Armageddon Darkness

by David Pollitt

  Chapter 14

  An Odd Couple

  Alex woke early, feeling a great sense of excitement without knowing why. It had only been ten days since the meltdown, but he and Abigail were finally becoming tolerant of one another. He was also starting to stay up late in prayer. He didn't really know how; and when Abigail tried to explain the dynamics of it, she couldn't. She wasn't a believer so she had never experienced its true nature. Alex thought of it more as just talking with God and listening. He found prayer best suited him by settling into a black leather recliner that was squeezed into the kitchen. He moved it back into his room every evening, but Abigail liked it too and forced him to bring it back for her to sit in each morning. He'd lay back in it with his palms up in quiet reverence. Sometimes he would fall asleep; but when he woke, he was always in his prayerful position and always felt rested and continued to say praise words like, "Praise the Lord." "Thank you, Jesus." Or, "Jesus," without stop. He was never taught to pray that way. It seemed to come naturally. He always sensed a great peace and God's presence.

  When he closed his eyes, he kept thinking he saw images of people, angels, and heavenly scenes. He would hear them speaking, praying, and saying the same praise things he was saying. It wouldn't last long, but he thought he was somehow connecting to others like him. He felt like he was connecting to others who wanted to know more about God and to draw nearer to Him. There was a consistent image that kept coming back to him. It had to do with a place in Tennessee where thousands of believers were gathering. He saw a very old man praying who would always say the same things, "Lord, protect those escaping to us. Give us the strength to withstand the beast."

  In these mini-visions, Alex started recognizing the surrounding countryside. It was full of rolling, interlacing green hills. There were very few homes near this place; and as his mind traveled, he seemed to be looking out a front window of a car that he was driving. Each time he had this waking dream, he got a little closer to this praying old man. He thought that the hills were too soft and gradual to be East Tennessee or near Monteagle. He was haunted by the fact that he'd seen this place before. After all, he had been just about everywhere in Tennessee at one time or another while delivering or repossessing cars.

  As Alex was heading back from the kitchen, he looked over on the computer table and saw a rock. It was a crystal of some kind. He picked it up and felt its weight. It just filled his hand, but was immensely heavy. He was certain that it was a crystal.

  He remembered, "Oh, yes, it's a Tennessee geode!" His memories came flooding back to him. He remembered repossessing a car in Woodbury several years ago. He had to go up Hwy 53. Off to the right just near a horse farm, he stopped to go to the bathroom. He pulled up to a white pump house beside a creek. After slipping behind the building to do his business, he looked at the creek for a moment and saw mounds of geodes. It was hard to imagine the expanse of such a scene. He had always been a rock hound as a kid. The mounds were five foot high, and the creek was full all the way to the pump house with crystal, agate, jasper, flint, and fossilized crystal geodes. He spent some time picking up some and throwing them in his wrecker before going to pick up the car.

  "Woodbury!" he shouted loudly. "It's Woodbury! The man is in Woodbury!"

  Abigail came stumbling out of her room and went to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. "Can't sleep again, Gov?" she said, smiling at him and kept thinking how safe she felt with him. She had always been alone in the convent. That was the way it was in the silence of her sect. She felt it was her way of running away from the pain of disastrous early years in which she kept falling in love, getting jilted, falling out of love, running away, going to college, dropping out, then dropping in again. Being a nun was safe to her. It was her way of protecting herself against herself. It protected her against her own failures and inabilities to cope with the real world. That's why she liked being with Alex, the non-threatening Alex, the safe, nonjudgmental, gentle Alex.

  She could rely on him never to change. He was like a human Ford truck. He was everything that she had ever looked for in a man, except for his homeliness. After a week or so, that didn't even bother her. His slight sense of humor, coupled with his naivety, challenged her well-lit humor and sarcasm. All this kept her from pushing away from him.

  Alex watched her lovingly. He saw her looking at him as he studied his rock and wondered what she was thinking. He enjoyed her company and felt somehow that it would tear him apart for this hiding time to stop. He had been praying about that and for an angel to come visit. He wanted to let the angel know that he wouldn't mind if they stayed together longer.

  His hunger for the Word of God kept him pestering her for answers; but now, it wasn't bothering her like it did before. He felt like she was actually enjoying God talk and teaching him things about the Lord and the Bible.

  Alex looked at her pinching up her eyes and face. She reached up and grabbed her neck in obvious discomfort.

  "Got a crick?" he asked as he moved to the two-cushion couch at the end of the kitchen, then patted at the cushion next to him.

  They spent most of their time in the kitchen. That's where the computer stayed, always on, night and day, and logged on to the Internet. Just perhaps someone would try to get them a message. Nothing so far, but they hoped. An e-mail would be nice.

  "Yeah, must have slept on it wrong. Do you have some aspirin?" she asked while walking slowly towards him and handing him a cup of coffee, then sat down next to him with hers. They both were in their bathrobes and looked like an old married couple, like peas of the same ragged pod.

