Lucifer Travels-Book #1 in the suspense, mystery thriller
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LUCIFER TRAVELS
MALIK WILL
~~~
Copyright © 2014 by Malik Will
Published by AuthorCraft Publishing
Copyright © 2014 by Malik Will
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
AuthorCraft Publishing
www.authorcraftpublishing.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
1st Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Lucifer Travels/ Malik Will. -- 1st ed.
ISBN 978-0-615-98716-30
Dedication
I would like to dedicate this novel to my best friend and confidant, Rashun Lockhart. You are truly an inspiration. You have been through so much in this world. So much so, that I sometimes imagine of having the power to change it. And if you would ask for the earth to be wholesome and white just for one day, I would make the world so.
Sometimes the darkest things in our lives make us beautiful because we know underneath all the decay, there’s a light ready to illuminate.
—MALIK WILL
CONTENTS
Like A Roaring Lion
One Nightmare Too Many
Those aboard Train C114
The Lake that Burns with Fire
The Words of Him
So That You May be Healed
The Sufferings of this Present Time
Both Come From Him
Light to My Path
Flourish without water
Its End is the Way to Death
God’s Storm
Hands that Shed Innocent Blood
Be My Witnesses
The Sum of Your Words
Through the Valley
Test the Spirits to See
The Devil Prowls
Someone to Devour
Darknesse Not Overcometh
Finally, Be Strong
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
Like A Roaring Lion
Mrs. Jackson concocts supper, a stroke of genius pulled from scraps she found lying around the fridge. Her kids, away somewhere in the backyard, are elated by a stray mutt she told them to avoid. She’s worried. It’s near dusk and her older sister, Bridgett, has not returned home at her usual time.
She checks her watch as the foulest of thoughts pour into her head. She mumbles to herself, “That girl should’ve been home a long time ago.”
The concern came comes from the recent news that there had been three bodies discovered, not too far from their home. All of who were women.
As she removes a hot pot of hog maws from the stove, she shouts to her children, “Have ya’ll seen your auntie?”
“No, isn’t that your job?” replies Debra as she walks into the kitchen.
“Girl don’t you sass me,” she says. “Where’s your brother?”
“He out there playing with that dirty dog...again!”
“Go tell him to bring his butt inside!”
Debra, delighted and full of glee, storms out of the kitchen and shouts at the top of her lungs, “ROGER, MOMMA SAID GET YO BUTT INSIDE FOR YOU GET A WHOOPIN’!”
Roger runs to the kitchen, shouting, leaving a trail of dirt on the recently swept floors.
“I didn’t do nothing Momma,” he says.
“Then why are your clothes covered in mud?”
“Ummmmm, I don’t know, Mommy.”
Mrs. Jackson scoffs and rolls her eyes in annoyance. But the worry about her sister outweighs her urge to give him a beating. So she dismisses him. “Boy, go on down the street and see if your aunt stopped by sister Jenkins’s house.”
Roger was staggered thinking his mother believed his story. He had just told a tall tale and lived to see another day. Jubilant and cloaked in bravado, he walks from the kitchen to the front door, pumping his chest in a grand manner.
That boy could be a dead pig in the sunshine and still be happy, Mrs. Jackson thinks as she rolls her eyes again. “Oh, and see if sister Jenkins got any milk, we’re running low.”
Roger didn’t respond.
“Boy, I know you hear me talking to you!”
But little Roger still didn’t respond. Mrs. Jackson, anxious and bushed from standing on her feet, pitches her giant cooking spoon into the sink in a fury and storms into the living room screaming to the top of her lungs. But the screaming was is replaced by heavy breathing—the only sound she could create.
Her body halts, frozen in time. The air in her chest inflated inflates and deflateddeflates. Rendered speechless, she began begins to tremble. Roger is also at a standstill with his eyes wide open as tears pour from his face. However, it was a silent cry as if he understands his fate.
Mrs. Jackson murmurs, “Please don’t do this.”
But this plea was is not to her son. It was is to the man holding the gun, which, at that moment, is pointing directly at little Roger’s head.
“Please, don’t hurt my baby,” Mrs. Jackson cries.
The gunman smiles. “I won’t hurt him. It will be painless.”
“NO! PLEASE…PLEASE…PLEASE GOD.”
The gunman strokes Rogers’s head, comforting him as a father would to his son. He whispers in his ear, “It’s okay, buddy, it’s okay.”
The gunman turns to Mrs. Jackson as she continues to plead. “God can’t help him,” he says. “. He been dead a long time. He just ain’t know it”
Mrs. Jackson drops to her knees. “NOOOOOO!”
Then the sounds of life returning to death spun through the room. BANG!
Roger crumples to the wooden floor. Blood pours from his body, traveling toward his mother’s knees.
The gunman, steely eyed and focused, approaches Mrs. Jackson.
Debra rushes into the living room screaming, “What happened, Momma? What happened?”
The gunman hovers over Mrs. Jackson. He watches her cry for a moment.
Debra sees her brother lying on the floor. She runs toward his body, stretching her arms like Silly Putty, placing his head onto her chest. “What did you do to Roger? What did you do?!”
The gunman turns toward Debra. Staunch and unwilling to fold, she glares into the gunman’s eyes even as tears gush from her own.
He stares back and, cruel and without warning, places the barrel of the gun against her brow. The heat burns her. But, steady in her pride, she refuses to flinch. She grinds her teeth to blunt the pain. Her skin, lax and full of youth, is blackened by the blistering heat. The room, silent, and her fate, sealed. One can only hope God noticed as she begins to recite the Lord’s Prayer in hope. “Our Father, who art in heaven.”
The gunman cocks his gun.
“Hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come.”
The gunman moves his finger from the top of the gun and places it on the trigger.
Debra takes notice. “Please allow me to finish.”
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The gunman removes his finger from the trigger and places it back on the top of the gun.
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” Debra continues. “Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory; forever and forever. Amen.”
Debra finishes her prayer and continues to provide succor to her brother’s body, rubbing her fingers throughout his hair as his mother would do.
“Do you think He heard me?”
“Who?”
“I mean, God. Do you think He heard?”
The gunman places his finger back on the trigger. “Go and ask him,” he says. And with her sad face filled with disgust and trepidation, he fires one single shot into her head.
Debra falls to the floor with her brother still locked in her arms. Mrs. Jackson lies crying in the same position as before.
The gunman, with no hesitation, turns to Mrs. Jackson and aims. The pistol again roars. Bang! In one small moment, a once beautiful home had now become a grave. And, in that same instant, to his gun, a free man had now become a slave.
With his heart racing, buried in blood and guilt, he turns to the front door with intent to leave. But a distinct sound captures him. It’s the sound of life. The sound of innocence. It’s the sound of Mrs. Jackson’s seven-month-old baby awakening from his nap. Or as he sees it, it’s the sound of a witness.
He rushes to the back room, pulls his pistol from his pants, and as he reaches the baby’s crib, he points the gun at the baby’s head. The baby smiles, unaware of the danger that’s before him. The infant, idyllic as he lays, reaches for the pistol as if it is a toy, smiling and laughing as children do.
The gunman pulls the pistol out of reach, not allowing him to get burned by the barrel’s heat. He hesitates. The scene of new life and pending death is all-symbolic. But he isn’t a man of the arts, only a man with a heart. Though it’s blackened, and the Louisiana sun is all but forgiving. So he re-aims as the baby plays. His finger slowly moves toward the trigger. Inch by inch till it touches.
Then, Daniel awakens from his dream.
CHAPTER TWO
One Nightmare Too Many