Absence of Faith (7 page)

"Do you remember his name?" Carson
asked.

"Never knew his name. I just heard
about it through the other doctors. I often thought of looking into
it, but I was always too busy."

"Maybe we can pull his records and
see if there is a correlation," Carson said. "Do you remember the
year?"

"Around 1985 I think."

"That's close enough. We can start
at that year and go back to 1980 and forward to 1990."

"It's an awful lot of records. Are
you sure?" Stokes asked.

Carson nodded.

"Okay then, I’ll have accounting
pull the records for you between those years. That's what I like
about you, Carson - we think the same. You have a lot of work ahead
of you. Nothing was computerized then. You'll have to sift through
the records by hand. I don't know where you are going to find the
time."

"When will they have the records?"
Carson asked. "I'm on call tonight, so I might be able to get
through some of them. We have to know if there’s a correlation. We
have to try to find out what it is."

"You're right. You're going to do
well here," Stokes said. "Again, I apologize for misjudging
you."

"Thanks. What did he die of?"
Carson asked.

"He was cooked. His skin had
2
^nd
degree sunburn and all of his internal organs were
cooked as if he were in a microwave.

T
he woman
struggled to reach the top shelf of her bookshelf to retrieve the
box of Tarot cards. Her stubby fingers barely touched the box as
she stood on her toes. Finally, she could no longer hold the
stretch, already out of breath and puffing hard. The cards tumbled
off the shelf and spilled onto her worn, dirty Persian rug. She
struggled to bend over and pick up the cards - all faced down
except one. She stared at the Death card and shuddered slightly and
her hands began to shake, but she quickly blew the thought out of
her mind and continued to pick up the Tarot cards.

The woman slowly stood up, still
out of breath, and moved cautiously to the flowered, overstuffed
couch in her tiny apartment. She placed the cards on the
dust-covered glass coffee table and waited. She knew that in eight
minutes her seven thirty appointment would knock on the door. She
knew he would be five minutes late. At exactly 7:35, the door
thundered with a knock.

"Come in," she struggled to get
out. The door opened and the young man with brown hair down to his
shoulders entered the cluttered room. He looked exactly like she
had seen him in her mind's eye two weeks ago when she talked with
him on the phone to schedule the appointment. She knew he would
wear his faded yellow t-shirt with several holes around the seams,
and she knew he would be her last appointment that day.

"Hello, Kyle," she said as if she
knew him.

The young man hesitated at her tone
then said, "Hi."

"Sit down. Would you like something
to drink?"

"No."

The tall, young man moved his lanky
frame into a worn rattan chair next to the sofa. The interwoven
straw let out an agonizing sigh as if it were too tired to hold the
man's weight. The woman watched him carefully.

"Is this your first time?" she
asked.

"No. It's fifty, right?"

"Yes."

Kyle dug into his black jeans and
pulled out two twenties and a ten. He handed the money to the
woman. She took the bills and stuffed them into a pocket located
somewhere in the lower part of her boring paisley dress that
floated on her body like a bed sheet flapping in the
wind.

"Okay. Let's start," she
said.

The woman leaned over and picked up
a small silver wire that looped to form a lower case letter "l".
She held both ends of the wire, closed her eyes, and shook the wire
in front of Kyle. Then she opened her eyes.

"You were not born here. You were
born in Asia...Vietnam I think. Your father was an American
soldier, but your mother was not an American. She was Vietnamese.
Your father was killed there and you have never met him, you don't
know him..." The woman shook the wire again. A frown formed on her
bulbous head.

"Your father has been trying to
contact you. He is very troubled...he is standing behind you right
now!"

Kyle quickly turned and saw
nothing. His eyes were wide and he tapped his fingers on the arm of
the chair.

"How do you know this?"

"I don't know. I just tell what I
see."

The woman shook the wire at Kyle
again.

"You will meet a young girl who
will betray you, but she will have good reason to do so. She will
see things differently from you," the woman said. "You have met
this woman before...she will be your lover, and then your
enemy."

She shook the wire again. "I see
you in a soldier's uniform, but... I can't see your face. I know
it's you though. It's another time...everything including the
clothes the woman next to you is wearing is from that time. I
see...I see...a Nazi insignia on your shirt sleeve!"

The woman opened her eyes and took
a deep breath. "I saw one of your past lives," she said. Her
forehead began to shine slightly. "I better open a
window."

"No, wait. Tell me more. I want to
know more about this past life."

"I sensed something very evil
there, something that was trying to get into me...something that
wanted to leave that time and enter ours..." the woman looked
deeply into Kyle's eyes. He shifted his weight and the chair
groaned again.

The woman took a deep breath, and
then shook the wire again.

"I see you again. You are standing
next to a table, a map table. You have stood there many times
before...you have made many decisions that have affected the lives
of hundreds...no hundreds of thousands of people..."

The woman's eyes suddenly rolled up
into her head and her body collapsed onto the sofa. A few seconds
later, she picked up her head and gasped for air. She started
talking again.

"I know who you are. I know you're
the Antichrist and you must be destroyed. I have proof. You are
evil incarnate! You must be stopped. You are EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! I
will not allow you to enter our time!"

The woman spit into the air. Kyle
moved back on his chair. The spit landed on the rug and slowly
disappeared.

The woman's eyes rolled downward
and she looked at Kyle. "Oh...Oh...how awful...you killed her right
there! I must stop! That was horrible."

"What happened?"

