“Stay away,” she barked.
I hadn’t expected that response. “Why are you tied to a tree?”
“My master tied me here.”
“Your master?”
“Master El.”
I definitely hadn’t expected that response. “Is Master El going to untie you too?”
“If it is His will.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s because you are of this world.”
I stood there wondering what to do when someone said, “It wouldn’t matter if I cut her loose, she still wouldn’t leave.”
At the sound of the voice the woman gasped. I turned to see a tall, thick-lipped, redheaded man walking toward us. “. . . Would you, dear?”
The woman bowed as far as her constraints allowed. “Please forgive me, Master. This Earthman spoke to me.”
“You’re forgiven, KaEl.” He turned to me. “KaEl asked to be tied to the tree. Isn’t that true, KaEl?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Why would she do that?” I asked.
“She feared that in a moment of weakness her carnal self would rebel and she might run away, so she wisely asked for help. But I don’t think she really needs it. She’s been very obedient.”
“Thank you, Master.”
He turned to face her. “How goes your purification?”
“The flesh is weak, Master. But the spirit is willing.”
I looked back and forth between the two of them. Part of me wanted to bolt, the other part wasn’t willing to abandon the young woman. “Why is she tied to the tree?” I asked.
“I just told you,” the man said curtly.
I rephrased my question. “Why is she standing here?”
“She’s learning to overcome the carnal nature within. She’s on the last twelve hours of her five-day purification and submission.”
“Submission?”
“Each member of our society must purge the world from their heart by undergoing the purification and submission ritual. It’s a privilege. She forgoes earthly food for five days and drinks only blessed, holy water mixed with frankincense. During this time she cannot speak to anyone but her Master. Unfortunately, you interfered with her sanctification.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Don’t worry, I can absolve her of her commission. Our religion is not without mercy.”
“Religion? This is a church?”
“Not a church. The church. We are the church of the AhnEl.”
I looked at him quizzically. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“You have now.”
“What kind of church are you?”
A slight smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “We are a pearl of great price—a rarity of rarities. A church of truth.”
“What kind of truths?”
“The word is not plural. There is one truth, simple and unified, and millions of extrapolations, subterfuges and delusions.”
“Tell me about this . . . truth.”
He crossed his arms, his gaze leveling on me. “Are you prepared to receive it? I have neither the time nor inclination to cast pearls before swine.”
His arrogance surprised me. “Try me,” I said.
“If you have ears to hear, you may ask me anything.”
“Does your church believe in the Bible?”
“Do we believe in the Bible, or do we believe the Bible? Be specific.”
“Do you believe the Bible to be the word of God?”
He grinned. “Now that’s a question. The answer closest to your intent is yes. Of course we do. Not that it’s His word. It’s not. He didn’t write it. But we do know that it’s a record of His teachings and history. But, unlike the rest of the Bible-blind world, we actually understand the book.”
Again, I was taken aback by his arrogance. “You don’t believe that anyone, besides you, understands the Bible.”
“I’m quite certain of it,” he said. “For centuries, before Gutenberg came along, the clergy hid the Bible from the people. Today, the people shroud it in mystery and hide it from themselves.
“You see, the Bible must be understood in context. The Bible is true, at least it was in its earliest, unadulterated renditions. It’s common knowledge, or should be, that through time there have been tens of thousands of alterations to the Bible. In fact, there have been more words changed in the book than there are words. But, that aside, even assuming that it was all truth and preserved as such, it would still only be true within the realm of its authors’ experiences, since all writing is tainted by the context of the writer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Allow me to explain it this way. If an aborigine should find a radio and hear a voice coming from it, he might say that there is a spirit in the strange box. He isn’t being deceitful, he’s just explaining his experience from what he understands. Even if he were to break the radio open and examine its parts, he still couldn’t possibly understand what he sees—the circuit boards and transistors that make the sound possible. His explanation doesn’t make him a liar, it’s the best he can do given his cultural and educational limitations. The interpreters of the Bible are the same as this poor aborigine.”
After a moment I said, “That makes sense.”
The man smiled, pleased with my answer. “KaEl, could it be that we have found an Earthman who is more interested in truth than patching up the holes in his own leaking belief system?” He took a few steps toward me. “What is your name?”
“Alan.”
“I am Master El. You may call me El. Why are you wandering the world, Alan?”
I didn’t want to tell him. “I’m just walking.”
He examined my pack. “Where are you walking to?”
“Key West, Florida.”
“Where did you begin your journey?”
“Seattle.”
“You’ve walked the whole distance?”
I nodded.
“Then you are a man with stories. I would like to hear them. A man who has walked all day must be hungry. Come dine with me.”
For a moment I said nothing, hesitant to go anywhere with a religious nut who would tie someone to a tree. “I have food,” I said.
“I’m sure you do, but, if you’re eating from your pack, I guarantee I can do better. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll provide you with a hot meal and you can tell me of your travels. Agreed?” He put out his hand.
I just looked at him.
