A/N: In this chapter, the text that is in bold italics comes DIRECTLY from the book "Showdown" by Ted Dekker. This is the only place in which I will directly cite the book, but I cannot possibly explain the meeting with Black better than Ted does here. :)
Thanks to Ozma, MCR-1993, kimi-lee22, and BlueEyes444 for reviewing chapter one! Enjoy chapter 2 and PLEASE REVIEW! :D
Paradise Broken
Chapter Two
Paradise, Colorado
Johnny was waiting for Sally when she parked her car in the driveway in front of her home. His brown eyes were bright with tears and his blonde hair blew in the light wind that had sprung up seemingly out of nowhere. The thirteen-year-old was scared to death, that much was certain.
He ran to his mother, eyes wide and hugged her tightly. Sally closed her eyes and drank in Johnny's outdoorsy scent. She loved her son.
"Mom, they wouldn't listen to me!" Johnny cried, his eyes wide. "I promise you, Cecil was murdered; I saw it; I really did!"
Sally sighed. "Johnny, I don't know exactly what you saw but I don't think that Cecil's eyes were really ripped out of his head—"
"Not you, too!" Johnny groaned. "Am I the only one around here that can see the truth?"
Sally led her frightened teenager into the house. "I'm not saying that I don't believe you, Johnny. I'm just saying that you've always had an over-active imagination. But I heard what Katie and Paula said and there's something strange going on. That's why I called an old friend, a detective, to come and investigate Cecil's death. And I'm really sorry, honey. I know you and Cecil were close."
Later that night, Sally began to think that what Johnny suggested was maybe not that crazy after all.
"Do you remember?" Black asked the congregation. "First there was an apple. The fruit of pleasure. All was good. Do you remember?"
Stony silence.
Black tossed the red apple into the air. "And then there came..."
When he caught the apple, it wasn't an apple.
It was a brown snake.
"The snake," Black said.
A gasp filled the room. Some shouts of alarm. Black held the three-foot snake by its midsection as the serpent lifted its head, testing the air with its long flickering tongue.
"But we know what happened to the snake, don't we?"
Slick as a magician, Black slid his hand to the reptile's tail and cracked the snake like a whip.
Crack!
The blurred snake became a rigid object two feet in height. A dark wooden cross.
"The snake was defeated."
The congregation was evidently too stunned to react this time. You could stuff an apple up the sleeve. You could hide a snake past the cuff. But not this hefty cross.
"And that defeat gave us the fruit of the vine once again." Black slammed the cross against the pulpit, where it vanished with a horrendous crash. Wobbling on the surface was an apple, which he held up for all to see.
The same red apple he'd started with.
Sally shivered. There was nothing normal about this "preacher". But then again, maybe he was right...
His words echoed through her head as she fell asleep. Wanna trip? Then he was speaking to her. Wanna trip, Sally? Wanna trip on Grace Juice, baby?
Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.
Several miles away, in a hidden chamber beneath an ancient monastery carved into a mountain, a boy named Billy wrote a story that would change Paradise, Colorado forever.
Paradise, Colorado
June 2, 2010
Fenton Hardy had been driving since three AM. He glanced at the dashboard and the digital clock said in green, angular letters that it was now seven in the morning. The sun was just beginning to peek over the mountains and spread its light over the Colorado landscape. Fenton yawned and almost missed the sign and the turn in the road. At the last minute the old sign made itself known:
Welcome to Paradise: Population 450"Finally," he breathed, and almost jumped at the sound of his voice; his radio had lost signal over two hours ago and he had been traveling in silence ever since. It seemed that he had lost all bearing on time in his drive through the Colorado terrain. He turned onto the dusty road into something that could have been mistaken for a ghost town in the Old West.
He saw a bar/restaurant owned by someone named Smithers. There was a hair salon and a meager grocery store. The houses were all old and out of touch. There were no cars on the street; there was at least one car parked in front of the homes. One old church, one decrepit theater. There was no hotel that he could see.
Shaking off his exhaustion, Fenton drove down Main Street until he reached the home of Sally Drake. He glanced down at the Map Quest instructions he'd printed out the night before to be sure; the addresses matched and he got out of his car and ascended the two porch steps and knocked on the door.
Fenton waited for a few moments. The door suddenly creaked open and a pair of haunted blue eyes stared at him from inside. Sally Drake looked like she had aged years since he had last seen her at their high school reunion. Her hair was messy and wild and she, for some reason, looked genuinely surprised to see Fenton Hardy standing on her doorstep even though she had called and asked him to come just the day before.
"Sally. How are you doing?" Fenton asked as gently as he could, seriously a bit concerned about his old friend's mental welfare.
"I shouldn't have asked you to come," Sally said, not opening the door any wider or showing any indication to let him in.
Fenton blinked. "What?"
"It was all a big misunderstanding. The preacher is..." she hesitated. "The preacher is something else." She had a faraway look on her face and Fenton shivered at the hollow sound of her voice.
"Sally—is someone forcing you to say this? Are you in any danger?"
Sally laughed. "Fenton, you need to put down your detective defenses for once. I told you, I was over-reacting. Cecil had a heart attack and the preacher is the greatest thing that's ever happened to this town. He's bringing grace and power to our little town of Paradise."
