Behind the Darkness

by W. Franklin Lattimore

  The warrior looked the dwarf spirit in the eyes and said, “To the pit!” The spirit shrieked in terror as it was hurled toward the living room wall at the front of the house. An angel in its path swept its sword upward just in time for the demon to be split in half as it made contact with the blade. The two pieces of demon flesh continued through the wall and out of the house.

  Brent’s excitement could hardly be contained. He looked past the angels near the dining room to see if the other two demons were still there. They, too, were gone!

  With a fist pump toward the ceiling, Brent shouted, “Yes! Thank you!”

  “Son of Adam!”

  The shout startled Brent out of his reverie. He looked in the direction of the voice. It wasn’t Garian. It was one of the other two angels that had swept in to aid Garian during his fight. The angel, whose name he did not know, now had scars across his face and rips throughout his tunic.

  Brent tried to meet his gaze, but found that he could not hold it. Looking downward toward the being’s knees, he listened as the angel said, “The battle is not won! The absence of the Enemy does not mean the presence of the Almighty! Danger lurks here, still. It is a time to think, not to celebrate! Her life yet hangs in the balance.”

  The angel’s words echoed in Brent’s mind. Danger still lurked. Elizabeth’s life still hung in the balance. But what more could he do?

  What about all of the things that he had done that had hurt the situation just as much as anything he had done to make it better? He had railed at God. He had bargained with the devil.

  Brent stood in the front yard of the Franklins’ home. He needed a moment to think things through.

  It was early evening on a Friday, and kids were out on skateboards and bicycles. Barbecue grills were fired up, and the scent of cooking meats wafted through the air. The laughter of children could be heard in different directions.

  The neighborhood was oblivious to what was going on in the house behind him. How many Christians lived in this development? How many of them knew the dangers that surrounded them every day? The world was not nearly as safe as it looked.

  What if every person saw all the battles taking place around him? Brent imagined that there would be much less laughter, far fewer smiles. Mankind would be engaged in a war that even children could not avoid.

  How many people would ever know that battles were continuously waged on their behalves? Demons worked feverishly to keep humans blind to the truth. Angels fought to open corridors to people’s minds so that they could hear and accept the truth. And the whole time, Christians were supposed to be walking down each opened pathway to deliver that truth.

  Everything—absolutely everything—centered on the truth. The truth that Man did not rise from primordial goo to become the life that he is today. The truth that science has not disproved the existence of God. The truth that there are not multiple paths to God.

  The Truth!

  Joshua—Jesus—said that he was the Truth. “The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” Jesus said in the pages of the Bible. “…and no man may come to the Father except through me.”

  No other way. No other life. No other truth.

  Truth. The very thing that mankind, as a whole, does not want. People believed, for the most part, only what they wanted to believe. The greater shame was that Christians were just as likely to fall into that mindset, a paradigm of choosing what they want to hear or believe about Scripture.

  Selective truth. Partial truth. Inept truth. And the whole while, people who might be willing to hear the full truth were going to Hell all over the world because of it.

  Maybe everyone should get a glimpse behind the curtain to see the reality of each person’s value, to see angels and demons doing their best and worst to assure each man, woman, and child a specific and permanent after-life destination.

  Oh the blindness! The inability to see the spirit realm was one thing, but the lack of desire to see the truth of who Jesus is…what he has given…

  Brent closed his eyes and whispered, “God, open our eyes to the need of everyone to know you.”

  Heaving a deep sigh, Brent turned around to face the Franklin house. ‘So beautiful on the outside, but inside filled with dead men’s bones.’ The words of Jesus took on fresh meaning as they related to the all-too-important American words, status and stuff.

  He trained his thoughts on Elizabeth’s, still surrounded by a ring of angelic protection.

  “…to do? Just accept this baby? Be kicked out of my house?” She remembered a girl at her former high school during her freshman year. “Rachel Bates. Boys and girls alike mocked her behind her back and sometimes to her face. Her parents sent her off to some camp or something where she could have the baby. A camp filled with other girls going through the same thing.”

  The very idea of being sent to some other place—some other state—where she knew no one was beyond her capacity to accept.

  “No, I can’t do this. I can’t keep this thing. There’s got to be a way to get rid of it.”

  Brent was grieved. There has got to be a way to encourage her to keep it.

  Brent knew that Tina and Colleen wouldn’t let her walk through it alone; having a baby would be an incredible challenge—even more so for an unmarried teen. The rest of the Morrison’s would probably stand by her as well. But none of them could even approach her at this point.

  Then there was Jason. His threat to…to what, harm her if she didn’t get an abortion? Yeah, he was a real help.

  Finally, there were her parents. Based on Elizabeth’s thoughts and his own interaction with Tony and Laura Franklin, he surmised that they would do whatever it took to protect their reputations and socialite statuses. A forced trip to an abortion clinic was certainly more likely to take place than their acceptance of a pregnant teenage daughter.

  Was there no one who could…?

  “Kyle!”

  THE SETTING SUN pushed through Kyle Russell’s bedroom window, refusing to fade out quietly. He had just finished up writing a biology paper and was considering a slice of the watermelon that he had seen on the kitchen counter earlier.

