The Watchers

by Mark Andrew Olsen

  Abby turned back to Marcelle. “Miss Marcelle, I don’t know if you’ve been told about me. But I was just in Africa where I fellowshiped with the missing part of your . . . I should say our spiritual family. To begin with, did you know that you are my grandmother in the faith?”

  “Oh, darling, you come here,” Marcelle said, reaching for her in vain.

  As Abby walked over to Marcelle and took her place at the deathbed of her spiritual relative, Dylan glanced outside and saw something that caused him to stiffen and quickly leave the room.

  CHAPTER

  _ 72

  BONNEVILLE CARE CENTER, MAIN CORRIDOR

  Four, now five men, their long overcoats hiding automatic weapons . . . Dylan’s old, internal tactical voice counted down in his ear.

  They’re here for a bloodbath. And there was no way, no way at all, that Dylan was going to allow that to happen. What was taking place in that nursing-home room was too precious and important not to defend with his life.

  Instinctively now, without hesitation, he began to pray. He asked for guidance, for protection, for divine help, but most of all for wisdom— so he would know the right thing to do and when to do it as he faced the battle ahead. He finished by asking, God, do I take action?Should I use violence against these men?

  This time the answer came back so clearly, it was almost audible.

  Then, striding through the lobby, he heard screaming coming from the nurses nearby. He met up with two of the men as they were marching through the front entrance. In a single motion he launched himself upon them. A couple of kicks swept them both from their feet. Before they could recover, Dylan had thrown his whole weight on both of their chests and was wrenching the weapons out of their hands. One, then two blows with the gunstock to their heads immediately knocked them out.

  He jumped up, dodged a woman in a wheelchair, punched through the door into open daylight and glanced around frantically for the best direction to run.

  Away. As far away from this place as he could get. Yes, he had to lead them away from the women.

  Gunfire shattered the air just beside him. The others had found him! He turned and took off running.

  A line of trees to his right seemed to betray some kind of creek bed. At least that offered some cover, so he headed that way. A bullet zipped by his right shoulder. He veered wildly away again. The red dot of a laser sight now danced about his neck and shoulders. Seeing this, he lurched into a headlong zigzag pattern. Then the dust ahead convulsed beneath the sprays of a dozen sharp concussions. Machine-gun fire!

  Doubt chose this moment to assail him. Still think God is going to get you out of this one? How badly are you willing to be a chump?

  In the midst of his panting, he called out to God and kept running. The machine guns he carried in both hands were now, he realized, a hindrance. He tossed them down into the creek.

  There were times for weapons of the Spirit, and he’d suddenly realized that time had come.

  He felt his feet move into a renewed frenzy of speed.

  God, he pleaded, all this time I’ve waited for a sure sign from you. Waited while Abby and every woman we met heard your voice, saw your angels, received clear direction from your Spirit. It’s my time now, Lord. Please. The time has come for me to receive something real and miraculous. . . .

  A cross street loomed in his vision. He abruptly turned the corner and disappeared.

  God, please! The time is now. Not three seconds from now . . .

  He looked up. There was a flash of bright light—a hand, a shoulder, a burst of unspeakable power. Although he would have done so willingly, he fell to his face automatically, almost by reflex.

  Three seconds later, his four pursuers rounded the turn as well.

  Taking in the new street before them, they almost fell on their own faces in their joint effort to stop the forward momentum and halt their progress.

  The man they were pursuing now knelt on the road’s center stripe, one knee raised, an elbow resting on it.

  The guy looked like he was praying, almost.

  The lead gunman regained his balance and raised a Glock handgun. A professional’s mark: one to the head, two in the chest.

  The kneeling man began to shake. And so did the killer’s gun hand.

  “What are you waiting for?” asked the second gunman.

  “Well, look at him! He wants us to do it. Something’s not right. Gotta be some kind of trick. Either he’s wired, or he’s gonna set something off the second we do him, or maybe signal a sniper nearby.”

