The Scarlet Plan

by Rick W. Warren

  The robber had yet to see Aaron because of his preoccupation with the manager. However, he knew something was wrong when he saw a renewed look of fear on the manager’s face. Quickly he spun around to see Aaron standing there holding a wallet and a receipt. He pointed the gun right at Aaron.

  It’s not loaded.

  “Just who do you think you are?” The robber said as he looked Aaron up and down. “Are you trying to be a hero or did you just want to die in front of everybody here?”

  Aaron looked at him as innocently as he could and said, “I just came up here to pay my bill.”

  The robber looked at him dumbfounded. “Are you really that stupid? Don’t you comprehend that this is a robbery and that I have a gun pointed in your face that I am about five seconds away from shooting?”

  His name is Arthur.

  “Oh my fault, Arthur,” Aaron replied. “I thought this was just a rehearsal since you came here with your gun unloaded and everything. If you wouldn’t mind hurrying up and finishing, though, I would appreciate it since today has been a bad day for me and I have a lot of stuff I need to do.”

  Arthur, the robber, looked at him in stunned silence. “How did you know my name? What do you know about my gun? Who are you?”

  “I’m just someone whose lunch with a nice lady was ruined by you. As a matter of fact, I think you should pick up this bill since you made me lose my appetite.”

  Aaron held out the receipt to Arthur while a stunned restaurant watched everything happen. Emma watched fascinated by everything happening. He is so brave, she thought. He’s the same guy I’ve always remembered.

  Aaron stood looking at Arthur without flinching and Arthur stood frozen by Aaron’s brazenness. This was not how he thought the robbery would go. He did, however, remember that his gun wasn’t the only back up he had.

  Emma was watching intently when suddenly she thought: He’s not alone. There’s a man in the booth behind Aaron who is Arthur’s partner. He was posing as a customer just in case something happened. He has a knife.

  Frightened, Emma stood up and shouted, “Aaron! He has a partner! In the booth behind you! He has a knife!”

  At that moment, a man much bigger than Arthur jumped out of the booth and rushed at Aaron with a knife clenched in his right hand. It was only a four-inch blade, but it was sharp enough to do real damage.

  Go low! Sweep the leg!

  In instant obedience, Aaron squatted down and swung his leg around in a full circle. He connected with the back of the big guy’s leg and took it out from under him. With a huge crash, the big guy fell flat on his back knocking the wind out of himself. The knife he was clenching went sliding across the floor. Emma, who had ran up to the front after warning Aaron, put her foot down on it to stop it.

  “Eddie!” Arthur screamed as he stared at his partner lying on the ground. He looked over at Aaron, who was just getting up. “You’re going to pay for that!”

  Duck his swing. Arm-bar.

  Arthur ran at Aaron with the gun in his hand and swung it madly at Aaron’s head. Aaron ducked his swing and quickly stood up to grab his arm. Arthur’s forward momentum caused him to stumble and in an instant Aaron had taken him down to the ground. Aaron quickly wrapped both of his legs around Arthur’s arm and started applying pressure to his elbow by bending it the opposite way it should go. Arthur howled in pain and dropped the gun on the ground. “Stop! Stop!” he said. “You’re going to break my arm!”

  “I’ll stop when you stop,” Aaron replied.

  “Ok! Ok! I give up!”

  Aaron relaxed the pressure, but didn’t let go. Big Guy “Eddie” was still lying on the ground. He wasn’t expecting the day to go like this either. Emma was on her cell phone talking to the police and they could already hear the sirens down the street.

  A pang of remorse came over Aaron as he looked at the two amateur thieves who tried to take Steak n’ Shake for a few hundred dollars. “Arthur, why did you do this?” He asked. “Was the little money they had worth the jail time you are going to get?”

  A tear ran down Arthur’s face. “I’m dying anyway. Eddie is my twin brother. I was once as big as him, but now I’m withering away from cancer. I only have a few weeks left and I felt like partying it up before I died.”

  “So you decided to rob a place and emotionally scar a bunch of people? There are kids here. What about them?”

  “What does it matter anyway?” Arthur replied. “We are all headed to the ground eventually. Life is a cruel joke and what happens is just the roll of the dice.”

  “Do you believe in God, at all?” Aaron asked.

  “I don’t have time for fairy tales. I don’t have time for anything at all much longer.”

  Aaron was just about to reply when the police stepped into the building. They quickly handcuffed and picked both of them up as they led them to one of the police cars. The people in the restaurant cheered Aaron and Emma for what they did in foiling the robbery. The table of older ladies took their turns hugging them and kissing them on the cheek. The manager was exuberant in his appreciation and said their meal was on the house, of course, and said their next ten would be as well. He also told everyone not to worry about their bills and apologized for this even happening.

  A couple of officers began to question them about the details of the robbery. Both Aaron and Emma kept the insight they had to themselves. This had been the craziest day of their lives so far and it was only lunchtime. Once the officers were satisfied with their statements they thanked them and left.