"You aimed a gun at a young girl's
head and fired. You killed her instantly because she spit in your
face. It was terrible," the woman explained. "Her hands were tied
behind her back. She was responsible for disrupting your plans. She
even tried to assassinate you several times. You were some kind of
leader of something big...not a company...something bigger, much
bigger." The psychic's face was flushed.

"Tell me more! Tell me more!" Kyle
said. "I want to know more!"

"The girl is the same woman who
will betray you in this lifetime..." The woman turned pale and her
eyes filled with fear. The beads of sweat rolled down the side of
her face.

"That's all I know now," she
said.

"Go back! I want to know more!"
Kyle said.

"No. I don't want to. I can't!
Something evil is trying to escape that time into our own -
something very evil," the woman explained. She reached down into
the pocket in her dress and drew up the two twenties and the
ten-dollar bill.

"Here, take your money back. I'm
not going any further," she said standing up and holding the money
out.

"You know more, but won't tell me!"
Kyle yelled.

"No, I don't. Something evil
is..."

The woman's hand holding the money
stopped moving forward. Her flushed face froze and her large round
body lost its stature and she collapsed to the floor crushing the
glass coffee table under her weight. The glass cracked into several
large pieces and the table's metal legs were distorted into
unnatural shapes. Kyle leaned down to get closer to the woman.
Suddenly, her eyes came to life and she started speaking another
language in a deep, haunting voice. Kyle was surprised that he
could understand the language.

"Wait. I want you to know that this
is not the end, Eva. It is the end of the Third Reich and National
Socialism, but it is not the end of my work. I will return near the
end of the millennium. I have been here before and I will come
again," the deep voice said.

The woman's voice changed to a
higher pitch and spoke in German. "You are a great man, Adolph. I,
too, will try to return when you do so that we can be together
again. Thank you for being my husband these last few days. I will
take the poison as you have asked. Good-bye, my love. I love
you."

The woman became still and Kyle
touched the woman's hand. It was hot. Within seconds she moved and
her eyes fluttered back to life. She began speaking
again.

"My greatest triumph is yet to
come," the woman said in the deeper voice. "When I pull the trigger
and end my life here, I will start again in another life and I will
succeed...for next time," the deeper voice said.

The woman's head jerked violently.
Kyle jumped back. Her body began to shake - her arms and legs moved
randomly in all directions and Kyle backed away towards the door.
Her torso began to convulse. He turned and ran for the door.
Suddenly, the room was awash in blood red light. Kyle turned and
saw that the woman's body continued its wild seizure, but now the
red light surrounded her and her body became brighter and brighter.
Kyle shielded his eyes and he felt his body hurling towards the
door uncontrollably. He hit the door with his right shoulder and
head. Dazed, he found himself on the floor trying to untangle his
limbs.

"Swoosh!" Kyle felt the pressure
increase on his eardrums. His back was hot and the air moved
violently picking up papers and toppling the living room lamps. The
pain in his head increased and he placed his hands over his ears.
The woman's body suddenly began to violently thrash and flop like a
mad fish out of water. Then two narrow streams of red-hot light
burned through her eyes and formed an angled wedge about 10 feet
long and four feet at its widest part. Kyle tried get up, but his
body was pinned against the door by the intense air pressure. The
wedge pulsated, and then there was a flash and everything in the
room turned white. The giant wedge of light narrowed into a pencil
thick beam, thrust itself into Kyle's left eye, and
disappeared.

"Ahhhhhhhhh!" Kyle screamed. It was
the last thing he heard before he lost consciousness.

T
he day-glow
red sign stood out like a beacon on the highway in the bright noon
sunlight. It was like a fireball in the sky, despite the brightness
of the July sun. Kyle noticed it right away and felt an uncanny
attraction to the place. He pulled his dark green 1995 Dodge into
the sandy parking lot and stopped in front of a large
glass-windowed storefront. Another sign with the same script
lettering and red day-glow neon blazed in the window, "The Other
Syde." A hand-painted mural of gargoyles and demons pulling souls
from the earth into a dark, fiery world surrounded the neon sign.
Kyle stared at the mural, shrugged, and then walked into the
store.

The room was dark and filled with
large round display tables. Each table had a tall, but different,
room lamp illuminating various items covering the tabletops. The
lamps had sales tags hanging from the shades. The items on the
tables included day-glow lipstick and nail polish, custom jewelry,
and books on the occult and Satanism. Kyle picked up a silver
necklace with a pendant in the form of a coiled snake.

"Welcome," said a raspy voice
coming out of a dark corner in the shop. "That's nice. Do you like
it?"

"Huh? No. Just looking," Kyle
said.

He turned in the direction of the
voice. "Where are you? I can't see you. My eyes haven't adjusted,"
he said. Suddenly, the room blazed white and everything around him
vanished into the white light. Kyle squinted.

"You're our first customer, today,"
she said. "Sorry, about the lights. I didn’t get around to turning
them on."

"What kind of store is this?" he
said noticing the bright green streaks cutting through long, black
perfectly straight hair.

"We sell everything you'll need for
the other side," she said.

"What other side?"

"The side of our savior," she
explained running her hand seductively over her shoulder and down
her arm. "What are you looking for?"

"I don't know. I just saw your sign
and decided to stop in," he replied. "The name was far
out."

"Well, I can help you with whatever
you need. I have more tables in the back," she said her eyes
shining.

She moved like a ghost from behind
the counter, her black robe-like outfit flowing like fine silk as
she walked. Kyle followed her into the back of the store. She
opened a door and passed through. Only candles - black and red
candles, lit the room. The air smelled hot and waxy. The girl
walked over to a shelf and pulled several books off.