by Ted Dekker
Jan hung from his restraints, wanting death. He could hardly think for the pain. If Karadzic would free his hands, he would claw the man’s eyes out! Jan ground his teeth. He would pummel that thick face! How dare he touch—
The world abruptly stuttered to white.
The vision!
Laughter crashed in on him from all sides. The field of flowers and this hilarious laughter. A wave of relief swept over his chest and he chuckled suddenly. Then the sentiment thundered through his body and he could not contain it. It was pleasure. Raw pleasure and it boiled from his bones in bubbles of joy!
Jan doubled over, as far as his bound arms allowed, and he laughed. The room echoed with the sounds of a madman, and he couldn’t help thinking that he’d finally lost his sanity. But he knew at once that he could not be more sensible. He was drinking life and it was making him laugh.
Every fiber in his body begged to die in that moment; to join that laughter forever. To roll through the field and rush through the blue sky with Father Micheal and Nadia.
The vision vanished.
He blinked in the darkness. You know Nadia spoke of laughter, Janjic. You know Father Micheal laughed. And then they both died. The laughing precedes death.
Then let me die, Father.
But save Helen. I beg you.
THEY HAD left the room for a while, to give her time to think things through, the woman said. Ivena’s body lay in a pool of blood to Helen’s right, her eyes open and dead. The candles cast wavering shadows across the room. And Helen stared with round eyes, a sheen of sweat glistening on her skin, breathing in ragged lurches.
She had passed out once, from hyperventilation, she thought. When she came to, she wondered if the whole thing had been a bad dream, but then she saw the body and she started crying again.
The problem was quite simple. She didn’t want to renounce her love for Jan. Her mind revisited his incredible kindness and his passion. Renouncing his love could very well be death in and of itself. At the very least she could never face him again.
But then she didn’t want to die. No, she would never allow them to kill her.
The door banged open, and Karadzic walked in with the woman and two guards. One of the guards walked to Ivena’s body and began pulling it to the side.
“Leave it!” Karadzic said.
The guard released the body and joined his comrade on Helen’s left.
Karadzic took up his position before her, like an executioner eager to get on with it. Vahda was biting at a fingernail, obviously excited. They stared at her in silence for a moment.
Karadzic spoke in a low rumble. “Now, Helen. We’re going to begin breaking your fingers. I prefer the knife and we might get to that, but Vahda has persuaded me that a woman will do anything to keep her fingers.”
Helen began to shake again. The nails in the beam at her back were squeaking with her trembling: an obscene sound that sent chills down her legs.
“Oh, God!” she moaned. “Please, God!”
Karadzic lifted his eyebrows. “God? I told you, God isn’t listening. I think your God—”
It was all she heard. Because the world exploded again. It flashed white.
She was back in the vision!
Only this time, the field of white flowers was swimming in the laughter of children. Helen caught her breath. There was another sound there with the children— she recognized it immediately. It was Ivena! Laughing with the children. Hysterical.
And the prone figure had vanished. And that was funny, she thought. No, that was delightful. That was perfectly incredible! That was better than anything she could ever have imagined.
She heard her own laughter, joining the chorus. Not because it was so funny, in fact funny was a terrible word to describe this emotion erupting from her belly. She felt as though she’d been yanked from an acid bath and plunged into a pool of ecstasy. This intoxicating world of intense pleasure.
This is heaven.
“Stop it!”
The voice snapped Helen back to the room.
“STOP IT!” Karadzic stood trembling. “You think it’s funny?”
Helen was chuckling. The woman hung from his cross covered in her own sweat, shaking like a leaf. A moment before, it had been terror twitching those muscles; now it was laughter.
The scene ran through Karadzic’s mind like a sick joke. He had seen this before. In a small village not so far away, twenty years ago.
“Shut up!”
She stopped and looked around like an idiot, as if unsure of where she was. The absurdity of this sudden turn in her demeanor brought a chill to Karadzic’s bones. What in God’s name did she think she was doing?
