A sample to read - by Christy Gerrell Bac

Tallahassee, Florida

October 1900

 

“Shun not suffering, shame or loss; learn of Christ to bear the cross.” From the song ‘Go to Dark Gethsemane…’

 

 She came out onto the street, and the cool wind hit her in the face just before a misting rain started to fall. Pulling her coat close and around her, she turned left from the steps of the boardinghouse and began to run toward the church knowing that if she could hurry, she would have her chore done and be safe within the hour. And she needed to safe; she wanted to be with others before the storm came and judging by the dark clouds gathering in the morning sky, the rain would come soon; too soon. And the other storm, she glanced quickly over her shoulder and she saw him. The tall blond man that was her constant shadow; the blond man that was frightening her more and more every day; the blond man that never stopped watching her and he made her feel ashamed, more than ashamed because she had no reason for him to be following her as he was. And yet, he was following her all the time.

Makayla looked back again, and she remembered that one time that the blond man had touched her, that one time that he had grabbed her on the street and had that other man not been there, she was certain the blond man would have kept her.

She had never known anyone that had dealt with something like this. She was attending school. She was innocent and only trying to obtain her education and this man, a fellow classmate that she had never even spoken too or given him any notice, had just decided to start trailing her, and she felt like he was one of her father’s hunting dogs and he was after her as her father’s hunting dogs would go after the deer.

There was nowhere to hide. The man knew where she lived; he knew her class schedule; he knew where she worked and what church she attended. For weeks now, he had been watching her, sometimes at a distance, and sometimes he was watching her, and he was far too near to her. And right now, at this moment as she was going to the church, she was alone. She would be alone cleaning the church as it was her Saturday to do so and no one else was coming to help her. She looked up at the clouds gathering in the sky, and again she looked over shoulder, and she saw him there behind her as she reached the church steps and she hurried up and into the vestibule. Maybe the Reverend Farmer or his wife Amanda would be at the church this morning; she hurried inside praying that she wasn’t alone here and fearing that she was alone her.

Makayla rushed to a window and looked out; the blond man was leaning against the doorframe of the store across the street. He had lit a cigarette, and she knew; she couldn’t stand here looking at him like she was. She had to get her chore done and get out of here as fast as she possibly could. She ran to the church door thinking there might be a lock on the door and there wasn’t, in frustration she stomped her foot and cried out.  Within a moment she had bowed her head and clasped her hands together, and she prayed that he would go away, that he wouldn’t come in here while she was cleaning. She was afraid, too afraid and the fear was making her ill.

She ran back to the window, and she saw him, the tall blond man.  He had thrown his cigarette away. She saw him rake his hand through his hair and put his hat back on his head as he stepped off the wooden sidewalk across the street and he started walking toward the church, and she nearly passed out seeing him coming toward where she was, and she knew only one thing, she had to hide, she had to hide now, she wasn’t safe if he found her and she needed to be safe. She ran to the front of the church, she looked up at the cross and then to the right, and she knew, the coat closet where the choir gowns hung. She opened that closet door and saw that there was no lock, but there was nowhere else to hide, nowhere else that he might not find her and sitting on the floor of that closet she closed the door, and she started to shake all over. With her hand over her mouth so that her crying made no noise, she sat surrounded by darkness, and at that very moment, she heard the loud clap of thunder come straight down from the heavens.

Reed went up the steps that lead inside the church wondering why he was coming here. God had never been here for him; God had never been anywhere for him. God had rejected him long ago as though he were nothing; Reed had been nothing to no one beyond Harriet Harmon his whole life. He walked inside the church, and he frowned at seeing his roommate Dean Rankin at the front of the church, he had never thought of Dean as the religious sort, but then, neither was he and he was here in the church.

“Reed,” he heard Dean say his name, and he nodded his head at the tall blond man as Dean came to where Reed stood and looked out as the rain was starting to fall. “I told you the other day to leave my girl alone.” Dean narrowed his eyes, and Reed shook his head.

“I’ve not gone near your girl,” Reed said not backing down in the face of his roommate’s fury. “I’ll be going home for a few days, maybe a week Dean so you can sort things out with you girl and rest assured, she is absolutely nothing to me.”

