All Living : A Seedvision Saga (9781621473923) (7 page)

“If you want blood, brother, then I shall give you some,” said Cain, spinning around, throwing the stone in his hand at Abel with all the anger he had accumulated over the past few hours. He didn’t just throw the rock at Abel. He threw it at his pain and embarrassment. He threw it to smash the humiliating experience of that afternoon, to break the pattern of anger, frustration, and sorrow he felt. He wanted to hurt himself, if only to feel more in control of his own course. Like the creek, he was hitting every stone in his path and rushing downstream with no choices.

He watched, as if time had slowed to a snail’s pace, as the rock smashed into the side of Abel’s head and split him open like a field melon. Abel’s body seemed to hang suspended, like an overly ripe fruit on the vine, then slumped onto the soil, his life blood spilling out of him.

For a moment, Kole was too stunned to react. Then he was on his feet, racing down the hill. “No,” he screamed.

Cain spun around when he heard his brother’s voice. A look of fear flickered across his face, and he fled, racing downstream away from Kole and disappeared into the woods.

Kole reached Abel’s body and knelt down beside him. He gently cradled his brother’s head in his arms and wept tears of loss. It was a completely foreign feeling that began to crawl from his belly and into his limbs. His arms were numb, and his legs were drained of all strength. He cried and cried, rocking Abel’s body back and forth in his arms, until he had no more tears to cry.

Lester stared at the journal in Al’s hands, Kole’s hands, ah, hell; he didn’t even know what to call him now. His oldest friend. Yeah, by a long shot. He didn’t know what to say; he couldn’t say it even if he did know. His eyes were misty, and he had a lump in his throat that he couldn’t seem to swallow. He fiddled with his napkin. He picked up the miracle cigarette, flicked it, and put it back down without puffing on it. He looked around the room, looked at the scratches in the laminated table surface, looked anywhere but into Al’s eyes, Kole’s eyes.

“I feel like I’ve just met you. I feel like I should be calling you Kole instead of Al,” said Lester.

“I like the name Al. Call me Al, and quit fidgeting. I’m still the same guy I was forty-five minutes ago when you sat down.” Al had reached the last page of his first journal and now closed the book.

Lester noticed something inside the back flap as it shut. “Hey, what’s that?” he asked, pointing at the journal.

“What’s what?” asked Al.

“That picture inside the back cover,” said Lester. “It looked like a drawing of a woman.”

Hesitantly, Al opened the journal up again to the last page. Inside the back cover was a pencil drawing, marvelously detailed. It was actually a masterful rendering of two women; a younger one, standing with her hands clasped in front of her, gazing out from the page with love in her eyes, and at first glance what looked to be a peculiar, older woman. The younger one was beautiful; lightly shaded hair, narrow eyes, high cheekbones. She appeared to be slightly freckled.

Observing her, Lester could tell she was graceful, elegant, and demure. Her head had a slight downward tilt to it making her appear to tease you with her innocent coyness. Her full figure filled a one-piece, wraparound, knee-length dress to capacity, and her bare feet seemed to find firm footing an inch above the bottom margin.

Behind her, in silhouette, was the face of an older woman that seemed to be distantly related to the first girl, but her appearance was dramatically different and strikingly unusual. Her age was hard to determine, her eyes were like small pieces of flint in deep sockets. Her forehead fell back sharply from a protruding brow, and her hairline was thin. There was plumpness to the face that bespoke ample fare, but there were also lines and creases that hinted at a life of hard work and suppressed sorrow. Radiating through all its unique character was the depiction of a serene face with a slight smile playing about the lips, a continence reflecting the pleasant contentment of one who must have watched countless sunsets with a lifetime lover.

Lester grinned at the pictures of the two women. One, a beauty any man would find hard to resist, and the other, a face that any modern-day scientist would validate as clearly belonging to a pre-historic Neanderthal woman.

“Did you draw this?” Lester asked in an awed voice overwhelmed by the exquisite details of the drawing.

“Of course I drew them, Les. You’re the first person besides me to ever even look at these journals, much less see what’s inside.”

“They’re fantastic, Al.”

“Thank you.”

“Who are they?” Lester asked.

“Keziah my wife.”

“You mean Kesitah?” corrected Lester.

“No, these are both Keziah,” said Al.

Lester looked up. “These are drawings of the same woman?”

Al nodded.

“They look so different from each other. I mean, they seem as if they could be related but definitely not the same woman. Care to tell me a little more about her?” asked Lester.

“We’ll get to that,” said Al. “We’ll get to that for sure. It’s one of my favorite parts.”

“At least explain to me how this could be two drawings of the same person,” Lester asked.

“Well, it’s Keziah when she was young, about the time I met her, and then it’s also Kezie when she was older, just before I lost her,” Al explained.

“I’m sure that makes sense to you, Al,” said Lester, “but I’m still puzzled. How could she look so different?”

“Well, seven hundred years takes its toll on a woman.”

“You mean to tell me she lived over seven hundred years?” Lester was baffled.

“Nearly everyone lived at least that long before the flood,” said Al.

“You mean Noah’s flood?”

“Yep.”

“But how?” Lester asked.

“Well, the world was different then, Les. More pure; closer to its original state of created perfection. There weren’t as many impurities in the air, water, or soil. It was a clean planet, and the people were not so far removed from the natural condition.”

Lester had a baffled look on his face.

“Let me explain it this way,” said Al. “There was less pollution, less ozone depletion, less deforestation, and less congestion. The vegetation and animal life were healthier. The food that mankind ate was not only bigger, better, tastier, and more nutritious, the air itself was richer in oxygen.