  Getting up from his desk, he pushed in his chair. Then he hesitated, hands still gripping the chair’s cloth-covered back.

  He stared out the window, down into his yard. The lone beech tree was green and fully leaved. His neighbor, across the street, was pushing his lawn mower into the garage. A couple of cars drove by, windows down. A beautiful end to the day.

  Then why was he not feeling it?

  He knew why. Elizabeth.

  For the remainder of the day, after lunch in the courtyard, all he could do was think about her. His dad had even caught him pondering the dilemma that he couldn’t push aside. In the living room, before dinner, he had apparently been sitting, dazed, with a blank look on his face.

  “Looks serious.”

  His dad walked in from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a hand towel.

  It was just his dad and he, now. Kyle’s mom had passed away nearly five years earlier from breast cancer. So much responsibility had been cast upon the man he considered to be his hero.

  “Dad, can I ask you something?”

  Dan Russell took a seat opposite his son, both of them on chairs that angled toward the coffee table and couch. He leaned forward, forearms on his knees.

  “Always, Son. You know that.”

  Kyle and his father had always been close. He was continually being mentored into a life of making decisions—not based on what was easy, but on what was right.

  A year earlier, while out on a survival trip with other kids his age and their dads, his father took him aside after a very labor-intensive rock climb and told him that he considered him to be a man, no longer a boy.

  “Listen to me, Son,” he had said. “You’re not a man because you can climb a cliff. You’re a man because you’ve got a heart that doesn’t back away from a challenge.” The words sunk deep into Kyle’s heart. He knew that he would never forget
that day or how it made him feel.

  “Dad, there’s this girl.”

  His dad’s face began to light up. “Okay…”

  “She’s fifteen. And she’s beautiful.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I kind of invited myself to have lunch with her and her friends today. But I did it knowing that something was wrong. I knew that she was really struggling with something that was scaring her.”

  Dan’s face grew serious. “All right. Keep going.”

  “As we sat and ate lunch—as she and I began to talk—I could tell that she was relaxing and really enjoying herself. We, you know, connected.”

  Kyle’s dad gave him a nod of understanding.

  “Okay, so yesterday…classes are over, and I’m walking through the hall to go catch the bus. I see Jason Foy…”

  “The star of your basketball team?”

  “Yeah. He was leaning in toward Elizabeth at her locker. He was mad—I mean, like, big-time angry. So, I slowed down to make sure that nothing bad was going to happen. He pushed a wad of money into her hand and told her to ‘get rid of their problem.’”

  Dan sat up. “I see.”

  “I waited them out. He was hard on her, Dad. Threatening her. He finally left and she began to cry.”

  “I can understand why your heart goes out to her.”

  “But it’s more than that. Earlier that day, before I knew any of this stuff, I was sitting in class. I mean, I barely knew who this girl was! And something told me to start praying for someone named Elizabeth. I didn’t know it was Elizabeth Franklin, but I thought it might be. Dad, I’ve wanted to meet her all year.” Kyle’s eyes trailed down to the floor.

  “Okay. I think I’ve got the picture. A girl that you’ve known from afar, but wanted to get to know. You’re told to pray for someone with the same name and you suspect that it’s her. You find out that you’re right, but you also find out that she’s pregnant and being pressured to get an abortion. And now you like her more than ever.”

  Kyle nodded at the carpet.

  “Not an easy position to be in. Do her friends know?”

  Kyle looked back up at his dad. “Yes. At least I’m pretty sure. Yesterday, out in the courtyard, I could see that they were trying to comfort her about something. They weren’t trying to run away from the situation. I found out that they’re both Christians.”

  “And Elizabeth?”

  “She’s struggling with that idea.”

  “Hmm…” Dan leaned back in the chair. He pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and released a humorless chuckle. “I’m sitting here thinking about how ‘funny’ it is that I want you to stand in your manhood and make Scripture-based decisions, while at the same time wanting you to gracefully back out of the whole situation and not allow it to get close to our home.” Dropping his hand, he said, “So, what is it that you want to do?”

  Kyle didn’t hesitate, though his words were a bit more softly spoken. “I want to keep getting to know her.”

  His dad nodded. “I kinda thought that’s what you were going to say.”

  “I just don’t know what to do.”

  Dan leaned forward again. “First, you keep praying. My first inclination is to believe that God has set you up for this. He had you start praying for Elizabeth, then he timed things so that you would see and hear what was happening at her locker. Sounds like God wants you involved somehow. How much? I don’t know. You need to be asking God for wisdom, Son.”

  “You’re okay with this?” asked Kyle.

  Dan knew his son wasn’t asking if he was okay with his intervention, but rather with his ‘involvement’ with the girl.

  “Kyle, if she decides to take the baby through to term, it’s not going to be easy. If you stand by her, people may think the baby is yours. You need to understand what that will do to your reputation as a Christian. It will change a lot of people’s thoughts about who they thought you were.”

  “You’re saying I shouldn’t get too close?”