The way Sally said "power" sent a jolt of ice through Fenton's bones.
He was about to respond but Sally started to shut the door in his face. Now getting agitated, Fenton wedged his foot between the door and its frame before it could completely shut. Sally looked a bit fearful at his aggressive behavior, but Fenton was feeling distinctly mortified and felt perfectly entitled to rash behavior, something that he never gave way to; that was more of Joe's territory. Perhaps it was something to do with the atmosphere of Paradise, but Fenton Hardy wasn't feeling entirely himself today.
"Sally. You called me last night, scared to death about something. I spent a ton of money reserving a last minute flight to Denver. I drove for four hours straight through no man's land, just so I can help out an old friend! I get to your house and what do you do? You shut the door in my face! Don't you think the least you could do is invite me inside for a cup of tea or coffee or something hot and offer me an apology? Don't you?"
"He's right, Mom," the blonde-headed boy of about thirteen said from behind Sally. Her son. Johnny Drake.
"You stay out of this!" Sally hissed and Johnny recoiled at the hostility in his mother's voice. Fenton was shocked at Sally's reaction toward her son and was about to say so but Johnny spoke before he could, his eyes locked on Fenton.
"You can't listen to her; you have to stay!" he pleaded desperately. "Mom's not like this; no one is! Marsuvees Black is turning the whole town against each other!"
"Johnny, not a word against the preacher!" Sally all but shrieked.
"Get a grip on yourself, Sally!" Fenton snapped, at a loss for any better way of getting through to the woman. He grabbed her by the shoulders and saw his nearly maniacal expression reflected in her eyes.
"Is there a problem?"
Fenton nearly jumped out of his skin as the silky voice rang from behind him and someone touched his shoulders. He mentally chided himself. He was a detective. People couldn't sneak up behind him! The air must really be adversely affecting me, he decided.
He turned to face the intruder. A handsome face shaded by a black leather cowboy hat. Observant black eyes. Impossibly white teeth. Dressed in all black from his cowboy hat to his trench coat to his tight polyester pants to his squeaky clean boots.
"Who are you?" Fenton asked although by the look on Johnny's face, he had a pretty good idea.
When the man spoke next, he confirmed Fenton's suspicions. "Marsuvees Black, here to bring grace and power to the insignificant, rock-bottom, stupid town of Paradise, my friend."
"Obviously your idea of grace and mine are not in agreement," Fenton said stonily, refusing to look away from Black's steely glare.
"But only one is correct," Black said softly. He turned to Sally. "I am sorry that he bothered you, Ms. Drake." He closed the front door and gestured toward Smithers Saloon. "Care for a drink?"
Fenton stared at Marsuvees Black from across the small table in the saloon. Steve Smithers stood behind the bar talking in low tones to a woman wielding a large brandy that Black said was named Katie Bowers. Marsuvees Black tilted his large beer and drowned the whole thing in less than a minute while Fenton clutched his glass of untouched ale and looked on in disgust.
"I thought preachers didn't drink," he said stonily, liking this Black character less and less with each passing second.
"I'm not your average preacher," Black said, a smug grin appearing on his face. "In fact, I'll be honest with you, Hardy. I'm not a preacher at all. But they don't know that. All they know is that I'm going to put this little town of Paradise back on the map. And these townspeople; they have a short temper. You saw how quickly Ms. Drake reacted to her son. You don't want to get in their way, and you best not be trying to spread any enmity around against me—they love me, they respect me, they need me. If you try to turn them against me, they'll tear you limb from limb, Detective."
Fenton stared at this man. "Are you threatening me?"
Black looked shocked. "Of course not. Preachers don't threaten."
Fenton snorted. "Just like they don't drink?"
Black smiled cryptically. "Just leave town, Hardy. We don't want anyone making trouble. I'm here to help."
Fenton stood up and slammed a five dollar bill onto the bar and didn't wait for Steve to give him his change. Instead, he spun on his heel and left the bar, wondering if his mind had completely left him.
Fenton's head seemed to have cleared when he reached his car. He hesitated, then pulled out his cell phone, amazed that he had even one bar of service in this wasteland. He quickly hit speed dial and breathed a sigh of relief when his old partner and friend, Sam Radley, answered the phone.
"Hey, Sam, do you think you can do me a favor?"
"Anything for you, Fenton. What's up?"
"I'm here in Paradise, Colorado and didn't know if you could do a search on a Marsuvees Black and get back to me as soon as possible."
"Sure thing, Fent. I'll run the search and get back to you ASAP."
Sam called back not thirty minutes later. "Marsuvees Black is a teacher at government-funded, university-sponsored program at a monastery in the mountains bordering Paradise called 'Project Showdown'. I couldn't get any information on Project Showdown other than it is run by a man named David Abraham and has been going on for nearly thirteen years. David Abraham recently hired Black."
"Thanks, Sam. I'll get back to you once I know something."
Fenton's first inclination was to head straight to the monastery Sam had told him about, but an image of Johnny Drake assaulted his mind, begging him not to leave. He would go to the monastery, but someone needed to keep an eye on things in town. He dialed his home phone number and hoped that Frank and Joe were still up for a little sleuthing.
A/N: PLEASE REVIEW, and I'll update very soon! :D
~Emachinescat ^..^