The Way Back (Book 2): The Way Back, Part II

by Giancioppo, Danny

  “The cause?” Luke repeated. “Being what?”

  “That we need to try and make our way to the light in order to be accepted into Heaven,” Jonah explained. “And you, for whatever it is you can do, are going to be interesting to him if nothing else. You need to just hear him out, and if you do, and you remain civil, he’ll be willing to hear you out too.”

  “Last time I tried hearing you out, one of my own got his arm cut off, so excuse me if I go in a little apprehensive,” Luke said. The rope cut apart, and Jonah just sighed, opening the door to Abraham’s room.

  It was wide open. There were no walls other than the four framing the building itself. There was a bed in the corner, as well as a chest and rack of clothes. There was a desk on the opposite end of the room, and a bookshelf full of what looked like religious paraphernalia: crosses, bibles, drawings of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, things like that.

  Standing at the end of the room, staring out a large, stained-glass window, stood Abraham. He looked like a handful of years older than Jonah, at least five or so. His hair was somewhat brown, unlike Jonah’s, and had hints of grey scattered all about it. Unlike Jonah’s five o’clock shadow, Abraham face was clean shaven, and his hair length was only somewhat longer, and parted to the side. He was fit, more so than Jonah, and he was tall. About as tall as Luke, maybe even a bit taller. All in all he was intimidating, and Luke couldn’t deny that, but still, he had to at least appear strong. Which he tended to be quite good at.

  Abraham turned around, and greeted the two of them with a warm smile.

  “Jonah, good to see you again, brother!” he said. His voice was deep, stern. It had force behind it, a drive; like he was selling something on an infomercial. “And this must be… Lucas?”

  “Just Luke,” Luke responded. It was his full name, but only his mother ever called him that. Abraham just smiled, and went over to hug Jonah, who reciprocated somewhat uncomfortably.

  “So, I’ve been told that you’ve been through hell, dealing with my people, is that right?” Abraham asked. Luke nodded a little, and raised his eyebrows.

  “You could say that, yeah,” Luke asked. “First Jonah and Hugh come along and claim we have some girl, then kill a kid right in front of us, to which my people reacted by shooting in defense, hitting Hugh’s arm, to which he reacted by chopping off the arm of one of my friends. Then I got bound up and forced here, so yeah, it’s been a bumpy relationship thus far.”

  Abraham looked concerned, and facepalmed, groaning heavily. It wasn’t what Luke was expecting, honestly.

  “I knew there were complications, but I didn’t know about your friend. I’m sorry, Luke,” he apologized. “You said it was Hugh that did this?”

  “Yes, he and some of our men tackled the two of them and threw them into a tent at one of our checkpoints near Lovell,” Jonah explained. “I told them to stop, but they wouldn’t listen.”

  “That’s when you act, Jonah. You could have stopped that if you acted,” Abraham argued.

  “I did, they wouldn’t listen, and then Hugh just did what he did and… well, then Luke did what he did,” Jonah defended. Abraham just turned around, trying to think.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do, right off the bat. Jonah, get a crucifix ready, and tell some of the men to get it ready for Hugh,” Abraham said.

  “What? B-But Abe, don’t you think that’s a little–?” Jonah said.

  “He’s always been a problem, Jonah, and now he’s acting out past even your limits. I’m ending this, now. Well, you are, but by my word,” Abraham said. “While you do that, I’d like to talk to Luke alone, please.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t even know him, and Abe. Not to make you alarmed, but he does seem pretty… capable,” Jonah warned.

  “I’m sure. Go, Jonah, please,” Abraham said. Jonah stayed a moment, hesitant to leave, but then he made his way out, getting ready to prepare the order for a crucifixion.

  Which was enough to throw Luke for a total loop; he hadn’t expected them to be so… savage in their killing methods, especially of their own people.

  “So… I don’t know exactly–” Luke said.

  “Snow,” Abraham said, cutting Luke off. “Why’d you go with Snow?”

  “What…?” Luke asked, still confused.