  Aaron looked at Emma. “Well, here’s a front page story for you. I’m free for an interview anytime.”

  Emma looked at him and smiled, however she couldn’t help but feel the melancholy of the situation. She got to see Aaron again, they foiled a robbery, but Jack was still dead and the killer was still out there. “Thanks for lunch and thanks for calling me. It really is great to see you again. It may sound weird, but you feel almost like an anchor in this swirling storm of a day.”

  Aaron smiled back at her. “I agree. It’s good to see that in times of drastic change some things have stayed the same.”

  They walked to their vehicles. They both had things they had to do, but they didn’t want to separate to do them. “Those were some pretty cool action moves you had in there,” Emma said as she opened her car door.

  “It’s good to know that my years of watching professional wrestling paid off,” Aaron replied.

  Emma laughed. He loved her laugh. “Call me later. We’ll trade notes on anything we find out.”

  “I will,” Aaron replied. “Oh, by the way, did you see the guy with the knife or did you suddenly know about him?”

  “It just came into my mind. This might sound really weird, but do you think it is possible that God was helping us?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t want to assume anything, but I think its fair to say that something supernatural is going on.”

  “Why is this happening? And why us?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think we have seen the last of it.”

  17

  It was half past noon as the guys made their way back to their homes. All four of them had the privilege of growing up together in the same neighborhood, which they had nicknamed “The Bruce.” Trent had come up with the name one day because of the street layout on which they lived. There were two streets that formed a literal square on which all the houses were. One street was called Bridge while the other street was called Spruce. Bridge headed north until it formed a half cul-de-sac and then turned west. Spruce branched off of Bridge and headed south until it formed another half cul-de-sac and headed east until it connected back to Bridge again. Trent had decide to combine the two street names and call it “The Bruce” to which the other guys thought it was cool to call. As far as they knew, no one else in Galesburg called it that but them. That was cool too.
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  Josh was very disappointed in losing his phone and had contemplated looking for it, but they knew they were not going back to find it. He did brighten up though when he realized that all of his information wasn’t lost since he backed all of it up on the Cloud, which he could access through his computer.

  They pulled up to Josh’s house and went inside to get their things. Josh’s mom asked him why he didn’t respond to her text she sent and he flatly admitted to losing his phone on the bike ride. However, he didn’t include the part where a psycho had been chasing them. Of course, his parents were not happy that they had been kept waiting for him to get home on top of the fact that he had lost his phone, but they were running late so they told him to stay with his sister and they would deal with the phone predicament later.

  They guys went up to Josh’s room while his ten year old sister, Ellie, watched TV downstairs. “I’m sorry you lost your phone, man,” Mark said as they got their stuff together. “I feel like this is my fault. If I hadn’t have been so crazy about seeing that barn and getting our picture in front of it, this never would have happened.”

  Josh smiled at Mark and said, “Don’t worry about it. We all wanted to go and none of us knew what we were going to see. I’m just happy to be safe at home. Phones can be replaced, we can’t.”

  “Didn’t you tell us on the way here that all of the stuff on your phone was backed up on the computer?” Trent asked. “I want to see if you actually got a good picture of Drago.”

  Josh opened up his laptop on his desk while the guys gathered around. After a few clicks on the computer, he was able to pull up the pictures.

  “Yes!” Mark said excited. “You didn’t lose the pictures! Could you email them to me?”

  “Show us the picture that has the guy in it,” Jordan said.

  Josh clicked through the pictures until he got to the ones of Mark alone flexing his muscles in front of the barn. This, of course, got a good laugh from Trent, but he grew quiet as Josh zoomed in on the barn window. Very clearly they could see that it was the madman who chased them through the woods. They could see the hatred in his eyes. They all knew that it was by God’s grace they had escaped.

  “I got a weird question for you guys,” Mark said. “Have any of you seen him before?”

  At first they all looked at Mark like he was crazy, but then all of them slowly came to the realization that there was something familiar about him.

  “What do you mean exactly, Mark?” Jordan asked. “Like, have we met him or something?”

  “Not exactly,” Mark replied. “I just think somehow, someway I have seen him before.

  “Rocky 4. Like I already told you,” Trent replied.

  “No,” Mark said. “I know this might sound weird, but I think I saw him in a dream last night.”

  “What do you mean?” Josh asked. “How’s that possible?”

  “I don’t know,” Mark replied. “But last night I had this really weird dream and I think this guy was in it.”

  “What was the dream?” Jordan asked.

  “It was this dream about a guy. I think his name was Earnest Weller,” Mark said. “He was a really rich guy, but his wife died and he missed her a lot. He saw this commercial about a place that could help him re-live the memories he had with her, but I can’t remember what it was called.”

  “Flashback.” Trent said wide-eyed.

  Mark looked at him surprised. “Yeah, that’s it. How did you know?”

  “Did the guy keep going back as many times as he could to live in his memories?” Trent asked.

  “Yeah, did I tell you about this dream already?”

  “No, I think I had the same dream.”

  “C’mon, Trent! Nice joke. No one dreams the same dream. I must have told you or something.”

