Heaven and Hell (14 page)

“I thought of the poor as being inferior. There was only so much money to go around, and ‘a fool and his money were soon parted.’ Most of the money came to rest in the hands of those who used it most wisely and effectively, hands like mine. In such hands, money attracted more money. But, you see, I had never been poor, never considered the circumstances under which those in poverty lived. All that many of those people needed to get back on their feet was a helping hand, perhaps my hand, but I never extended it to them. I was in a position to make a difference, but I didn’t.

Serena, we are our brother’s and sister’s keeper. In all of my 68 years of life on Earth, I never came to realize that simple fact. I realize it now, but now it’s too late. Once, my world was my wife and children, the house on Ventnor Drive, and my office on the 16th floor. But now this is my world, an altar of pain amidst the eternal heat and harsh sun of this barren valley. The sun never sets on this place, you know. It beats down on you constantly, unremittingly. What I wouldn’t give for a night, even a shadow.

Oh, to feel the rain upon my face, even a drop of water upon my lips, but all of that is gone, part of another life.”

Thomas turned to gaze upon the pain and misery that surrounded them. “I often wonder if my wife, Susan, is somewhere here among us. I guess I’ll never know.” Thomas turned once more to Serena. “Oh, she was such a beautiful woman, a loving wife and mother. I hope and pray that she isn’t here. I pray that today she dwells with God in Heaven. In that case, she wouldn’t remember me at all, would she? Perhaps that would be for the best. Perhaps our two daughters are there with her by now. I hope so. I want so much for them to be happy. They don’t deserve to be in this place.”

Serena stumbled to her feet. She walked to the altar, knelt by his side, and took the hand of Thomas in hers, in an attempt to lend to him some measure of comfort. Thomas was now almost fully regenerated. Only a few scars remained to attest to the suffering he had most recently endured. He had the appearance of a man in his late 30s, and a handsome one at that. Yet decades of pain had etched its mark around his sad eyes.

“You can’t realize just how good it has been to talk to you, Serena,” continued Thomas. “None of those around me speak English. I suspect that fact is courtesy of satan himself.”

Thomas strained to gaze toward the sky, toward the great hoard of buzzards circling overhead. Experience told him that his time was indeed short. “I’m afraid that I‘ve been doing all of the talking. Time in Hell is eternal, but moments like this, moments without pain and in good company, are precious. I know that you will need to leave me soon, and we will never meet again, but I would like to know a little about you, about your life. That is, if you don’t mind.”

Serena didn’t mind; she so desperately needed to talk to someone. She told Thomas about her all too brief existence among the living, about the rock house in Oregon, about Chris. It was when she spoke of her love lost, that tears came once more to her eyes. What was she going to do?

“I’m sorry that you’ve lost someone so wonderful,” said Thomas, “but I’m sure that there are many heartbreaking stories to be heard here. It might have been better for us all if we had no memory of our lives on Earth.

“Thomas, do you think there’s any hope for us?” asked Serena.

“I fear not,” was the response. “In the great judgment hall, God himself sentenced me to outer darkness until the day of final judgment. What will happen after that, I can’t say, but I fear our fates are sealed. I only wish that I could give you another answer, a more optimistic one. I fear that Jesus was our only hope of escaping this place, and we both rejected Him.”

Serena shook her head sadly. “If we only had another chance.”

Thomas squeezed Serena’s hand. “If I knew then what I know now, I truly believe that I would have changed my ways. But you see, at the time, I believed that the only thing beyond death was eternal sleep. One had to live life to its fullest, for all too soon it would be gone. Now understand, I took my family to church from time to time, but I guess that I just wasn’t listening to the sermons very carefully.”

Again Thomas looked skyward. The terrible black birds were gathering above him. His body was whole once more. It was time for the cycle to be repeated, as it had countless times before. “Serena, it’s time for you to go now.”

“If I stay I might be able to protect you for a while,” replied Serena, who couldn’t bear to think of her newfound friend in agony again. “Maybe you could get some rest, a break from all the pain. I’d be happy to watch over you, shield you from the sun; protect you from the birds. It would be no trouble at all, really.”

“You are such a dear sweet person,” replied Thomas. “It makes your presence here all the more tragic. But if you stay, things might be all the worse for you. Remember what satan told you about helping others here? Now go, please, and don’t look back.”

Serena rose to her feet; then leaned down to kiss Thomas on the cheek. “God bless you, Thomas.”

Thomas wasn’t so sure that such a thing was possible, yet he smiled back at this young woman who had brought a brief moment of respite from his eternity of pain. “And you too, Serena.”

Serena turned to leave, then hesitated.

“Go quickly, Serena,” warned Thomas, the volume of his warning increasing. “Run, get away from this place.”

Serena walked and then ran. She never looked back. She couldn’t bear to look at what was destined to happen.

“Good-bye Serena,” whispered Thomas, as he strained to watch her diminishing form vanish into the distance. A terrible shadow swept across his body as one of the huge birds passed by inches above. It climbed and pirouetted in midair before swooping back in his direction. Shackles rattled as he closed his eyes and prepared to experience the next chapter in the eternal tragedy of the late Thomas Allen Stanford.

T
HE dominion of black altars and swarming vultures went on for miles. Serena could hardly imagine how many tormented souls were trapped here, nor did she care to attempt the computation. It was like a great city, the altars set up with mathematical precision like homes along well-planned streets and avenues. There was only one industry in this great metropolis, one product—the eternally regenerating raw flesh of its unwilling citizens. And there was no lack of consumers for that product. The ravenous birds of prey consumed everything that the city’s inhabitants could produce, and still hungered for more. It was an economy, indeed, an ecosystem like none other.