“Yes,” said Al, seeing the look of amazement on Lester’s face, “modern science has even discovered that ancient air bubbles trapped in the hardened resin of amber are still nearly fifty percent more oxygenated than the air we are currently breathing. The air of the early earth was a naturally pleasant, sweet, and fundamental part of mankind’s health. Because of breathing better air, the bones in a man’s body were stronger and denser, not so fragile and inclined to break. The blood was blue and thick, flowing with essential vitality. Why, when I was a younger man, in my early hundreds, I could easily jump from a thirty foot height with no fear whatsoever of twisting an ankle or breaking a leg. And speaking from personal experience, even if a bone did break, it would heal in less than half the time it takes for a bone to set nowadays.”

“So you could live longer,” Lester said.

“Precisely!”

“But that still doesn’t fully explain the picture,” contended Lester. “Your wife, she looks so…different. From herself, I mean.

“Les, have you ever seen an eight-hundred-year-old person, besides me I mean?”

“No.”

“Yes, you have,” debated Al. “At least, you’ve seen the remains of them. Every time some scientist or archeologist declares that he’s unearthed a pre-historic man, a Neanderthal or a link in the chain of evolution, it’s a bunch of hogwash. What he has discovered are the skeletal remains of a pre-flood person.”

“What?” Lester shook his head as if to shake loose fifty years of Darwinian propaganda. “Care to elaborate?”

“Okay,” said Al, “think of it first in terms you can understand. The skull, as well as all the bones in the body, slowly change shape with the passing of time. That is why the shape of an eighty-year-old person’s cranium is not the same as when they were eighteen. The brow ridges have calcified somewhat. The skull has flattened out, to a degree, from the effects of gravity. The jaw thickens and elongates, the spine telescopes. Ever notice people tend to get shorter after they reach a certain age. They begin to shrink; they change. Now multiply that effect by ten, eighty years becomes eight hundred years. Science had to discover a way to explain and justify the dramatic differences in skull structures that they were finding, because they refused to believe in a Creator, and because they have never actually seen a living, breathing eight or nine-hundred-year-old person.”

Al stopped talking.

Lester put his head in his hands and sat there for a moment.

“Too much information too quickly?” Al asked, concerned.

“No,” said Lester, shaking his head but not looking up. “Keep going.”

“If mankind were to embrace a Creator, then he’d have to obey divine laws. But most people would rather follow their own hearts, doing what is right in their own eyes. Or even worse, choosing to live however they want because it’s their life, not someone else’s.

“But the problem is that people crave structure. They want freedom, but they desire community, society, civilization. So people made their own laws, established their own kings, and eventually spawned their own religions. But religion, or churchianity as I like to think of it, is a domineering force that seeks to rob a man or woman of a true relationship with our Creator.

“So the logic that was instilled into our very substance rebelled from this dictatorship of the spirit and sought out new ways to explain why and how this happened, thus scientific evolution. First, the Big Bang Theory; not a fact, mind you, but a very weak theory. Then, another theory came along called ‘survival of the fittest.’ Not entirely rot but certainly incomplete without a designer and planner in the picture. How many skyscrapers are there that have been drawn, calculated, and built without an architect? It’s complete nonsense.”

Al took a breath. “Don’t get me wrong, science is not evil. I love science. I love looking into the night sky and asking, ‘what is a star?’ But evolution? Ha! I’ve seen more solid theories at the bottom of an outhouse hole. It’s like believing that a thousand dump trucks filled with nickels can dump their loads and all those nickels will land face up. It’s ridiculous. It’s pathetic. But people will grasp ahold of it like a drowning man will grab a life preserver, and all because it’s easier to believe an untruth than to have faith in a hard truth.

“Faith, Lester. It’s a rare commodity. Most people don’t have it because they have to see something to believe in it. The past is so wondrous and fantastic that it boggles the mind. Science gives a miniature slide show and people say, ‘okay, there’s hard evidence,’ but I know the past for what it was. I don’t need to have faith in the past; I was there. I witnessed it. I save my faith for the promises that were made concerning the future. And if you think the past was wonderful and fantastic, hold on to your headstone ‘cuz we ain’t seen nothing yet.”

“Okay, I think I get what you’re saying,” said Lester, “but correct me if I’m wrong. If we were capable of living to be eight or nine hundred-years-old, we’d all look like Neanderthals?”

“There never were any Neanderthals.”

“Yeah, but we’d look more or less like what we currently describe as Neanderthal?”

“Absolutely correct, my friend.”

“Okay then, Al. How come you don’t look like a Neanderthal? I mean, you’re a lot older than eight hundred, right?”

“I am,” said Al, “and the only reason I still look the way I do is because God has frozen my degenerative processes for all these years and obviously minimized the effects of gravity and old age.”

“How?” asked Lester.

“Well, I don’t know how it works, but I’m sure it has to do with the fruit of life.”

“The fruit of what…?”

“The fruit of the tree of life; I was given some of the seeds of a fruit from the tree of life when I went back to the Garden of Eden. The Creator wanted to keep me around until the time of the end, so He prolonged my life in a very tangible way. He did not give me the gift of eternal life, but he did bless me with a rather long mortality. But we’ll get to all that.”

“Can I see some of the seeds?” Lester asked anxiously.

“I don’t have any, Les. I had to swallow all six before I left the garden.”

“Six seeds?”

“Yes, one for every one thousand years of life, including my original nine hundred and ninety year lifespan. The last one must have kicked in over nine hundred and fifty years ago.”

“Al, can I say something?” Lester asked.

“Sure.”

“I’m almost sorry I asked about the drawing,” said Lester.

Al laughed. “Why’s that?”

“Because I think I’d rather just listen to you read some more out of your journals. True stories are way easier to swallow than true science. You know what I mean?”

“Sure. Easier done than said,” joked Al, reaching for his black bag once again.