The Proselyte

THE PROSELYTE

By J.Z. Leister

Edited by Randi Leister and Laura Stille

Copyright 2018 Jacob Leister

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hardwork of this author.

This book is dedicated to my King and my family. To my King for His gifts. To my family for their patience and support.

10% of all proceeds from this book will directly support Family Keys International. The Leister family living in Eldoret, Kenya have given their lives for the aliens, orphans, and windows of East Africa, shining the true light into the darkness. For more information on how you can get involved in that work visit www.familykeysint.com.

Chapter 1

But if thine eye be wicked, thy whole body will be dark

Caedmon squeezed through a tree-choked wall of dense foliage and into a clearing like a glowing ember shoved through a thicket. His light shone bright and cut an arc through the vast area of darkness in front of him. A wide stream of grass, flowing left to right and tall enough to reach the waist of his tunic, covered the ground. The gentle breeze created waves that rippled through the stalks, chasing each other back and forth, from one side to the other.

On the other side of this expanse, on the far bank of the grass, rose an uneven wall of gigantic buildings made of steel and concrete. They were unlike any buildings he had ever seen, outside of this dream. They had sharp corners and clearly defined edges. They looked advanced in their construction, far beyond that of the low hovels he was used to, but antiquated and shabby.

The windows of the structures were dark openings leering down at him like hundreds of judgmental eyes. They were layered with dust and their framework was worn with time. From the casings, the paint had been mostly scaled away.

The walls were time discolored cement and mold encrusted mortar and rusty, dank iron shone through in random locations where the outer cement had caved away. They supported green vines, twisting this way and that in decades of growth, spreading across the old structures.

To his right there stood a great wall. It was unlike the buildings, in that it had no windows, but it too was made of concrete and had the same modern, decrepit look. It rose straight up from the ground like a jagged cliff. Somehow, as is the case in dreams, Caedmon knew it extended for miles in a great arc along the ground, past the reach of his light in front and behind him, a barrier standing silent in the darkness.

Across the clearing, his eye caught some movement and his stomach turned. He had relived this nightmare many times, through many nights. Before his eyes focused on them, he knew it was a husband and wife with their young child between them. They were frantically fleeing. The were not fleeing the dark nor some unseen enemy, but from him. They were fleeing from him and his light, running along the small path between the stream of grass and the backdrop of buildings.

The family stopped abruptly and looked across to him. Their feet skidded to a stop in the loose gravel, sending a shower of small pebbles down the path. He could see the horror in their faces when they realized he and the light shining from his chest had emerged from the forest. The mother bent over and spoke soothing words to the child. Caedmon's light cast their dark, shadowed figures across the front face of the buildings. Their chests heaved from fear and fatigue.

Caedmon opened his mouth wide, his muscles tightened, and his face turned red trying to cry out with words that would comfort them, but his mouth was dumb and the words wouldn't come. No matter how much he struggled to speak, no sound passed his lips.

How can I tell them that my light is different? he thought, how can I let them know? I am not the Light! Isn't my light different?

Without having to see it, he knew how this ended, and though he struggled against the inevitable, he could do nothing to stop it. The family turned and fled from him and his light. He wished them no harm, but against his will, he started to pursue. Even while his legs pushed him forward, his heart ached for what was about to happen.

The young family ran. They ran in front of the many buildings. The father bounded up each small porch, pulling on every door, but found them all to be locked fast. With every failed attempt, he grew more determined, resolutely leading his family down the stairs and to the next one. They reached the last building in the row, the closest one to the giant wall, and to the father's surprise the door was hanging open.

Even compared to the dilapidated look of the others, this last building seemed to be in shambles. Due to age or damage, one side of its foundations had crumbled. Instead of rising straight into the air, the whole structure leaned precariously toward the great wall next to it. Of the many floors that had once risen to great heights, only the bottom half remained standing. Caedmon could see the top floors had broken off and fallen over the wall. Even some of what was left, with its jagged edges and bent steel beams, hung over the upper rim of the wall, as if it too wanted to follow the floors that used to rise above it.

