The Treasure Box (The Grace Series Book 2)

by Mark Romang

Pettis twisted the tourniquet rod tighter and tighter but couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. The field medic shook his head. “I still feel a distal pulse. I’m going to have to put a second tourniquet on him.”

  “Yeah, he’s leaking like a sieve,” Webb said as he watched a crimson spray gush from his buddy’s leg. Webb applied even more pressure to Maddix’s femoral artery. Nearly all his weight rested atop the crudely amputated leg.

  “Wolf-Pack to Base, we have a man down with severe blood trauma. We need a medevac ASAP, over,” Lt. Kirkland said into his field radio. He shook his head. “I’m going to have to go outside. I can’t get a signal in this giant hidey-hole.”

  “Hey! He’s trying to sit up!” Webb exclaimed. “Be still, Mad Dog. Don’t try to get up.”

  Like Lazarus rising from the dead, Maddix bolted up to a sitting position. His eyelids jerked open. Fear swirled in his bulging eyes. His gaping mouth contorted like a woman giving birth. “Demons!” he screeched. “I can see them! They’re everywhere! I see demons!”

  Chapter 1

  Walter Reed Army Medical Center

  Army Major John Triplett shuffled his notes until he found a group of highlighted questions. They were the same queries he asked his patient in previous sessions, just worded a little differently. Triplett liked to call them his “nut cracking” questions, no disrespect to his patient.

  He designed the questions to pinpoint the events and the timeline of their occurrence just before Petty Officer Andrew Maddix encountered his NDE—near death experience.

  “Tell me again, Andrew, exactly where do you think the angel took your spirit?” In all his years counseling military personnel, Triplett had never crossed paths with a patient as puzzling as Maddix. The Navy SEAL swore he saw demons during his near-death experience in a cave in Afghanistan’s Khost province.

  Maddix sighed and closed his eyes. “It definitely wasn’t heaven. The angel led me through a passageway and into a cavernous room. We stood on the precipice of a high bluff and looked down into a fiery abyss. The abyss stretched for as far as I could see and contained a body of flames as vast as an ocean. And the flames gave off a repulsive odor.”

  “Can you describe the smell?”

  Maddix nodded. “It smelled like sulfur.”

  Triplett wrote down “brimstone” in the margin of his notes. “Do you think the cave you just mentioned was the same one you and your SEAL team were in when you stepped on the land mine?”

  “I’m not sure. I just know I didn’t see any of the other guys.”

  Triplett removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his thin nose. “But you said in one of our other sessions that when your spirit first lifted from your body that you looked down and saw your team medic tying a tourniquet around your leg.”

  “Yeah, I did. But then the angel came and took me away and we were alone.”

  “Did the cave you and the angel were in look natural or manmade? And was it composed of granite or sandstone?”

  “It looked natural. And the walls were reddish. I guess it was sandstone.”

  Triplett chewed on one stem of his reading glasses. “Is there anything else about the geography of the cave that you find memorable?”

  Maddix nodded. “There wasn’t a ceiling to it. I could see sky above me.”

  Triplett leaned forward. This was a new admission that might just lead to something. “So the cave might actually be a slot canyon?” Triplett noticed confusion drift across Maddix’s face. “Are you familiar with slot canyons, Andrew?”

  Maddix shook his head. “Aren’t they just big cracks in the earth?”

  “Not exactly, but close,” Triplett said. He grabbed his laptop off his desk and ran a Google search on slot canyons. He selected the best image and handed the laptop over to Maddix. “A slot canyon is a narrow canyon formed by the cutting action of wind and water. They can sometimes be more than a thousand feet deep and only three feet in width. There are hundreds of slot canyons in the Southwestern United States. Utah has the most of them, I think,” Triplett said. “Anyway, does the image on my laptop look like the cave you were in?”

  Maddix nodded, his face losing color. “It could very well be the same one.”

  “Tell me again how far you traveled inside the cave before you came to the chasm.”

