Behind the Darkness

by W. Franklin Lattimore

Fear shot through Brent’s core. A stunning realization flashed through his mind. He looked over at Garian and, while hoping that he was wrong, said to him, “It’s a spirit of confusion. Isn’t it?”

  Garian nodded.

  Brent’s heart raced. He had to figure out what to do.

  “You lied to me!” he accused the demon.

  The demon kept speaking into Elizabeth, but turned enough to give Brent an honest smile this time. A smile backed by evil humor and filled with fearsome teeth.

  Brent tried to move to Elizabeth’s right side. It was then that he realized that the wing wasn’t there to protect Elizabeth from the demon of death; it was there to prevent him from intervening. He knelt down in front of her instead. He began to yell at her, trying to counteract the misleading thoughts being expertly placed within her mind.

  “Life! Your life is beautiful! Your baby is beautiful! Give life a chance!” Give life a chance? Really? That’s the best I can come up with?

  Brent’s own thoughts were rattled. In the midst of this crisis, he was coming unglued. He had given this demonic spirit his own permission to go ahead with this!

  Think, Brent! Think!

  Brent knew that he couldn’t stop the demon on his own. He couldn’t pray for any intervention, because Joshua had made him the god over this situation. And now, he couldn’t even get Garian to take action.

  He got up and walked toward the bedroom door. What am I supposed to do?

  Wait! …Empower Garian!

  He walked over to the warrior. “If I got you prayer cover, could you intervene?”

  Brent knew that he couldn’t pray to Joshua for help, but the realization struck that, when others prayed, they weren’t lifting those prayers to him. Those prayers were going to the real God! It wasn’t a twenty-five-year-old fallible man who gave the angel its power. It had to be—could only be—Joshua, himself!

  “I do not know. If this demon establishes a right—if Elizabeth begins to agree—then, just like with the spirit of suicide, it will be able to remain at her side.”

  “But, prayer has got to do something, Garian! It has got to have a powerful effect if the prayer itself is powerful. Right?”

  “For Elizabeth’s sake, I hope that will prove to be so. There may yet be resources that can be brought to bear against these agents of darkness.”

  Elizabeth suddenly got up from her bed and began to walk to her door. Upon reaching it, she opened it and walked onto the landing, turning left toward her parents’ room.

  Brent transported himself into the master bedroom and waited for Elizabeth. She opened the door and entered, flipping the light switch on. She walked straight to one of the two walk-in closets and opened it. There, taking up a good foot and a half of space along the left wall, was a safe.

  A gun safe.

  Oh, God! No! Please, Father! Joshua!

  Elizabeth looked at the handle. It required a key.

  “Where would he keep it?” she asked herself.

  Brent was beside himself. He had lost control of the conversation, lost control of her thoughts—lost control of everything.

  Prayer, his mind screamed. Prayer!

  He couldn’t be in two places at the same time, so he had to make a decision.

  Without another moment wasted, he transported himself to the Morrison household.

  Tina, Colleen, and Mandy were watching a movie on the couch in the living room. Paul and Janet Morrison were sitting at the kitchen table sharing the events of their day with each other over coffee.

  Brent quickly walked up to Tina. She had been the most sensitive so far to his voice. He cupped his hands around her right ear and yelled, “Prayer! Elizabeth needs prayer!”

  No response.

  I’m competing with that movie.

  Okay. Louder, then.

  “ELIZABETH NEEDS HELP! PRAY! PRAAAAY!”

  The three girls broke out in giggles as they called out a chorus of “AS…YOU…WISH!” in unison with the now-unmasked Westley as he tumbled down a grassy hill.

  The movie, one of his favorites, was all of a sudden not so funny. Not anymore. It may never be again after all of this played out.

  “Are you girls okay?” came a question from the kitchen. It was Mrs. Morrison.

  “Huh? I’m sorry. What, Mom?”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Why?”

  “I just thought I heard...” She paused. Shaking her head, “Nothing. Never mind. I’m sorry I interrupted.”