  “The girl, why did you name her Snow?” he asked. Luke felt his heart stop.

  How the hell did he know about that? Nobody but the guys even knew she was there, let alone what her name was. There’s no possible way he could know that.

  “I… We don’t have the girl,” Luke said. “I already told your men that–”

  “I know what you told them,” Abraham continued. “And it was pretty convincing, but I know you have her. It’s okay, you don’t have to lie to me about it; you can be freaked out, I would be too, but… I know.” Luke was silent, and still tried to keep a good poker face, but the truth was he was freaking out. What the hell was going on here?

  “How…?” Luke asked. “How did you know?” Abraham smiled.

  “Hard to explain, harder to understand. For now I’ll just say I know things, and that maybe you should be a little less judgemental toward the religious aspect to things than you are. So, as I was asking, why Snow? I’m curious.”

  “Well… that was just the name she wanted,” Luke said, realizing there was no point in hiding it now; by whatever means, Abraham knew the truth. “She liked it, and she came from the snow as far as we knew, so that’s what we went with.”

  “Oh, okay,” Abraham remarked, still smiling a little bit. “That’s nice.”

  “What’s her real name…?” Luke asked. Abraham stopped for a moment, thinking back.

  “Tatiana,” he said. “I…I believe that’s what her parents named her, before they passed.”

  “Oh… Well, why do you want her back so badly?” Luke asked, getting– at least in his mind– back to the task at hand. “So you can rape them more? Force them to work? Crucify them?” Abraham looked shocked, and stared at Luke in disbelief.

  “What?” he asked. “Absolutely not. Why would you ask that?” Maybe he didn’t know everything.

  “She said you would take the kids into some private place, one-on-one, what the hell else could that mean?”

  “We would take them in to sample their blood, try to get a blood type! Not rape!” Abraham said. “She’s just a child, I doubt she even understands what that is!”

  “You think taking children’s blood is normal? In a world like this?” Luke asked. Abraham hesitantly shrugged.

  “The same is done for all my people. You never know when it may come in handy.”

  “She also said you made them work– she didn’t even know how to read!”

  “Yes, we would have them work, but nothing outlandish! And no, most of the children couldn’t read. Regrettably that’s one of the things we need to work on, but we would read them passages from the bible.”

  “And they didn’t have names? You never even named them!?”

  “I… No, we didn’t– not all of them. Had I been able to have more of my own one-on-one time with them, I would’ve, but I was far too busy to put a name to a face, and no one else in charge of the children’s progression cared to do so. Many of these children lost their parents at young ages; some we never even found until they were orphans. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s not nefarious.”

  “Then why did you kill them after they ran away? We saw Hugh shoot a young, teenage boy to pieces with a shotgun because he ran, out of fear.”

  “I would assume because he was with Hugh and that hulking mass of a man that held him!” Abraham protested. “Even with Jonah there, the boy was likely horrified, and regardless… Hugh is a terrible man. I thought there may be some light in him, but I was wrong, clearly. He’s a sinner, pure and simple, and he’ll pay for it.”

  “Look, what do you want with me?” Luke asked. “If it’s alright, I’d like to go back home to my people.”

  Abraham
paused, and sat down in a chair, he motioned for Luke to do the same, and he reluctantly agreed.

  “Well, from what I hear, you’re gifted,” he said, calming down. “You can see through the demon’s eyes, yes?”

  “I…I don’t know. I don’t know how many, or how it happens, or why, but I’ve been seeing through a Goliath’s eyes; it’s with another Goliath, and every time I see through it, it senses me. They both do. They’re coming here,” Luke explained as best he could, getting somewhat panicked as he spoke; it was one of the only things that really terrified him as of late.

  It didn’t make any sense, not to him anyway, but oddly enough it seemed Abraham understood what he was saying as though it were no different than describing the weather.

  “I see,” he responded. “And do you know how to make it work?”

  “No,” Luke answered, shaking his head. “I thought it maybe had to do with pain, or anger, but I was wrong.”

  “But it occurred after your friend lost his arm, correct?”