  Maddix handed the laptop back to Triplett. “It seemed like a long ways. I’m guessing a mile or two, maybe.”

  “Were you walking or floating?”

  Maddix closed his eyes again. “I was walking. The angel kind of hovered alongside me.”

  “You were alone with the angel?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did the angel look like?”

  “He looked like a man in his prime. He was very tall and wore a white cloak that seemed to glow.”

  “Did he have wings and a halo?”

  Maddix snapped open his dark eyes and shot Triplett a glowering look. “Are you making fun of me, sir?”

  Triplett shivered. “No, Andrew, I would never do that. All I’m trying to do is help you. I can’t do that without a clear picture of everything you experienced. Some of these questions are redundant and silly, I know. But clues can hide in obvious places. And sometimes I have to be very specific to make progress.”

  Maddix nodded. “He didn’t have a halo or wings. Like I said, he looked like a man, only aesthetically perfect. And there was something about him that emanated tremendous power and holiness.”

  “Did the angel say anything to you? Did he explain what was happening to you?”

  Maddix closed his eyes for the third time. He shifted his prosthetic leg to a more comfortable position. “The angel said I had been chosen to view the home of Satan and his demons, and the people he deceived.”

  “Did he say why you were chosen?”

  Maddix nodded his head slowly. Sweat beaded on his brow. He opened his eyes and looked at Triplett wildly. “The angel said…”

  Triplett shifted forward. He sat on the edge of his seat. If he leaned forward any more he would fall to the floor. “The angel said what?”

  “That I was chosen before the beginning of time to lead a resistance against Lucifer.”

  “You’re confiding all sorts of new things to me today, Andrew. Why have you waited until our last session to tell me these things?”

  “I didn’t want you to think I was crazy,” Maddix confessed. He paused for a moment. “So do you think I’m a nutcase, sir?”

  Triplett put his glasses back on. “No, Andrew, I really think you’re as sane as the next guy or me for that matter. Having a NDE and OBE—out of body experience—doesn’t make you crazy. But they can drive you to insanity trying to figure out what they are and what causes them.”

  “What do you think they are?”

  Triplett smiled and shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. “There are a number of theories out there. But I’m afraid none of them will satisfy you, Andrew. Personally, I believe NDEs may be a combination of lucid dreaming and hypoxia. At some point you may want to talk to an oneirologist. They could probably help you more than I can.”

  “What is an oneirologist?”

  “Someone that analyzes dreams and tries to interpret what they mean.”

  “But I wasn’t dreaming, sir. This was different. I was clinically dead and my soul briefly detached itself from my body.”

  “Lucid dreams are many times so realistic that they’re hard to distinguish from reality.”

  “It strikes me as odd that the very people trying to explain away near-death experiences have never experienced a NDE.”

  “You’re right, Andrew, I’ve never had one. And I don’t pretend to have all the answers you’re looking for. I can only give you my humble opinion. Look, no one is disputing the existence of NDEs. Millions of people have experienced them. NDEs are an accepted phenomenon. It’s the cause behind them that the scientific community can’t agree on.”

  “And they never will figure them out because NDEs are of a spiritual
nature. And spirituality defies scientific knowledge,” Maddix said.

  “You do have a point there,” Triplett agreed. “I’m curious, Andrew, before your near-death experience, were you a religious person? Did you spend much time thinking of God and spiritual issues?”

  Maddix smirked and shook his head. “You can ask any of the guys in SEAL team 8. I was a hard-drinking, skirt-chasing frogman. I never had any use for God or the Bible.”

  “But now you do?”

  Maddix nodded his head. My out-of-body NDE has affected me on a visceral level. It forced me to rethink my religious beliefs and to make some lifestyle changes.”

  “Now you’re a strictly business Navy SEAL, a frogman in touch with his spirituality.”