  Brent took advantage of the distraction and screamed his loudest into Tina’s ear. “ELIZABETH NEEDS HELP! PRAY! PRAY NOW!”

  Tina’s expression changed, all traces of laughter gone from her mouth and eyes. “Something’s wrong,” she thought. “Elizabeth.”

  She leaned forward toward the coffee table and grabbed the remote control. Pausing the movie, she said, “I think we need to pray.”

  Brent wasn’t going to stop with Tina. He was going to establish confirmation. And to that end he was already yelling into Colleen’s left ear. “Pray for Elizabeth! She needs help! She is thinking about suicide!”

  Colleen said, “I’m starting to get scared for her.”

  “Girls, what’s going on?” It was Mr. Morrison.

  Tina and Colleen looked at each other, not sure of what to say. Should they reveal anything about Elizabeth’s situation?

  Brent trained his listening on Elizabeth as she searched for the key to her dad’s gun safe. “…maybe on Dad’s key chain with his car keys?”

  Good, she hasn’t found it yet. Brent thought for a moment. Was he able to locate the key? He concentrated for a moment. Yes. It was in the master bedroom. It was under the lamp that sat on the nightstand at Tony Franklin’s side of the bed. Hidden, but accessible in the event of an emergency.

  May it remain hidden throughout this emergency, Brent willed. If only he could… Could he?

  Brent concentrated on Garian. Concentrated on making his thoughts known. Concentrated on a message. “Garian, I need you to do something. Can you hear me?”

  “I can,” came the winged warrior’s response.

  Brent was stunned! Really? This is something I could have done all along?

  “Garian, the key that Elizabeth is searching for is under the lamp on the window side of the bed. Guard it. Find a way to redirect her attention if she gets close. Anything to prevent her from getting to that key!”

  “I will do what I can,” said Garian.

  Brent heard Tina as she responded to her dad’s question.

  “Something that Colleen and I need to pray about,” responded Tina.

  “Just the two of you?” her dad asked.

  Colleen looked into Tina’s eyes and gave a barely-noticeable shake of her head.

  “Umm… Yes. At least for right now. It’s something that a friend is going through. We promised to keep it private.”

  This time it was Mrs. Morrison with the question. “Is it Elizabeth Franklin?”

  Tina fretted. “Mom? Dad? Please, don’t ask me anything about it. Okay? I don’t want to break a promise.”

  “Tina,” her dad said, “it’s your decision, but don’t let your promise keep you from doing what’s best for her…or him. Okay?”

  She closed her eyes and nodded her head. “Okay.”

  Tina grabbed Colleen by the hand and, while Mandy remained on the couch wondering what was going on, led her from the couch to her upstairs bedroom.

  Brent watched both of them enter the room and sit on Tina’s bed. Colleen told Tina that she believed she had heard the Holy Spirit tell her that Elizabeth was considering suicide. With no further delay, the two of them began to intercede in earnest for their friend.

  Good, thought Brent. Now to keep that key out of Elizabeth’s hands and get her to change her mind about even wanting to find it.

  Brent arrived back in the Franklin home to see a single demon and an angel watching Elizabeth as she looked through drawer after drawer in her parent
s’ room. The spirit of confusion was nowhere to be seen. Instead, to Brent’s horror, he found that Elizabeth’s acquiescence to that spirit’s words had ushered a familiar adversary back into the fight.

  The spirit of suicide was once again wrapped around Elizabeth’s neck.

  Ice water coursed through Brent’s veins. A combination of fear, anger, and lack of confidence crashed down on him like a mammoth wave.

  Brent approached Elizabeth. As he did, the demon of suicide, now decorated with a few more scars, tightened its tail and began to hiss at him. A warning, or maybe even a defensive reaction.

  He listened again to Elizabeth’s thoughts. “…have to be a gun. It could be something else. Pills? A knife?”

  She stood up and looked toward her parents’ master bathroom. “What does mom have in the medicine cabinet?”