“Come on, Alan. You have nothing to fear. I may be sly as a serpent but I’m harmless as a dove. Come with me and I will feed you—body and, should you desire, soul.”
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Just a mile or so from here,” he said pointing east. “I have a vehicle.”
I thought a moment more, then my curiosity got the better of me. “All right.”
“Splendid,” he said. “Splendid.” He turned toward the woman. “We will leave you to your quest. The celestial spirit abide with you, KaEl.”
She bowed her head. “Praise be to my Master.”
I followed him about twenty yards to his car, a brand-new Range Rover with the paper dealer plate still in the window. Kyle Craig had owned a similar model. I knew enough about the vehicle to know it was worth more than a hundred thousand dollars.
“You can lay your pack on the back seat,” he said.
I started feeling hesitant again, wondering what I had gotten myself into, but still I opened the back door and set my pack inside. I climbed into the passenger’s seat.
El started his car and pulled out of the grove onto a dirt road, which we followed back for nearly two miles.
“How far have you walked today?” El asked.
“About sixteen miles.”
“Is that how far you walk every day?”
“I usually try for twenty. Sometimes more.”
“You must be in very good physical condition.”
“Walking twenty-five hundred miles will do that,”
I said.
“Indeed it would.”
We drove almost ten minutes before we came to a fenced compound consisting of a large, rustic-looking red barn, an A-framed house and two log buildings. A garden and a vineyard ran the length of the front fence.
There was a guard booth near the compound’s front entrance and the gate opened at our approach. El pulled the car to the front of the barn and put it in park, leaving the vehicle idling. A muscular young man wearing the same style of yellow T-shirt as the woman at the tree ran out of the building as if he’d been waiting for El’s return.
“This is where we’ll be dining,” El said.
The man stood at attention as El handed him the car keys. “Welcome home, Master,” the man said.
“Thank you, MarkEl,” he replied.
El walked around the side of the car where I was standing. “Follow me,” he said.
I opened the back door to retrieve my backpack.
“You can leave it,” El said. “It will be safe.”
I pulled it out anyway. “I would be more comfortable having it with me.”
He looked annoyed, but said, “Whatever makes you more comfortable.”
I shut the car door and the man pulled the vehicle away, disappearing around the side of the barn. Behind us the large gates shut. I wondered if I was a prisoner. I thought about the gun my father had given me, stowed in the bottom of my pack.
“This way,” El said, motioning to an open door.
I followed him inside. Even though the building looked rustic on the outside, inside it was clean and nicely furnished in a modern European style. The high-ceilinged room was spacious and open and three of its walls were painted with murals. The largest wall depicted the moai statues of Easter Island, while the other two were of the Egyptian Pyramids and the Mayan Pyramids of Tikal. The vaulted ceiling was painted dark blue, with constellations, and the exaggerated stars had eyeballs in their centers. The floor was hardwood, with areas covered by rugs.
Most surprising to me was that the room was filled with people, maybe forty or more, all dressed in the same yellow T-shirts. They all stared at us as we entered, looking curiously at me. I felt like a stray their “master” had brought home. Near the center of the room were two long dining tables. As we entered, El said to a young man with long, dark blue hair, “DarEl, bring us something to eat.”
“Yes, Master. What would please my Master?”
“Surprise us,” he said. The young man quickly disappeared behind a white door splattered with blue and red paint. “Come,” El said to me, gesturing. Every eye in the room was still on us as I followed him to the first table.
“Sit. Please,” he said.
We sat down on a long bench lined with red vinyl cushions.
A stunningly beautiful redheaded woman walked up to us and knelt in front of El. “How may I serve my Master?”
“Bring us something to drink,” El replied. “My usual. And some tea. What will you have?” he asked me.
“Just water,” I said.
She glanced at me, then back at El. “Yes, Master.” She leaned down and kissed his feet, then stood, hurrying off behind the white door. I watched in amazement. El seemed used to such adoration.
The man with blue hair quickly returned, carrying a bowl of red hummus and a stoneware plate piled with pita bread.
“Your service is accepted, DarEl.”
The man smiled. “Thank you, Master. Praise Master.”
El motioned to the bowl. “Eat. It’s quite good. It’s hummus with red chili.” He dipped a triangular piece of bread into the bowl, scooping up a dollop of hummus. “Tell me, Alan, before you were a sojourner, what did you do?”
Just then the redheaded woman returned carrying our drinks on a tray. She set a glass of red wine on the table in front of El, followed by a teacup and a teapot. She poured the tea, then put in a spoonful of sugar, stirred it, then looked at El. “May I serve my master anything else?”
“I am satisfied, my dear. Your service is accepted.”
“Thank you,” she said. She handed me a glass of water, knelt again and kissed El’s feet, then took the tray and walked away. I waited until El looked back at me.
“I was in advertising,” I said.
He nodded. “We are in similar fields then. We both are engineers of the mind. Are you a religious man?”
“Not particularly.”
“Do you believe in a God?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe in the Bible?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“You think so?” He gazed intently into my eyes. “Have you even read it?”
“Parts,” I admitted.
