What the Hand: A Novel About the End of the World and Beyond

by Stockwell, Todd

  Malachy’s predictions were buried in the archives of the Vatican for some 400 years before they were discovered and revealed to contain startlingly accurate descriptions of the previous reigning popes. As subsequent popes came to power, the predictions continued to align with uncanny precision. Malachy wrote that the last pope, number 112, would be known as Peter the Roman, and he would hold the office during a period of many tribulations and the total destruction of Rome. But Malachy, like other non-Biblical prophets and seers, viewed the future through murky lenses. He was off by one. The last pope would be 113.

  ***

  The first order of business for this mendacious trio was to make sure everyone received the Mark of the Beast. To this end, they gained control of armies and police forces around the world. The ancient city of Babel was rebuilt in Iraq, and the New World Order solidified its power across the globe by brute force and vicious persecutions of the noncompliant. It was a time for men and women to search their souls, to choose between good and evil, between God and Satan.

  ***

  Those who chose God were not left alone amid the ever-increasing power of Lucifer, his cohorts, and demons. Within the spiritual realm, the battle lines were forming. Free will worked both ways. The prayers of the remaining faithful had called in legions of God’s angels to fight the onslaught of the Fallen Ones. And to help counter the unholy trinity, as predicted in Revelation, God sent two witnesses to spread the Good News of Christ for forty-two months.

  ***

  These witnesses were actually the prophets Elijah and Enoch from the Old Testament, who hadn’t yet died on the Old Earth but were snatched up to heaven thousands of years before. Now they were back, roaming the mountains and cites of Israel and spreading the truth to anyone who would listen.

  The Antichrist sent the Minions to take them down, but as predicted, they were indestructible for a time, spitting fire from their mouths and disintegrating anyone or any army that came at them.

  I never got to watch them on the Old Earth, but we heard some of the radio reports from the various pirate stations we were able to pick up. The announcers described wave after wave of attacks met with annihilation by the ferocious prophets. The Antichrist had not yet gained complete control over the media and the world was glued to their computers and televisions for a time to watch the Witnesses in action.

  Millions turned away from the Antichrist to become martyrs over their miraculous feats, until the Antichrist realized he was losing thousands of potential followers by the second and wisely ordered the Witnesses to be left alone.

  But the Antichrist would have his revenge. As was written, their heavenly powers were eventually removed and the Antichrist pounced, laying waste to the Witnesses and leaving their bodies in the streets of Jerusalem for three and a half days, so the world could see them on television and renew their confidence in the dark leader.

  ***

  Also on the side of good, 144,000 evangelists from the original Twelve Tribes of Israel, who had been dispersed across the globe, returned to their homeland during the last days. These were Jews who could no longer deny Christ as their long-awaited Messiah. They would make up for their blindness by preaching the gospel with a vengeance, until every one of the 144,000 had saved thousands and met their own martyrdoms.

  ***

  For thousands of years, the Jewish people had been waiting for a messiah to rescue them from the constant persecution they had faced for their belief in God. The Old Testament prophets had left them hundreds of predictions so they could recognize this savior when He finally appeared. It was predicted He would be a descendant of Abraham and David, He would be born in Bethlehem, He would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, make the blind see and the deaf hear, be betrayed by a friend for thirty pieces of silver, be beaten and spat upon, pierced in His hands and feet, given up to death by His own people, that He would return from the dead, and on and on.

  And there was one other prediction in the Old Testament concerning the coming Messiah. It was predicted that the Jewish people would ignore all the predictions and miss Him altogether. And that’s exactly what happened.

  ***

  The Jewish people, like many of us, needed a baseball bat to the head to finally wake up. The two witnesses and 144,000 had converted many, but now they were dead, along with millions of martyrs. And most of the would-be martyrs were in hiding, often at the behest of cowards like me holding them back. But nothing could hold back the coming blows of the Tribulation, as we were about to discover.

  19

  The sisters were to die next. They had been the self-appointed mother hens of the tribe and were to be sorely missed. That motherly instinct would seal their fate. While everyone was outside fooling around, Ida and Eva were inside the cave cleaning and straightening, trying to maintain some semblance of a home.

  ***

  That’s when the earth began to shake violently, throwing us to the ground, where we rolled around helplessly. Had we managed to gain our footing, we might have tried to reach them and then perished ourselves. Instead, we could only watch in horror as the mountain collapsed on the good sisters, crushing them in an instant.

  ***

  The birth pangs, increasing in their ferocity even before the Tribulation, mostly came our way in the form of natural disasters. We had already experienced raging wildfires that decimated the vegetation of surrounding mountains. Hurricane winds came through with such force they uprooted century-old redwoods. Floodwaters surged through the valleys below after the heavy rains. And earthquakes shook the mountains on a regular basis.

  ***

  This quake was something special, though. I looked it up at the Hall of Knowledge. It was the largest ever experienced on the Earth. It measured a magnitude of 11.8, putting to shame the Great Los Angeles Earthquake. It destroyed buildings in fourteen countries, caused three deadly tsunamis, and killed nearly three million people. And on a mountain far away from its epicenter, it took two of our good friends.