  “No,” Dan said with a sigh. “What I’m saying is that you will have a battle ahead of you, as well. Your desire to help this girl is probably going to include you not exposing who the real father is. That is going to start a lot of rumors flying that you’re going to have to deal with. Scripture tells us to ‘avoid all appearances of evil.’ In this case, you would be doing the opposite. But, then, you would be in good company.”

  Kyle looked at his dad, his curiosity piqued.

  “Two thousand years ago, a carpenter by the name of Joseph decided to forsake his good reputation for the same two reasons: because of love and to also protect the honor of a certain pregnant teenager.”

  Brent listened—even as he continued to monitor Elizabeth’s thoughts—as Kyle Russell recalled his earlier conversation with his father. He knew right away that he needed to stop considering this seventeen-year-old as a kid. He was a young man who had been initiated into manhood by his dad.

  While Brent was grateful for his own father’s relatively-new walk with Christ, it was another man—his former high school basketball coach, George Chamberlin—who had taken on the mantle of mentorship so as to initiate Brent into manhood. Even after seven years in the role, his friend hadn’t stopped stretching Brent to be more than he had been the day before.

  Brent knew that when he got back home to Ohio, new areas of weakness—revealed during this Otherealm experience—were going to need some work. In many ways he envied the young man that he was now watching. The teenager had been walking on a firm foundation his whole life.

  Kyle continued to look out across the front yard through his bedroom window. Brent knew that this could be the make-or-break moment of this entire ordeal. Would Kyle establish himself as Elizabeth’s rescuer? Could he do with a simple phone call what all others had failed to do with their own attempted interventions?

  Brent spoke into Kyle’s right ear. “Call Elizabeth, Kyle. She needs help. Call her and help her. Your dad will stand behind your decision. Just make it!”

  He listened as Kyle’s thoughts shifted from his earlier conversation with his dad to a compelling need to speak with Elizabeth.

  Kyle turned around and walked out of his bedroom, down the stairs, through the hallway leading from the foyer, and into the kitchen to the telephone. From a small, wheeled cabinet below the telephone, he grabbed a telephone book, flipped to the white pages, and began to search for…“For whom?”

  He didn’t know the names of either of Elizabeth’s parents, just that their last name was Franklin.

  Kyle flipped to the “F” section and found the names of four different Franklins living in the area. Only two of them lived in the right city.

  “Cleve and Martha Franklin?” he asked himself out loud. “They sound too old.” His finger traced down to the next. “Jeremy D. Franklin.”

  He looked at the street address. Kyle had been to the Franklin home once before, and it was the first time that he had seen Elizabeth. He’d been in their neighborhood trying to sell some fundraiser raffle tickets for his senior class. Her dad hadanswered the door, and she had walked behind him and up the stairs, never looking back to see who had knocked.

  Kyle sighed. The address did not belong to Elizabeth Franklin’s family. That meant that her number was unlisted.

  Brent had to come up with something else.

  Let’s try this instead…

  His thought was cut off by something that caused his chest to tighten, as a renewed fear again reached the forefront of his mind. Elizabeth had come to a conclusion.

  The wrong one.

  “Okay…I’m not going to let myself be distracted by anything else. It’s time to just end all of this.

  There was a pause.

  I need to write something, don’t I? I’ve got to let people know why I’m doing this. I’ve definitely got to let Tina and Colleen off the hook, let them know it’s not their fault.”

  Once again, panic dictated Brent’s actions. He walked aro
und Kyle to get in his face, even as the young man was contemplating what to do next.

  “Kyle! Go to her! You know where she lives! You know how to get there! Go to her! She is in trouble! Rescue her!”

  Brent watched as concern crossed Kyle’s face.

  He walked back through the hallway toward the foyer and then steered right into his dad’s den. There sat Dan Russell in a thick, brown-leather chair, his back to a wall of hundreds of volumes of books. The man looked up as Kyle entered.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Dad, I need to head out. Something’s wrong. I’m getting this feeling that Elizabeth’s in trouble.”

  Dan sat up in his seat. “Yes. Go. Take my car—it’s behind yours.”

  Kyle turned around and grabbed his dad’s keys off a set of pewter hooks above a table near the front door. He rushed out to his dad’s new Lexus SC. He had never been trusted with it before now.

  He started the black coupe and quickly backed out of the driveway. Putting it in gear, he sped off to the Franklin home hoping and praying that the ugly outcome, now graphically depicted in his mind, could be averted.

  ELIZABETH SAT AT her bedroom desk. Brent watched—his heart hammering—as she wrote her suicide note.

  Garian stood vigil over her. Grimness shaded his features.

  This was it. This would be the night that Elizabeth Franklin would look back at as a turning point in her life, or it would be the night in which she stepped out of life altogether.

  The beautiful handwriting that he had seen during her classes in school was transformed into jagged cursive because of the uncontrollable trembling in her arm and hand.

  Elizabeth thought about writing something to Kyle, but since she barely knew him, she didn’t want to drag him into all of her mess. She put down her pen and stared at the page, re-reading what she had written.

  “Good enough, I guess.”