  “You got a point,” said the other gunman, now too scared to even nudge Dylan with the toe of his boot.

  The two men began to back away, guns at the ready.

  The weapons fell to the street. The men backed up, desperate to get away but unwilling to turn their backs on the sight before them. Finally, twenty yards back, their terror peaked and they turned around to flee, disappearing into the neighborhood.

  Dylan stood and remained still, looking up and down the full length of the mighty warrior angel standing guard just behind where he’d knelt.

  “Thank you!” he said out loud. “Thank you.”

  MALIBU, CALIFORNIA

  A gleaming stretch limousine pulled up in front of the bone white beach home. A patrician, elegant figure in an expensive European tracksuit ran his hand through well-coiffed gray hair, looked up at the sea gulls massing overhead, and jogged inside.

  Lying against the far wall of an empty living room was a man with his arms tied behind his back.

  The Head Elder of the Scythian Brotherhood walked over to him and kicked the soles of his feet to wake him up.

  “So, it’s our old secret friend. The man who, in a way, made all this possible. Hello, Bob Sherman.”

  “Yes, and here’s the man who lied and went back on every promise he ever made to me,” snarled Abby’s father.

  The man bent down and shouted in Sherman’s face. “What are you talking about? Has your memory failed you, you idiot? Do you remember what you were, this loser at a state college, when we found you? When we offered to make all your dreams come true in exchange for some help with your whacked-out wife? Did we not deliver on that? Did we not make you a millionaire thirty times over?”

  “You told me Susanne would get treatment and help for her delusions. Not force me to lock her away for three decades. Not tear my family apart!”

  “Well, your daughter has taken revenge for all of you. Our Brotherhood is in tatters. Our leadership is dead, our rank and file decimated. And for me, the only joy I’m going to have before my masters come to claim my soul is that of making your last moments on earth as excruciating as possible.”

  He extracted a scythe from its hanging place on a side wall.

  “And if I get the least impression that you’re trying to talk with that putrid god of your daughter’s during this time, I swear I’ll make this more painful than anything this world has ever witnessed.”

  “You mean, since the death of Christ,” Sherman said through gritted teeth.

  “Whatever.”

  “Well, don’t worry on that account. As it happens, what you’re describing has already taken place. I read my daughter’s account of heaven before you pigs found me. And I know she’s telling the truth. Not only that, but what she described was so much more appealing than anything you and your men could offer, it was no contest. So if your homicidal existence is so pathetic that you can’t stop yourself from inflicting pain in your very last moments of safety, then go ahead. Because I’m a follower of Christ now, and I know where I’m going. And whatever suffering you inflict on me will be so richly rewarded in heaven, I might be tempted to come back and ask you to inflict some more.”

  “Die, you pathetic kneeler,” he growled, coming closer, his grip tightening on the scythe’s handle.

  Sherman began to speak in a loud, commanding voice. “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you, foul spirits, to leave my presence. Leave this place. Leave this
man!”

  The Head Elder took one step back, for the foul beings all around him had responded hatefully to Sherman’s words.

  That one step, the impact of Gucci leather on Carrara marble, obscured the faintest sound of movement from outside . . .

  Crash! The living room’s picture window shattered profusely, deafeningly. Glass cascaded all over the space.

  A black-clad male form flew into the center of the room, screaming “FBI! FBI!” at the top of his lungs.

  The Head Elder called out for help, but none of the beings this leader of the Scythian Brotherhood had served would save him now. Bullets flying around him, he turned away from a row of white, translucent beings and dashed across his marble floor in terror. He reached the edge of his second-story veranda, framing that magnificent seascape, and leaped . . .

  He struck the terrace below with unearthly force, turning his limp body into the mockery he had so often made of others.

  CHAPTER

  _ 73

  MARCELLE'S ROOM —THE NEXT MOMENT

  “Yes, I can remember in my childhood,” Marcelle was saying, “hearing stories of these unbowed women coming over from Africa and singing praises to God even while they still lay chained in the horrible holds of those transport ships. I remember.”

