The Call (Harbingers): Episode 1

By Bill Myers

Brenda, a tattoo artist who sees images of the future, and three other strangers with special abilities are drawn together to help a young student at the mysterious Institute for Advanced Psychic Studies. Daniel's gifts are supposedly being honed to assist world leaders . . . but it turns out there are some very disturbing strings attached.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781441231314

Bill Myers

Bill Myers (www.Billmyers.com) is a bestselling author and award-winning writer/director whose work has won sixty national and international awards. His books and videos have sold eight million copies and include The Seeing, Eli, The Voice, My Life as, Forbidden Doors, and McGee and Me.

Book preview

Pan

CHAPTER

1

There’s four of us. Well, five if you count the kid. We don’t know each other, we don’t like each other, and we sure didn’t ask for any of this. But here we are. The probability of fate, Andi calls it.

I call it a pain in the butt.

Anyway, we each got our own version of what’s been happening, so here’s mine. . . .

It was Friday night. I was tired and business was slow. Time to shut down. I was already cleaning tips and grips when three white boys—football jocks from the community college—roll in. They’d played some big game earlier and it must have been a sweet victory by the way they waved around their Buds and staggered in, giggling. Well, two staggered in giggling—the one they carried between them was barely coherent.

Hey there, Brenda. The buzz cut on the right had been a recent customer.

I glanced up from where I was cleaning my stuff. Sorry, boys, all closed up.

He acted like he didn’t hear. We got ourselves an honest to goodness virgin.

The one in the middle, six-three, 275, raised his head and opened his watery eyes just long enough to greet me with a Texas drawl, Ma’am, before nodding back off. But it wasn’t the good-ol’-boy charm that got me. It was the face. The same one I’d been sketching for over a week.

Buzz Cut laughed. Twenty years old and not a mark on him.

Pure as driven snow, his buddy agreed.

I looked at the clock. Like I said, business was slow and I was getting tired of ducking the landlord. You got money?

All grins, Buzz Cut dug into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash.

I swore under my breath and motioned them to the beat-up barber chair in the middle of the room. Set him there.

They plopped him down.

I popped a sterilized pack and began prepping a tip. What do you have in mind?

You know, Buzz Cut said. Do your hocus-pocus thing.

My what?

Where you tat out his future. Like you did me. He pulled up his sleeve to show a broken heart spurting blood from a bullet shooting through it. I’m gonna be a heartbreaker, man. He grinned at his buddy. A real lady killer. Ain’t that right, Brenda?

If you say so.

Chicks go for a man in uniform. Wherever they send me I’m gonna leave a long line of broken hearts.

I rolled up Cowboy’s sleeve and started prepping the arm.

So do the same for him, Buzz Cut said. Tat out his future.

You really do that? his pal said.

I reached for a blade and began shaving the arm. I just ink what I see.

Well, shoot, do my future, too.

You ain’t got one.

Huh?

They both laugh, thinking it’s sarcasm. I wish it was.

I sterilize and goop the arm, all the time staring at it.

So how much? Buzz Cut says.

Free form? It was a lie. Like I said, I’d been sketching stencils for a week. But they didn’t have to know.

Sure.

Two fifty, I said. Half now, half on completion.

So that’s . . .

Thinking wasn’t his specialty, so I gave him a hand. One hundred fifty now, one hundred fifty when the job’s done.

Sweet.

He peeled off the bills, counting as he set them in my palm. Fifty, one hundred, one hundred fifty.

He figured he was done, but like I said, it was a slow week and he was a slow thinker. I gave him a look and glanced at my hand, making it clear he was short.

Oh, right. He peeled off another fifty.

I gotta piss, his buddy said.

Buzz Cut nods. He motions to the empty bottle in his hand. And it’s time for a recharge.

His buddy leans over Cowboy and says, Don’t go nowhere, pal, we’ll be right back.

Buzz Cut adds, Get some sleep. It’ll be over ’fore you know it.

Cowboy doesn’t answer, so he shakes him. Hey . . . hey!

He opens his eyes.

Get some sleep.

He nods and drops back off.

The boys turned and headed for the door. I stared at the arm, pretending to wait for an image to form. But as soon as they’re gone, I crossed to the desk and pulled out the stencil I’d been working on—four grown-ups and a ten-year-old kid walking toward us. I didn’t recognize the kid or two of the adults. But, like I said, I recognized Cowboy. And I recognized the woman

Reviews for The Call (Harbingers)

