“Maybe a couple of hours.” Zion answered.
Pat’s face didn’t budge but internally he sighed in exasperation. He now almost wished that Clive was here to take the pressure off of him from socializing. As the social anxiety was setting in, Pat could hear the screaming at the far corners of his brain. This then made him do something he generally never did. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you like your work?”
“I adore what I do.” Zion glanced at Pat with a smile that could melt any icy heart.
Pat’s heart was made of stone.
***
Zion’s excitement was noticeably growing the closer they came to the thin black line. Pat could even feel a change in air pressure as they neared. His ears popped and the left ear felt like it was draining.
“Did ya feel that?” Zion asked in an excited whisper as if his ear had just drained too.
Pat nodded but continued to stare straight ahead. At the beginning of their journey, the skies had been mostly clear and the weather calm. Now on the horizon, black clouds were steadily making their way towards them. The land on either side of the highway was barren save for a few spindly trees. After a few minutes, Zion turned right into a pitiful-looking subdivision. Each home looked like the owners had gone to no effort to maintain the landscaping or paint. The corner house was a double wide on cinder block legs and Pat worried that it would go tumbling off its foundation once the storm rolled in.
Zion drove past this home and to the end of the dead-end street where caution signs were posted. He turned off the car and looked at Pat with sparkling eyes.
“Well, I say we park here and go the rest of the way on foot.”
Pat didn’t argue. He began grabbing equipment and fell in step behind the excited Christian scientist. The temperature had dropped as well so Pat pulled his sweater tighter around his slim frame, but it didn’t seem to help. He had always struggled to stay warm and his size did not help this issue much.
Even though Zion was slightly shorter than Pat, he was ahead by several strides. The black line they had been following was now as wide as a creek and just as fluid. Pat could understand why others hadn’t noticed it before. It rippled to where the stark colors of it simply blended into the background. Somebody might have thought it was the wind or some sort of heat wave. But it was autumn and there was nothing hot enough to cause a natural heat wave to occur.
“Of course, Clive is going to be disappointed he missed this.” Zion finished, and Pat realized he had been ignoring everything Zion had said.
“Why do you say that?”
Zion smiled. “Because,” He stepped over a cluster of rocks as he spoke. “We are at the forefront of this research, and…”
Pat knew that something was very wrong as soon as they were within yards of the anomaly. As if the tear in the fabric of reality had been waiting for them, three trees created a perfect triangle in the sparse grass. The black clouds billowed up in a tower behind them and concealed the black line in the sky. But what was truly sickening was the woman bent and broken on the ground in the center of the trees. Her white blond hair spilled up over her face concealing her identity but Pat knew who it must be.
“Rach…” Zion whispered.
There was no way she was alive. The unnatural curve of her spine indicated it was broken and blood seeped out onto the ground killing the grass in its wake.
“Oh, Lord God in Heaven.” Zion breathed. In a state of shock, he placed his equipment down and walked in a trance to his wife.
Pat’s mind was brought back to the day he had watched Justice be taken away. For a moment, the blond hair became vibrant red and Pat’s feet itched to run to her.
“Patty.” Justice stood beside him looking on in sadness. The wind was picking up in intensity so her waist-length red hair danced.
“I can’t do it!” Zion shouted to the sky. “This is beyond what I can handle, Lord God!” Zion’s sobs shook his entire body.
“How did this happen?” Pat asked Justice.
She glanced at him and placed a finger to her lips to silence him and instructed him to watch.
“Who did this to you?” Zion demanded of his silent wife. Tentatively, he reached out with his right hand and as soon as his fingertips made contact, the body dissolved into a flock of crows and flew into the black line in the sky.
Zion’s gaze whipped around to look at Pat pleading for answers. Pat instantly looked at where Justice had been standing but she was no longer there. He then looked back at Zion who was now standing. All that was left in the man’s eyes was emptiness.
Comfort was not something that Pat was good at so he shouted out, “Is it an apparition?”
Zion did not answer but pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed a number. In a moment, Zion had fallen on his knees and sobbed happy tears.
“Oh, Rachel Rachel Rachel.”
Pat turned his back on Zion so he would have some privacy. Pat could feel a few drops of rain here and there hitting his skin but he didn’t want to leave Zion behind. He didn’t have to wait long because Zion had suddenly picked up his equipment and continued to talk on the phone while gesturing for Pat to go back to the car. Zion’s face still looked sapped of energy, but his color had returned with the relief of being able to speak to his wife on the phone.
Once they were in the car, Zion said, “I love you, darling.” And hung up. “She’s okay.”
“That is good.” Pat said. “What do we need to do now?”
“I’m thinking.” Zion said simply. “I’m rattled. It must be an apparition from when I was chipped and having my night terrors. I don’t remember it but it must be from my imagination because I don’t know of anybody else who would be imagining horrific things like that. My night terrors have always been terrible.”
“Why do you believe in a God that lets you suffer through that?” Pat said finally.
Zion didn’t answer right away. The wheels turned behind his eyes and Pat could tell he was trying to find the right words to answer the question. This was something that Pat could admire about this man— the care with which he said things.
“A good God will allow things to happen to keep us from becoming the darkest versions of ourselves. We are always being refined. He always completes the good work he has started in us.” Zion bit his lip thoughtfully. “The struggle reminds me of all the goodness I’ve been given and the good God I serve. I am so finite but he is so great.”
“That sounds masochistic.” Pat said flatly. He couldn’t understand Christians and their need to go through suffering to be a good person. “Humanity shouldn’t need to suffer to be better. We should be allowed to figure it out ourselves.”
“Wouldn’t that be amazing?” Zion sighed. The emotional exhaustion seemed to be creeping back into Zion’s eyes now as he started the car up. “Let’s go back and take a breather. The weather is getting bad out here and I need to think and pray.” His eyes were trained on the backup camera screen and he skillfully turned around to head back home. “I don’t want to suffer but I know I am a stubborn human being with an inherently sinful nature. I can’t fix myself.”
