Throughout the week, Esperanza had felt the steam leaking out of her as each new post found a target. The loss of hot air had been good for clarity of thought, but it had also taken a toll on her body, or so it seemed. It was getting harder and harder to fight off the chills. It was with shaking hands that she picked up her phone and checked the time. It was 3:33 in the morning. Call her superstitious, but there was something unsettling about waking up with chills at precisely that time of night. Something whispered that she needed spiritual advice more than ever. Sure enough, Sophia had posted only three minutes prior. What did it say?
Luke 22:31-32: "And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren."
The song this time was...weird. The thumbnail showed a space fleet and the title was "Messages from Earth" by Christopher Franke. What would happen when she clicked this time?
She touched the screen and it was like a switch flipped. Instantly her eyes closed and her shoulders drooped, but ironically her senses were sharper than ever. She couldn't physically move, but she could see everywhere, and then the music swelled in. A low rumble filled the room, tinged with eerie minor key notes. The eyes on the egwugwu mask started glowing a lurid, disturbing shade of orange. A black gaseous essence that looked like smoke but behaved like mist started pouring out of its mouth.
Around the bed the gas swirled, rising into columns and becoming humanoid. Soon nine of these things towered over the bed like Nazgûl, leering at her through glowing red eyes. Mockingly they bowed over her, calling her Queen and showering her with cloying words that burned with acidic insincerity, "clothing" her with royal robes that stank of sewage. At no previous point in her life had she ever felt this naked, this open to ridicule. At a concussive blast, the tallest and cruelest of them commanded the rest with a gesture to stop playing around and let him do his job.
Slowly he walked up to her, savoring her fear, hooked his thumb under her jaw and his fingers over her scalp, and pulled. Out of her body she snapped, as if she were made of rubber. Her face was now fused to his palm, which smelled like carrion. Her disgust amused everyone. She doesn't like being stuck to me like this! What say we do her a favor? Let's knock her loose, boys!
With unnatural strength, he dangled her like a piñata and they took turns battering her with clawed fists. Each blow hit like a sledgehammer, breaking ribs. Skin peeled off when they knocked her loose as well, but both face and ribs regenerated on the spot. Why? So we can do it all again, one of them answered, grinning. We are going to have a lot of fun with you. But where were we going? He grinned even wider, showcasing yellow canines and a forked tongue. To meet the GOAT, of course. Where else?
Again the leader spoke. All right, that's enough, boys. There'll be plenty of time for this later. Down we go. He pointed at the floor and into it a pentagram was burned, a glowing goat's head in the center. The head exploded and into the hole they all jumped head-first, holding her between them like boosters on a rocket.
Was this the GOAT they were talking about? Of course it is, a neighbor hissed with delight. Haven't you ever seen Baphomet before? "Baphomet" is just another name for our boss. You do know the Bible talks about separating sheep from goats, right? Well, our boss is the goat--the first one. You have no idea how funny it was when we persuaded you to make that designation a compliment.
They had clearly done this sort of subterranean skydiving before, even though the darkness was so thick that you could feel it, lit only by the lurid glow of demon eyes and by magma further down. They knew where all the rock ledges were and took obvious pleasure from guiding her fall so she would hit them. Each hit revived a painful memory. Harsh words, acts of malice, deceit, shameful lusts, cowardly acts of compromise. Blood from Lazarus, Iris, Tyrell, Damon, and even Sophia splattered all over her face as each memory exploded to the surface, compounding the pain. Then the music slowed and so did her descent, until she was hovering over two stone beds, one of them occupied.
With growing horror, she realized that the empty one was to be hers. As the music periodically roared a low note, flames shot up under the beds, causing them to glow and the skin of the condemned to burn and peel, only to regenerate so the burning could continue.
Before her lay a roguishly handsome white man, whom Esperanza somehow knew to be her third-great-grandfather, obviously through Lazarus. Apparently his name had been Alger. How strangely fitting that she should be confined with a representative of the very same part of her lineage that she had most wanted to forget. His features were twisted with anguish, his voice rough with involuntary screaming, and on the earth she had imagined that she would enjoy watching a man like this one suffer, but now that the scene was before her, it brought her nothing but fear. Similarly, he had fantasized many a time about having company this pretty, but her arrival only made his pain worse. The spirit of lust that he had entertained in life now used his appetites to power a machine that would drill into his crotch, giving him a horrid, excruciating mockery of the orifice that he had worshipped. It leered gleefully at them both. Obsession and sadism, its twin specialties, had both flowered in each of them. The proportions were perfectly inverted. Having both of them to play with would be extremely amusing.