  ***

  It was another tough loss. Billy, doted on by the sisters for his resemblance to Ida’s raptured son, was crushed. And I was especially saddened because I had become quite close to Eva. But there was nothing much we could do except to mourn and pray for them, find ourselves another camp, and start over again.

  ***

  Fortunately, the weather was fair and we’d slept outside the mouth of the cave the night before the quake hit, so we had inadvertently spared some crucial supplies. Regardless, most of our food was under the rubble in the cave. We packed what little was left and agreed to head toward the ocean where we might pilfer something to eat from one of the beach communities.

  ***

  On our way across the mountains, the grumblings of martyrdom gained traction again. Billy, fresh off the deaths of his beloved sisters, led the chorus this time, but Danny and Howard were right there with him. Only Speckle, somewhere in his own world, and Roger, who wasn’t paying attention, remained quiet, except to occasionally complain about the long hike.

  “I say we just get it over with,” said the distraught Billy.

  “I don’t know what we’re waiting for,” said Danny.

  “Yeah—what are we waiting for?” Howard chimed.

  “I don’t know—maybe the avoidance of an excruciating and needless death,” I said.

  “Who cares? It’s gonna happen sooner or later,” said Billy.

  “That’s not necessarily true,” I said. “Only God knows what’s in store for us.”

  “Stop it, George! What’s the point? We should be out there spreading the Gospel, not hiding in caves like cowards!” said Danny.

  Danny was as angry as I’d ever known her to be, and this was the first time she sounded completely serious about martyrdom. It scared me, so I pulled out my only sure hand: “I’ll stop, but who is going to take care of Roger?”

  “Roger will come with us. He’ll be better off,” said Billy.

  But it didn’t matter what Billy said. I
knew he was being emotional. His bravado would wane after he got some food and rest. And Howard, whom I’m pretty sure was secretly infatuated with Billy, would go along with him. My only worry was Danny, and when she didn’t respond to my remark about Roger, I knew the martyrdom business would be dropped, at least for a time.

  ***

  Martyrdom and Christianity had gone hand in hand since the beginning. All except two of the original apostles gave their lives to spread the Good News of Christ’s sacrifice and teachings, and to share the miracles they had witnessed. Nonbelievers on the Old Earth could not grasp the significance of this.

  Christianity had not spread across the seven continents in a vacuum. The apostles didn’t travel the known world, giving their lives to spout dogma. Such thinking should have been an absurdity to any reasonable man. Yet hundreds of thousands were martyred, and Christianity became the world’s largest religion while many continued to view Jesus as some sort of philosopher.

  ***

  The apostle Peter was crucified upside down by the Romans. They were going to do it the regular way, but he begged them to do something different because he felt unworthy of suffering the exact fate of Jesus.

  Bartholomew was whipped mercilessly and skinned alive. Let me reiterate that: he was skinned alive. And yet, he did not deny the teachings of his “philosopher.”

  Andrew was also whipped, nearly to death. His tormentors stopped the beating because they didn’t want him dying too quickly. He lived for two more days tied to an X-shaped cross. What did he do during those days on the cross? Did he beg to be let down? Did he deny his “philosopher”? No, he continued preaching the Good News.

  James was sentenced to death for spreading his belief in Christ. While waiting for his execution, he witnessed to his Roman guard, who was so moved by James’ faith that he asked to be martyred as well. James and the Roman guard were beheaded side by side.

  Some local Jews tossed James the Younger off a cliff after he refused to deny Christ. He survived the fall, so they beat him and threw stones at him. When that failed to kill him, they bashed his head in with a club.

  Thomas was stabbed with spears and burned alive. Matthew was done in by sword in Ethiopia. And so it went for these brave men. Even many of the later apostles, most notably Mark and Paul, who never knew Jesus, ended up martyred for their own great faith. Mark went to Alexandria to tell the Egyptians about Christ, the things he’d learned, and the miracles he’d witnessed. The Egyptians welcomed him by tying him to a couple of horses and dragging him down the street until he resembled a large cut of meat. And Paul, who was responsible for turning so many to Christ, was beaten, imprisoned, exiled, tortured, and finally beheaded by the Roman Emperor Nero.

  ***

  These men were either insane or had seen things to bolster their faith to an extreme that could not be denied. Had they all been insane, it would have been some sort of strange, mass hysteria or hallucination, unshakable in so many even through the most cruel torture, unparalleled in the annals of psychiatry, science, or any other known history.

  The idea is ridiculous. There was only one truth here. These men gave their lives because they witnessed and practiced miracles, speaking to God in the Spirit or after the return from the dead of their friend and teacher, Jesus, in the flesh. And it was a shame their deaths had to be ignored by even one man, let alone the billions of skeptics who questioned their sacrifices.

  ***

  By the way, the two original apostles who didn’t die spreading Christianity were Judas and John. Judas hung himself, unable to bear the guilt, after he betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, and John, the Revelation guy, was dropped in boiling oil for his faith, only he miraculously survived, and that’s how he ended up exiled to the Island of Patmos where he received the visions.