  "Let me help—if you don't mind?" he said nervously, not knowing what her response would be. He put a hand on the place she was squeezing, and then nervously pulled it away.

  She gratefully moaned in relief, "Would you? That would be great. Oh, have we got any e-mail, Gov?

  "Nothing, but remember, either we will, or we'll get a visit from an intuition soon. They said it would take some time. I think that we'll be hearing from Woodbury soon. I keep dreaming or getting glimpses of a man down there. I recognize the terrain. There are a few places that look like Woodbury. It's special like Sewanee."

  "You're getting visions, now? Don't go weird on me, Gov. Woodbury, what in the world could be going on there? Here, let me make it easier for you," she replied, then let her robe slip off her shoulders down past her shoulder blades exposing a small sleeveless t-shirt.

  "Are you sure?" asked Alex anxiously, never having been this close to a woman in his life. Never mind getting ready to rub one.

  "Sure, Gov. Relax. I am. You know I haven't been a nun all my life, not quite as stiff as the rest of them. After all, if we can't take care of each other, no one else will. Just squeeze on my neck right here," she said as she picked up his hand and put it on her neck, then squeezed his hand against the spot in emphasis.

  When he touched her neck, he squeezed it gently, and Abigail groaned and arched her neck backward trying to tense it up. "You're pretty good with those big hands of yours. You could hire out with a technique like that. Don't worry, I won't break. Do it harder." She pushed herself closer to him with part of her back and thigh parked without room between them.

  Alex was blushing as he felt the smoothness of her skin and the blood rushing to her muscles under his fingers. He'd never ever had a girlfriend, and now he was feeling a rush of excitement from massaging a nun's neck. He continued to work over her shoulders and out from her spine down to her middle back as if he had been doing it professionally for years. He had seen someone doing it at an airport once in one of those chairs. He opted to have one himself while waiting on a flight connection. He was just copying what he saw the lady doing for her other customers.

  "Does it feel good, Abigail?" he asked.

  She gasped, "You have no idea. I feel like a ball of knots. It seems like my whole upper body has been stressed. I haven't done a thing to cause it, unless it's putting up with you. That's it. It's your fault," she laug
hed and turned to wink at him.

  He leaned his face next to her ear and took a chance. "Abigail, I like being with you. Do you like being with me?" He was embarrassed at how hokey it sounded.

  She went silent for a moment and leaned back against him. As she laid her head back on his near shoulder and looked him in his eyes, she whispered, "What if I do? Would it make any difference?" She nudged him from his trance-like state with the command, "Keep up the rubbing, Gov, and I'll like you a lot more," as she chuckled at their nearness, refusing to run this time—just enjoying it.

  She thought to herself, "I do like this old goat. I can't believe it. I really do like him. I'm not running this time. Well, where would I run to anyway?"

  There was a moment when Alex was moving his face close to her neck. He wanted to kiss her. He felt so compelled by it that it bothered him. He broke into an enormous sweat, and his body temperature was peaking like a furnace. Still, he drew his lips closer to her neck hairs without her knowing it.

  Suddenly, they both heard, "You have mail!"

  It startled them so much that he flung her from the couch as he jumped up and dived for the computer. She fell forward leaving her robe behind. She grabbed at it struggling to get it on, but Alex still noticed, and she knew it; she was blushing this time.

  Recovering quickly, she heard Alex ask, "Abigail, will you do the honors. I'm so nervous about an e-mail that I'd delete it before getting it read." He sat down in the computer chair, and Abigail pulled up a kitchen chair beside him. She placed her hand on his shoulder as she leaned towards the screen with him. He reached up and patted it tenderly. Once again, their eyes met and neither of them said a word for several minutes. They just looked at each other.

  "Yes, I'll do the honors, Gov," she said, breaking the moment and finding herself a little out of breath while feeling a little giddy like a school girl with the beginnings of a crush. She aptly clicked on the read-me screen, and before reading it, clicked on print. She wasn't taking any chances either.

  "Look, it's from a guy called Caleb. From a website called, 'unmarked.com.' Do you know him?"

  "Yes, he's an intuition," he remarked again as he saw her smile knowingly.

  "Okay, okay, Alex, just call them angels from now on. Is that better?" She put her arm through his, and they both leaned over the printed transmission.

  It read, "Alex, hope things are well. Got your message days ago. Heading your way soon. Sending you two kids and a dog to take care of. Prepare their rooms. Delete this transmission and turn off your computer. There will be no more contact until you hear the dog bark. Keep your oath, Alex."

  "Two kids? A dog? What's that all about? What oath?" asked Abigail confused.

  "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm taking a cold shower," and he got up and walked towards one of the hall bathrooms.

  Behind him, he heard her say, "You're not the only one."

      