  Brent now wanted to know the answer, as well. He placed himself in the bathroom and peered through the decorative oak doors of the medicine cabinet. There were only a few bottles in it. Tablets and capsules for headaches, indigestion, and colds. Nothing to induce sleep and nothing narcotic or similar. They would be of no real danger to Elizabeth.

  The knife idea, though. Brent sighed. He hoped that she would not try what he had very gratefully failed to accomplish a decade prior.

  Once again back in the bedroom, he watched and listened to Elizabeth, hoping to gain some insight into what he needed to accomplish next.

  “Mom and Dad are healthy as oxes,” she thought. “They wouldn’t have any pills that would do the job.” She briefly toyed with the idea of the knife but recoiled at the thought of the intense pain, knowing it would be far beyond what she could handle.

  Attention returned to the search at hand.

  Brent had to find out what more he could do; what right things he could do.

  A couple of things seemed to have gone well in the past several minutes. First, Garian’s stance in front of the lamp showed that he was willing to do what he had been commanded. And the other was that Tina and Colleen were praying.

  Was it enough? Brent instinctively knew the answer to that.

  He looked at Garian and concentrated. “Can the spirits hear me speak to you this way?”

  “They cannot.”

  It was the reply that he hoped for.

  “Then the spirits don’t know where the key is?”

  “No.”

  That’s a relief, thought Brent. He might now have a few minutes to strategize.

  Brent knew that he was only at the beginning of the plate spinning. The problem was going to be keeping them all spinning while the Enemy continued to add more. He couldn’t afford to allow any of them to fall, cascading in a catastrophic shattering of lives.

  The demons were surely going to try to overwhelm him, as Elizabeth’s protector. They were definitely going to try to keep him distracted from the things he could do to effect a good outcome. Could he do something similar to keep the demons distracted from bringing about a bad outcome?

  The spirit of death was assisting Elizabeth in her search, seeming to enjoy the hunt vicariously through her.

  The demon looked at Brent, an amused look on its face.

  “It is like a game of what you children of dirt call Russian roulette, is it not? Every drawer that she opens could be the gun’s hammer hitting the lone cartridge in the gun chamber. Boom!” It produced a sinister laugh.

  Drawers in closets, in dressers and chests, in jewelry boxes…in nightstands on both sides of the bed. Elizabeth still had several to go through. Her thorough approach at each drawer manufactured a slow pace. But then, what was the rush? Her parents were going to be gone for several hours.

  The irony was that she wasn’t the one who was panicking. Instead, it was Brent.

  He wondered if he could get her to think that the key was elsewhere, in another room.

  The demon of death stood up straight and surveyed the bedroom, looking for something. It turned to Elizabeth and spoke directly into her ear. “Try the nightstands. What better place to hide a key in the event that a gun was needed quickly?” The dark spirit looked at Brent with a smirk.

  Brent tried not to give anything away. Instead of looking toward Garian, he stilled his composure and stared back.

  “Garian?”

  “There is more going on than you are seeing, son of Adam. Actions that you are missing.”

  Actions? Brent’s head swiveled back and forth looking for anything that was escaping him.

  “Where, Garian? I don’t see anything?”

  “I have given you what I can.”

  Of course, thought Brent. Everything’s a mystery. No direct answers.

  Brent thought through the angel’s words. If I’m not seeing what I’m missing, then it can’t be here in this room. Is something going on elsewhere?

  “Garian, you keep that demon and that girl away from that key!”

  “I will do what may be done. I have a small amount of prayer cover. That will help.”

  Small amount? But Colleen and Elizabeth… Then it hit him. Actions that I am missing!

  TINA AND COLLEEN were still on the bed in Tina’s bedroom.

  Talking.

  Not what Brent wanted to see. But he understood why.

  “Getting frustrated, child of dirt? Confused, maybe?”

  It was the spirit of confusion. It was standing in—through—the bed behind the girls, its wings sheltering them, keeping Brent from approaching to speak directly into their ears. If he was going to communicate to either of them, it was going to have to be from a distance.

  What do I do? What?!

  He needed more prayer. More coverage. But from where?

  It came to him!