Dean Rankin looked back at the front of the church wondering where Makayla Hunter had gone. He had spent weeks following her, weeks waiting for her to be somewhere alone just so that he could talk to her, all he wanted was to talk to her and get to know her and she was acting like he was evil because he wanted to get her alone, because he was watching her and following her. She had come into this church; he looked around one last time walking up to the front toward the cross and looking in between all the benches, and he saw that she wasn’t here. She had to have snuck out the back door, and he knew there were only two places she could be, back to her boardinghouse, or she was at the seamstress shop where she worked.

“She’s my girl,” Dean pointed a finger into Reed’s face. “You go near her, and I’ll bury you, Reed.”

Reed watched his roommate leave the church, and he felt that when he returned from Woodville, he wasn’t going back to the room he shared with Dean. The man was obsessed with the beautiful young woman Makayla and for whatever reason; Dean had it in his head that Reed wanted Makayla. He stopped still looking out the door that Dean just went through and he remembered his kissing her, he remembered how well she had fit in his arms, and he also remembered her crying out for her lost lover, Austin.

 Reed sat down in the back pew and dismissed Dean and the beautiful young woman that he couldn’t have in his life, and he felt his heart as it was breaking over his loss of the one woman that had really mattered to him in his life. His heart was breaking for purely selfish reasons too, and he knew that. He was grieving as he was in this moment not because he had lost her, but because he now had no one to care for him.  He was honestly and truly alone in this world.

Reed’s thoughts turned to his mother and long ago and his father and what had happened that had forced him as a child to run away and never go home again. And it was too late to ever think of going home again because home wasn’t there and if he were honest with himself, he would state the truth, home was never there, not the home that a child needed and longed to have.

He looked up at the cross hanging in the front of the church. He saw the beautiful stain glass windows with angels holding children and Jesus himself depicted as reaching down from the heavens to save mankind, and he knew; Jesus hadn’t saved him. He carried a horrible truth, a horrible reality inside of himself that he had only been able to share with her and now she had taken his truth to her grave. She was gone, and no one in the world could understand his anger at God if there was a God.  There was no one beyond her; she was that one person that knew what had happened in his childhood that had altered his whole life, she understood his anger at God and she had not forced him to her way of believing.

“Why!?” he stood up and screamed in the empty church. “If you’re such a loving God then why do bad things happen? Why do children die? Why does anyone die?” he screamed these questions inside the church, and he felt almost a healing come over him as he ranted at an unseen God that he wondered if this God were even there and he feared God wasn’t here. He feared greatly that there was no God or heaven or even redemption and forgiveness.

“You took everything from me!” Reed felt the tears falling, and he put his face in his hands, and he sobbed hard like he had been when Senator Quinn Lambert had found him harmed as he had been so harmed that day in his childhood. He shook his head, and he shook his fist, and he cried out why again and then again. “I wanted to go home to her! I just wanted to go home to her. She was all I had.” Reed cried more than he had been unaware that he could cry like this and he went to his knees with his head bowed.

He had made the highest grades; he had studied hard and long, he was being awarded the first Master of Science Degree in Mathematics that this college had ever awarded to any student. He was highly educated, and he knew that he was fixing to step into a Governor appointed position in this state.  He was being sponsored by two Senators and a Congressman and there was no one to care about his accomplishments, there was no one that loved him for just himself. He was alone, and he had been alone even when Harriet Harmon had been alive. But at least he had known that she loved him, he had been loved when she was alive. Now, there was no love; now  in his life, he was empty. There was no one to love him, no one for him to love.

Reed had fallen silent, he had ranted at God like a madman in this church, and now he had cried until his tears were all gone and in the silence, he heard sobbing, and it was coming from the front of the church. Slowly, carefully, quietly he got up off of the floor and made his way to the front of the church listening carefully, and he knew, without a doubt, someone else was here inside of this church, someone else was here, and they were crying. He heard the noise again, and he left where he had been standing and he went in search of the noise. He saw the closet, and he opened the door and saw her, she was sitting on the floor with her hand over her mouth to try and silence her crying.

“Dear God,” he said when he saw her push herself further into the closet and he knelt down to her suddenly aware that something more was going on here than what he knew.

“Help me,” she whispered while looking up at him. “Please, don’t let him find me. Help me.”

To read more of this story: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQVR17H the cost is $1 dollar with all money donated to research into the disease that took my little girl's life.