  “It’s amazing,” remarked Abby, “that as hard as their lives have been here, with all the days of slavery, the hard years after Emancipation, or many decades later in the fight for equal rights—none of it’s squeezed the gifting out of those godly women.”

  “Yeah, but still, we’ve all been hamstrung,” Marcelle said, her voice starting to weaken. “It’s a scandal, we’ve had so little to do with each other’s faith that it took this long for the gift to cross racial boundaries.”

  “Maybe now it’s time,” Susanne said.

  “Maybe it’s time for all these old breaches and grudges to get washed out of our system,” Abby agreed. “Can you imagine what the church could do, with our prayers alone, in this messed-up world? Without these divisions and grudges to sap our strength?”

  Marcelle held out her thin arms, inviting Susanne, herself just a stick figure, to climb up onto the bed. Tentative at first, she crawled forward and lowered herself into the old woman’s arms. Slowly, tenderly, they formed a mother-child embrace.

  “O Lord,” Marcelle called out as she tenderly caressed Susanne’s forehead, “you know I have missed this. I remember, Susanne. And I know you remember.”

  Abby knelt before them, letting herself melt into their healing embrace.

  Then Abby furrowed her brow and gazed up into the face of her grandma in the Spirit. “We’ve forgotten how sick you are.”

  “Oh, I’m all right. Fact is, this is the happiest day of my life!”

  “And mine,” said Abby.

  “And definitely mine,” added Susanne.

  Abby leaned forward, took her mother’s hand, and placed both on Marcelle’s head. It was a posture she had seen only once before, when standing before Sister Okoye at the Believers Gathering as she herself was nearing death.

  Both of the younger women began to pray silently, moving their lips.

  It was at this point that television viewers all over the world, regardless of their set’s quality or the reliability of the video feed, began to experience the old standby. Technical Difficulties. Some saw what were once labeled ghost images, or shallow transparent forms moving across the screen. The whole viewing audience noticed a brightening of the ambient light in the room; some even assumed that an electrical malfunction had overtaken the nursing home.

  Only a select number of them realized what was actually taking place.

  Suddenly a bright flash of light shot from the center of the room, and of viewers’ screens. Thousands would report that their tubes had exploded, and scores would have to be reminded by manufacturers’ help desks that their televisions no longer even possessed such things.

  In the room, the bright flash and remaining glow revealed what video could not fully capture—the translucent figures of radiant beings standing about them.

  Abby and Susanne scrambled from the bed as Marcelle shooed them off like an impatient parent, hopped off the mattress, and took them both arm in arm for a walk down the hallway.

  Dylan met them there, a glow of intense satisfaction playing across his features. His eyes met Abby’s, and they narrowed in a blissful smile. He came aside of them, draped his arm over Abby’s shoulders and squeezed hard. Then he leaned over and buried his mouth in her unkempt hair. No one else around would know what was exchanged just then. A word of triumph, a bid of congratulations, or perhaps something more.

  In either case, they had completed the quest. Finished the race. And there was one thing no one could take away from either one.

  They were both warriors in the highest sense.

  ATLANTA, MCQUEEN STUDIOS

  America’s favorite talk show host turned away from a giant video screen, which still bore the image of a smiling Marcelle. The host’s face was slack with awe, wonder, and amazement. All she could do was shake her head, her arms crossed and her eyes lined with tears.

  “I can’t help but feel like we just set off a shock wave of the Spirit that’s rocking across our country tonight,” she said, accompanied by a roar of delighted applause. Her voice began to rise, drifting into the preacherlike cadence of Mara McQueen at her most inspired.

  “I don’t know if you felt it like I did, but all I can say is, let the healing begin! ”

  WESTWOOD MERCY HOSPITAL, LOS ANGELES

  Nurse Gladys was walking down one of the hospital’s gleaming hallways, carrying two cups of medication, when suddenly her muscles began quivering and her eyelids fluttering. Her fingers twitched, and the cups went flying as though flicked out of her hands by an invisible gremlin. The pills they contained scattered all about the floor.

