The Hand of God (25 page)

The sky began to clear as the whirlwind turned into a mist, it swirled around me, and then up into the sky above the cross.  As it hovered above the cross, the face of a skull formed inside of it, as if it was showing me its face.  I tried scoot backward on the ground, but the cloud dissipated and was gone.  The Bishop’s body still hung from the cross, lifeless.  I already knew what that cloud had been.  It was the Holy Ghost, and it wasn’t happy.

Epilogue

Six months later

I sat in a small break room eating my lunch.  A few months ago, I’d taken a job at a funeral home in Del Rio, TX.  It wasn’t a small town, but wasn’t as big as San Antonio either.  The funeral home was family owned, and my speaking experience helped me in handling pre-arrangements as well as presiding over funeral services.  After all the recent commotion the past few months, it seemed like a good place to lie low for a while.

The mass death at the Alamodome had made national news.  No one could explain it, and fortunately no one caught the events of mine and Lucifer’s on camera.  They found seventy thousand dead people there.  The feds got involved and explained it as some kind of mass suicide led by a deranged cult leader who chickened out himself at the last minute.  There was currently a nationwide manhunt for the Bishop. 

They would never find him though.  After I crucified him, I stayed with him for four days out in the wilderness.  I wanted to make sure he didn’t rise again.  There was no need for me to worry though.  Within a day, vultures were pecking at his flesh.  By the end of the next day, he was nothing but bones.  I still remained though to be sure.  After four days had passed, I took down his bones and buried them there on the hill and set the cross on fire.

After all that, I left San Antonio and came to Del Rio.  My bosses were the Salazar family.  They were nice folks, even though they were Catholic.  They didn’t mind my Protestant views and I helped run the funeral home.  I help with preparing bodies when needed as well.  They were impressed at my skills at handling a dead body.  I didn’t tell them where or how I learned it obviously. 

I hadn’t heard anything from Lucifer or David Davidson since that night either.  No telling what they were up to.  The one thing I didn’t forget was the Holy Ghost and that horrible face it showed me.  It was going to come for me one day.  There was no telling when that day would be.  It was still hard to believe everything.

I was a supernatural, yet doomed creature. Somehow I had defeated Jesus Christ in his second incarnation as a man, or second coming.  Part of me wondered what happened to him once the Spirit took him.  Did God punish him for failing?  If so, would that be punishing himself?  So many questions that I had no clue about, it made the waiting the worst part. 

I didn’t have time to think too much about it.  I walked outside the funeral home to greet my appointment.  A young family was coming in to make arrangements for their grandmother who passed away the night before.  They pulled up in a small Toyota and climbed out.  It was ten in the morning, but the sky was getting dark.  I walked up to the man and shook his hand.

“Hello Mr. Lincoln, good to see you.” I said.

“Thank you Mr. Sims, you too.”  He introduced me to his wife, Jennifer and gave me a rundown of what they were looking for as far as the funeral. He looked up at the sky as the clouds moved overhead.

“We should go inside,” he said.  “I think a storm is coming.”

“Yes.  It definitely is.”

Author's Note

Tim Miller graduated from Bethel College in Mishawaka, IN with a degree in Bible and religious studies.  After serving four years in the U.S. Marines, Tim spent six years working as a corrections officer.  The Hand of God is Tim's first novel in almost ten years.  He currently lives in San Antonio, Texas with his fiance and their children.

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