Memory's Door (A Well Spring Novel) (36 page)

Tristan pointed at a speck on the horizon. “Do you see the object rising out of the ground in the center of the field? Where the sky meets the grass?”

“Yes.”

“That is our destination.”

Tristan turned and strode off at a pace Marcus had to half walk, half jog to keep up with. After a few minutes a song rang out, and although it seemed to come from all directions at once, Marcus knew Tristan was the one singing. The words were in a language Marcus didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. His mind filled with images of warriors in great wars and vast fleets of ships battling through thirty-foot waves.

They covered ground quickly. Marcus still couldn’t make out precisely what the object was, but it was rectangular in shape. A few minutes later he knew it was a door. When they were ten yards from it, Tristan stopped and folded his arms.

The door rested on a four-tiered concrete foundation. Each tier was smaller than the one underneath it—steps leading up to the door. The sides and frame of the door looked to be concrete as well, and the top was slightly wider than the frame on both sides. A smattering of daises grew out of the thick jade grass that surrounded the foundation.

Behind the door, ethereal trees moved in an unfelt breeze against a sea-green sky. An arched wooden lattice stood behind the door. The door itself opened in the middle and was made up of four-paneled wood. Enthralling. But what captured Marcus’s imagination was the light that seemed to pour from the sides and back of the door in waves. Brilliant light that he was sure would kill him if he touched it.

The air smelled of an early morning day in the beginning of autumn, and he drank it in. The door seemed to beckon him, and yet he couldn’t ignore the sense of dread that surrounded the structure.

“What door is this?”

“It’s time to choose, Marcus.”

“Choose what?” he said even though the answer was obvious.

“Whether you will go through the door . . .” Tristan stared at the structure. “Or turn and walk away. This time will be your only chance.”

“What is inside?”

Tristan bent to one knee, his gaze fixed on the door. “You would like to know the answer before you step through?”

Did he want to know? Was it even permissible to ask? “I asked the question with little expectation of you giving me the answer.”

“I will answer the question if you want me to.”

“Tell me.”

Tristan continued to stare at the door as he answered. “It is the door of your memories.”

His memories? “I don’t understand.”

Tristan rose and turned to Marcus. “Inside you will find all of your memories. The ones of joy, the ones of devastation. Ones you have treasured and ones you have forgotten. Played out as real as when the moments happened.”

Marcus staggered back a step.

“You will face the memories of what you have imagined the future to be, of what the past might have been, of what the future might have been had you chosen differently. All are contained inside your door.”

The memories of what Zennon showed him in the valleys flooded his mind—Kat trying to figure out if she could stay with him, and her divorcing him, and ten years from now with his life in shambles. He took another step backward on the thick grass.

“Will I see what my life and Kat’s life truly would have been like
if I hadn’t done what I did to Layne and he hadn’t died? A memory still to come?”

“Yes.” Tristan’s face was like stone. “This you shall see.”

Marcus’s arms and legs grew cold. “I can’t face that.”

“I see.” Tristan shifted his weight and went silent again, his thick arms still folded across his wide chest.

Marcus stepped toward the angel. “Guide me, lend me your counsel.”

“The choice to step through the door is yours. None can make it for you, and none can give counsel for this decision but the One.”

Marcus asked the Spirit but no answer came.
Jesus, please, tell me.
Again, nothing.

“Are you permitted to tell me what else lies beyond the door?”

“A choice.”

“What choice?”

“Open the door and discover it for yourself.”

Marcus walked to the door’s foundation, closed his eyes, and prayed for strength. A strange mix of peace and dread settled on him. How could he be feeling both at the same time?

Must I, Lord?

This time the Spirit answered.
As my angel has said, it is your choice.

Will I survive?

No answer.

What will happen to me if I don’t go through?

I have already spoken of that to you.

Marcus shook his head. When? How could the Spirit have told him anything about the door, since until a few minutes ago Marcus didn’t know it existed? The image of a coin flashed into Marcus’s mind. Of course! How could he be so obtuse? He twisted to look at Tristan.