  ***

  Much later, some very confused individuals, referred to in their circles as Martyrs of Islam, would strap bombs to their chests, walk onto buses, into shops, or other crowded areas, shouting “Allah Akbar,” pull a cord and blow themselves up—along with many others, including women and children, who moments before had only been minding their own business. But this wasn’t martyrdom in any sense of the word. This was known on the Old Earth by another term: mass murder.

  ***

  I had deterred any would-be martyrs in my own little circle, at least for a time, and we continued our journey toward the sea in silence.

  ***

  Hours down the trail, we stumbled upon a rare doe feeding near our path. I pulled my rifle and promptly shot the creature before it could react. We dragged our kill another half-mile to a flat opening in the woods, made camp and settled in to eat and sleep.

  Deer can sometimes smell humans a mile away. Even experienced hunters had difficulty tracking and killing these animals. Not to mention the shortage of any game in those sparse times. But these were the small miracles that happened when we needed them most. The good Lord was with us. Still, we were about to get some uninvited guests.

  ***

  Between the loss of the sisters and the long hike, everyone was spent and quiet that evening, except for Roger, who had been acting stranger than usual ever since Joe’s death and who began pacing and whispering to no one, it seemed, in one corner of the encampment. Danny went to him, and after some time, he seemed to settle down. A little later, I watched as he sat on his pack and began reading from what looked to be a well-worn book. Although he wasn’t much of a reader, I didn’t think much about it, mostly because I was too tired to care. I did notice Danny staring intently at him before I fell asleep, but that was the last thing I remembered before all hell broke loose, literally.

  20

  With the best of us having been raptured and more being martyred every day, the spiritual battle between good and evil, raging in the heavens and on the Old Earth since the fall of angels and man, was finally coming to an end. God pulled back his forces and unleashed the last of the demon horde, held back for centuries to forestall the inevitable destruction that was to come.

  ***

  The outside world was experiencing a deluge of supernatural phenomenon, unprecedented even by old world standards. Long ago, when men began to drift from the foundations and structures of the Old Testament teachings, and from their relationship with God, they found themselves at the mercy of demons, both spiritual and physical. In order to coexist, they made pacts with demons, setting up pagan religions, worshiping these fallen angels as gods, setting them up as chiefs and kings, practicing occult rituals to maintain their power long after they were dead.

  In those days, the supernatural was natural. There was a prevalence of real magicians, soothsayers, clairvoyants, witches, warlocks, giants, ghosts, monsters, demons, and men possessed.

  Cultures and nations had been built from pagan practices, but such evil could never be sustained, and those empires eventually failed. And once Christianity began to spread, the spiritual war took a turn for the good of man. Demons were cast out, their images, statues, and temples destroyed, their power and influences relegated to the shadows, to the dark spaces of the planet and the dark hearts of men.

  ***

  But the battle was far from over. Just as in the days before the Great Flood, in the last years of the Old Earth, there had come a resurgence of the occult, and the appearance of the Antichrist was the result. With each new pledge and recipient of the Mark, Victor Talley, now fully possessed by Satan, gained more and more power.

  After solidifying this power across much of the world, establishing a one-world government and religion, and initiating peace in the Middle East, the Antichrist set his sights on the newly rebuilt Jewish Temple in the city of Jerusalem. He had all symbols and articles related to Jewish monotheism removed from the temple, replacing these with images and statues of himself, so he could be worshiped there as the one true deity. This was predicted by the prophet Daniel in the Old Testament and was known as the Abomination of Desolation.

  The Abomination of D
esolation was the beginning of the end of the Tribulation. God began unleashing the demons and along with them the worst Judgments of Revelation.

  ***

  Far away from our mountain hideout, despite droughts and other natural disasters, in many cities and towns across the globe people were still out at the movies, markets, restaurants, bars, and pagan churches, waving their Marks to collect their tickets, burgers, booze, car washes, shoes, cakes and pies, and all manner of goods and services. Things were getting tougher, but all in all, there remained a decent quality of life for many of the worshipers of Satan.

  God had been holding it all together, trying to give people an opportunity to repent, to come to the only reasonable conclusion that the material world was all for naught, that the Antichrist and his trappings were a big lie, a black hole of the death and destruction, and that all sins would have to be paid for, either by the blood of Jesus or by eternal separation from God.

  ***

  But now the most virulent and loathsome demons were being unchained one by one, and the Judgments were to come like a hammer to wake the few whose hearts were not yet completely blackened by the bile of godlessness.

  ***

  It began, much as it always had in days long past, with the voices of the dead. People would hear strange whispers, sounds that could not be traced to any specific location and sometimes seem to be coming from their own heads. The voices were mostly incoherent, but now and again a word or phrase of a vile and blasphemous nature could be understood.

  Next, came the manifestations—the feeling of a presence, the flash of a vaporous form, shadowy figures moving in the peripheral, the sudden appearance and disappearance of man or creature, real but not real.

  Then the possessions—the vacant looks and odd behaviors of neighbors, friends and relatives; the cold staring and the fixated glares of malevolence; the guttural noises and vicious words carried by unfamiliar voices; the writhing bodies and fits of seizures; and the explosions of bloody violence and murder.