Piercing the Darkness Read online

  Piercing the Darkness

  This sequel to This Present Darkness follows the supernatural battle over the small town of Bacon’s Corner, where, once again, armies of angels and demons are at war. Sally Beth Roe is trying to escape her past and struggling to find the truth, while Tom Harris finds himself embroiled in a battle to save a Christian school threatened by outside forces.

  Frank Peretti

  With more than 12 million novels in print, Frank Peretti is nothing short of a publishing phenomenon and has been called “America’s hottest Christian novelist.” The Oath (Word Publishing 1995), sold more than half a million copies within the first six months of release. The Visitation (Word Publishing 1999), was #1 on the CBA Fiction Bestseller list for four months. Peretti is a natural storyteller who, as a youngster in Seattle, regularly gathered the neighborhood children for animated storytelling sessions. After graduating from high school, he began playing banjo with a local bluegrass group. He and his wife were married in 1972, and Peretti soon moved from touring with a pop band to launching a modest Christian music ministry. Peretti later spent time studying English, screen writing and film at UCLA and then assisted his father in pastoring a small Assembly of God church. In 1983, he gave up his pastoring position and began taking construction jobs to make ends meet. While working at a local ski factory, he began writing This Present Darkness, the book that would catapult him into the public eye. After numerous rejections from publishers and a slow start in sales, word-of-mouth enthusiasm finally lifted This Present Darkness onto a tidal wave of interest in spiritual warfare. The book appeared on Bookstore Journal’s bestseller list every month for more than eight years. Peretti’s two spiritual warfare novels, This Present Darkness (1998) and Piercing the Darkness (1989), captivated readers, together selling more than 3.5 million copies. The Oath was awarded the 1996 Gold Medallion Award for best fiction. Frank Peretti and his wife, Barbara Jean, live in the Western U.S. In spite of sudden fame and notoriety, Frank still lives a simple, well-rounded life that includes carpentry, banjo making, sculpturing, bicycling and hiking. He is also an avid pilot.

  PIERCING THE DARKNESS

  Howard Books

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1989, 2003 by Frank E. Peretti

  Originally published by Crossway Books in different form.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Howard Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  First Howard Books ebook edition February 2012

  HOWARD and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Jaime Putorti

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 89-50338

  ISBN 978-1-4516-7334-0 (ebook)

  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

  —JOHN 1:5 (ESV)

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  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Illusion Excerpt

  FOREWORD

  BY 1987, MY first novel, This Present Darkness, was doing well enough to warrant a sequel. Crossway Books asked me how soon they could expect it. I was still working in a ski factory, so I considered how long it took me to finish the first novel and told them five years. They asked me how much I needed to live on. I told them, we shook hands and signed the papers, and that year I became a full-time writer, finishing Piercing the Darkness in time for Crossway to publish it in 1989.

  The sequel was already forming in my mind while I was loading ski blanks into the molding machines. The world outside the factory walls was gobbling up the New Age. Spirit channelers were over-gesturing and speaking in silly accents on TV talk shows; movies and television, surely the most pervasive pulpit available for preaching a different gospel, were wasting no time in doing so; worse yet, Eastern mysticism and occultism were slithering into the schools disguised as all manner of ground-breaking learning techniques. I had no lack of subject matter. The trick was, as always, to find a story to contain it all.

  By God-ordained coincidence, I met a Christian attorney who just happened to be handling a lawsuit against an elementary school in which children were being taught to meditate, visualize, and contact spirit guides in the classroom. We got together, brainstormed, and, working from real life, fashioned the legal case that would play such a huge role in the spiritual journey of Sally Beth Roe.

  After fourteen years, Piercing the Darkness seems to me a little overstuffed, but it’s understandable. Fifteen years ago, I was discovering to my alarm the extent to which Satan’s people, systems, and institutions are networked and ready to carry out his plans, and I wanted to cover it all. Nevertheless, as we follow the invisible warfare swirling around the life of one wounded, searching sinner, the core message rings clear: No amount of lies, no matter how cleverly couched, will ever outstrip or outlast God’s truth, nor will any lie ever outreach His grace. The Lord knows those who are His, His sheep hear His voice, and the arm of the Lord is never so short that He cannot save.

  I rejoice in that message. I’m proud of it, and always will be. I don’t mind at all being known as a Christian writer, because a Peretti book is always going to carry a Christian message, and by God’s grace, do it well. My greatest reward is knowing the message is being received and is making a difference in the lives of so many.

  Thanks for reading.