“You laugh like that again, I’ll put a bullet in your stomach! Do you hear me?”
Helen nodded. But her eyes were no longer round and wide. They looked at him with mere curiosity. He would have to put the fear back into her. He would break two fingers, one on each hand. Her index fingers.
Karadzic took a step forward, noting that his own hands still trembled. He closed them into fists. “We will see how you feel after—”
“I’ve made my decision,” she interrupted calmly.
He blinked. “You have, have you?”
“Yes.”
“Not so fast.” This was not sounding good. “I have Janjic. Do you know that?” The pitch of his voice had elevated, but he didn’t care.
“You . . . you have Jan?” She swallowed, and for a second he thought she might burst into tears again. “I love him,” the woman said.
“You’re a fool,” Karadzic muttered through clenched teeth.
“I will die rather than renounce my love for Jan.”
This was impossible! “You won’t just die! You’ll have all of your bones broken, one by one, you little coward!”
Her eyes stared at him without moving. Tears spilled from each, leaving fresh trails down her cheeks. But she did not blink.
“If you think you’ll find some perverted satisfaction from hurting an innocent woman, then do it,” Helen said.
“You think you’re innocent? Did I drag you here? You’ve killed your own lover by coming here.”
Her cheeks sagged.
Karadzic continued quickly. “Janjic will die and only you can save him. Renounce him, you fool. They’re only words! Don’t be an imbecile.”
“No!” she screamed. “No.” She began to cry again. She was going to break. Her face wrinkled with pain. Karadzic could smell the change in her and he encouraged her gently.
“Save yourself,” he said. “Renounce him.”
She inhaled sharply and settled slowly against the ropes. She looked directly into his eyes and Karadzic swallowed. There was a new woman behind those eyes and she was stronger than he’d thought.
“You know I can’t do that,” she said quietly. “Kill me. I’ll die for him—it’s long overdue.”
The tremble started at Karadzic’s head and worked its way down to his heels. If he hadn’t been immobilized on the spot, he might have lifted his pistol and shot her then.
Vahda was not so paralyzed. She shrieked and flew past Karadzic with claws extended. Her fingers dug into Helen’s neck and she raked them down her chest, leaving trails of blood.
Karadzic stepped forward and brought a heavy hand across Vahda’s head. The woman sprawled to the floor. “She’s mine!” he shouted. “Did I tell you to do this?”
He stepped back, trying desperately to gather himself. He was losing control of the situation, the one thing no good commander could allow. His breathing came thick and slow. White spots floated in his vision. Vahda pushed herself to her feet.
Karadzic faced Helen. “So. You think you are smart. Choosing your death. Well, I will kill you. And I will allow Vahda to break your bones. But you won’t die until you’ve witnessed the death of your lover. Would you like that?”
The woman did not react.
He screamed it. “I said, would you like that?”
She blinked.
But otherwise she only peered at him. Her neck was bleeding badly from Vahda’s fingernails.
“Get the prisoner,” Karadzic snapped.
Two guards quickly left the room for Janjic.
“Vahda, dear. Remember, this is my game, not yours. You must remember that.” She didn’t acknowledge him. “So now you may break two of her fingers, but only two,” he said.
She turned to him with a glint in her eyes.
“Yes, darling. You may. And her knees.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE FIRST thing Jan saw when the two guards dragged him into the room was a tall woman in red with long black hair. She was facing the wall. He saw Karadzic to the left, wearing a sinister grin by candlelight. Then the woman moved aside and he saw Helen.
She’d been tied to a thick wooden cross. Her head lolled to one side, and she stared out into the room, expressionless. She hadn’t seen him.
There was blood on her neck. And her knees . . . Oh, dear God! Her knees were a bloody mess. Jan panicked then. He growled and flung himself forward.
His attempt was rewarded with a stiff blow to the side of his head. He slumped between the guards and Helen’s image swam in his vision. She was looking at him now. Slowly a thin smile formed on her mouth. Dear Helen! My poor Helen!
