Willow reaches out and takes my hand in hers, squeezing hard. She’s also beginning to realize where things are headed. Even more devastating, she’s confronting the fact that there’s no way out.
I squeeze back, but the gesture is instinctual. Right now, my mind is elsewhere, rushing down every possible path and struggling to find an outcome that doesn’t end in utter disaster. We’re trapped, and I know it, but I can’t give up that easily. I keep allowing my curiosity to push even deeper into the recesses of my mind, following every option to its logical conclusion and then starting over again once there’s no reasonable options left.
I glance over at Saul, noticing that he’s fervently praying under his breath. He’s desperate for answers, throwing any sense of rationality to the wind and following a path that feels right.
Over the last few weeks I’ve accepted what a foolish exercise this is, but there’s also something about it that makes me extremely jealous. Saul and I have reached the same dead end, but my friend has hope while I recognize there’s none to be found.
Willow squeezes my hand again, a tiny gesture that strikes deep.
Of course there’s still hope.
“Please appreciate how difficult this is going to be for our staff,” Pastor Bend continues. “Camp Damascus is about healing, not pain, and I hope you can find peace knowing the end will be quick and easy. In their natural state, demons are driven to torture those who sin, but so long as they’re working for us they’ll be nothing but efficient.”
Three demons step forward, one for each of us. Around the circle, the other creatures place their powerful hands on the frightened campers before them.
This is it, I realize. This is where I receive the answer I was really looking for, the biggest question of all. Am I about to go out like a light, or is there something more?
Tenet number four: I will persevere when my body does not.
As these final moments loom, a strange thought crosses my mind.
I’ve spent my whole life in a deeply destructive collective, pinned to the hard end of a philosophical extreme. When my pendulum swung back the other way I had plenty of momentum, but I never really got the chance to experience life in the middle.
I never had much balance.
Truth be told, I probably would’ve ended up on the blunt and logical side of things, but a little vacation along the median sounds fun. My faith was all or nothing, and I suppose that’s fine, but I’m curious what it might’ve been like to responsibly dabble.
The demons who stepped forward begin marching across the grass toward us, closing in for a simultaneous execution.
More regrets begin to wash over me: mysteries that will never be revealed, puzzles that will never be solved.
Is the entirety of their world just freezing underground torture chambers? Why are they wearing those polo shirts? What’s with the shackles around their necks?
An idea washes over me, a connection that I never could’ve made within a completely logical state. Now that I’m seconds away from death, however, I’m willing to experiment with the mysterious and unknown.
Just the tiniest bit.
Words begin tumbling out of my mouth, not the traditional prayers I was raised with, but a bizarre Latin passage from Saul’s occult demonology tome. I’ve got a specific text in mind, the one that felt less like a prayer and more like instructions for some holy artifact.
The Prayer for Release.
The image from that page is still burned into my mind, a priest standing over his disheveled captive and spontaneously releasing their bonds through some power beyond our understanding.
I quickly rattle off the words, fully expecting that this incantation will do nothing and I’ve reached the end of my mortal coil. Fortunately, I’d been studying these passages so diligently that even now, in this moment of tension and fear, I recite them with perfect accuracy.
Just a few more steps before the demons arrive, the pale, smiling creatures reaching out with their long-fingered hands.
Crack!
The demons hesitate.
Crack! Crack!
The unexpected clang of three popping shackles resounds through the clearing.
The creatures halt, broken iron hoops falling from their necks.
Metallic snaps continue ringing out as the remaining demons are freed, their collars tumbling off and landing in the grass with a cascade of dull thumps.
“What the hell just happened?” Saul exclaims, backing away.
“I don’t know,” I admit, utterly shocked.
Pastor Bend’s eyes are wide with disbelief. “What did you do?” he cries, shaking his head from side to side and sporting an oddly sympathetic expression. “I offered you a painless death, and now they’ll drag you to hell! It’s in their nature to punish the sinful and depraved. We commanded them with mercy in our hearts, but now they’re free.”
The pastor wells up with tears and begins mumbling through a prayer, not for himself, but for us.
Standing before me is a pale, saggy-skinned demon with long, sunken features and huge white eyes. Her name tag reads EISHETH.
Up until now, I’ve only witnessed these creatures sporting a frightening, wide-mouthed smile, but with a flickering, trembling grimace her expression begins to shift.
The stance of these demons is swiftly adjusting, the monsters no longer carrying themselves with perfect posture. The sharp twitches that once coursed through their fingers at random intervals have disappeared, finally releasing them from their rigid, locked-in stature.
“No. Please,” I beg, backing away from Eisheth in a state of sickening panic.
The rest of the captives are crying and whimpering now, cowering in the face of spiritual judgment.
Suddenly, a deafening squeal of feedback rips through the air, erupting not only from Pastor Bend’s megaphone, but over the entire camp’s PA system. I flinch in alarm, momentarily reaching up to cover my ears as the sounds transform into a swirling collage of random audio sources and radio waves from beyond. I can hear the frantic screams of hell through this wash, accompanied by the rolling drone of some foreign-language news report. A baseball game pops in and out for a moment, and soon enough this random flood of sound lands on an unexpected broadcast of blasting, grinding deathcore, amplified directly from the headphones still playing inside Saul’s pocket.
I cower under Eisheth’s gaze, face-to-face with the judgment I’ve been promised since I was a child. All of my decisions, every personality flaw, every white lie or venial sin hoisted upon the scale and settled accordingly.
For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
I drop to my knees and close my eyes, but in these final moments I don’t ask for forgiveness. I don’t accept Jesus as my savior, and I don’t suddenly repent the love I feel for Willow. She’s still holding my hand, and as the scales of good and evil weigh this gesture through the stern glare of some higher power, I only squeeze tighter.
If they’ve got a problem with this, then frick ’em. They may be powerful, but they’re wrong.
Eyes closed, I hear the screaming begin, not just transmissions from beyond over Saul’s caustic, crushing music, but cries of agony and fear from all around me. I brace for impact, dreading the first horrible stab of pain, but the pain never comes.