The War in Heaven (10 page)

In the midst of her depression, a glowing blue cloud appeared in the middle of her cell. Within seconds the cloud was filled with a myriad of sparkling stars. It had been so long since she had seen stars. Julie gazed in wonder at this marvelous sight. It was so beautiful.

Then she saw him; a dark form emerging from the mists, then another, then a swarm of the creatures she had seen only once before, on the plains, under the blazing sun. He gazed at her, the poor girl on the floor who was illuminated by the lights of the mystical portal. She returned his gaze with a growing smile. Tears came to her eyes. It was him! It was really him.

“Please, Abaddon, take me with you, oh God, please. I didn’t tell him who you were—he couldn’t make me tell,” cried Julie.

Abaddon smiled and extended his hand. “Then come Julie, I’ll take you away from all of this. I’ll take you to Refuge, a place where no one will hurt you ever again. Come, take my hand.”

Julie was crying tears of joy as Abaddon lifted her to her feet and took her into his arms. “Be still, child, we are leaving right now.”

“Easier than we had dared to hope,” noted Lenar, who had already reopened the portal.

“You will have your own place,” continued Abaddon, leading Julie toward the glowing stars. “No chains will hold you again, and no bars confine you; you are going home.”

A moment later, they vanished into the soft starry mists. The small creatures quickly followed. Lenar took one last look behind them, so as to confirm that they had not been observed. Then he too vanished into the mists. Their glow quickly faded, leaving an empty cell behind.

Barely ten minutes had passed, when Cordon returned to visit Julie. His final trip to the altars had not been productive. None of the other victims surrounding Thomas Carson had been very helpful. One had no eyes with which to see, nor ears with which to hear at the time of his disappearance. Another had been beset by some sort of small creatures, which had acted to distract him. The others were simply at the wrong angle or too far away to get a good look. Julie was the only reliable witness.

Cordon was out of patience, as he walked up the corridor. Julie was the key, his only lead. He had pampered this wench long enough. She knew the name of this dark angel, of that he was certain. She admitted to having heard it. Her insistence that she couldn’t remember it was a rouse. Now he would know it as well. He would do whatever was necessary to extract it. He would offer the carrot first, before resorting to the stick. He
was not opposed to giving her a few more days of peace if he got what he wanted.

Still, her new place of torment was already selected; an icy resting place in the frozen wastelands of the Dark Continent. It was not the easiest ordeal to prepare, but it would be well worth the effort. A fireball or two would be needed to melt the rock-hard ground into a deep viscous slurry of mud and ice. Then, with her arms shackled behind her back, and a heavy ball and chain around both ankles to act as ballast, she would be tossed in, to sink into the yielding depths, even as they froze quickly around and over her. In the thirty-degrees-below-zero environment, she would vanish into obscurity, frozen in the ice fifteen feet down.

Was it better than the altars, less painful? Probably not. She would exchange the agony of eternal dismemberment at the scratching claws and pecking beaks of the birds for the stabbing cold pain of being forever frozen, suffocating in the dark cruel ice. Still, to Cordon, one ordeal was pretty much like another. These humans had to be put away, restrained, neutralized. Their suffering was of no real consequence to him. It was what the master demanded. Anyway, what he needed was for her to disappear, and this ordeal would certainly accomplish that. And it would be a change of scenery for Julie, a place where she could hide. The irony was amusing.

He did not immediately comprehend what he saw as he gazed into her cell. Was she there in the shadows as she often was? “Julie, come forth, we have business to discuss.”

No answer; she was gone. He examined the cell lock; it was undisturbed. She had vanished without a trace from within a locked cell.

He resisted the urge to vent his rage by striking the wall or the bars of the cell. That would accomplish nothing. He was faced with another mystery, or was it another clue? He wasn’t sure. Still, it might be a good idea if this incident remained his dirty little secret for now. It wouldn’t be all that difficult to orchestrate. After all, his own superior had done it many times.
All it would take is a minor adjustment of the books. In the meantime, he would continue his investigation. He would get to the bottom of this disappearance—of that he was certain.

Tom was restless and nervous as he paced back and forth in Abaddon’s audience chamber. He’d been waiting nine hours for this opportunity, and now here he was waiting again. It had been Bedillia who had excitedly come to his room with the news that Abaddon was at last ready to see him. It had taken nearly twenty minutes for him to get here, so vast was this place. He was concerned about keeping Abaddon waiting. He was obviously a busy angel. But it had been Tom who had been kept waiting, over an hour at this point. He walked to the back of the room and gazed into the crystal telesphere. It appeared identical to the one in the ring room.

“I apologize for my tardiness,” said a voice from behind him.

Tom turned to find the enigmatic angel standing at the other side of the table. He was surprised that so large a winged being could move so stealthily. “How did your mission go?”

“Perfectly,” was Abaddon’s reply. “I think she will make a good lab assistant for you.”

“I’m afraid I don’t even know what your mission was beyond the fact that it somehow was related to my rescue. She? Do I know her?”

“Well, you have been only eight feet apart for the past eighteen months, but I doubt you know her. I thought Bedillia might have told you,” continued Abaddon. “At the time of your rescue six days ago, one of the human victims on an altar close to yours overheard our conversation. I’m afraid that I introduced myself by name. Anonymity is one of our strongest advantages. A certain master demon by the name of Cordon has been investigating the incident, questioning the humans occupying the altars around you. Only
one saw or heard anything of any substance. He had spirited her away to a waiting cell where he has been questioning her, yet she had resisted telling him my name. She is a most remarkable woman. She has a kind spirit, even after 14 years on the altar. Therefore, I brought her here. I think that she shall be a useful addition to our community. There are many people here who are deserving of a second chance, like you.” Abaddon motioned to a chair at the table. “Please, sit, we have much to discuss.”

