Free Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007) by Michael Coorlim Page B

out into the
cooling dusk air.
    She could hear Gideon calling after her, but
the further she walked down the darkening town streets, the fainter
his voice became.
     
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    Jessie Ross strode the
line between proud and humble, and she walked it balanced by the
faith of her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. She had come to accept
her talents as gifts from the Almighty, given to her by the Lord to
guide her along her path through the fallen secular world, and she
used them as best she could to glorify Him. She was proud of these
gifts -- some of them, anyway -- and though pride was a sin she
accepted it as part of who she was -- part of who God had created
her to be.
    And every Sunday she used the gift of her
voice to spread His harmony through the congregation of the
International Church of Christ Everlasting as part of its honorable
choir.
    Jessie loved the Church, both the chapel in
Laton with its geometric architecture of plaster and glass, and the
community and culture of the ICCE. She loved her foster parents
most of all, but the Church was her true family, from the
Christmas-and-Easter-Christians all the way up to Reverend Robert
"Call-Me-Bob" Carter himself. Singing in the choir was only one
small way she served the Church, but she liked to think that God
and his angels enjoyed the voice He had given her almost as much as
His Earthly congregation did.
    Her life was a charmed one, she knew, graced
by God, and she had no right to complain about anything. After all,
as her father the Deacon often said, people all over the world had
it much worse than she did. She did have concerns though, from time
to time, that scratched like burrs at the underside of her
contentment.
    As she and the choir sang their homily to
the glory of God, she could feel one of these burrs adding a
discordant note into her melody. Her eyes scanned the pews and
their rows of upturned reverential faces until they lit on that of
Lily Anne Baker.
    She was there up in the front row with her
mother and father, Deacon Baker (in her mind the 'Other Deacon'
though of course he and her own father were equal in the eyes of
the Church). Most Sundays Lily looked as peaceful and in tune with
the music as anyone else, but this morning she seemed tired. Weary.
Troubled. She followed along in the hymnal, but Jessie could tell
that Lily just mouthed the words, not contributing her voice to the
community's song.
    That wasn't surprising on its own, of
course. The poor dear had been through such trying times. The Lord
was surely testing Lily, putting her through trials and
tribulations, sounding the bedrock of her faith. Jessie had no
doubt that her friend would come through stronger for it, though
inside she felt pangs of sympathy for the losses and trauma Lily
had suffered.
    There was something more to Lily's current
distraction, though.
    As Jessie watched her friend, a darkness
cast itself across the Church, shadowing its congregation, though
there was nary a cloud in the sky.
    Jessie braced herself and kept singing. The
Lord seldom saw fit to grace her with a vision while she was with
the choir, but she owed it to her Church family to keep the
tune.
    In the congregation below, she could see
shadows across every face, save for Lily's, who stood out all the
more brightly. Indeed, as she watched, the rest of the Church
seemed to sink away until only Lily remained, elevated above and
caught in a mote-filled shaft of multicolored light. The rest of
the choir fell away as well, leaving only Jessie, caught in her own
beam.
    She kept singing.
    Jessie felt herself pulled along up through
her beam like one of those tubes at the bank, and saw that Lily was
being likewise transported. Their beams connected and parted,
weaving and intertwining with others, though she couldn't make out
any of the other travelers. Some were pure white, like hers, others
were dark hues, and a few -- like Lily's -- were multicolored and
shifting.
    Above, far above, she could see that