  In a flash, Brent was downstairs in the Morrison’s home. He approached Paul and Janet Morrison. They had moved from the kitchen table to the couch, now that it had been vacated by the girls. Mandy was nowhere to be seen.

  Husband and wife continued to talk while sipping their cups of coffee.

  Brent walked up to the couch and knelt down between the two sets of legs. He leaned in so that he could be close to both Paul’s left ear and Janet’s right. Then he said, in a clear, loud voice, “Pray! Tina needs prayer! Your daughter! She needs help! Help Tina! Go to her! Pray for Tina!”

  It didn’t take much more shouting before the couple stopped their conversation and looked at each other, concern reaching their brows.

  “Something’s going on,” said Paul, sounding somewhat unsure. “Are you feeling it?”

  Janet broke eye contact, glancing left, as if to listen for something. She slowly nodded her head. “Something with Tina,” she said, as she began to push herself off of the couch.

  Following her lead, Paul got up and the two of them left the living room and proceeded up the stairs to Tina’s room.

  The door was closed, so Paul gave a couple taps with the knuckles of his right hand and then opened it.

  Tina and Colleen were on their knees on the bed. Brent watched as they turned to look at the two adults standing in the doorway.

  “Is everything okay in here?” asked Paul.

  The two girls looked at each other for a moment, then nodded their heads.

  “Are the two of you still praying?”

  Tina responded with, “We’re trying. But we can’t seem to focus.”

  Brent, standing behind the Morrisons at the doorway, spoke into their ears again. “Pray with them! Pray with Tina! Get them to open up! You—we—need to hear what’s going on!”

  “Tina…” began Mrs. Morrison, “Colleen… We need to hear what’s going on.”

  The two girls visibly tensed.

  “Why?” asked Tina.

  “Because I think your mom and I just heard God tell us to ask you about it and to pray with you.”

  Brent walked through the Morrisons and into the bedroom. He stared into the eyes of the demon of confusion. There was fire in them. Hatred. It was no longer the mild-mannered demon that he’d been dealing wi
th over the past hour.

  “Do you think you can win this, you repugnant human? Do you really think that you can best us?”

  The demon seemed to think of something, then it visibly relaxed.

  “Brent Lawton,” it said, “come and let us reason together.”

  “Stop!” Brent shouted. “Don’t try to use the Bible as your weapon!” Brent took three more steps to the foot of Tina’s bed and said, “I know you are not going to go away at the use of His name, but I rebuke you in the name of the Captain of the Hosts of Heaven—Jesus the Christ!”

  The spirit shrank back momentarily, as if absorbing a hit to the gut or a punch to the face. It wasn’t much, Brent knew that, but at least the name had brought a little bit of discomfort to the demon. And that knowledge brought Brent some satisfaction.

  Mother and father advanced on the bed and began to sit down with the girls. It was then that Mandy Morrison rounded the door jamb and entered the room.

  “Can I pray, too?”

  Paul looked to Tina for the answer. She shook her head a little while she began to slowly shrug. The silent separation of her lips made it clear that she didn’t know how to answer the question.

  Janet looked to her youngest daughter and said, “This may not be an appropriate conversation to be a part of, Sweetheart.”

  Then with the innocence of a child’s heart, with insight that came from—well, somewhere that was not Brent—Mandy said, “I think Elizabeth might die tonight.”

  All five in the room gawked—six, if the demon was included. Mother and father looked to Tina for answers. Brent watched as tears welled up in her eyes and she began to sob. “I’m so scared! Both of us are!”

  The inward strength that Colleen Burns always tried to portray collapsed in that moment. She too, began to cry.

  “We don’t know what to do?” Colleen said. “We try to pray, but we don’t seem to know what to say! Everything’s coming out…confused.”

  “Then we put an end to that confusion right now,” said Paul Morrison. “Mandy, come in and hop up on the bed.”

  Mandy advanced slowly, emotion playing at her lower lip. “I don’t want her to die.”

  Janet took her daughter into her arms as the girl climbed atop the bed.