“But it gets even worse,” the thing said gleefully. “Your son came back missing a few parts and he didn’t make it to heaven, but the worst thing of all is that he knows he’s lying in his grave.”
Even as the creature’s words registered in Delroy’s mind, mixing with his silent screams, Terrence opened his left eye. The other eye was a burned-out pit.
“Dad?” Terrence croaked. He tried to rise but could only move a few inches. “Dad!” His ruined face filled with panic. “Dad, get me out of here!” He pounded his fist against the top of the coffin. The rapidfire thumps filled Delroy’s ears. “Dad! Dad, help me!”
“Are you going to leave him there?” the creature asked over Terrence’s screams. “Are you going to leave him trapped, Preacher? Or are you going to free him?”
In the next instant the light inside the coffin dimmed. Delroy felt water and mud all around his face. He arched his back and rose, lifting his face clear of the water pooled at the bottom of the grave.
His breath came back to him in a rush. Terrified, he pushed himself out of the grave, swinging his body around and grabbing for the flashlight that remained at the grave’s edge. Mud caked his face and burned one eye.
He aimed the flashlight at the bottom of the hole where the creature had pulled him under. The beam reflected in the dark water that shimmied as it settled. There was no hole like he thought there would be.
“That’s impossible,” Delroy said, hoping that it truly was. Still, he couldn’t shut out the vision of Terrence trapped in the coffin under the muddy earth.
“Are you going to leave him trapped, Preacher?” The creature’s words taunted Delroy, even from his memory.
The creature was gone. Or at least it was in hiding for now.
Delroy listened. He heard pounding, but he told himself that it was his heart, not his dead son’s fist slamming against the coffin top.
Breathing hoarsely, unable to calm down, Delroy played his beam over the cemetery grounds and spotted the shovel where he had dropped it during the fight with the creature. On his third attempt, Delroy got his feet under him and lurched out of the hole. He grabbed the shovel and headed back to the grave. He started to clamber back down, unnerved by everything he had experienced.
“Son.”
Delroy heard his father’s voice. He froze and looked at his father’s grave. He’s not there. If anybody made it to heaven, my daddy did. That was just the wind. That’s all. Just the wind. He returned his attention to Terrence’s grave. The image of his dead son—wounded, God, he’s only wounded—trapped in his grave filled Delroy’s mind. He felt compelled to start digging. He lifted the shovel.
“One thing you always gotta remember, Son. Satan, why, he was made for lyin’. He’s got his powers, terrible powers to do many things, but none of ‘em are as strong as his lies. Because when Satan lies to you, it’s gonna be when you most want to believe him. Nothin’ he’s gonna tell you ever gonna be the truth. See, he weaves lies outta your own hopes, fears, an’ dreams, outta what you think you saw an’ what you think you want to see. That’s how he works. That’s how he always works.”
The words weren’t new. Delroy remembered them from a conversation he’d had with his father when he was nine.
Delroy made himself look at the grave and reason things through.
There’s no way Terrence is down there. I know my son. He was a good boy. He went to church and he honored the Ten Commandments. But at the same time he realized that Terrence might not have been a true believer. No man could ever really know another’s heart.
Captain Mark Falkirk’s warning about “pretty good Christians,” people who led good lives but still didn’t challenge themselves to fully trust and believe, echoed inside Delroy’s head. Was that what Terrence had been? A pretty good Christian? Was that what Delroy had been, too? What happened to those who died without ever truly believing, when God raptured the world? Were they left behind like Delroy, but remained dead and buried deep in the cold, hard ground?
Delroy’s heart ached. He didn’t know, and that was the worst of it.
No, he amended quickly as the rain continued to fall from the black sky, the worst of it would be if Terrence really was trapped down there. He closed his eyes, feeling the pain that throbbed through his body from the beating he’d taken. He fully expected the creature to return and finish what it had started.
But it didn’t.
Weary and scared, feeling bereft and abandoned, Delroy dropped to his knees at the foot of his son’s grave with the shovel in his fists.
He bent his head to shield his face from the cold rain and told himself he was going to pray. Only he couldn’t find the words.
He knelt in the night only a few feet from where his child lay buried and reminded himself over and over again that the thumps hammering his eardrums were his heartbeats and not the sound of his son’s fist striking the coffin lid.
12
United States of America
Fort Benning, Georgia
Local Time 2234 Hours
Megan sat in the hospital waiting room between two MPs that Corporal Kerby had assigned to accompany her after they had left the Hollister home. Kerby hadn’t said that she was under arrest, but the way the MPs offered to get her coffee from the break area and followed her to the bathroom, dealing with the uncomfortable situation of her doing something they couldn’t do for her in a place they couldn’t go by standing guard over the ladies’ loo, made it clear that though she wasn’t technically under arrest she was at least being closely supervised.
She didn’t let the presence of the two young MPs bother her. Other MPs stood guard in the base hospital
