Free The Firstborn by Conlan Brown

stomach.
    She got up to get herself a drink of juice. On the way to the kitchen she heard her grandfather’s voice coming from his office. The door was nearly shut, a single sliver of bright light slicing through the blackness.
    He was a gentle man who didn’t lose his temper, but he was nearly shouting into the phone.
    “I don’t care if Al Nassar did recruit suicide bombers. If I find out one of our people is responsible, I will be not kindhearted.”
    She paused, certain she must have heard wrong. Then, changing direction, she slipped out the front door and headed for the horse stalls.
    Her grandfather had always owned horses as long as she could remember. The smell of hay and livestock hung in the air, sweet and homey. This was where she’d come to think when she was a little girl, away from the world.
    She sighed and crawled over the fence, making sure not to touch the electrified wire that ran across the top.
    Ahead was one of her favorite horses—Dante, black as the night itself. She reached down, tugged at a handful of tall grass, and approached the big animal.
    The horse seemed spooked for a moment, drawing back.
    “Hey, boy,” Hannah said in a soothing tone. “Do you want something to eat?” She reached out with her hand, offering the grass with an open palm, making sure not to let her fingers get in the way of chomping horse teeth. Dante bowed his head and bit into the wad of grass, smacking loudly as he chewed.
    “Good boy,” she said with a small voice, patting him on the neck.
    Hannah still didn’t care for the dark, chilly and mysterious, but she felt safer near the hulking black horse. She hugged his neck, and the horse gave an accepting grunt, clopping in place with his hooves.
    She smiled for a moment then felt her face sag. How was she supposed to go home? To live alone? To spend her days fearful of strangers?
    Her face buried in Dante’s mane, she breathed in the smell of the horse. Then she felt it—like a ringing in her ears that seemed to echo through her head. And then—
    Beatings—punching and kicking.
    A man on the ground.
    They spit on Him—screaming in His face.
    The cross He carried up the hill.
    The crown of thorns.
    The cuts—weeping red.
    The flesh, tearing from His body.
    The sweat—the blood—running down His arms and legs.
    Crying women.
    Blackened sky.
    Thunder.
    Lightning.
    —It is finished.
    Silence.
    Immutable, impregnable silence.
    CRASH!
    The sky splitting. The earth shaking. Buildings tumbling. Soldiers falling to the ground. The curtain tearing.
    The tombs—stone coverings—breaking open—
    The dead—rising—

    Hannah was huddled in the corner of the barn, petting the kittens, when her grandfather entered, a single yellow lightbulb hanging from a wire above.
    He stood in the doorway for a moment, not speaking.
    She looked up at him. “I’m seeing things.”
    He nodded. “I always wondered if you were one of us.” Henry approached her and sat on a bale of hay. “There’s something we need to discuss.”
    Her head drooped as she ran her fingers through the kitten’s short fur.
    “Tell me what you saw,” he said.
    “I saw the death of Christ.”
    “And?”
    “I saw…tombs breaking open. Dead people came back to life.”
    Her grandfather nodded. “‘The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.’ The Book of St. Matthew, chapter 27 , verse 52.”
    She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
    “Those who were raised from the dead at the death of Christ went back to their lives, as best they could. But they had seen the other side—they had seen eternity, and when they were returned to Earth they continued to see the world free of time and space. It was their gift, enhanced by the Holy Spirit that would come at Pentecost. They were the first to be born in the grace of Christ—the Firstborn. It was their charge to serve Christ with their gifts of the Spirit, like any other. Theirs was a kind of