  “I promise. I’m not joking. I had the same dream.”

  At this, Josh, chimed in. “Was his wife’s name Cheryl?”

  “Yeah, I think it was,” Trent replied.

  “And was the doctor’s name, Thomas Rule?”

  “Yes!” Mark and Trent replied in shock.

  “Did you see this too?” Mark asked.

  Josh nodded his head. “I think I did.”

  “Jordan?” Trent asked.

  All three of them looked over at him. Jordan had been quiet during their discussion. He had been thinking about what they were saying. This was the craziest day of his life. Not only had they literally escaped death, but all four of them had just shared the same dream the night before. “Earnest Weller had been stalked by Drago. He snuck into Earnest’s house and injected him with something that gave him a heart attack. After that, they used the information that they got from Earnest’s mind in order to access his bank accounts and steal the millions of dollars he had. This wasn’t a dream. This had to have really happened.”

  “And we all saw it?” Mark asked mystified. “How can this be real?”

  Josh spun around in his chair. “Guys, look at this. I found it online from about two years ago.”

  Once again, they gathered around the computer. On the screen they saw the headline: “Lifetime Galesburg Businessman And Philanthrope, Earnest Weller, Passes Away At 86.”

  “He’s real!” Trent said in astonishment.

  “Does it say how he died?” Jordan asked.

  “It says he died at home of natural causes,” Josh replied.

  “Is a heart attack natural causes?” Mark asked.

  “Yes,” Josh replied.

  “But in the dream, he was killed by psycho guy,” Mark said confused. “Why isn’t that in there?”

  “Because they never knew the truth,” Jordan replied. “They thought he died a normal death, but the truth is that he was murdered.”

  “Are you saying we saw the truth of what really happened?” Trent asked.

  “I believe we did,” Jordan replied.

  “Why is this happening?” Josh asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jordan said genuinely bewildered.

  “We should talk to someone.” Mark said.

  “Who could we talk to?” Trent said. “If we told our parents about Drago, we wouldn’t be allowed outside again until after Christmas.

  “I’m not talking about Drago,” Mark replied. “I’m talking about sharing the same dream. Could this be something from God?”

  All of them sat in silence for a moment. “We have church tomorrow,” Jordan said. “Maybe Pastor Aaron might know something.”

  “Yeah, he’ll know we’re crazy,” Trent said in response.

  “I don’t think we’re crazy,” Jordan said. “I think something big is happening.”

  18

  Convert sat alone on the deck out back where he had spent many nights in conversation with Jack. He looked over at the chair that Jack used to sit in and felt another deep pang of sadness over the fact that he would never sit here and have another conversation with him again. The finality of death was something that was hitting him harder than he thought it ever would. He just couldn’t stop thinking of the fact that Jack’s life here was done. Everything that Jack would do or was supposed to do was now over. He would never see Jack walk through the back door with his favorite pitcher of summer sun tea again, he wouldn’t ever be able to take his usual prayer walks with him like he always loved to do on nice autumn days, and he would never sit across from him at the supper table discussing what had happened that day. Jack was gone.

  Many people from the church had come over to comfort Marie, and to Convert’s surprise, she had been amazingly strong. He didn’t know how she did it. Many people brought over food and wept along side her. So many came just to tell her how much they loved and appreciated Jack. Everyone was beside themselves in how Jack met his fate. No one could believe that this would have happened to him. Graciously, no one bothered her by asking about how he got to Lake
Storey. Right now wasn’t the time to solve the mystery. Now was the time to comfort Jack’s widow.

  Widow. Marie was now a widow and the thought of it simply burned with disgust inside Convert’s mind. It wasn’t fair. Marie deserved better than to lose her husband to a murderous criminal. Convert knew what he was going to do next. He would find Jack’s killer and he would bring him to justice. It took all of his self-control to stay there and not to be at Lake Storey right now scouring for answers. He knew there would be time for that. Right now it was time to be there for Marie. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t sure that she was safe either. In reality, he was hoping that the killer might show up just so that he could catch him. One thing was certain: there would be no escape once he got him.

  It was around 5:00 at night and there were about seven or eight people still at the house. One of the people there was a very good and gentle man named, Grant Harper. He was the Elder chairman at Jack’s church and the responsibility for tomorrow’s service fell on him. He sat next to Marie and asked her what she felt would be the right and respectful response to have at tomorrow’s service or even if they should have a service at all. Marie was adamant to Grant that Jack would not want the service canceled and, as a matter of fact, he would want the service to be about honoring Jesus even in the midst of sadness.

  “One of Jack’s life verses was John 3:30,” Marie said to him “‘Christ must become greater; I must become less.’ I truly believe the best way we can honor Jack is to honor God. We are certainly free to mourn, but we also have a special opportunity to show the joy of Christ to others despite our circumstances.”

  “You amaze me, Marie,” Grant replied. “And you’re right. I believe that is what Jack would have wanted too. I’ll talk to our worship leader tonight and I’ll take care of everything.”