The desperate father didn't see the broken structure. He didn't notice the rhombus-shaped door opening. He didn't give the leaning hallway that was inside a second thought. He only saw an open door and an opportunity for his family to escape the approaching light. Without hesitation, they retreated into the dark doorway. Their muffled cries and pounding footfalls echoed deep into the building's interior.

Caedmon had now crossed half of the open grass field. The green sea parted before him and closed quickly behind him at every step. His light was shining even brighter now as he continued the chase. It was not the dull light that normally shined from him, but intense like the Light. It lit up everything in front of him. Shadows of the individual heads of grain bounced on the leaning building before him. It brightly lit up the edge of the grass, the small beaten path, the front steps, and the doorway as he followed the family through it.

When Caedmon entered, all was silent except the echo of their running feet, sounding back to him through the tilted corridor. He pursued. How can I explain that I wish them no harm? The sloping stone floor was so smooth and covered in dust, his balance was difficult to keep as he ran. A long hallway of strange objects - furniture, boxes, and ceiling tiles - were strewn across its entire length, further impeding his progress. Most of the objects had come to rest in an uneven heap on the lowest corner where the smooth floor kept trying to send him.

He raced down the hallway, slipping and sliding, tripping and recovering. Finally, he emerged from the corridor like he had emerged from the forest, moments before. But instead of a sea of grass in front of him, there was a great expanse of the same smooth, tilted floor that was in the hallway. His light illuminated great marble pillars that rose perpendicular from the stone floor, but far from plumb, to support the high ceiling above.

Before he could stop himself, he shot out of the corridor like a ball out of a cannon and slid out onto the floor and down the slope to the right. From their tracks left in the layer of dust that had collected over the years, Caedmon surmised the young family must have had the same experience. Following their tracks, he made his way, supporting himself from pillar to pillar, across the expanse. Fighting against the slick floor, he moved slowly but steadily. He caught sight of them again just as they reached the far corner of the great room.

At this end of the building, the ceiling opened up completely, creating a giant atrium rising and leaning in the darkness. What seemed like an endless wall of dusty windows jutted up diagonally into the air on the far side. Many of the glass panes were missing and others were severely cracked. The windows rose for more than 20 floors and then, just as he had seen from the outside, they came to an abrupt, jagged end. He could hear the breeze blowing across the top of the building and it created a throbbing moan that vibrated the air around them.

The young family was frantically climbing the wall to escape. Caedmon followed their smudged trail as it transitioned from the floor to the wall of windows. He could hear the sound of their bare hands, knees, and feet squeaking against the glass. He crossed the atrium in pursuit, his light pushing back the darkness as he moved.

The mother and father were almost to the top of the incline, the father gently pulling, the mother gently pushing their child along. They were climbing as quickly as they could, while trying to avoid the missing panes. Caedmon arrived at the base of the wall and his light shone brightly upon the climbers, casting unnaturally long shadows in front of them. Cries of renewed terror fell on Caedmon's ears as the family saw these dark figures leading the way.

Leave us alone! came the voice of the father.

I'm trying! I can't stop! Caedmon tried to yell, but again, the desperate words in his mind were not vocalized. He stood at the base of the windows, waiting for the inevitable end to this chase. The same end he had witnessed many times before.

More dusty windows were smudged as they climbed higher and higher. Making his next move, the father put his weight on a glass pane in front of him, but it shattered under the pressure. His momentum forward sent him off balance, nearly causing him to fall through. He jerked his body back, but overreacted and his feet lost their grip. He started to slide. Unable to stop, he slid back into his wife and child. The mother braced herself to arrest his movement, but she couldn't take the blow. She lost her grip and all three picked up speed, and they squealed down the glass wall toward Caedmon.

