Chapter 17

He couldn’t have looked more confused and surprised. “Jesse? What are you doing here?”
She was still reeling from the impact. Seconds ticked by but she could not think of an answer. So she reused his question. “What are you doing here?” she countered.
“I’m getting some clothes for my aunt to wear at her funeral.”
“Oh.”
“And you?”
“I, um...I’d rather not say.”
He looked at her curiously, but didn’t question her further on the topic. “Would you like to come in?”
“No, thank you,” she said, still rooted to the spot.
“Can I take you home?”
“No, no, that’s alright.”
By now, Michael looked thoroughly amused. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”
She didn’t answer directly. “I think I’ll go now,” she said, and started to leave, but he blocked her path.
He studied her up close, not sure what to think. “Are you going to come back when I’m gone?” he asked.
“Yes,” she admitted. She couldn’t lie, and considering her holy mission, she didn’t think it would be a good idea anyway.
“And you’re not going to tell me why you’re here? Or where you came from?”
“My grandparents have a camp on this lake,” she obliged him.
“Oh, I see.” Michael’s face registered some satisfaction at extracting that bit of information from her.
“I’m...sorry about your aunt.
“Yes. Did you know her?”
“No. I think my grandparents did. They’ll be at the funeral.”
“Ah.”
She was very uncomfortable. Why wouldn’t he just let her leave?
“I won’t be here much longer,” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather wait inside?”
She gulped. “Alright,” she said, not wanting him to make a big deal of it, and he held the door open for her.
“Have a seat,” he said, indicating the boxes. “I wouldn’t sit on any of the chairs, if I were you. I’ll just be a minute.”
She watched nervously as he went into the bedroom. Did he have any idea what he was doing? Did he know what his aunt had been?
She listened carefully to the shuffling and rummaging that came from the open door. Nothing dreadful seemed to happen. Come to think of it, the creepy feeling of the house as a whole was considerably reduced. The cobwebs remained, but they failed to inspire a sense of fear. Something had changed, and she wasn’t happy about it. She walked cautiously toward the room that had sent her running only the day before. She stuck her head in. Nothing.
She was devastated. All this work, all the planning and anxiety, and staying up till all hours of the night, for nothing! The room smelled like mothballs, but there were no evil spirits inhabiting any corners, of that she was sure. She felt royally ripped off.
She pulled out of the doorway and went back to her box. In a few minutes, Michael appeared with a paper bag of shoes and clothing. “All ready!” he announced. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”
Determined to find out what had happened since she’d last encountered the house, Jesse began questioning Michael in the car. “So, were you and your aunt close?”
“No. She was my great-great-aunt, and she didn’t like company. I rarely saw her.”
“Did she have kids?”
“One. She lives in the States.”
“Is she selling the house?”
“The house belongs to my parents. They’re going to sell it.”
This was interesting. “You never saw her, but your parents let her live in their house?”
“It belonged to my grandparents,” he explained, “left to them by their parents. But Aunt Laura always claimed it was hers, and no one ever had the nerve to kick her out. She was scary, and a little nuts. She lived there for something like 50 years, outliving everybody.”
So far, so good. Aunt Laura was turning out to be quite interesting. “What do you mean, she was scary? Was she crazy?” Jesse asked.
Michael glanced at her as he drove. “Tell me when we get to your camp.”
“Oh, um, it’s the next drive. So, about your aunt?”
“Yeah, well, she was into a lot of weird stuff. My Mom used to say she was just superstitious, but I found a bunch of things in her house ... tarot cards, a Ouija board, and a bunch of other things I couldn’t recognize. All pretty Satanic-looking.”
“Satanic-looking?” Jesse repeated as the car came to a stop. “Are you allowed to say that?”
He shrugged. “Hey, that’s what they looked like to me. Satanic, if I ever saw it.”
Jesse knew she should let him go, but she was too close to getting some real answers. “Did you ever go in the house before she died?”
Michael looked at her, and she knew that he knew that she knew something. It was written all over his face. “Yes,” he said, slowly, “when I was a kid.”
She tried to say something, but couldn’t think of the right words.
“What about you?” he asked.
Jesse took off her seatbelt and turned in the seat to face him, excited but nervous. “You felt it?” she asked, sure from the look in his eyes that he had.