  —Frank E. Peretti

  May 19, 2003

  CHAPTER 1

  IT COULD HAVE begun in any town. Bacon’s Corner was nothing special, just one of those little farming towns
far from the interstate, nothing more than a small hollow dot on the AAA road map, with exit signs that offered gas, no lodging, maybe a little food if the place was open, and little more.

  But it began in Bacon’s Corner.

  It was a normal Tuesday evening. The workday was over, supper was on in most of the homes, the stores were locking up, the tavern was filling up. All the employees at the Bergen Door Company had clocked out, and the security guard was checking the locks. Mr. Myers’s son was bringing all the lawn mowers and tillers in for the night at the Myers Feed and Farm Store. The lights were winking out in the local mercantile. Two retirees sat in their chairs in front of the barbershop, putting in their idle hours.

  The fields and farms right across the Toe Springs–Claytonville Road were getting warmer and greener with each day, and now the evening breeze was carrying a lot of mid-April smells—apple and cherry blossoms, plowed dirt, a little mud, some cattle, some manure.

  It was a normal Tuesday evening. No one expected anything unusual. No one saw or heard a thing. No one could have.

  But the commotion started behind a dismal little rented farmhouse just south of Fred Potter’s place—a flapping, a fluttering, a free-for-all, and then a cry, a long, eerie shriek, an echoing, slobbering wail that raced into the forest like a train whistle through a town, loud, muffled, loud, muffled, moving this way and that through the trees like a hunted animal; then a flash of light, a fireball, blinking and burning through the forest, moving with blinding speed, right behind that siren, almost on top of it.

  More cries and screams, more flashing lights! Suddenly the forest was filled with them.

  The trees ended abruptly where the Amhurst Dairy began. The chase broke into the open.

  First out of the forest came a bug, a bat, a black, bulb-eyed thing, its dark wings whirring, its breath pouring out like a long yellow ribbon. It just couldn’t fly fast enough, but clawed the air with its spidery arms, desperate for speed and shrieking in total panic.

  Right behind it, so close, so dangerously close, the sun itself exploded out of the forest, a brilliant comet with wings of fire tracing a glimmering trail and a sword of lightning outstretched in burly bronze hands.

  The black thing and the comet shot into the sky over Bacon’s Corner, zigzagging, shooting this way and that like wild fireworks.

  Then the forest, like a row of cannons, spewed out more hideous creatures, at least twenty, each one fleeing in utter panic with a dazzling, flaming figure tenaciously on its tail, scattering in all directions like a crazy meteor shower in reverse.

  The first demon was running out of tricks and maneuvers; he could feel the heat of the warrior’s blade right at his heels.

  He spit over his shoulder, “No, turn away, I am going!”

  The fiery blade cut an arc through the air. The demon met it with his own and the blow sent him spinning. He corrected with his wings, turned and faced his assailant, shrieking, cursing, parrying blow after blow, looking into the fiery eyes of more power, more glory, more holiness than he’d ever feared before. And he could see it in those eyes—the warrior would never turn away. Never.

  The demon withered even before the blade struck its final blow; it slipped from the earth, from the world of mankind, into outer darkness, gone in a tumbling puff of red smoke.

  The warrior turned and soared higher, spinning his long sword above his head, tracing a circle of light. He burned with the heat of battle, the fervor of righteousness.

  His fellows were consumed with it, striking demons from the sky like foul insects, vanquishing them with strong swords, relentlessly pursuing them and hearing no pleas.

  On the right, a long, slithering spirit took one more swipe at his heavenly assailant before curling tightly in anguish and vanishing.

  On the left, a loud-mouthed, boasting imp cursed and taunted his opponent, filling the air with blasphemies. He was quick and confident, and just beginning to think he might prevail. His head went spinning from his body while the proud sneer still twisted the face, and then he was gone.

  There was one left. It was spinning, tumbling on one good wing.

  “I’ll go, I’ll go,” it pleaded.

  “Your name?” ordered the angel.

  “Despair.”

  The warrior swatted the demon away with the flat of his blade, and it fled, gone, yet still able to work evil.

  And then it was over. The demons were gone. But not soon enough.

  “Is she all right?” asked Nathan the Arabian, sheathing his sword.

  Armoth the African had made sure. “She’s alive, if that’s what you mean.”

  The mighty Polynesian, Mota, added, “Injured and frightened. She wants to get away. She won’t wait.”

  “And now Despair is free to harass her,” said Signa the Oriental.

  Armoth replied, “Then it’s begun, and there will be no stopping it.”