  Gladys lowered neither her gaze nor her hands in response to the mishap. Instead, her eyes searched out the nearest window through the open door of an adjacent patient’s room. She stared out into the sky with a look of fierce curiosity.

  Another few seconds passed. With a look of disapproval, a nurse behind Gladys dropped to her knees to pick up the tablets. Everyone on the floor knew Gladys hadn’t been acting herself since an inappropriate conversation had surfaced several weeks before between her and Abby Sherman, the hospital’s now-famous patient who had disappeared.

  Still Gladys did not look down. In fact, she began to smile—a wide, beaming grin that transformed her winsome face.

  She closed her eyes and two enormous tears flowed down her brown cheeks. Her lips started moving. A nearby colleague trained in lip-reading would later report that the nurse’s only words were Thank you, Jesus, thank you . . . Over and over again.

  IJEBU ODE, NIGERIA

  Kneeling before the grave of Sister Okoye, Sister Motumbe quickly looked up from the clump of small flowers she had just transplanted.

  A few hundred yards away, lying in a hammock restored to the ceiling of the Eredo Rampart, Saronu opened her eyes abruptly, jarred awake from a deep sleep. At first somewhat alarmed, she peered into the distance, then started to smile slowly. She nodded her head as though an inner question was being answered somehow, from somewhere.

  Both women closed their eyes, serene.

  JERUSALEM, ROOFTOP OF CHURCH OF THE HOL SEPULCHRE

  Facing the setting sun from her perch over the city, Rulaz closed her eyes and smiled blissfully. She held out her arms and extended her hands. It almost seemed like a faint, imperceptible breeze was washing over her.

  She tilted her head back, heavenward, and began to laugh a rich, unforgettable laugh, which her brothers and sisters had never, ever heard her unleash before.

  Pure laughter and praises to Jehovah began to drift downward across the crowded rooftops and alleyways of the Eternal City.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Most of the Nigerian geography I depicted in The Watchers is authentic. The location of highw
ays, rain forests, and most of the Sungbo’s Eredo is all real. Everything mentioned about Sungbo’s Eredo is historical, from its appearance and location to most of its history—except that it was not a fixture in Watchers lore, as these Watchers were my invention. Yet it was indeed reputed to have been built by an ancient, wealthy queen from Ethiopia. The rampart’s remarkable water-gathering qualities were taken from archaeological literature. My depiction of Port Harcourt was all too close to the mark, as throughout the writing I’d continued to read media stories of abducted and murdered Westerners in the Niger Delta region.

  My descriptions of London were culled, sadly, from the Internet and I trust, accurate.

  As for Jerusalem, everything about the Abyssinian monks on the rooftop of the Holy Sepulchre church is true—except for the fact that no Sentinel of Jerusalem or Watchers matriarch lives among its beleaguered Coptic population. However, the entire account of age-old tensions, abuses, and even outright fistfights between the two Coptic contingents is sadly true.

  Finally, I’d like to address the issue of “Spiritual Genealogy,” which arises in this book. I encourage everyone to try to trace their spiritual genealogy as far as possible, as a fascinating and inspiring pastime. However, I have no desire to confuse, dilute or otherwise complicate the far truer and more edifying Scriptural nomenclature of the Family of God. God is our true heavenly Father, and our spiritual one as well. Those matter supremely. I only maintain that tracing the path of the one or ones who led us to Christ can often reveal fascinating and revealing truths of our spiritual heritage.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A globe-trotting thriller like this requires one of two things: either unlimited airline miles, or some well-traveled friends. In my case, I was blessed with the latter.

  My thanks go out to Rev. Joseph Thompson of the Nigeria Harvest Experience and The Church at the Well, as well as to his wife Sola, for their assistance with Yoruba vocabulary. Thanks to my longtime writing buddy, Stephen Bransford, for his help on Nigeria as well.