Hell’s fury appears in both the flesh and the unseen realm, where trust is blurred, and deception is a matter of life or death. In an epic showdown to escape the entities seeking to destroy her, Beth must embrace a mysterious and ancient truth. One that will shatter everything she’s ever known.
Watch Beth’s slow burn from fringe to faith, terrorized to triumph. For fans of novels by Frank Peretti and Colleen Coble. And if you’ve followed my non-fiction over the years—fair warning, this serialized story’s dark beginning deviates from my normal narrative writing. Expect a bumpy but redemptive ride—eventually.
At the end of a dead-end street sat their frame house like a silent, lone guard. Theirs was the last one, just before the road dropped into the catacombs of dense woods. In winter, the large Georgia pines displayed their green dressings among the deathly-pale gray branches of oaks and Sweetgums.
Beth took one last glance at the tenuous slivers of light slicing through the towering trees as their car pulled out of the drive. Switching her gaze to the front window, she noticed a Pontiac Trans Am, barreling towards them. It had popped over the hill as if on a morbid mission to land in the dark expanse of forest behind them.
Her father gripped the steering wheel, jerking it to the right, then equally to the left. Beth and her sister, Lily, were thrown against each other, skulls smacking bone and flesh. With a final lurch, they bounced off the backs of the front seat as their car stopped in the middle of the street.
A split second later, a fiendish bang blasted inside the car, so loud a wave of pressure shot through Beth’s ears. As if deaf, the world turned to a muted silence. Her ears felt like thick cotton stuffed inside, trapping an incessant ringing.
She heard only the muffled voice of her mom.
A gun? Loaded?
Beth’s eyes darted to her mom’s mouth to read her lips.
She realized that during the commotion, a nebulous pistol had fallen out of the glove box and fired a round. The bullet had thankfully landed in the flesh of her father’s leg.
An ambulance arrived and took him to the hospital. Relief at his retreating presence would’ve comforted her, if not for the residual echoes from the blast vibrating inside her. Any sound of sirens was drowned out by the high-pitch still pinging in her ears.
From across the street, the curious elderly neighbors came to assist and volunteered to take her and Lily to wait at their house.
As they followed them, Beth’s muddled thoughts fragmented like numbed projectiles. But once inside their house, burning menthol stung her nostrils, mixed with the comforting and familiar, dry aroma of baby powder
Minutes turned into hours.
The tick-tock-tick-tock of the mantel clock mocked the tomb-like quietness. Beth squirmed in her chair at the biting, caustic stillness.
On the surface, Beth’s family looked normal. Only those who lived beyond their white picket fence knew the violent secrets firmly locked behind their front door.
She had learned to ride her bike on this street. Their giant Labrador stayed in the backyard, ready to put his front paws on her shoulders and lick her face. She took tumbling classes and tap lessons.
After school, she made mud pies or swung on the metal swing set, which threatened to tip over when she got too high. A few houses down sat a small store where she and her sister would get Jolly Ranchers and bubble gum.
Pine floors creaked and moaned when the ancient floor heater blew its hot breath into the hallway. Saturday cartoons brightened the morning from an oversized TV that took up a good portion of square feet in the den. No remote controls. Just a manual twist of a cumbersome knob as it clunked with each turn
But by twilight, Beth watched an ominous thin veil appear between the world she could see with her eyes and the precarious one beyond it. During the wretched nightfall, it flexed its acrimonious dominance.
Rising through the coal-black, an ashen, unseen world exposed a perilous underbelly. A robust evil swelled in strength against an ebony sky.
This darkened realm did not disappear by day. It remained—evident by the occasional flitting of butterflies in Beth’s stomach. From the spiritual world, she sensed something or someone was watching.
Yet the sun’s penetrating light pushed the shadows to the periphery. Still active but less visible. It was like a power source of its own, the brightest star keeping fear at arm’s length.
After each torment of the night, the climbing rays of dawn strummed their beating radiance. It warmed Beth’s skin and kissed it with hope. The sunrise carried the glowing glimmers of rising courage.
Then there was the painting. In her bedroom, the prized possession hung.
Some days, her finger traced the painted trail in the picture as she ached to climb inside it, to be safely frozen on the canvas. The oiled print seemed to exude its own magnetic pull, away from the paleness of dread and the cowardice of night.
But without fail, the darkness returned under a sky poked with stars.
A familiar fear reached its gaunt fingers for her, night after night. She felt it in the chill crawling across her skin before she ever saw its haggard shape.
Yet, the picture on the wall guarded all the same.
Oddly enough, the shadow “man” never smudged its presence on that side of the room. The frame’s origin, with its simmering offer of hope, eluded her.
What is its history? How did it come to be in her room?
Beth did not ask.
But the shadows seemed to know.
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I want to know more about what this shadow is doing hovering over her. I'll read more tonight or tomorrow.
Really like your descriptions of smell. Curious to know more about the picture!