  Maddix looked down at his prosthetic leg. He shook his head sadly. “I’m not a SEAL anymore. The PEB declared me unfit for military duty,” he said softly. “I just wish they would’ve held off making their decision a little longer. I went for my first run early this morning. I almost made it a mile. And my prosthetic hasn’t affected my swimming at all.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about the Physical Evaluation Board’s decision. But I’m not surprised about their recommendation to retire you from the military. Even though you have made amazing progress, they’ll always err on the side of caution.”

  Maddix frowned. “The government has spent a lot of money on my training. And now they’re going to cut me loose just like that? I could be an instructor, if nothing else.”

  “I’m sorry, Andrew. America is not as safe without you defending our interests. I mean that.”

  Maddix manipulated his prosthetic leg, bending it back and forth with little effort. “The Navy says I’m disabled. But I don’t feel disabled.”

  Triplett smiled. “You’ll do just fine in your civilian life with an attitude like that. I know you will.” Triplett reached into the pocket of his medical smock. “Before you go I have something to give you.” He retrieved a small pill bottled and tossed it to Maddix.

  “What is this?”

  “Medicine for PTSD,” Triplett answered.

  “But I don’t have any of the symptoms, sir. I’m not depressed. I’m not dreaming of my accident, and it doesn’t bother me to talk about it. And I haven’t had any flashbacks.”

  “You may yet. Post-traumatic stress disorder is sometimes delayed and doesn’t start until many months after the initial trauma. So keep these pills handy. But don’t tell anybody you got them from me. This drug hasn’t been approved yet by the FDA,” Triplett explained. “So far it has outperformed lorazepam and phenelazine in clinical trials.”

  Maddix shoved the pill bottle into the front pocket of his athletic pants. “Thanks, I guess,” he said as he rose to his six-foot-two height. “Is that it? Am I done?”

  Triplett looked at a clock on the wall. He stood and extended a hand for Maddix to shake. “Yes, you’re done with me, Andrew. But if you ever need to talk, look me up. My contact number will be on your discharge papers. Don’t be shy.”

  Maddix released the psychiatrist’s hand and smiled. “I’ll keep you in mind in case I go completely nuts.”

  “Have you given much thought to what you’re going to do in your civilian life?”

  Maddix nodded. “I’m thinking about enrolling in a seminary. If the hell I saw truly exists, I have to warn people about it,” he said right before raising his right hand up to his brow.

  Major Triplett returned the crisp salute and watched Maddix limp out the door. I hope America treats you well, Petty Officer Maddix. You deserve it after the hell you’ve been through.

  Chapter 2

  Four years later

  Like most mornings in Felicity, Utah, the sun rose bright and hot. The brilliant orb inched its way higher into a cloudless sky as blue as ripened blueberries and promised to bake the dusty resort town with unrelenting desert heat.

  Andrew Maddix left his modest apartment above the town’s drugstore and began his morning run. His ritual always took him to Zion Baptist Church located near the town’s east end. The small church was a tick over a mile from his apartment, and Maddix usually covered the distance in five minutes.

  Everywhere he went he ran. He wanted to retain as long as possible the rock-hard body he’d developed during his stint in the Navy SEALS. It wasn’t easy. The bi-monthly potluck dinners his congregation put on made it hard not to pack on flab. But his determination couldn’t be extinguished, and so far the running regimen was working. He only wished he could find a place to swim. He longed for the daily four-mile ocean swims he used to partake in while in the SEALS.

  Maddix ran swiftly along the shoulder of Highway 9 and directly into the sun. Dressed in athletic pants and shoes, Body Armor shirt, and Ray-Ban sunglasses, he looked nothing like a pastor. But then he had always bucked the trend. Things were no different now, even though he’d recently turned thirty-two.

  Maddix settled into a consistent stride. His arms pumped evenly at his sides, and he hardly noticed the rhythmic impact of his feet impacting the ground. Today’s run was turning out to be one of the better ones of the week. He felt strong, could feel the runner’s high approaching.

  Nearing the half-mile point, Maddix glanced at his watch. Two-minutes and twenty-one seconds had elapsed. If he kept this pace up he would shatter his pre-injury personal best for the mile run.