Her welcoming committee nodded with savage agreement and began pushing her onto the hot bed, strapping her in with bars of iron. The pain was unbearable, her entire body blistering, popping, and hissing where it touched the stone, limbs thrashing helplessly against the iron, and in her mind throbbed the dreadful knowledge that her captors were just getting started and were frighteningly good at what they did, having practiced it for millennia. Her immobilization complete, they began feverishly installing machines for her. One had just been tested on empty air and was in the process of being positioned when the ever-present music changed, a column of bright blue light broke through the rock ceiling, the bars were pried away, and the light pulled her up like a tractor beam.
Alger looked up at her wistfully as she floated away, knowing he had no such hope of deliverance but drawing what little relief he could from the knowledge that she would not be adding to his torture with her presence. The demons screamed and cursed impotently, watching their prey escape.
Through endless space she floated, finally arriving at a city suffused with lights of every color, cascading from a Source that radiated love, beauty, and majesty. The streets were paved with gold so pure that you could see through it. Each gate was set with precious stones and everywhere she looked, there were mansions. Before her stood a man with olive skin, thick and curly brown hair, and eyes so warm that you never got tired of looking at them. There were holes in his wrists and his feet and a spear wound in his side, but they no longer bled or caused Him pain.
Overcome with shame, she threw herself down at His feet and tried to wash them with her tears, but He bent down, cupped His hand under her chin, and gently pulled her up.
"I know, child. I know it all. We don't need to rehash it. But concerning that, I do want you to know something: you were just a hair's breadth away from staying there.
If your family had not prayed for you the way they did, if your daughter had not answered My call, if you had kept your heart just a little bit harder, your physical heart would have ruptured and the bitterness you harbored would have bound you to that stone bed for eternity. As it was, Sophia reduced the inflammation in your soul and slowed your heart down, preventing that outcome. As you deduced, I was talking through her."
Her lips trembled. "Your call?"
He nodded. "Yes. In fact, that chain goes a little farther back than Sophia. Before your mother was born, your grandfather used his faith to pray into the future, over all of his line, and because he trusted Me that much, I blessed the word of his testimony, enabling him to speak in death with the freedom and the volume that he was denied in life and then some--good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.
In this way, he was able to reach your daughter this very year, through his personal journal, which I endowed with the force of direct memory. When she was thus awakened, she was able to hear My call and begin using her own spiritual gifts, which function like his but in the opposite direction. His gifts worked forward in time and as you surely noticed, hers work backward. Together they were able to retrieve you, the lost Hope. And that brings Me to something which is really not very important but may be of interest to you. Would you like Me to tell you about it?"
She blinked, pleasantly astonished that He should ask such a casual, low-stakes question. "Yes, Lord. Please do. If there is anything at all that You would like to tell me, I want to hear it."
He smiled. "Very good. That's the kind of passion I like to see. So, going on... You are aware, naturally, that Sophia is chiefly descended from Ham or as you say on Earth these days, 'black' and that even though she looks nothing like it, she is descended in small part from Japheth or 'white' in trace amounts. What you might be interested to know is that Lazarus was much the same, only inverted. In other words, in the same sense that Sophia is 'white', Lazarus was 'black'. He had some of the blood, but you wouldn't have known it by looking at him. Incidentally, he was also descended in small part from Shem, and therefore so are you and Sophia. Humanity is far more interconnected than most people realize. Shall I continue?"
Fascinated, she nodded.
"You remember the mixed host in the battlefield vision, right?"
"Yes..."
"The men you saw there represented his contributions to your ethnic heritage. The battle standard you saw was his. He drew something very similar to it in life, which is why it looked familiar. He had begun learning in depth about his own heritage and wanted to design an appealing symbol for his descendants that acknowledged all of their forebears, which happened to include people of all four 'colors': red, yellow, black, and white. And this brings me to something more important. Are you ready for it?"
"Yes, Lord. If You think I'm ready, then I'm ready, whether I feel it or not."
He smiled again. "Very good. You're learning quickly. And that's especially good because your calling is far bigger than you know. If you steward it faithfully, you will perform great signs and wonders, including but not limited to resurrection. But that's for later. Right now, I need you to open yourself completely to Me. When I send you back to Earth, Sophia will show you how. But before I do that, one final note about the men you saw Lazarus leading:
The druids and the medicine men that you saw behind him had no way of knowing Me directly, but they sought Me in earnest anyway and because their hearts were right, I showed Myself to them and they became My sons. A broken and a contrite heart I will not despise. Ironically, Lazarus inherited the Levites that you saw from Alger, the man you met in hell. When it comes to seeking Me, it is better to try and not know or to believe and not see, than to know and not try or to see and not believe. Do you understand?"
Swallowing, she nodded.
"Good. You have some catching up to do, but I know that you are up to the task. Until we meet again, know that My grace goes with you, that your end can still be greater than your beginning, and that you are healed as a token of both."
With that, He leaned in for a hug and she was totally suffused with joy and relief. Within seconds, she was back in her room and the music was fading. No change was visible, save for the time her phone displayed, but she would never forget what had happened. It was now 3:43. The whole experience had only taken ten minutes.