleton in black armor. His left hand holds a black banner with a white design in its center. His right hands hold the reins of his red eyed horse. The horse stands over a crowned body, preventing a holy man and two children from touching the corpse. Although the foreground of the card is bright, the sun is setting between two towers in the distance.
*Click.* _The card and the room plunge into blackness._
CHAPTER 16: Death
The first time Frank saw death on a person's face was when he was fifteen years old. His parents had left for a foreclosure auction in Sissiton. They had planned on staying overnight, spending one full day before the auction to examine the equipment for sale. It was twelve-thirty at night that the phone rang. Groggy from sleep, he had tried to answer it. None of the words said over the phone made any sense but finally he realized his sister needed help.
He drove his old rebuilt motorcycle to his sister's. When he got to her house, all the lights were on and the front door was open. Inside he saw his four-year-old nephew, JW, standing in his pj's with his eyes wide open and his thumb in his mouth. Frank asked his nephew where his mother was. He never answered but just stared with his wide-opened eyes.
He found Julie lying in her own blood on the living room floor next to the telephone. Her left eye had swollen shut. There was a deep matted depression on the side of her head. Small trickles of blood flowed from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. When her good eye focused on him, she started to talk. He bent down to hear her whispers and heard a terrible wheezing in her labored breath.
'Take care of JW, Frank.' Frank looked up and saw JW still sucking his thumb watching from the hallway.
'I'll take care of JW, Julie. Right now we need to take care of you.
Who did this?'
'Timothy,' was the faint reply.
'Take it easy, Julie. I'll call for an ambulance.' After making the phone call, Frank cradled her head in his lap. When he looked into her green eye, he saw death. He felt a rasp in her labored breathing. He found himself counting slowly to five between each painful inhale and exhale. Then the air went out of her body and everything stopped. He looked into her eye, it was already starting to haze.
The ambulance crew and then the sheriff's deputies showed up. After Frank was questioned over and over, everyone became busy doing their jobs. Frank was pushed to the side of the room. He finally noticed, in the far doorway, JW standing with his thumb in his mouth. Before Frank could go to his nephew, he heard yelling from the front door.
Timothy, his brother-in-law, burst in drunk. He screamed for everyone to leave and yelled for his lazy no good bitch of a wife to get her ass in here. He started fighting with one of the deputies. Frank never saw how he did it but Timothy was suddenly waving the deputy's gun at everyone. There was a sharp noise and Timothy was on the floor.
Frank brought JW home with him as the morning sun started to rise in the east. His parents raised JW like he was his brother. Frank always tried to keep his promise to his sister but Frank never forgot how JW just looked on. Frank had thought something was different with JW before. After seeing him standing and watching the death of his parents, Frank was positive something wasn't quite right with his nephew's mind. JW would watch suffering with a detached cold-blooded pleasure that always drove the steel shards of the memories of the night Julie died into Frank's mind.
Although Frank had been Julie's younger brother, he always had to take care of her. She had been too trusting, too easily persuaded. He had been able to protect her all but two times. The one time before they left for Sioux Bluff and the night she died. The last time the deputy had done what he should have been able to, avenge her death, so Frank became a cop.
Frank could remember the faces of the thirteen other people he saw die in his life. Seven were accidents. Six were car crashes and one was a fall off the roof, which broke a neck. Three of the remaining six were heart attacks. The forth was a drug overdose. The last two deaths drove him from the streets and to his current job as a BCA agent.
It was midnight. He was a training officer for a young recruit. The rookie had only been on active duty with the force for twelve days. They got a silent alarm from a downtown drug store. When they pulled up, they found a stolen car had been driven through the front of the store and a number of figures running down a dark back alley. Frank yelled to the rookie to wait for backup and called in a report of the situation to the station. When Frank got out of the car, the rookie started running down the alley. Frank had nightmares of the run down the alley. Never able to catch up to his partner. Just seeing the flash of his outline race between the dark shadows. Past the corner of a building a flash and the echoing report of a shot came through the darkness. Tripping over the sprawled body of his partner, Frank smelled the blood and cordite. Before he could check his partner, the gun opened up again. Frank felt the whoosh of a bullet speed past his head and the warmth of his own pee running down his leg from the fear. He emptied his gun at the flashes. The silence was absolute.
When Frank's eyes adjusted again to the darkness after the bright flashes of gunfire, he saw his partner. His mouth would open with every gasp for air he made. The rookie's eyes caught the few rays of light in the dark alley. They luminesced with a fevered light. As Frank reached for him, he died.
Frank never knew how long he knelt next to his partner but finally a rustling made its way into his conscious. With numb fingers, he emptied the casings out of his revolver and loaded it with fresh bullets. Frank crept to the end of the alley. There the killer crawled, an empty gun by his side. The killer sensed he was not alone. He rolled to his side and looked up at Frank. Frank heard the twelve-year-old killer whimper, stick his thumb in his mouth, and die.
Frank shook the memories from his mind. He had an old nemesis to meet. Someone he could barely remember from his past long ago. Someone who had destroyed his sister, changed his life, and now threatened the existence of the only one he had pledged to protect. Frank got out of his car, walked to
the door and opened it. A blow hit him in the side. From the floor he looked up at the old man. In his hands, the killer had a twenty-two pistol with a plastic milk jug taped to its muzzle. Frank knew the combination made a perfect silent weapon. He felt the damage the bullet had done, tearing his insides apart. He felt death coming. He