  SALLY ROE LAY in the grass, clutching her throat and gasping for air, taking long, deliberate breaths, trying to clear her head, trying to think. A raw welt was rising on her neck; her plaid shirt was reddened from a wound in her shoulder. She kept looking toward the goat pen, but nothing stirred there. There was no life, nothing left to harm her.

  I have to get moving, I have to get moving. I can’t stay here—no, not one more minute.

  She struggled to her feet and immediately rested against the farmhouse, her world spinning. She was still nauseous, even though she’d already lost everything twice.

  Don’t wait. Go. Get moving.

  She staggered up the back porch steps, stumbled once, but kept going. She wouldn’t take much with her. She couldn’t. There wasn’t time.

  ED AND MOSE were quite comfortable, thank you, just sitting there in front of Max’s Barber Shop right on Front Street, which is what they called the Toe Springs–Claytonville Road where it passed through town. Ed was sixty-eight, and Mose wouldn’t tell anyone his age, so nobody asked him anymore. Both their wives were gone now—God bless ’em, both men had pretty good retirements and Social Security, and life for them had slowed to a comfortable crawl.

  “Ain’t bitin’, Ed.”

  “You shoulda moved downriver, Mose. Downriver. They get cranky swimmin’ clear up to your place. You gotta catch ’em in a good mood.”

  Mose listened to the first part, but not the second. He was staring at a green Plymouth hurrying through town with two upset children in the backseat.

  “Ed, now don’t we know those kids there?”

  “Where?”

  “Well, why don’t you look where I’m pointing?”

  Ed looked, but all he could see was the back end of the Plymouth and just the tops of two blond heads in the backseat.

  “Well,” he said, shading his eyes, “you got me there.”

  “Oh, you never look when I tell you. I know who they were. They were that schoolteacher’s kids, that . . . uh . . . what’s his name . . .”

  IRENE BLEDSOE SPED along the Toe Springs–Claytonville Road, wearing a scowl that added at least a decade to her already crinkled face. She kept her fists tightly around the wheel and her foot on the gas pedal, spurring the green Plymouth onward whether Ruth and Josiah Harris liked it or not.

  “You two be quiet now!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Believe me, we’re doing this for your own good!”

  Bledsoe’s words brought no comfort to Ruth, six, and Josiah, nine.

  Ruth kept crying, “I want my Daddy!”

  Josiah could only sit there silently, numb with shock and disbelief.

  Bledsoe hit the throttle hard. She just wanted to get out of town before there was any more trouble, any more attention.

  She was not enjoying this assignment. “The things I do for those people!”

  SALLY STEPPED OUT onto the back porch, still trembling, looking warily about. She’d changed her shirt and donned a blue jacket. She gripped her wadded-up, bloodstained plaid shirt in one hand, and a paper towel dipped in cooking oil in the other.

&nbs
p; It was quiet all around, as if nothing had happened. Her old blue pickup was waiting. But there was still one more thing to do.

  She looked toward the goat pen, its gate swung wide open and the goats long gone. She took some deep breaths to keep the nausea from coming back. She had to go into that little shed once more. She just had to.

  It didn’t take long. With her heart racing, her hands now empty, and her pockets stuffed, she got out of there and ran for the truck, clambering inside. It cranked and groaned and started up, and with a surge of power and a spraying of gravel it rumbled down the long driveway toward the road.

  Irene Bledsoe was speeding, but there were no cops around. The speed limits were inappropriate anyway, just really impractical.

  She was coming to a four-way stop, another stupid idea clear out here in the middle of nowhere. She eased back on the throttle and figured she could just sneak through.

  What! Where did—?

  She hit the brakes, the wheels locked, the tires screamed, the car fishtailed. Some idiot in a blue pickup swerved wildly through the intersection trying to avoid her.

  Little Ruth wasn’t belted in; she smacked her head and started screaming.

  The Plymouth skidded to a stop almost facing the way it had come.

  “Be quiet!” Bledsoe shouted at the little girl. “You be quiet now—you’re all right!”

  Now Josiah was crying too, scared to death. He wasn’t belted in either, and had had quite a tumbling back there.

  “You two kids shut up!” Bledsoe screamed. “Just shut up now!”

  Josiah could see a lady get out of the pickup. She had red hair and a checkered scarf on her head; she looked like she was about to cry, and she was holding her shoulder. Bledsoe stuck her head out the window and screamed a string of profanity at her. The lady didn’t say a thing, but Bledsoe must have scared her. The other driver got back in her truck and drove off without saying a word.