As they slipped down from pane to pane, the child drifted away from his mother’s protective embrace. She reached and he reached, but she could not grasp his little hand. It happened so fast. The body of the small child slid over a window frame, but this frame had no glass stretched across it. In an instant, he fell out of sight, swallowed up by the darkness outside. Before his curly head was lost in the black, his mother saw a look of helpless terror fill his face. A faint cry was the last thing they heard from him.

The mother's heart stopped. She made one last, frantic lunge, but he was already gone.

Noooooo! she screamed until her voice broke.

The couple continued their rapid descent toward Caedmon. They never stopped reaching back for their child, no longer concerned about the light waiting for them at the bottom.

In the scene, Caedmon could see a look of malice forming on his own face while they slid toward him. It actually looked like he was enjoying their terror. That's not me! he thought, I don't want to hurt them! That's not my light!

The light in his chest grew in intensity and the boundary of its glare increased in size. Like a growing, blinding white orb, it expanded outward. It grew too bright to look at and he lost sight of himself within it. Soon the couple also slid into the growing orb and it swallowed them whole. The whole scene - glass wall, stone floor, concrete pillars - were filled with the Light now. Out from the middle of the glare, where the parents had disappeared, came a cry of pain from the father, then a dull thud, followed by a low eerie wail.

Then everything went black.

Caedmon jolted from his sleep with a cry. Beads of sweat rolled off his forehead. His heart was pounding and his chest heaved violently.

He surged forward to a sitting position in his bed, appalled by the memory of the dream. Feelings of remorse and shame sucked the air out of his lungs. He pushed the tears away from his eyes with the palms of his hands. He stifled a sob.

Although it was not his first dream of this kind, his mind raced with how real it still was to him. He was shocked by the horror and pain he felt for the family. He remembered the little boy’s face before he fell into the darkness and his eyes welled up with tears again.

He was the cause of their pain. He chased them. His light led to their end.

No! he said out loud. It isn't true. That wasn't my light. I'm not like that.

He looked around the room in an effort to fill his mind with anything other than those images: the Light, his light swallowing them, the mother’s cry, the boy’s face. Caedmon got up from his bed and rapidly paced the short length of his room. He smacked his head with open hands like a drum, trying to force the images out. His puckered expression showed the desperate battle raging inside him.

It was impossible to know how long he had been sleeping, but he was sure sleep would not return again during this sleep period. He stopped pacing and knelt down next to his bed. He reached under the grass mat and pulled out a small mirror. Sitting down, he held it in front of him. It was not a very clear reflection, but it was enough to show the wearied face looking back at him. Sometimes this reflection was the only thing that helped relax him after these episodes. The reflection of his own eyes helped firm up his loosening grip on reality. It took his mind off the nightmare and he started to calm down.

In the small mirror, he saw himself. Sunk to the floor. His head leaned back against the wall above his bed. His face was still wet from the sweaty anxiety of his dream. His brown, wavy hair was matted against his wet forehead and his light brown eyes looked into themselves. His nose was covered in freckles, the same tone as his hair.

His brow was still pushed together with a look of worry. The worry of an unsolved riddle or unanswered question. His legs were crossed in front of him, covered with britches made from a rough canvas material. His feet stuck out the ends, calloused and bruised from years of hard labor.

Again, he forced himself to relax.

He wore no shirt, revealing a lightly complected, small frame with lean, well defined muscles. His shoulders were dotted with freckles like his nose. His chest was still rising and falling with his deep breaths and his heart was still thumping inside it, but starting to slow.

From the middle of his chest came a dim glow. His light. An area the size of his fist at the base of his throat and just under the skin, pulsed slightly with every heartbeat. This little area was the cause of his nightmares. It was the cause of his confusion about the Light. He didn’t know how or why, but this light had been a part of him as long as he could remember.