  “Yeah…”

  “And what happened just before the other times it’s occurred?” Abraham asked.

  “It’s only ever happened one other time, while we were all talking about you. We were discussing the danger of your group, and what it could mean for us, what we may have to do. Then it hit me,” Luke described.

  “Hmm,” Abraham said, and seemed to be in deep thought. For a while he said nothing, and then suddenly he looked up at Luke. “I think it might have to do with stress.”

  “Stress?” Luke reiterated.

  “Yes. You were stressed talking about us, I assume, especially when all you knew about us was based off the scared ramblings of a misinformed little girl. And seeing Jeremy, one of your very close friends lose a limb must have been traumatic to say the least. Is there anything else about this ability that you’ve found?”

  “Well, nothing good– not that this is really good, either,” Luke said. “It happened because a Chirper lodged into my head. The only reason I’m not comatose is because one of my friends pulled it out and killed it. Ever since, my eyes have been silver– though when I get the visions they glow blue-ish– and I can’t sleep most nights. When I do, and more recently sometimes even when I’m awake, I get these sort of night terrors. Reliving the period where I was left motionless by the Chirper, screaming for help. I don’t think my friends know that, but I figured it out a while ago; it all seemed too real, like it was something I’d lived through before. Then one day I realized, it was my own purgatory, almost every time I shut my eyes. Now it’s getting worse, and…and happening more and more frequently.”

  Abraham looked intrigued, and without a word got up and stepped closer to Luke, moving his hands toward Luke’s. Luke to a precautionary step out of his seat, and held his hands up in defense.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked. Abraham searched for words.

  “Like I said, it’s hard to say, hard for even me to understand. But just as you have your gifts, I have mine,” he said.

  “What I have aren’t gifts, if anything they’re curses. And what do you mean ‘you have your’s?’” Luke questioned. Abraham sighed, and stared at Luke directly.

  “I think I can jumpstart your visions, if I may have a small sample of blood, and you let me touch your head. Additionally, I may be able to do something about the damaged hypothalamus you’ve got causing you the inability to sleep without night terrors, and from the sounds of it, more recently the full nerval shutdown of your bodily control, slipping into the visions even while awake,” he offered.

  Luke didn’t know what to make of what he was hearing. This had to be a joke, right? It didn’t make sense, what this guy was saying. He wasn’t some magical being, he was a human! Luke was human, he knew that much, and he had these odd quirks.

  Then again, Abraham seemed to know things he should have had no way of knowing. How did he know they had Snow? How did he even know her name was Snow? And come to think of it, Luke never said Jeremy’s name, yet earlier Abraham used it. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that his people would never betray him, and it didn’t seem logically possible for Snow to have done it, so how could he know these things?

  Nonetheless, even if he was magical, or some kind of angel or demon or God knows what, Luke wasn’t seriously about to just let him get all physical with his head, was he? That would be insane! The man just sentenced someone to die by crucifixion, and now he wanted to fiddle with Luke’s mind?

  “Why should I trust you, at all?” Luke asked. “Magic or no magic, how do I know you won’t just kill me here and now if I let you near my head?” Abraham sighed, and pulled a knife out from his belt. He handed it to Luke.

  “If I really am magic, then I could probably kill you without touching you, don’t you think?” Abraham asked. “All the same, even if I’m not, and you think something is up, then you can stab me, right through the neck. How does that sound?”

  Luke paused, and considered his options. There was no way he’d actually allow Luke the chance to kill him right now, was there? Even if he did, Jonah– the second in command– was gone, and there were probably guards waiting for something to go wrong so they could come in and take Luke out if he did try anything.

  But if Abraham really could somehow fix Luke’s night terrors… It was insane to even consider, but if he could… Luke wanted nothing more than for that to go away, if nothing else so that he wouldn’t be such a burden to his family.

  “Fine,” Luke said at last. “But you try anything, and I will kill you.” He tightened his grip on the knife.