“I felt it,” he admitted. “A bookcase fell on me, and for no good earthly reason,” he said with significance. “It broke my arm and some ribs.”
“What about today?”
“Today I prayed hard before stepping in that house. And whatever it was, it wasn’t there anymore when I went in. I don’t know if it had anything to do with the prayer, or just the fact that Aunt Laura was dead.”
An owl hooted, and suddenly Jesse was very aware of the darkness surrounding the vehicle. “Do you want to come inside?” she asked.
They both realized they had some things to talk about. The cabin was bright at least, when they turned on some lights, and Jesse soon had a fire built out of the embers in the fireplace. When they were comfortably seated on opposing couches, Michael got her story out of her.
“So why did you go back?” Michael asked, dumbfounded. “And in the middle of the night, even, if you were so scared?”
Jesse was at a loss. “I have no comprehensible answer to that,” she said at last, with a sigh. “Call it stupidity.”
“Well it probably wasn’t the brightest thing you’ve ever done.”
“At least now I’ll be able to sleep, knowing it’s gone, whatever it was.”
“I’ve slept well for the past thirteen years, knowing it was still there,” he said.
Jesse couldn’t understand that. “It didn’t freak you out at all? Knowing there was something that powerful out there, and that evil?”
Michael shrugged. “I was a kid when it happened. I trusted God to protect me from evil spirits.”
Jesse almost accepted that answer, then she shook her head. “Wait a minute!” she said after thinking. “You just said a piece of furniture fell on you and broke bones! What do you mean, God will protect you? He let you get hurt! You might have died! How and why would you trust him to protect you after that?”
Michael was silent, and just looked at her sadly.
“Oh wait, I know this one,” she said, adopting a sarcastic tone. “You can trust him not to give you more than you can bear, right? Or what about this one: God disciplines those he loves. Maybe you did something bad that day, huh? And you just got what you deserved. Or maybe God was just trying to get your attention. Oh, but this one, this one’s my favourite,” she said with feeling, “ ‘All things work together for the good of those who love the Lord.’ Have you heard that one? Straight out of the Bible, God’s honest truth.”
After that speech, she felt like she should have a cigarette to take a shaky draught on. But since she wasn’t in a black and white movie, she just sat there, angrily, without so much drama.
Michael didn’t just sit there, though. Agitatedly, he got up and walked to the sliding glass doors, paused a second or two, and returned to the edge of his seat, leaning forwards. His smoky blue eyes were full of real sorrow when he looked at her.
“People said those things to you?”
She nodded. He sighed.
“I can never know what you went through,” he said. “I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. Sometimes people say things, meaning to help, and they don’t realize how painful their words are. They might be true, but often they aren’t applicable or meaningful. Only you can know why God let this happen to you. You’re the one experiencing it. Only you and God can work this out. You need to find your own reason to trust him again.”
Jesse held her head in her hands, willing herself not to cry.
“Maybe you’re being too logical,” Michael went on. “Trusting God isn’t logical, it’s crazy. According to human standards, you would have to be mad to trust him. Your mind rebels against it. It tells you that you will only be hurt again. It says that God abandoned you...but you know that’s not true. I know you know it, somewhere deep down, though it doesn’t make any sense. You know he’ll never leave you, that he never has. God isn’t disciplining you, and I know he never wanted this to happen to you. I don’t know why he let it happen, why he doesn’t intervene with a miracle every time evil people try to do evil things. But he is giving you the strength to hold up under it, and he’ll work something good out of it. Somehow, he will.”
Jesse had given up by the end of this speech, and was crying bitterly into her hands. “My faith always made sense! This doesn’t make any sense! This - just - hurts!”
She lifted her head from her hands, looking right at him, and she couldn’t keep it in anymore. “I’m so afraid,” she confessed. “I know God is good, I know that he loves me, I know he can protect me. But if this is what he calls protection, then I don’t feel safe.” She took a moment to collect herself, biting back tears and channelling a righteous anger. “David said, ‘Blessed are all who take refuge in him’. I took refuge in him,” she said angrily. “I trusted him! But the one time I needed him, he didn’t lift a finger to help me; and all I can think is, what is he going to let happen to me next?”