It was by this light Caedmon had seen everything he had ever seen. This light had shown him so many beautiful things. Surely it did not have the same source as the Light his people feared and hated so much, the Light that had horrified and tortured that young family.

With a great effort he forced his mind to drift further from the dream. He turned his body slowly and his light swung a slow arc around the room.

His dim glow illuminated a small square room that was simple and tidy. His grass mat lay on the floor in front of him. Roughly made bamboo shelves stood in the corner holding a few changes of clothes. Just beyond the end of his bed was the doorway. It was covered with a heavy, coarsely cut burlap sheet, the same material that covered his legs, that hung from wooden stakes above the jamb.

His parents, Seth and Mary, had faithfully raised him in an environment of hate and fear of the Light. They followed the teachings of their Elders: that the Light was an all-knowing, all-powerful force that stole their friends, killed their heroes, and destroyed the fruits of their labor. As one of Those Who Walk In The Dark, Caedmon knew he should harbor the same feelings toward it.

We are haters of the Light? All light? Is that true? he thought. Do I hate this light shining from my chest?

Now, and at many times recently, tucking his chin and looking down at the light shining from his own chest, he was sure they couldn't be right. Could they?

As far as he knew, he was a child of Those Who Walk In The Dark. These people and this culture had been the only one he could remember, but he was not the same as they were. They neither shared his ability to see nor had lights like the one that shone from him. These differences had always been there and his parents knew this full well, but neither he nor they had any idea how or why. In their eyes, he was just an outlier, a mutation, a break from the norm. The light that shone from his chest and his ability to see were foreign concepts to them, and yet, they called him son.

When he was younger, he accepted everything his parents taught him about the Light, the darkness, his people, and his home. The catechism of the blind was a thorough and continuous one, but that unchallenged trust had faded in recent years. As he approached the age of seventeen, he realized that the truth about the Light was more complex than what they had told him. The truth may have been more complex than what they, or maybe even what the Elders, knew.

It was not that he loved what they called the Light, that could never be possible. His dreams and the stories he heard of its stealing, killing, and destroying made it impossible. He had seen the horror in people's faces when they retold their encounters with it; it was a horror too genuine to doubt. He had heard the Elders’ warnings about walking alone or straying from the paths.

He had even seen that Light for himself one time. He was just a little boy and looking out the front door of the house, when out of the corner of his eye he saw it. The Light. He timidly walked to the opening. He saw the Light was shining down on one of the paths far off in the distance. Its glow was beautiful to him. Mesmerizing. The pillar of Light lit up the gravel of the path, the rocks lining the path, and even some of the pale green turf outside the path. It took Caedmon’s breath away to see such an intense light, so much brighter than his own.

Caedmon was about to walk out toward it, but stopped when heard the sounds of someone running frantically in the distance. Suddenly, out of the darkness, a woman came into the reach of the Light. Caedmon could see she wore what he later learned were the garments of a field worker. He could see the fear in her face as she ran and stumbled toward her home, completely unaware of the Light shining on her. In the intense beam, he could clearly see the particles of fine dust she kicked up and the nervous sweat reflecting off her face.

In one moment, she was running full speed along the path and in the next, as if by an invisible force, she was lifted off her feet and shot high into the air. A sharp scream barely reached his ears before it was quickly cut off by the distance and the darkness. Caedmon saw the vacant look in her eyes and watched her rise to what he thought was an impossible height, and then, as quickly as it came, the Light went out. He turned to tell his mother what he saw, but she shushed him and pulled him sternly away from the door.

We never discuss such things, was all she ever said about it.

No, his present nagging doubts didn't develop from a distrust of the stories told, from those who experienced them, or even from the Elders’ teachings. The doubts he wrestled with always rose from a deep, unshakable conviction that what they called the Light could not possibly be the only light. Otherwise, how could he explain his light?

