Page 171 of The End of the World As We Know It

Abagail Freemantle could only hold her breath, count to three, and continue about her work. The stink of death filled the room like a fetid incense. The dim flame of the gas lamp flickered in an unfelt breeze. Close and cramped, the narrow bed and her chair were all that could fit in the converted linen closet. This young man, who could have been her brother or son, lay dying. And she was powerless.

In the past year, the Great Influenza had swept across the planet, attacking healthy people like this young man more often than the elderly or young. It started with a sore throat, chills, and a fever, but ended with ravaged lungs within the husk of a body. The pandemic had killed millions, so the newspapers said, but was slowly beginning to ebb. Abagail volunteered for the St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church, just down the road from her place in Hemingford Home, in the nearby freetown Speese. They had set up clinics for treating flu victims. While the big cities recovered, rural places laggedbehind without the proper resources. But they had each other and the Lord and that was enough. Most days.

People struggled, going through the motions that things had returned to what they could call normal. But the fear remained underneath it all.

Abagail watched him sleep. She held the space with him, carving out a spiritual siege-wall against the intractable disease. Unable to abide the silence—broken only by the raspy, desperate inhalation and labored coughs—she took her patient’s hand. Beads of sweat glistened along his ashen skin. A pang of guilt thumped at her insides, knowing the flu had no power over her. She focused on being God’s hands to wipe the young man’s tears, dab his forehead, and comfort him where she could. His Bible lay spread on the sheets next to him, the open pages mocking him. And her.

Stirring, he groaned as if the weight of the sheets pressed too hard on him.

“You think God has abandoned us, don’t you?” she asked.

“Don’t you?” Half turning from her, he coughed. Flecks of blood sprayed the sheets, his lungs completely eaten up worse than if he had the white plague.

“The Lord don’t owe us an explanation for why He does what He does. I’m satisfied with what God told Moses.I Am Who I AM.His name all the answer one needed.” Beyond question. Most days. When someone received answers likeI Am, there was no point in questioning. Maybe that was the point. But that left so much room for doubt. “Here’s what I know: While we’re here, we have to serve. To do our part.”

“I wish I had your faith.”

“You’re tired. Let me believe enough for the both of us.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.” His attempted smile faltered, a broken crack along his face.

“You hush now. Save your strength by not arguing with me.”She prayed as if she could push health from her soul to his by sheer force of faith.

He shivered, trapped in the terrible chill of death’s shadow. His eyes, dulled by fever and fatigue, searched for her. “I have something to confess.”

“What is it, baby?” She patted his hand, uncomfortable in the role of mother confessor.

The young man rose up on his elbows as best he could, his arms buckling under the effort. His tone lowered into a conspiratorial scrape. “I see him.”

“See who?” Abagail leaned closer.

“The man whose face was hidden by the shadow of the moon.” He faded in and out of consciousness. His breathing grew shallow, his cadence cracked with delirium. “He’s coming for you. For all of us.”

No, not delirium—or if it was, it was a shared fever dream—since Abagail had also dreamed of this Moon Shadow Man, a figure who existed like a word forever at the tip of her tongue without being named. Even when she was alone, in the night, in the cold of the wind, lost in a barren place, he was there. Just out of sight, just out of reach, always watching. Always waiting. Abiding. The Moon Shadow Man first approached Abagail in a dream. A dream with the strength of memory.

In the early morning light, Abagail Freemantle looked toward Hemingford Home. The folks back in Boulder busied themselves with building a new life for themselves after the ravages of the superflu plague. Ignoring the real struggle. No, they were meant to stand against the gathering forces of darkness. Against him. Beyond the nightmares, they had no idea who they were up against, but she understood what he could do. The returning darkness was almost upon them—if indeed it had even truly left them—but they weren’t ready.Shewasn’t ready.

She was no longer able to feel God’s presence. No longer able to heed His call. She felt like she had been praying into a dead phone. She’d lost that which was most precious, her sense of her Father’s good pleasure. “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.” She had offended God (with her doubts). She hated to disappear on them. It felt cruel to just leave them a note, but she didn’t have time for lengthy explanations or long-winded discussions. Her soul was in jeopardy. She had to leave. While the folks in Boulder slept, she had to rekindle what she once had, that connection.

I must be gone a bit now. I’ve sinned and presumed to know the Mind of God.

My sin has been PRIDE, and He wants me to find my place in His work again.

I will be with you again soon if it is God’s Will.

—Abby Freemantle

She’d lost track of time. It could have been hours, days, or weeks since she left on her pilgrimage of fasting and prayer. To have her spirit sifted. She stopped beneath the ragged shadow of the Witness Tree. Centuries old, having seen countless stories, things she hadn’t imagined, it bore the marks of history. Its bark charred black, its branches spindly and skeletal.

“Show me my sin, Lord. I don’t know. I’ve gone and missed something you meant for me to see.”

His message delivered, the young man convulsed, the rack of coughs spasming his body. His hand tightened on hers to ride out the pain. He wrapped his other hand over hers, holding on until his grip slackened, the last of his strength fleeing into the night on an angel’s wing.

The room reeked of grief and despair. Abagail closed the door behind her. When she went outside, schoolgirls jumped rope to their ode to the “three-day fever” they started calling the “purple death.”

“I had a little bird and its name was Enza. I opened the window and in-flew-Enza.”

The world was falling apart, judgment was inevitable.