How Serena longed for an end to it all. She could bear the screams of agony no longer, the terrible sounds of pecking and pulling, and the dreadful caws and cries of the birds in the midst of their feeding frenzy. Was there ever an end to it all, or would it extend all the way to the sea of fire?

At long last, Serena beheld it, the final row of altars and a great levy of rock and soil beyond it, not unlike the one she had scaled on her way into this terrible place. At the very heart of the city, virtually every black altar had been occupied by a desecrated soul. But here in the suburbs, most of the altars were vacant, shiny slabs of obsidian awaiting the arrival of eternal victims.

Then the strange irony struck her. Like most earthly cities, this one was growing like a beast, claiming more and more of the countryside around it. Land was cleared and new altars were fabricated to make room for the steady stream of unwitting inhabitants who were sure to come.

“Oh, if only there was some way to warn them,” whimpered Serena. “If only they knew what was ahead.”

What was it like to be eaten by birds again and again while you lay there, shackled and helpless for all eternity? It was an unimaginable concept. How did one keep their sanity amidst all this destruction? Thomas Stanford had. His kind words had pulled her back from the brink of hysteria. He had been a friend when she desperately needed one. If only she could have repaid the favor in kind. She felt so helpless. Just thinking of that brave soul now brought even more tears to her eyes, then open sobbing. Did one, in time, get used to the eternal cycle of pain? She hadn’t thought to ask. She wouldn’t have.

She paused, sitting down upon one of the vacant altars for a moment, trying to compose herself. Right now she was so tired, more mentally than physically. She heard a round of screeches and cries from the birds circling above. She turned her gaze upward, then to the instrument upon which she sat, to its glistening surface shimmering in the red sunlight, to the chains and barbed shackles securely anchored on it. She considered its purpose. She thought better of her decision and quickly jumped to her feet. To sit here was sacrilegious, perhaps even obscene. She would only rest her feet when she was well clear of this place. She moved on, eventually passing the last row of monoliths and scrambling over the ridge and into the rocky terrain beyond.

She thought back upon the stories she had heard in high school, stories of the world’s greatest human atrocities. She considered the concentration camps of Nazi Germany and the killing fields of Cambodia, the most terrible acts of human barbarism of the last century. But this experience went beyond acts of genocide—this was eternal torture in the guise of execution for
billions
. As totally evil as those who masterminded these terrible holocausts were, satan, the architect of this city of pain, was far more nefarious. The beautiful angel who had led the praise to the Most High had become creation’s greatest villain, humankind’s most vile adversary.

Serena couldn’t explain why she turned one last time to look at this realm of horror, yet as she did, a new aspect became apparent. For the past hour she had focused her eyes on the ground in front of her, hardly daring to scan the width and breadth of the dreadful valley, but now she dared. She focused her attention on the hills about a quarter mile to her left. There, just beyond the level expanse of the field of agony, she saw thousands upon thousands of wooden crosses set into the steadily rising terrain, each one held a victim of satan’s hatred. Here too, the black vultures swarmed and fed, adding a new dimension to the horror of this ancient form of execution.

Through the sacrifice of Christ, the Cross had become the instrument by which humankind had been offered redemption. But in satan’s hands, it had become just another form of torture, a route to eternal agony, inspired by the twisted mind of man.

“Oh God!” gasped Serena, quickly turning away. She had no idea as to what horrible sins these poor souls might have committed, but she wasn’t about to go up there and investigate. Instead, she moved on, venturing into the rugged boulder-strewn valley beyond the monoliths.

The cries of agony slowly faded away, yet deep within her mind the screams continued. What she had beheld had profoundly affected her. No doubt, her own coming experience would affect her even more. She cried, not only for herself, but for all of the people who had turned their back on Christ’s love. God hadn’t sent her here, she had. She thought of all of the sins in her life, of all of the people she had hurt, intentionally or inadvertently. There were so many things in her brief existence on Earth that she now so desired to make right, but she no longer had that power.

Her mind wandered back to that green rich Earth. By now, she imagined, her earthly body rested in a coffin 6 feet beneath the Oregon sod, filled with formaldehyde. She wondered how many people had attended her funeral. She and Chris would have been buried side by side in Holly Hillcrest Cemetery, in his family plot; at least she hoped so. There, at least, she and Chris would reside together for eternity.

She tried to imagine that place in spring. She and Chris had gone there to place flowers upon his mother’s grave last May. It was so green and peaceful, a hilltop overlooking the small Oregon town and the farms beyond. Was Chris with his mother now? Serena thought so. She had never met her husband’s mother, she had died when he was only 15, but she had been the wellspring of her husband’s faith. She had educated him in the ways of the Lord, in the ways of caring, and she had done her job well. Their reunion was most assuredly a blessed occasion. It would help him deal with her loss. Then Serena remembered; he would never remember that loss. There would be no pain, only joy. Serena wept all the more. Hell was more than pain; it was the separation from God and all of those she had loved on Earth. It was the realization that she was totally forgotten by all who had ever loved her.

Serena stopped. Reaching for the mystical hourglass that she had slipped into the tight upper hem of her loincloth, she stared at the enigmatic device. Yes, there was still plenty of time, only a small fraction of the sand had run its course. But what horrors lay ahead of her, how far did she have to travel? Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. Maybe she hadn’t been so clever after all. Being thrown quite suddenly and unceremoniously into that fiery pit might have been more merciful than this.

Serena was startled as a long dark shadow swept across her. She turned to behold a tall figure, engulfed in darkness. Satan’s countenance bore a slight but devious smile.

“So, Serena, what do you think of my realm so far? Or may I assume that your tears have already answered my question?”

“Sir?” she answered awkwardly, trying to gain control of her emotions. She wiped the tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you coming.”

Satan laughed openly. “Most people never do, until it’s too late. You didn’t.”

Serena looked at the prince of darkness with puzzlement. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand.”