“Thank you,” replied Tom, sitting in a chair that, amazingly enough, seemed to be composed of cushioned metal. Abaddon sat across from him.

“This Cordon is not so blind a follower of Satan as most,” continued Abaddon. “He employs unique methods. He thinks for himself, and he is dedicated. Now he has taken up the crusade of seeking us out. He is not as yet sure of who we are, what our mission is, or what our capabilities are. Still, he is a nemesis that bears watching carefully.”

Tom nodded but said nothing.

“Never has the likes of which we are endeavoring to accomplish been done here in Hell,” said Abaddon. “It is a revolution, plain and simple. It is not just a revolution of ideas or ideals, but of actions. Ideas and ideals will one day change the nature of existence here, but this place will be won through pure force, through violence and pain. This is the task set before us, and we are not alone. We have allies. The small creatures, my children, represent one of them.”

“How many of those things, your children, do you have, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“You may ask anything,” replied Abaddon, “I am an angel; I don’t have secrets. Currently the number is somewhat over seven million. They multiply quickly when they are active, and have a long life expectancy. They are not immortal; they can be killed, but it is difficult. Currently, due to a scarcity of food, most of them are in a state of deep hibernation within the
lowest caverns of Refuge, but one day soon I will awaken them to begin their mission.”

“And you created them?” asked Tom.

“Actually, genetically engineered would be a more accurate term,” replied the dark angel. “It was a process that required centuries. They were developed from one of the native creatures that existed here at the time of my arrival, at a time when this world was not so foul. I saved it from extinction. Hell never was a world so grand as your Earth, but ten thousand years ago it was far kinder. One of our goals is to restore it if possible, and I believe it is.”

“I remember that one of them smiled at me when I thanked him for releasing me from the altar,” said Tom. “I was a bit out of it at the time, but it seemed like it understood what I said.”

“He did,” confirmed Abaddon. “They are highly intelligent.”

“And you command them?”

“Yes,” confirmed Abaddon, “and so can you. They are a marvelous species. They can discern the nature of the human soul by the very aura that surrounds all of us. They can sense if you are disposed to furthering the ends of good or evil. You are a good man, Tom. I knew that even before I rescued you. For much of your life you were confused; many men are, but you are now beginning to see the light as well as a purpose for your life.”

“I saw the light a bit late, I fear,” noted Tom, shaking his head.

“Perhaps,” said Abaddon, “only time will answer that question.”

“And you spoke of other allies,” continued Tom, who wished to get back to the original line of discussion. “Was the angel I saw in the crystal one of them, this Aaron?”

Abaddon smiled. “He most certainly is, and he is not alone. There are currently about 5,000 angels in Heaven who share his sympathies. In addition, there are now several hundred humans in Heaven, saints who know
of our struggle, and like Aaron, are willing to assist us. You see, the vast majority of your people in Heaven know nothing of those of us here. It is for their own peace of mind that it is so. After all, who would want to live for eternity knowing that a mother or father, a brother, sister, or cousin, was in torment in Hell, and that they are powerless to intervene? The Father, in His wisdom, made it so.

However, for the first time in all of eternity, there are those who seek to know. They realize that in knowing they will find both truth and despair. Yet, they do so nonetheless. They come to realize that they can no longer live in paradise with their eyes closed. Many of these have become powerful allies. The communicating device which you saw earlier, the one which allows direct and instantaneous communication between Heaven and Hell was developed by just such a group of persons. And those in Heaven send more than information. There are angels who brave the journey between Heaven and Hell to bring us other things such as tools, seeds, weapons, and power. But it is impossible for them to bring us all that we need for our struggle. We will need to learn to manufacture some of these things for ourselves, in much the same manner as they do.”

“I assume that is where I come in,” observed Tom.

“Very astute,” confirmed Abaddon. “I am asking you to perfect an art no one here has yet mastered.”

“Yes, assembling complex components from base materials, using nothing but the powers of thought,” replied Tom.

This time, Abaddon seemed truly impressed. “You are more deductive than I had imagined.”

Tom chuckled. “Not really, I just overhear people talking and pull it all together. Quite honestly, I can’t see how it can be done. The energy required to transmute one element into another is truly enormous. The heat required to accomplish it would be on the order of tens of millions of degrees…at least.”

Abaddon smiled. “Somehow, I knew you were going to say that. But as the people in your century like to say, you need to think outside the box. This is not Earth, nor is it the universe with which you are familiar. The rules of physics work somewhat differently here, as you will soon discover. However, they are not tremendously different. Your skills as a physicist, especially one in your field, make you the perfect candidate to try.”

Tom pondered Abaddon’s proposal for a moment. “As I promised you from the altar, I will do what I can. What sort of time frame are we looking at?”

“Of that I am uncertain,” said Abaddon. “Something is happening. In the last year, Satan has nearly doubled his forces on Earth, waging spiritual warfare against your people. Despite our considerable ability to gather intelligence about him, it does have limits. His book is virtually impossible to probe. It is hazardous to any who would dare open it.”

“Book?” asked Tom.

“Yes,” confirmed Abaddon. “There is in Heaven a great hall of records that holds the sum total of the experiences of all beings, both humans and angels. Those records take the form of books, but they are not books of leather and paper as you understand them. They are far more. They are able to carry you on a journey with that individual, to see the contents of his or her entire life, from birth up to the present. That is how we can anticipate what Satan’s minions are doing. Looking into their books is hazardous enough; looking into Satan’s is too dangerous to contemplate. We see him only through the eyes of others. We can only guess what his real motives and plans are. We know that he has long contemplated an invasion of Heaven to settle scores with Michael and Gabriel, but we do not know when such might happen.”