He knew there was another side to it they were not able or, maybe, not willing to recognize. He could see the other side though. His light had shown him things his parents knew nothing about, that the Elders knew nothing about. Amazing things. Wonderful things. It gave him hope that there was more out there than just this dark existence. And yet, he wondered how something so full of wonder and beauty could cause so much pain?

Those Who Walk In The Dark only knew the evil it represented. They didn't know the good, and from his parents' perspective, they didn't want to.

Throughout his life, Caedmon had been told the Light was a source of evil and that he must hate it. However, in doing so, it meant he must also hate a part of himself, a part he physically could not separate from himself. His parents, the Elders, and his other fellow citizens hated the Light and thought it so evil, but light was within him, shining from him. Because of that, for so long he believed he must be evil too. He grew up loathing himself for being different, but he wanted that to change. He just didn't know how to do it.

A child only knows what is. Their truth is limited to their immediate experience. A fish is unable to recognize the water it swims in. It doesn't know if it's dirty or clean, or if it's the ocean or a river or a lake. The water is so much a part of the fish's experience, it can't see it or describe it. As water is for a fish, the home is for a child. Their experience is the water they swim in. Caedmon was longing to see beyond his, but struggling to do so.

Because of the shame this environment created, he was scared to talk to his parents about his light. When he finally brought it up, years ago, his parents fought for three days.

I told you it was a mistake to bring him here! He would hear Seth say.

"I needed him. We needed him," Mary would respond.

After the fighting ended, his dad told Caedmon it was only a stage and warned him to keep his light to himself. When Caedmon persisted, his dad punished him with lashings, and forbid him to ever speak of it again.

With tears running down his face and feeling even more confused, the little boy retreated to his room. Since that day, over ten years ago, he had kept his feelings and his light to himself. He spent all those years in silence about it, not entrusting his secret to anyone. His parents even seemed to forget he ever brought it up.

And then, in the last weeks, he started having these dreams. They brought his confusion and frustration back up to the surface again, leaving him longing to tell someone. Yesterday, he mustered all his courage and brought it up again to his parents after he came home from his community task.

They were headed to their room to change for their leisure period when he blurted out, I want to talk about my light.

Seth immediately began to pace with agitation and his mother sank into a chair. The visible shock that shone on their faces immediately told him he had made a mistake. He was met with criticism and mockery from his dad and sad pleading from his mom. He felt like he stood in front of them again as a seven year old boy, full of shame.

The toll of a distant bell broke in on Caedmon's thoughts and brought him back to his bedroom. He was still holding the mirror in front of him. He crawled off his bed and slowly slid the mirror back under his grass mat. He stayed there, on his knees. To Caedmon, the mirror was a priceless possession. It was the only one he had ever seen and if his parents found it, not knowing what it was, they would certainly take it, destroy it, and probably punish him for having it.

The bell toll continued in the far distance. Now, at the beginning of the day, he was supposed to recite the prayer of the blind again. He closed his eyes and bowed his head.

"My world is darkness.

My people are Those Who Walk In The Dark.

We are born of darkness, in rebellion to the Light.

The Light only exists to steal and kill and destroy.

We are haters of the Light."

Caedmon said the prayer mechanically, kneeling beside the grass mat that was his bed. It was the same nightly prayer that all of Those Who Walk In The Dark recited. It was taught to him at a young age, as it was to every child. The prayer represented their most basic laws. They believed it to be their deepest truth. It governed their lives, dictated their days and nights, ruled their thoughts and filled them with a determination to hate the Light.

Kneeling there, Caedmon realized, after all these years, it had been reduced to empty words for him. To his parents and the rest of his people, the prayer was the foundation for their thoughts, emotions, and collective will. To most of Those Who Walk In The Dark it was a continual reminder of why they existed and who their daily enemy was. It was the reason they got out of bed every day, and it was the final thought that put them to sleep every night. To them, the darkness was their life, and the Light only led to death.