He shook his head condescendingly. “Parts,” he said. “Then you do not really believe it. Or, at least, that it might lead to your eternal salvation. Otherwise you would cling to it as an overboard sailor clings to a life ring.” He lifted his glass of wine and drank. “Unlike you, I’ve read the Bible more times than I can remember. I’m more fascinated by it each time I read it. As I said before, the truth of the Bible must be understood in context.”
He leaned toward me. “The Bible is as ancient as time, but more modern than ours. To the enlightened, the book describes spaceships and interstellar beings, rocket launches, weapons of mass destruction, holograms and, most importantly, the origin of the species.”
“What species?” I asked.
“Our species, of course. You see, the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, it’s all truth, contextually shaded, but as truthful as today’s newspaper.” He grinned. “Actually, given the state of today’s media bias, more truthful. In fact, DNA evidence has proven conclusively that our entire species descended from a single female. This isn’t conjecture, it’s proven fact. The idea that mankind gradually descended from monkeys is intellectually absurd. What do you think of that?”
“I think most scientists would disagree with you.”
He smiled. “Only the foolish ones. You see, scientists are just as dogmatic as the religious. Maybe more so. They rarely change their minds, they just die off and the next generation’s thinking emerges. The difference between them and me is that I have a viable explanation for the species and they don’t.
“You see, even the most ardent Darwinist must admit that there is a fundamental flaw in his belief when it comes to the evolution of human beings. For millions of years, hominids, a half-ape, half-man beast, roamed the world. Then suddenly, boom”—he flourished his hands dramatically—“there are homo sapiens. Intelligent, self-aware, language-speaking beings capable of building pyramids, advancing complex mathematical formulas, understanding advanced aerodynamics and mapping the universe. They even performed successful brain surgery. Yes, there was successful brain surgery more than a thousand years ago. We have the archeological evidence.”
He shook his head. “What a culture we live in. We are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance. In the late 1800s archeologists discovered the ancient Sumerian cuneiform texts, writings of earth’s oldest-known civilization. When scholars translated their writings, what they discovered surprised them. The Sumerian tablets actually agreed with the Old Testament; the genesis of the earth, the Garden of Eden, even the story of Noah and the Great Flood. Of course, even the oldest Chinese writings, carved into tortoiseshells, tell of the great flood. You do believe in Noah and his ark, don’t you?”
“Not literally,” I said.
His brow fell with disappointment. “If not literally, then how?”
“Noah’s ark isn’t feasible. You couldn’t carry that many creatures and their food in a boat ten times the size the Bible describes.”
El grinned. “You could, of course, if you were carrying their DNA.”
“DNA?”
“Exactly. Truth, my friend, is found in the gray space between religion and science.”
“DNA wasn’t discovered until the 1950s.”
“No, that’s when it was rediscovered. We modern humans
want to believe that we are at the pinnacle of evolution and intellectual thought.” He said this with a mocking grin. “So we conveniently ignore everything counter to that belief, including architectural marvels that are thousands of years old that we cannot duplicate today. We are not more intelligent. Greater cultures have lived and died, not just in the universe, but on this planet.
“Did you know that in 1913 a farmer in a tiny South African town called Boskop discovered a skull unlike anything anyone had seen before? It was so unusual that it made its way to the top scientists and anthropologists around the world. What was so unusual about the skull was its dimensions. The skull was larger than ours, but its face was smaller. In fact, it was less apelike than we are. You might have seen these pictures—they’re the same face we see in people’s descriptions of today’s aliens.
“At first, scientists thought that these skulls might be an anomaly, an aberration, caused by a disease, like hydrocephalus, or some such thing. But this theory was quickly disproven when scores of similar skulls were discovered.
“These beings had brains twenty-five percent larger than ours. Scientists estimate that their average IQ would be close to 150, which means, on average, they were geniuses.” He leaned forward. “Do you understand what I’m saying? They were smarter than us. They were more advanced than us. We are an intellectual step backward.” He leaned forward again. “If you still haven’t caught my deeper meaning, let me spell it out for you, Alan. They were not us. We are not alone.” He studied my eyes for my reaction. “The evidence is everywhere, carved into the records of our earth. On every continent there are carvings and hieroglyphs of spacemen and spaceships. They are described in great detail in the Bible. Just open to Ezekiel.”
“You’re talking about aliens,” I said. “You believe in UFOs?”
“My belief system isn’t predicated on faith. I have knowledge. And the term UFO is a misnomer. The crafts you’re referring to aren’t really unidentified flying objects if they’ve been identified, are they?”
“Are you saying that you’ve seen them?” I asked.
“Seen them, touched them, with gloves, of course, they’re remarkably hot once they’ve traveled in our atmosphere, I’ve even been inside them. But it’s not the crafts—it’s the pilots I find most intriguing. Seeing them for the first time, if you don’t wet yourself, is a mind flush. Trust me, everything you think you know about the world is immediately down the toilet. The first time I saw them, it took me days to stop shaking.”
Richard Paul Evans: The Complete Walk Series eBook Boxed Set Page 64