Michael had nothing more to say. Her misery, her fear and loneliness, went beyond anything he could comprehend, and he had to respect that. Nothing would be so unforgivable at this moment as preaching. He also had to keep his own feelings in check - which were telling him to hold her tight and offer that protection she thought she needed. She didn’t really need him right now, not in that way. She needed a friend, not some boy taking advantage of an emotional situation. Now it was his turn to put his head in his hands. If he couldn’t counsel her, and he couldn’t comfort her, what could he do? She had chosen to talk to him, maybe only because he happened to be connected with his aunt’s formerly demon-filled house, admittedly, but still, she was laying herself open before him. He couldn’t just walk away from her.
“He never let anything like this ever happen to me before.” Her fingers were linked behind her neck, her voice choked with too many tears shed. “I always thought,” she said, “that if I was good, if I always tried to follow him, I’d be happy; that if I found myself in a bad situation, it was because I’d done something wrong, made a wrong turn or something, stepped out of his will for my life. But I can’t see where I made a mistake. Should I not have been on the road that night? Should I not have joined that choir? Should I have been a friend to Jeremy? If staying in God’s will, if understanding it, is that hard, I can’t do it! It’s not possible! I don’t know what he wants from me!”
Michael couldn’t have been more relieved at the turn of conversation. Here he could speak freely.
“I know it’s not a popular view,” he said, “but I honestly don’t think we can step out of God’s will for our lives. If it’s God’s will, it’s going to happen. We may do things he doesn’t want us to, but he guides us if we’re looking, whether we know it or not, and he forgives us if we do make a mistake. He doesn’t just leave us to suffer the consequences of being human. God disciplines us to mold us, not to punish us. What happened to you is not your fault, and it wasn’t a punishment, I can tell you that much.”
“So it was just God’s will for me to be raped, is that what you’re saying?” she replied.
Michael was wordless.
“I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair,” she said. “That’s not what you meant.” She sighed. “But that’s what it sounds like, and that’s what I don’t understand. Why would that be God’s will? What kind of God is he?”
“Those are perfectly valid questions.”
For the first time that night, she sat back on the couch, worn out. Michael, too, relaxed, though unconsciously. They continued to talk through some issues, more calmly however. Soon Jesse was lying down on her couch, and talking about more mundane subjects, such as her family. Michael followed suit. Their answers gradually grew shorter, and Jesse’s eyelids were more often closed. When they failed to open, and at the same time she ceased speaking, for two minutes together, Michael got up, and finding a blanket and pillow in the side room, covered her with one and laid the other under her head. Turning off the lights, he was surprised to hear her speak.
“Don’t leave,” she murmured, as though in her sleep; indeed, without opening her eyes.
So he couldn’t. He locked the door, got another blanket and pillow, and took his place on the other couch. Was there anything else he could do?

He woke up while it was still dark, alert to sounds of distress. For a moment he didn’t know where he was, until he recognized Jesse’s voice. He had barely to roll off the couch and he was kneeling by her in the dark, and caught her hand. She was thrashing about, crying and calling in her sleep, words strung together without making any sense, but somehow their meaning was clear.
“Jesse!” he called to her. “Jesse! Wake up! It’s a dream! It’s only a dream.” She only struggled harder against him, eyes shut tight as though to hide from some terror, and wrenched her arm free of his grasp.
“Jesse!” he yelled louder, taking her shoulders and shaking her. She was going to hurt herself if he didn’t wake her soon, but he didn’t know how. She resisted every attempt he made, and only seemed to be getting worse. He was considering a glass of cold water, when suddenly, her eyes were open, and staring at him.
He did take her in his arms, then, and held her as he would have held a child, saying soothing words and rocking her gently. Now that she was awake, she did not cry, but she leaned her head on his shoulder and clung desperately to his shirt, until she was asleep again.

Morning found them both in better spirits; Jesse in particular. In the light of day, overcast and rainy as it was, what had seemed the very end of the world only the night before, now did not appear so tragic. She spent an hour or two in the sunroom quite serenely reading Job. When Michael finally woke up, and found her at it, he asked her how she liked the book. She replied that it confused her terribly, but at the moment she found parts of it very helpful. He was mollified by her change of spirits. She thanked him, somewhat self-consciously, for listening to her the night before, he assured her it was nothing, and then he left. She didn’t need him anymore.