  Sweat filmed on his body, cooling him from the sunbeams flooding the sky. He could see the church now—a humble yet quaint structure with a steeple and a few stained glass windows. Surrounded by enormous cottonwoods, the church looked innocuous enough on the outside, but a dysfunctional mess churned inside. The small congregation was at odds with most everything he did. The pews were too hard, the music too loud and his sermons too long. And on and on it went.

  Two months on the job and he sensed that most of the members despised him. They didn’t like his take-charge demeanor and pointed sermons. Almost every day he got a letter or call from a disgruntled member, chastising him for the way he led the church. Their judgmental eyes disapproved everything he did.

  His professors at Dallas Theological Seminary warned him about taking on a small church reeling from a catastrophic split. But like a fool, he didn’t heed their sage advice. Now he had serious doubts as to whether he was the right man for the job. Discord bled so freely that he didn’t know if the flow could ever be staunched. Like a plate of broken glass, disharmony fractured the church into a thousand pieces.

  But more sinister than backbiting conversations and a clash of wills was something that a degree in divinity hadn’t prepared him for.

  Paranormal activity haunted the church.

  The occurrences were too plentiful to explain away as coincidences, and happened to trustworthy people he knew would never fabricate such disturbing events.

  The bedevilments ranged from deacons shoved down flights of stairs by invisible attackers, to the church pianist being struck in the face by a flying hymnal. Even Maddix himself had a run-in with a poltergeist. Two weeks ago he had been in his office, working late on a sermon outline. After finishing he had walked back through the sanctuary and happened to look back toward the pulpit. That’s when he saw the heavy wooden cross over the baptistery hanging upside down.

  He had personally locked all the doors before retiring to his office that night, and had heard no unusual sounds that could be associated with vandals. The cross was constructed of burr oak and would take a couple of lumberjacks to heft it into a different position. But in his opinion, the cross had been moved into its blasphemous position by something lacking human hands.

  One-hundred more meters to go. Maddix looked at his watch. His run just eclipsed four-minutes and twenty-five seconds. He dug down deeper, ignored his gasping lungs and pushed his legs to their absolute limits.

  He could see the ghost hunters’ GMC Yukon parked in front of the church. The black SUV’s back hatch hung open. Last night he followed around the paranormal investigators as they set up their motion senso
rs, digital voice recorders and digital cameras in different areas of the sanctuary and in various classrooms. He even helped them hang wind chimes from light fixtures. After setup, the ghost hunters left the church, promising to return after midnight to begin their investigation.

  Maddix sprinted the last twenty yards into the church parking lot. He stopped and looked at his watch. He completed the run in four minutes and forty-two seconds. Not bad for a man with only one leg, he thought.

  With hands on hips, he walked up to a cottonwood tree and sat down in the shaded grass. He looked at the church as he reined in his racing breath. I wonder what they found.

  He didn’t have to wait long to find out. The front doors of the church suddenly burst open. The two ghost hunters, their arms laden with equipment, ran out of the church and up to their vehicle.

  Maddix got up and hurried over to them. “Hey, what did you guys see in there? How many ghosts do we have?” he asked, trying his best to sound cheerful, as if pastors ask this sort of question all the time.

  The ghost hunters ignored him and began dumping their equipment into the Yukon’s ample storage area.

  Maddix touched the shoulder of the man closest to him. “So how did it go last night?”

  The man turned to face him. His wild eyes bugged out from an ashen face. “Preacher, you don’t have ghosts in there,” he said as he jerked his thumb back towards the church.

  “Then what do we have?”

  The ghost hunter tossed an EMF meter onto the equipment pile and slammed shut the hatch. He ran around to the driver’s side door and hopped in. Maddix followed him. He rapped on the window until the driver put the window down.

  “Can you please answer my question?” Maddix said firmly.

  “Preacher, you and your congregation need to clear out of that building,” the man said, his voice quivering. “And you need to do it fast.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t have ghosts in there, you have demons! And you have lots of them!” the driver hissed just before backing up out of his parking stall.