  Abraham just nodded, and Luke reluctantly sliced the knife down his finger. The blood seeped out of the new, stinging slit, and Abraham gently ran his finger across it, absorbing the blood onto his hand. He quickly put it to his lips, and swallowed it. Luke watched is total disgust, but not a moment later, Abraham put his hands on Luke’s head, and Luke pressed the knife close to Abraham’s chest.

  There was a moment of pause, and then suddenly Luke’s eyes began to flicker, and a moment after that, they shot open with a silvery-blue hue, and the world around him collapsed, as he once again saw through the Goliath’s eyes.

  “This is what you see?” Abraham asked, presumably somehow seeing the same.

  “Yes… i-it is,” Luke stammered. Even if it was being spurred on, it still drained Luke, and made his breathing unsteady. He always felt the same sense of dread and fear.

  “I see,” Abraham said, breathing heavier. “And these… Goliaths… they see you too?”

  “I don’t know,” Luke whispered as his body grew more and more tense. “They just… know where I am, and I know where they are.”

  “And they’re coming to you,” Abraham continued. “Do you know what for?”

  “What they always come for,” Luke said.

  “I see,” Abraham said once again. Then Luke felt a sharp kind of pain in his head. Almost like electricity was coursing through his very mind, and while he wanted to thrust the knife into Abraham’s heart, he couldn’t move himself to do so.

  He also couldn’t see. Not the visions or the real world. Everything was just light, and darkness, shifting back and forth haphazardly. He could have sworn in that moment he heard voices shifting around past his ears, but he couldn’t make out the words they spoke in their soft, melodic tunes.

  It all happened suddenly, or at least seemingly so, and then, in a moment, it was done; Luke could see again. Abraham stood in front of him, and he took a step back, proud of his work.

  “What did you do?” Luke asked, catching his breath.

  “I did as I said I would. I took care of the night terrors,” he explained. “I saw the almost fungus-like apparatus on your hypothalamus– sort of the ‘dream center’ of your brain– and I wiped it clean. It spread to your retinas, but as far as I know that’s what allows you to see what you see, so I left that there for now.”

  “How do I know you told the truth?” Luke asked.

  �
�Guess you’ll just have to wait and see,” Abraham exclaimed, smiling as he did. “Like I said, Luke, you just need to open your eyes to the idea of a higher power, don’t judge it so much without reason. You might find it actually makes a lot more sense.”

  “Right… Well when do I get to leave? If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to go home to my people,” Luke requested. Abraham then grew a very solemn face, and didn’t quite know what to say at first.

  “You… can’t,” he said. He didn’t seem happy about it, but still, he said it, and that wasn’t very good to Luke.

  “Excuse me?” Luke asked incredulously. “I can’t?”

  “No, you can’t,” Abraham repeated. “I brought you here because you’re special, Luke. I need you here, with me. The people will see someone like you, and know that there are higher powers at work.”

  “But there wasn’t! There aren’t! I just got a Chirper lodged into my head! It could have happened to anyone! It may have!” Luke protested. “Not to mention, if anything, I’m more like the Antichrist; I see the demons and they see me.”

  “Luke, did Jonah tell you what this is? Why we’re all here? Why we’re so ‘fanatical’ about our beliefs in the Lord?” Abraham asked.

  “I had my own theories, he sort of confirmed them,” Luke said. Abraham nodded slightly.

  “When the world started to fall apart, everybody had their theories,” he explained. “Most thought it was an alien invasion, some thought it was government-related; maybe they opened up some dimensional portal that went wrong. We– amongst others, I’m sure– believed that this was the rapture: the end of days, and the second-coming of Christ.”

  Luke wanted to roll his eyes, but he was far more concerned with where this was leading than why it was being said at all.

  “Now, not many people seemed to have made it, which one could argue is reason enough to dispute the rapture theory. But I know it’s true. You see Luke, there was a small town in Indiana that I used to live in, called Westphalia. I lived there for a good few years of my life; it was a nice, wholesome community, with good family values. They also happened to be a strictly Christian town, and had bibles essentially lining the walls of every home and building on every street.”