[jenneth_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

 The best of Christian fiction authors come together to write a what I can only describe as a novel written in the spirit of an RPG (role playing game): Bill Meyers writes as the tattoo artist, Brenda; Frank Peretti writes as the atheistic professor; Angela Hunt writes as the geeky professor's assistant, Andi; and Alton Gansky writes as the Christian jock, Tank. In an attempt to write episodically like a TV series, these four Christian authors take turns telling novellas that develop into a larger story.I personally fangirled when I found this book. The series is such a quirky phenomenon that it's actually hard to find much about it online. Almost as if the authors didn't mean for it to be widespread. Almost as if we readers stumbled upon their own writing practices that weren't meant for public viewing.But they are. And I couldn't be happier.With writers such as Meyers and Peretti in the mix, you can assume the book delves into quite a bit of Christian paranormal. Four characters inexplicably come together to repeatedly stop evil, often satanic forces, from disrupting the world. And no matter how much the characters may differ from each other, and no matter how much they try to go about their own lives, they continually are brought back together.The writing of each other is vastly different from the others. This can be both a strength and weakness for the series. Bill Meyers tends to write with very short sentences and enjoys testing your suspicion of disbelief, with little to no description or dialogue tags. In his writing, the characters can only show their greatest emotions with no filter or social grace to keep them reserved as we would expect most people to be in typical situations. Everything is an extreme, and while this works well for a high-risk, fast-paced climax or action scene, it struggles when the entire piece is paced this way. The book as a whole may suffer because Meyers's notable style is the first of the four, and if this style irritates some readers, they may not read beyond the first novella. However, those who enjoy Meyers's writing style will find him as familiar as an old friend and enjoy how he crafts the characters differently from the others.Personally, I most enjoyed Frank Peretti's novella. It reminisced of his and Dekker's 'House' standalone novel because of the mysterious and inexplicable mansion that appeared in different places throughout town. In fact, it seemed as if Peretti took several of his story concepts and reintroduced them here. Not only 'House,' but 'This Present Darkness' seemed to have a few moments of inspiration that then affected the rest of the book. Frank Peretti's style is so intense that it left me, a twenty-year-old college student, afraid of the dark. Ha! After I finished the book, I discovered a YouTube video of Peretti reading the first chapters of his novella in his deep, suspense-radio-drama voice. Definitely worth the search if that kind of stuff interests you.As a disclaimer, this is a grittier Christian fiction than typical in its genre. Few of the main characters are religious, and the one character who does identify as Christian was written as young and naive (though overall still likable). The book handles things like paranormal and satanic influences, and while the characters are all united in fighting the evil, like a TV series, the ending doesn't fully resolve, but instead promises more to come. My one main frustration was that some of the authors chose to insert questionable language. While some of the offensive language is merely crude, others border on taking the name of God in vain, even though I think the authors meant the outbursts to be a prayer of some sort.Each of the four authors do a gripping job at writing the characters in the book and sucking you in with the same kind of attraction Netflix does with 'Stranger Things.' This is a binge-worthy book.Things to Watch Out For:Sex: A comment about "sexual desires" pg 139Language: screw-1 pg 95, a-1 pg 122, p-2 pg 15, 122, crap-1 pg 122, "she flipped me off"-1 pg 123, G-1 (possibly a prayer) pg 142; G's sake-1 pg 146; several prayerful comments in the last quarter from a Lutheran character, but some of them seem to border on being flippant. "Blessed J" (supposedly reverent) pg 288Violence: Characters run from peril and satanic forces. A mysterious house afflicts characters with hyper-realistic nightmares. Child kidnapping. Murder. Several characters are dragged toward a door to Hell. Characters are forced to be presumably possessed with the Devil. A child is stabbed.Drugs: None that I specifically remember.Nudity. NAOther: Demonic activity and situations involving demon possession. A character is a tattoo artist and can see into the future. Characters each have special, unexplainable gifts such as healing, visions, etc.

[bemislibrary · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Like the one hours television shows that flash the forensics and solve the mystery, this book builds on a common supernatural theme. The novella format allows for only superficial character development. The stories, like many TV season finales, leave many issues unresolved. While it is not a satisfying beginning, middle, end story, it is worth reading just to see how the unique format could work. LibraryThing Member Giveaway randomly chose me to receive this book free from the publisher. I was under no obligation to write a review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

[vintagebeckie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I didn’t really know what to expect when I chose Invitation to read and review. Oh, I knew that the 4-novella collection was authored by some of the best authors in the field of Christian fiction, and that I have never been disappointed by anything they have written. I also knew that their writing style, characterization, and plot-development suited my reading tastes. But I didn’t know I would be led on a challenging and twisting journey that included mind-bending situations. Invitation is speculative fiction at its best. It has a unique format that suits the genre well — short, episodic novellas, changing points of view, and story lines which at first seem unrelated, but soon come together in a coherent manner. There is something weird going on, and this reader enjoyed every minute.Each novella in the collection has a different author and the unique voice of one of the four main characters. Four very different people with strange gifts are brought together in what can only be called a supernatural way. And try as they might, they cannot keep from forming a team to investigate and somehow impact weird happenings. I loved how the authors’ collaboration brought forth a cohesive whole. This cannot possibly be easy to achieve, but they somehow managed to achieve unique stories within a consistent framework.Evil seems to be having its way in Invitation, but there is a sense that God is at work in big ways in the world and in the lives of the main characters. I think the spiritual journey each character embarks on is my favorite part. As each challenge is met, the characters learn more about themselves and their place within a spiritual world. Each novella is wrapped up in Invitation, but the story is far from over. Invitation is just the first novella collection in this series.Invitation is gritty and edgy; not your typical CF. So don’t be surprised if this book takes you places you didn’t expect with characters that don’t often show up in normal novels. You just need to do what I did — sit back and let the authors take you on a trip you won’t forget.Recommended for fans of speculative fiction.Audience: adults.(Thanks to Bethany House for a complimentary copy. All opinions expressed are mine alone.)