Her index fingers were oddly disjointed. Nausea swept through his stomach. He turned from her and saw the body folded over itself in the shadows. It was a woman, lifeless, dressed in . . .
It was Ivena! That was Ivena lying in the corner with her head bloodied. Oh, dear God! Dear God!
Jan closed his eyes and lowered his head. The sorrow rose through his chest and rushed from his eyes, as if a dam had broken deep in him. He hung from his arms between the guards and he wept.
“Do you like what you see, Janjic?” Karadzic asked quietly.
Shut up! Shut up, you devil from hell!
“Don’t listen to him, Jan. Listen to me.” It was Helen’s voice!
He lifted his head and blinked.
“Shut up!” Karadzic said.
But Jan was looking into Helen’s eyes, and he saw something there. Something new. Something that reached into his chest and squeezed his heart. It was the way he’d felt in the restaurant on their first date, the same feeling that had given him weak knees in the garden under a full moon. It was the same beating of his heart that had pounded in his ears while she leaned over his shoulder looking at the coffee machine.
And yet it was coming from her heart, not just his. He could see the love in her eyes and in the lines around her lips. She seemed hardly aware of her broken bones. She was swimming in a new dimension.
He began to cry, and the guards shifted awkwardly on their feet.
“Jan.” It was Helen again, weak yet speaking his name. His body trembled.
“Jan, I love you.”
He lifted his head to the ceiling and began to wail out loud. Waves of joy washed through his bones.
The guards released him suddenly and he crashed to the ground. He hardly felt the force of the fall. She loved him! Dear God, Helen was loving him!
He wanted to look up at her and tell her that he loved her too. That he would give anything to hear her say those words again! That he would die for her.
Jan’s lips pressed against the stone ground and his tears pooled. He rolled to his side and tried to push himself up. He couldn’t. But he had to. He had to stand and rush over to Helen and kiss her face and her feet and her wounded knees and tell her how terribly much he loved her.
Karadzic was screaming something. Jan opened his eyes and saw that the man had thrust a pistol in Helen’s cheek. But Helen’s eyes were on Jan.
She didn’t seem to care about the gun. And it occurred to Jan that he didn’t either. In fact, it all seemed rather absurd; this big man shoving his black weapon at Helen, as if doing so should bring her to her knees. She was tied up, how could she possibly fall to her knees? She was strapped to the cross, bleeding, and she was smiling.
A bubble of laughter escaped Jan’s lips.
For a long, awkward moment the room fell to silence. Karadzic and his woman stood shaking, glaring at Jan, at a loss. Helen looked into Jan’s eyes.
Karadzic suddenly spun, gripped the pistol in both hands, and squeezed the trigger. A deafening report boomed through the room.
The slug tore into Jan’s side, burning as if someone had jabbed him with a branding iron. He gasped and clutched his side.
“Dear Father, save us,” Helen’s trembling voice whispered. Her chin rested on her chest. “Love us. Let us hear your laughter.”
“Silence!” Karadzic screamed.
The door suddenly banged open and a ghost from the past stood there, huge and white and round-eyed. It was Glenn. And a moment later Jan knew that he was in the flesh. Glenn Lutz was here!
Helen had looked up and was staring directly at Glenn. “Show your hand. Show the power of your love. Let us hear your laughter. We’ve died already, now let us live.” She was praying for the laughter.
Karadzic had spun to Glenn, who stood dumbfounded, glaring at Helen on the cross.
The room fell to an eerie silence.
“Kill her,” Glenn said in a breathy voice. His face suddenly contorted with hate, and he stepped up between Karadzic and Vahda. “Kill her.” His voice rose in pitch and he began to shake. “Kill her!” he screamed.
Karadzic stood rooted to the ground.
The sound came like bubbling spring, gushing from the rock. It was laughter. It was the same laughter from the vision. But it wasn’t from the vision. It was from Helen. Helen had lifted her head and was laughing open-mouthed.
“He, he, he, he, he, ha, ha ha ha ha ha!”
Jan held his breath with the suddenness of it. It was the picture from the cover of The Dance of the Dead, only here, painted on Helen.