“Simon. That’s the answer, isn’t it?” Marcus turned back and stared at the door as the magician’s words floated back to him once again.

“Chose the wrong door, you see. No, that’s not right. That’s wrong. Reverse that. Strike that. Didn’t choose the door. Should have gone through it but didn’t. Didn’t, didn’t, didn’t. Want to go back and walk through it, because I think it would be good, but I can’t now. What’s done is done. Over. Finished. I went the other way. Had my chance.

“You’re just like Charlie. Willy Wonka is going to hand you a ticket, but you’ll have to choose to go through the factory door.”

Marcus took a last look at Tristan and smiled. The angel didn’t look a bit like Willy Wonka.

Marcus placed his foot on the first step and his legs shuddered. Or was it the concrete step he stood on that moved? A second step. A third, and then he eased his foot onto the last step. The light that emanated from the sides of the door swirled around him and seemed to pull him closer. He took a deep breath, held it, and pushed the door open. The pulsing light on the sides of the door burst out like a flood and immersed him. It felt like liquid, as if he could swim in its currents.

After a minute his eyes somehow adjusted to the brilliance of the light and he stepped forward. He was in a hallway made of stone walls and ceiling—it reminded him of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. Arched windows were spaced every few feet and gave views of a green, rocky coastline on either side. The crash of waves and the briny smell of sea air filled his nostrils.

A seagull riding the currents to his left seemed to cry in rhythm with his footsteps on the dark stones at his feet as he eased forward. Ten yards ahead was another door. This one had a handle made of gold and it turned without a whisper. Marcus stepped through and stared at the splendor around him.

He was in a lush garden of flowering trees and tiny waterfalls. Was he still inside the structure he’d entered? Or outside? Marcus laughed at himself. Inside what structure? The door of his memories hadn’t led to anywhere, but in another sense he knew it led to everywhere.

A path made of leaves wove through the center of the garden and he stepped onto it. The pad of his feet on the leaves was the only
sound. The path went on for fifteen yards before it turned hard to the right, then hard to the left for ten yards, then a gentle curve for forty paces before it turned straight.

A canopy of trees was now overhead. As he walked on, the canopy grew closer till he felt like he was walking down a hallway made for a Hobbit. After a few more steps, he had to stoop almost double to keep from brushing his head on the soft branches above him. He craned his neck and saw the end of the tunnel and through it a clearing.

Enter in.

He fell to his knees and crawled through. He was in the middle of a wide swath of Japanese maples. There was no underbrush here, just a carpet of emerald green moss that ran up to the base of the trees. In the center of the clearing, not more than twenty feet across, was a pool. A ring of thick jade grass surrounded it.

Look into the pool. You must see what it contains.

Marcus removed his socks and shoes, giving in to a sudden desire to feel the soft touch of the moss on his feet. There was no movement on the surface of the pool, no breeze in the air, no sound of his feet on the moss carpet.

When he reached the line where the moss and the grass met, he slid his toes onto the grass, the rest of his foot remaining on the moss. A tingling sensation seeped through his toes, into his feet, up his legs, slowly at first, then faster as it surged into his torso, his arms, and then his face and head. He wouldn’t have been surprised if whatever it was had rocketed out of his fingertips, but it remained inside and filled him with thundering joy.

Marcus rocked back and forth from his toes to his heels as the feeling intensified as if ocean waves were crashing inside him—each wave made up of his wildest desires answered. The longer he stood soaking in the glory of the Spirit’s presence, the more difficult it was to imagine having to gaze into the pool and see what his life could have been, would have been if he hadn’t let Layne die. To see what his life with Kat would be in the coming days and years.

But he had to see. It was the only way to deal with the regret
once and for all, to slay the beast for all time. With the strength of the Spirit he could more than face it. He could destroy it just as so many of his regrets been vanquished last year when the three other Warriors had gone into some of the deepest parts of his soul and obliterated them.