Caedmon opened his eyes after finishing the prayer, but stayed on the dirt floor, thinking deeply about the words he had just said. He stared down at the dim light that shone from his chest with polarized feelings of contempt and affection. It shined clear and white and pulsated slightly with every beat of his heart.

The bell was still tolling. It came sooner than he was expecting. He slept longer than he realized. Soon, his parents would be home and he would have to leave for the bell tower, winding it up for its next toll.

He stood up and grabbed his shirt from the table in the corner. The face of the little boy from his dream flashed through his mind again. He stopped, arm outreached, hand squeezing the shirt harder than necessary, eyes pressed closed. With a great exercise of will, he stuffed the mental image back into those rooms of his heart where painful memories go. He slipped the shirt on, but kept the collar open to leave himself some light. The intense darkness of this world made it impossible to see without it.

Chapter 2

This is your hour, and the power of darkness

The sound of the soldiers fading in the distance was a victorious sound for two young people. A young man and young woman tucked themselves back into the recesses of the small hollow of a large mound. The mound was now mostly earth, but at one time, had been mostly a man-made structure and long before that, it had been a new, sturdy building with wide roll-up doors.

Their hearts were in their throats and the blood pumped loudly in their ears. It was a close call. Their mission had been to penetrate the wall through an entrance well-known and well-used by their people. Now, that entrance was blocked, destroyed by the retreating soldiers and they would have to find another way.

This was not an uncommon theme in the history of their people. Over the years the entrances were getting fewer and more difficult to find. However, the mission stayed the same and these two messengers were undaunted by this minor setback.

The young woman could not see the young man's face through the pitch black darkness, but she knew the brows would be pulled together and the premature wrinkles in his forehead would be rippling above them. This was his thinking face, because like her, he was trying to remember the next closest entrance they could employ.

With no need for words, the two began to creep out of their hiding place as one. They stopped after a couple of steps and listened closely. Their ears penetrated the dark void around them. If darkness reigned in this part of the wilderness, silence was heir to the throne. Not a sound could be heard besides the almost imperceptible flow of dry breath moving in and out of their airways and the gurgling of a river close by.

They took a few more furtive steps away from the safety of their hollow.

Suddenly, with a flash of light, the sharp hiss of an arrow, and the cursing at a missed opportunity, they knew they had been found. Not all the soldiers had retreated and their choice of hiding in the mound might not have been as smart as they thought.

A quick glance informed them there were two soldiers, one fitting another arrow to his bow and the other holding out a large shining crystal and looking very displeased at the first for the sin of his initial shot. The targets for these arrows, the two young people, were not waiting to see if the follow-up shot would hit its mark. They both, in perfect harmony, bolted through the thick forest to put as much of it between them and the bow as they could as fast as they could.

As they ran, the young woman realized that, while they were running away from the two soldiers shooting at them, they were also running toward the larger group that had retreated not too long before. Just as this thought shot through her consciousness, the sound of another arrow sung out of the darkness they were running into.

She felt the hair on the side of her head tug slightly, pulled into the contrail of the narrowly missing projectile. Before they could react, another zipped through the air toward them from the archer behind, and this one's sharp head cut through the young man's tunic and sliced a small incision into the flesh of his triceps.

Again they moved in unison, this time cutting to their left, veering from the frontal assault. Their new path was leading them away from the first two assailants and away from the larger group, but was leading them right to the base of the giant wall they had intended, but were unable, to penetrate. The problem they faced now, was the lack of known entrances in the direction they hurtled themselves.

Lights from the two groups shown brightly behind them, causing their shadows to dance in front of them as they ran, telling the young people they were being pursued. In just a few moments, they would cover the distance to the wall and they would be trapped between it and their pursuers. Trapped with no more hope than being on the receiving end of a firing squad. With no other option, they pushed forward through the hanging branches and low growing bushes.

They pushed through the final clump of foliage and their hands slapped hard against the shear, stone structure, bringing them to an abrupt,