Faith Read online

  **********

  It was touch and go for a few minutes, before the plane broke above the weather, but two hours later, the flight landed in New York safe and whole.

  Alan had clutched his armrest as the plane initially struggled against the storm, wondering if perhaps Cyrus’s prophecy might somehow come to fruition. But ten minutes after takeoff, the 737 was cruising comfortably above the weather and beautiful blue skies and sunshine stretched out on all sides of the plane, the boiling clouds and crackling lightning safely below them.

  Alan wrote the story on the two hour flight, injecting a little more malice and sarcasm than he normally might have, compensating for his own feelings of foolishness in having given weight to any of it. Nowhere in the story was there any mention of his own deliverance from pain. He transmitted the story to his editor and had a drink.

  He arrived at his office at one p.m. and spent most of the day researching upcoming articles and attending editorial meetings, where he hammered out the final details of the story on Cyrus Taylor which would run in next week’s issue. Once that was done, he forgot about Cyrus Taylor completely.

  At 5:30 he called it a day. Before leaving the office, he called his lady friend, Rachel Bennet, and invited her over to his apartment. She said she’d be there around seven thirty.

  When he got to his apartment, a detached duplex outside of the city, it was past six o’clock and the Wintertime darkness had come early. He wasn’t overly concerned to see his lights out when he returned home. It was quite possible he had forgotten to turn them on, or there was a power failure. He unlocked his door and stepped inside, flicking on one of the hateful CFL’s that had to warm up before getting to full brightness, and even then, they were all but worthless. The apartment was still in half-light even with the bulb burning. He walked into the bathroom to relieve himself and wash up a little. When he came back, he was more shocked than frightened to see Cyrus Taylor sitting on his living room couch. Realizing he had seen no vehicles outside, the first thing he thought to ask was:

  “How did you get here?”

  “Maybe,” Cyrus answered, “I mounted up as on wings of eagles. We have unfinished business.”

  “I’m calling the cops.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  A cold shudder crawled down Alan’s spine and he knew Manny was there even before he turned around and saw him, hulking in the background like some steroid-infused wrestler, his pale eyes milky in the semi-dark. Manny blocked the doorway and Alan knew if he reached for his cell phone he would be quickly subdued.

  “What do you want,” Alan asked, his mouth dry as desert-parched leather.

  “Payment, of course,” Cyrus said. “I asked you last night if you were willing to pay the cost for your demonstration. You scoffed, thinking you knew better than God, that He wouldn’t exact his price. You were tested and found wanting.”

  “What are you talking about,” Alan stammered. “There was no test.”

  “Ah, but there was. You were told not to board that plane. But you defied God and did that very thing. That was your test.”

  Alan tried to think on his feet, knowing he should have seen it coming, but his fear garbled his tongue.

  “But nothing happened,” he objected, knowing even as he said it that it was a lie. Something very major had happened, he just didn’t yet know what it was.

  “And why would it? Did you think God would murder a hundred innocent people to teach you a lesson? You think too much of yourself. No, you alone owe the debt for your mockery.”

  With the delicate touch born of a lifetime of darkness, Cyrus removed his sunglasses to unveil eye sockets that were simply empty. Two bottomless black holes bore down on Alan, gaping sightlessly along both sides of Cyrus’s nose. The craters held a curious, reddish tinge, as if blood could be seen circulating beneath the thin skin that lined the sightless wells.

  “I was chosen before I was born,” Cyrus said, a little sadly. “I could heal the blind, but I could never heal myself. That was my yoke and I bore it without complaint. Now, for your insolence, God will yoke you.”

  Alan turned to make a dash for the door, but Manny reached out with the quickness of a striking mongoose and grabbed Alan’s arm. At the instant of Manny’s touch, Alan felt as if an electric bolt staked him to the spot with unbreakable bands of steel. He stood an inflexible statue, powerless to move or topple, staring helplessly up into the austere face and icy eyes of Emmanuel. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  All the pain that had so recently disappeared crashed into him with a hundredfold vengeance, a lifetime of joint degeneration packed into a few seconds. To Alan it felt as if some wild-eyed mad doctor were inside of him, ratcheting and twisting the ligaments of every grinding joint with a metal lever, binding up the connective tissues in screaming knots so tight they might burst in sprays of fluid and protein. His fingers petrified to immovable stone and his back twisted and arched into a tortured pretzel. His knees and hip joints contracted and withered; his toes curled backwards in a bone-breaking constriction. He wanted to scream at the unbearable agony, but his jaw seemed bolted shut and he could only moan like a tormented animal.

  When Manny released him he fell to the floor and lay there, not immobile, but squirming like a bisected serpent, his every breath a knife slash, his every movement a spear thrust.

  He looked pitifully up at Cyrus sitting untroubled on the couch, his sunglasses again riding the bridge of his nose, those stripped sockets once more a question.

  “What is in me?” Alan croaked out in a painful rasp.

  “He who is in you,” Cyrus answered, “is greater than he who is in the world.”

  Cyrus stood and took Emmanuel by the arm to be led. They walked from the room, never to be seen again. Whether they dematerialized, vanished in a blinding flash with a herald of trumpets, or simply walked out the front door, Alan never knew. He could only twist on the floor in agony, a humbled Rumpelstiltskin, shriveled and wasted.