Free Deadline by Randy Alcorn Page B

himself.
    Sue read, “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”
    Jake cringed. This book seemed so full of hope for some, so condemning of others.
    “Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.”
    Suddenly a loud gasp filled the air. Startled, Sue and Jake looked at each other, each thinking the gasp came from the other. They turned to Little Finn, on the other side of the bed, leaning over his father. There was Finney, his head lifted six inches off the pillow, eyes wide open, looking intently at something beyond the room, beyond the moment. Finney gasped again, his lips suddenly turned up in that patented grin, and for a moment he was full of life. Just as quickly his head fell back to the pillow.
    Jake felt something like a brush of wind. His spine tingled with the eerie sensation someone had just left the room.
    Finney was gone.

CHAPTER FOUR
    H e stood immersed in the passageway’s twilight, unable to decide which direction to go. At one end, the closest, was a murky shadowy light, at the far end the brightest light he’d ever seen, yet not a light that hurt his eyes, but drew them. He sensed excitement and activity from beings at both ends, one excitement surrounded by uncertainty and longing, the other by certainty and fulfillment. He remembered what lay beyond the passageway’s near end, the murky one from which he’d come. But he wasn’t sure what awaited him at the other. The explorer in him tingled with anticipation as he considered the mystery end—be it exit or entrance—from which a magnetic pull beckoned him to come join the radiance.
    Finney felt his energy being siphoned off, his body growing weaker. He sensed efforts being made, whirring machines and tubes of fluids desperately trying to keep him from leaving his old world. Strangely, though, he felt energized, as if the dynamism siphoned off his body was draining back into a vast energy supply somewhere else, from which it had come. He felt less and less connected to his body. He was a fighter, a survivor, a soldier who would never easily let go of life. But that was just the thing—what awaited him at the other end of the passageway was not lack of life, but Life itself. Not an end, but a beginning. He could feel it. Its power and lure were palpable, almost overwhelming. He was a ship on a stormy sea, caught between two ports, unsure which he could reach. But the storm itself seemed to be making the decision for him. That was all right because, strangely, he trusted the storm. His course was now out of his hands.
    Though his eyes were closed, Finney could periodically, just for a moment, sense the light through his eyelids. He’d heard voices from time to time, ever since he’d been here. At first they were all unfamiliar voices—concerned, professional, muffled. When he heard that first familiar voice, that beautiful voice, it infused him with strength, so much so that for a moment he thought it enough to bring him back. He couldn’t hear every word, but he caught many phrases, including “I love you, Finney.”
    He wanted to say “I love you, Sue,” but his mind couldn’t make his lips move any more than it could lift his eyelids. He was trapped within a mutinous body that no longer took his orders. So he just listened, unable to give to Susan, able only to receive from her. He received, thankfully.
    Beautiful Sue. He could see her clearly in his mind’s museum of film clips, exactly as he first saw her when he was a high school sophomore and she an