But even with the truth of those thoughts ricocheting through his mind, Marcus couldn’t make his lead-filled feet move toward the pool. The regret was so deep, so cutting. The consequences so severe. His son had died because of him, and no matter which path he chose, from this moment forward he would lose Kat as well. The memories of what he’d seen in the valleys buried him, and tears rose to the surface. He cried out to Jesus, but the voice that answered him was not the Spirit’s, but Simon’s once again.

“The Wolf, the Wolf, the Wolf of confusion, he always spins a compelling illusion.”

For the second time the magician’s words pulled the scales of deception from Marcus’s eyes. Simon was right. Illusions. Alternate realities of the enemy’s making. How could the enemy know his future? Or what would have happened if he hadn’t let Layne go? Why would Zennon show him anything but lies laced with enough truth to draw him into darkness and assault his heart? Marcus closed his eyes and tried to receive the truth.

Are you ready to see?

The voice of the Spirit.

“To see what, Lord?”

You know.

“What my life would have truly been like if I’d kept Layne in the park that day?”

Yes.

No, he wasn’t ready, but he never would be. “Though the truth slay me . . .”

Marcus breathed deep three times, once for each member of the Trinity, and lifted his foot, which now felt as light as a butterfly
rising off a daisy in the heart of summer. Then another step, then another, then one more, and he settled onto the grass at the edge of the pool and let his feet slip into the crystal waters.

Instantly the same sensation he’d felt when his toes first touched the grass rocketed through his body, this time with so much more intensity his body felt like it was on fire, burning him with a hint of pain that seemed to cleanse his body, mind, soul, and spirit. He must have shut his eyes again because he no longer saw the trees or the grass or the moss or the sun cascading into the glade like liquid, but instead he saw the universe and other worlds and beings of power and overwhelming light.

After moments or ages, the fire inside faded along with the visions and Marcus opened his eyes. The ripples on the surface of the pool were fading and seconds later it was glass again. He gazed at its surface without hesitation and without fear, the power of the Spirit surging through him, giving him the strength and faith to endure and press through whatever he was about to see.

Freedom comes.

Slowly a jumble of colors formed on the surface of the pool and began to form into thin shapes he could almost make out. They faded, replaced by other ethereal scenes of shapes flying and running that again vanished into the water without becoming clear. Over and over the hint of a face appeared, or a gathering of people, a woman, a man, a child, but none of them came into focus.

Each time it was as if a giant hand came and washed away the image before it could settle. And each time the colors and images were washed away, Marcus felt another wave of peace and another surge of freedom enter his heart till there was no fear, no regret, no worry about what was to come. The pool bubbled and churned and when it stopped, the sense of peace and contentment was overwhelming.

He was ready and he knew beyond a doubt that when the pool formed the next image, he would see what would have happened if he had chosen differently that day in the park with Layne.

Nothing came except a feeling of love that grew stronger. He waited, but the water only reflected his own image back to him. Marcus swished his foot through the water and watched the ripples build, then fade back into glass. It didn’t make sense. Why wasn’t Jesus showing him? There was nothing to see. Nothing to see. Nothing.

I have shown you, son of my heart.

Realization flooded over him as the implications of what he’d seen—or not seen—became clear. Was it possible? Was it true? His would-have-been life couldn’t be shown because it didn’t happen? The pain of what might have been had no hold over him unless he allowed it to. And the future was not set. Hope filled him as the truth washed over him again and again.

There is one more thing you must do.

“Yes, Lord?”

Offer forgiveness.

“To?” But Marcus didn’t need to ask, and in an instant he forgave himself for the choice he’d made with Layne so many years before. Once again he was buried in tears, but this time they were ones of release and unrestrained freedom. Wave after wave of forgiveness engulfed him. After an age the Spirit spoke again.

It is time to go.

Marcus made his way back through the tunnel of trees, back through the garden, and up to the door of his memories that would lead him back to Tristan. As Marcus approached the door, his pace slowed. On the back of the door was carved a verse that shone like gold.