―Frank Peretti
Hell is Other People
The temptation was to venture out and be with others, or stay in my garden of earthly delights, as I termed it.
It was pleasant being walled away with two beautiful women and frankly, other people were hell―I had no idea who was safe or posed a threat. Anyone could innocently betray us and we'd all be destroyed by the Beast and end up dead like Tom Faraday.
But that was carnal thinking―just wanting to save my own skin. Hell, I was a journalist and there was a deception of cosmic proportions taking place right before my eyes and I had a duty to expose it.
All of this bravado sounded heroic but truth was, I was scared to death, literally. If you've ever encountered the demonic you know what I mean. The terror is so intense it overwhelms you, followed by a profound nausea and feeling of total abandonment.
I never felt more vulnerable and hopeless than just after experiencing one of my night terrors. A close encounter of the third kind might be harrowing, confronting an alien being, but it pales in comparison to being oppressed by a demon. This is the real abyss you stare into and it stares back at you and you are all the more helpless because there is no distance in the spirit.
Something that's physical, emotional or mental, you can deal with, but when you're dealing with spirits, you're out of your depth.
You can run but can't hide because this alien presence has crept inside and the thought of going to sleep fills you with dread because you'll be completely helpless the moment you surrender your conscious control.
I recall trying to explain this to Art Tucker, my friend and personal alienist. He called it sleep paralysis. Well, that might be a good descriptor of bondage but it does squat as far as touching and remedying obsessive thoughts, heavy oppression or the control exerted by a possessing spirit.
And this is why I hate spirits and why metaphysics gives me heartburn. It's another dimension, another world, and I'd prefer to ignore and avoid it as much as I can.
"Here's your portion of the file," Brooke says, handing me thirty pages of Tom's notes, partly handwritten and partly typed. She and Angelica them have divided the rest between them and we've set a goal of analyzing this material for today.
I don't know what I can glean from Tom's observations but I'm secretly hoping there's a smoking gun somewhere in the manuscript that will allow me to expose the cabal and their devious plan to use the global emergency as an opportunity for them to seize power and form a new world order.
That's about as much as Tom confided to me before his death and I still don't know why or exactly how they plan to carry out this scheme.
So, there was nothing to do but read the document and try to discern their motives.
Everyone fell to work quietly reading and making pencilled notes in the margins. Judging from my portion of the pages, If the girls' material was as dense and technical as mine, they’d be bored out of their minds just trying to wade through it.
Tom had listed dates and times for solar eruptions and the subsequent effects anticipated. I scanned the schedule and noticed each of the days that had particularly strong eruptions were days when significant events occurred.
And then it dawned on me. The cabal had been using solar storms as a distraction for their nefarious deeds, the same way a thief might use a blackout as a cover to allow them to steal and loot without being observed.
I actually had in my hands evidence of the blueprint the cabal was following to seduce and gain control of society.
I knew how, I just didn’t know why.
Regardless of the cabal’s motives, I had concrete proof of their schemes and intended to use it to expose the work of the Beast and his minions.
But the prospect of confronting the Beast was akin to the trepidation a man would feel in waging battle against a dragon in his lair.
I could almost feel the heat from his nostrils and the foul stench of his breath.