If Glenn’s senses hadn’t already snapped, they did in that moment. He roared and swung a huge fist at Karadzic’s face. Bone smashed bone with a sickening thud and Karadzic staggered backward. Like an unleashed tiger, Glenn sprang at Karadzic while the commander was still off balance. But Karadzic set himself and the two large men collided.
Glenn shook like a leaf now, his lips pressed white with desperation. With a thundering roar, he ripped the gun from Karadzic’s grasp and jumped back.
Helen’s laughter echoed through the room, and Glenn jerked the pistol toward her in a blind fury.
The reprieve was what Karadzic needed. He snatched another gun from behind his back and jerked it up in line with Glenn. But the American’s gun was already steadied.
A boom crashed through the room. Jan’s heart stopped its beating. Oh, God! He clenched his eyes shut. Oh, dear God!
Laughter pealed about him. Helen’s laughter. In death? She had joined Ivena and—
Jan snapped his eyes open and stared at Helen. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open and she was still laughing.
Then Glenn’s huge body fell, like a side of beef. His head bounced off the concrete a foot from Jan’s. His eyes were open and there was a hole in his right temple.
Helen was still laughing, seemingly oblivious to the struggle around her. Her mouth was open with delight and tears wet her cheeks.
Karadzic faced her, sweat pouring from his skin. He took a step back and his eyes skipped around. It occurred to Jan that he was terrified. The big man opened his mouth in a moan.
Jan looked at Glenn’s torso again, and this time he saw the black handle wedged under his shoulder. The gun!
Jan glanced up at Karadzic. The man trained his wavering gun forward, as if struggling against an unseen force. They had been here before. Only this time it wasn’t the priest’s laughter Karadzic would silence. This time it was Jan’s wife’s. The realization passed through his mind and he thought his chest would explode. Still Helen did not stop her laughing.
Jan reached out his right hand and grabbed for the gun under Lutz’s body, keeping his eyes on Karadzic all the while. The man w
as transfixed by the sight of Helen. At any instant the gun in his hand would buck.
Cold steel filled Jan’s hand. His world swam. He found the trigger and pulled the pistol out in one quick motion. A groan broke from his throat and he heaved the gun up in Karadzic’s direction. He yanked the trigger.
Boom!
The slug hit his old commander somewhere below the waist, but Jan kept jerking on the trigger. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Click. The gun was empty.
Karadzic staggered back, wide-eyed, his own weapon unfired. He stared at Jan, wavering on his feet. Several blotches of red spread on his shirt. His nose was twisted and bleeding.
The man fell face forward on the concrete and lay still.
The room grew quiet.
Karadzic’s woman had gone white. She eased toward the door, glanced one last time at Karadzic’s lifeless form, and ran from the room. One of the guards ran out behind her, blinking in disbelief.
Only then, with Helen hanging from the cross, Jan lying in a pool of his own blood, and the last guard cowering against the far wall, did it occur to Jan that they were alive.
He dropped the gun and pushed himself to an elbow. He saw Helen looking at him in silence, and immediately collapsed to his side. Pain shot up his spine and he groaned.
Helen looked at the remaining guard, who still stood trembling. “Please, please,” she begged. “Please help us.”
The guard suddenly rushed across the room with a drawn knife and Jan’s pulse spiked with alarm. The man ran to the cross and his blade flashed. It severed the cords. Helen fell free. The guard caught her, quickly lowered her to the ground, and ran from the room.
Jan’s world began to drift. The universe had been created for moments like these, he thought. It was an odd thought.
Jan felt his head being lifted and he opened his eyes. She’d managed to crawl to him and lift his head in her arms. She was sobbing.
“Forgive me! I’m so sorry, Jan. Forgive me! Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. I was so wrong. I was so, so wrong.”
Her words floated in and out. She’d never said such things, but then she’d never been who she was now. Jan’s body trembled, but this time with an unspeakable joy. The fruits of love. The universe was indeed created for moments like these.
