“No, this is my responsibility,” she protested.
“Logan, please. This investigation will require a lot of time and work and it’ll be here when you get back.” She began to object but he put up his hands and interrupted her, “You need some time off. Scott can take care of it.” Noticing her disappointment, he knew she wanted to work her way through the remorse even though it wasn’t her fault and couldn’t have been prevented.
“I’ve got another idea,” he suggested. “I’ll call the families and start the initial investigation. You can continue when you come back. You haven’t had a vacation in forever and this will help clear your mind.”
She wanted to argue because she really felt it was her job to handle the audit with Scott. But Bill put up his hands again, “Logan, I have the final say in this.”
She stared at the floor for a long time, grieving over the tragedy.
“Go”, he said tenderly, pointing to the door.
She stood up and walked a few steps, turning to face him. He could see her lips quivering. “Thanks.”
Sitting down at her desk, attempting to read through some of the messages, tears blurred her vision. She noticed co-workers politely avoiding eye contact as they walked past and thought ‘this is no use’.
She was taking this far too personally. Again, she remembered her parents. How she wished they were still alive! Logan felt the tears begin to well up but she willed herself not to think about them, knowing it would only make her sink deeper into depression.
Finally, she made up her mind and decided to send an e-mail message to Bill and the other employees announcing her intention to take a short trip to Brown County. Just a one-hour drive from Indianapolis, it would be good for her to be in the ‘hills of Brown County’ again. Her parents had a cabin on Sweetwater Lake and she hadn’t been there in a while.
She smiled faintly, remembering how much she loved that place, only good memories, until the accident…Then, making a decision to forego the cabin, go camping instead, she realized it was still painful to bring up the happier times. With e-mail typed and sent, grabbing her purse and hastily leaving the building before she could change her mind, her plan to take a trip to the lake, while a snap decision, was a wise one.
Before her parents’ accident, Logan had spent some time roaming around that part of the state and it had become a sanctuary for her; in the past her inner radar led her there, to one of her favorite places to be alone with nature, to meditate. Making plans to leave, she drove home, but first she would attend Jake Turner’s funeral.
* * * * *
When Logan entered the mortuary, she was shocked to see so few mourners in the tiny chapel, and, as she signed the guest registry in the entry hall, she heard several people murmuring about the front-page news in the paper that morning.
Jake had been identified as a suspect in several thefts at the bank, but Bill had been very careful during the interview with the reporter not to name Logan as the person who discovered the missing money.
However, Linda, the secretary, had also been interviewed, divulging that Logan had made the initial phone call to set up the appointment with Jake. Someone on the newspaper staff found a photo of her, taken when she was promoted at the bank, and put it in the article.
A reporter had made several calls to her apartment that morning but she didn’t answer the phone. Her voice mail was full of messages to call him but she ignored them all.
Steadfastly avoiding eye contact with anyone, she walked into the chapel and saw the closed casket. Guilt flooded through her. She sat down in the back, hoping to maintain anonymity. She looked at Jake’s parents sitting in the front row. It was obvious from their faces that they were unaware of what he had done until today. They sat there, grief-stricken and in shock. Logan felt compassion for them. After all he was their only child; she was an only child too and remembered how much her parents had doted on her.
“Can you believe it!” someone whispered from the pew in front of her.
“I knew he had been acting strangely the last few months, but I had no idea. I always thought Jake would be the next partner,” another voice responded.
“Yeah, but look at the expensive car he drove…and that apartment! I couldn’t afford the lifestyle… just being out of law school and everything. I thought maybe his parents had money, but doesn’t look like it.”
The conversation continued but was lost on Logan. She hung her head, feeling for the family, relating to their sorrow, and assuming some fault for his death.
As soon as the short service ended, Logan left without giving condolences to Jake’s parents as blame continued to gnaw at her. Envisioning them recognizing her (even though she had taken care to wear a hat and keep her head down) and condemning her for the role she played in their son’s death, she scurried out of the funeral home, wishing she could tell them how sorry she was.
She could not get the picture of his last moments on earth out of her mind; the horror of it all made the picture even more vivid.
* * * * *
But, his last moments on earth were inconsequential, if the truth was known. What mattered was what Jake Turner faced after he left earth. The afterlife, Heaven, Hell, Borderland--that was what was important to him now. Borderland, the temporary residence, home to all after death, until their fate is judged and designation given.
No human could understand or even begin to imagine what awaited their arrival. For some, it was a joyful reunion with loved ones, reward for a good life on earth. For others, it was time to meet the Maker, atone for sins, face eternity in Hades.
Jake could not picture it...and maybe that was a good thing…for his fate was terrible and unimaginable. No one would want to experience it; judgment swift, his journey ended in the inferno.
Voices invaded his consciousness and swarmed around him, muffled yet rising in a cacophony. Forced to open his eyes, slowly, cautiously, not knowing, dread filling him, he sensed rather than saw the new environment. But, vision sharpened and he began to absorb the strangeness of the place, saw shapes forming in his line of sight, and, as the drug-induced fog enveloping his brain began to lift, he found himself staring at some of the doomed inhabitants in disgust and fear.
A conjectured stench of decaying flesh hit him. The shapes continued to form, clawing at Jake in sickening enthusiasm, welcoming him to the Dark land. Fighting to free himself from their grip…and eternal damnation…overcome with despair, he let out a groan that rose to a thunderous, terrifying scream. The noise escaped into the air surrounding him, momentarily halting the tugging and clawing.
Twisting, whipping about, trying to free himself from the ghoulish crowd who were eager to have him join their ranks, he rose, as if pulled by some unseen force, not yet realizing the full extent of his freedom to move, shaky, still adapting to his transformation from a physical body to an ethereal one.
The gathering of spirits grew, circling around him like lions stalking their prey. Surveying the group, distrusting, he wondered, where am I? What is this place? Thoughts raced and he came to the startling recollection. I’m dead! I killed myself! Flashing back to that moment…he was no longer living; he was a spirit, beyond saving, destined to live in an ungodly place, reviewing the unspeakable act of suicide forever.
Pulsating with vile energy, growing, spreading throughout the throng, wickedness floating closer and closer, Jake immediately sensed the intent…they planned to make him one of their own, consume him into their foul, teeming, ever-expanding pool of malevolence.
Quickly lurching forward and upward, attempting to escape the mass of hellish fiends, his legs feeling tingly, much like a person who experiences an amputation of a limb and continues to feel what is no longer there, he had the