Behind the Darkness: Otherealm, #3

By W. Franklin Lattimore

Control is a delusion…

Control. An elusive, yet greatly-coveted power, sought after by the young and the old, the wealthy and the poor. Can it be bargained for? Bought? Seized? And if attained, how much control can a individual actually wield? 

Pittston Police Chief Brent Lawton is about to share a story with his wife that will affect both of their lives forever. Listen with her as she receives the account of a twenty-five-year-old man endowed with an array of unexpected supernatural powers who is sent on a chilling mission to protect the life of a fifteen-year-old pregnant girl named Elizabeth. 

Journey into a realm of spiritual beings that few believe exist, and find out if one person's good intentions can be enough to stop the murderous plans of an ancient, evil enemy. 

Who—or what—is really pulling the strings to life and death? 

Welcome to the Otherealm, where heaven, hell, and man battle for the soul.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BHC Press/Open Window
• Release date: Apr 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386346371

Book preview

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As a former professional editor, I’m pretty picky about what I read. As a busy mom, I want an exciting story I can escape into for a little while, but also something that’s got some depth to it. W. Franklin Lattimore’s Behind the Darkness hits the spot! This book had me spellbound from the first chapter, with its perfect mix of heart-stirring dialogues, beautiful and powerful emotions, and surreal spiritual battles. I can hardly wait for his next book!

—Shirley Avery, Editor

With Deliver Us from Darkness, W. Franklin Lattimore propels himself into the ranks of powerful storytellers like Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker. Not only does he weave a tale of intrigue, intelligence and deep characters, he does it with the bold courage to rip the curtains away from dark truths, which is too often lacking in authors today. The result is a fascinating story that will leave you excited and shaking and flipping pages faster than you can say, Holy cow!

—Robert Liparulo, Best-Selling Author of

Comes a Horseman, Germ, and Deadfall

Sometimes you have to break the rules, and that’s what Lattimore does in When Darkness Comes, his second offering of the Otherealm Saga. He’s written a book about spiritual warfare in the everyday. Upstanding citizen and officer of the law, Brent Lawton, has to choose between what is right and what is legal, mirroring the author’s own choice to write Christian fiction capable of engrossing and entertaining a mainstream audience. This book—this series—is for anyone who enjoys a good mystery, and is chock full of twists and turns that make a reader go hmmm…! Excellent work! This writer has written a tale worthy of its own Hollywood movie.

—S.R. Karfelt, Author of the Covenant Keeper Series

Move over Frank Peretti, there is another Frank in town!

—Andi Newberry-Tubbs, Award-Winning

Book Reviewer & Blogger

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behind the darkness

Copyright © 2017 W. Franklin Lattimore

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published by Open Window

an imprint of BHC Press

Library of Congress Control Number:

2016918299

Print edition ISBN numbers:

ISBN-13: 978-1-946006-23-3

ISBN-10: 1-9460-0623-8

also available in trade softcover

Visit the author at:

www.wfranklinlattimore.com &

www.bhcpress.com

Book design by

Blue Harvest Creative

www.blueharvestcreative.com

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The Three-in-One—I am both humbled and amazed by the ability that You have given to me to write this story—and especially the ones to come. I would say that I appreciate You more than You know, but since You know everything…

Robert Liparulo—A friend and incredible author. I appreciate the amount of time that I got to spend with you at The Ragged Edge in 2011. Your insights prompted the writing of two novels, rather than a single very long one. Your willingness to provide me with additional wise counsel over the past couple of years has been priceless.

Allison Chamberlain—My editor. You’ve taken my story and polished the rough edges. You’ve provided structural and literary criticism. You’ve made my book better for having touched it. Thank you.

Ted Dekker—Someone I’ve admired from afar for a very long time. Several phone conversations with you inspired a writer. Your Ragged Edge event solidified one.

Lindsay Coy—A wonderful gal with a good eye for my early grammatical mistakes. Thanks for your contributions!

Lindy Stein—A friend who lent a lot of excitement to my writing. I’d write and you’d respond with excitement.

Michele Atwell—You were my greatest cheerleader during the writing of this story.

The Ragged Blue Monkeys—Yes, they do exist! You are the single-most encouraging group of people I’ve ever met, a community of brothers and sisters who know how to love and support one another throughout the trials and jubilations of the writing journey. We are blue monkeys in a brown-monkey world.

To Joshua

It is an honor to know you.

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It’s about time I finally published this account. I’ve put it off for too long. I expect that, as I write, it’s bound to stir up many raw emotions. I just pray I can get through it.

My name is Brent Lawton. I’m the chief of police for the Village of Pittston, Ohio. I have a wife, Tara, and three children: Jenna, Jamie, and Amy.

I love my life.

You’d laugh at that last comment if you knew half the things that Tara and I have been through. But this story—this situation—took place before our children were born. In fact, it took place before Tara and I were even married.

This past Thursday evening, I approached Tara in our living room as she sat reading on the couch. I told her that I had a story that I needed to share, one that I thought would capture her attention even more than Tosca Lee’s latest work of prose.

Tara did me the courtesy of setting aside her book with a humored grin. I’m betting she thought that my awkward demeanor was the precursor to something worthy of an upcoming laugh.

Sitting in my favorite chair while facing her on the couch, I took a deep breath and released it, the whole time looking her in her eyes. Her grin faded.

What is it?

I have something to tell you. Something that happened a few years after the hike.

‘The hike,’ as we’ve come to call it, was the event that brought Tara to Christ—and me to Tara—back in 1987. A long time ago.

Hon, do you remember back in 1990 when… I paused. I didn’t really want to say the words.

When your mamaw passed.

I nodded. That was also the year that my Grand Am got totaled, Dad lost his job, and all of our friends took off into their own lives.

That would be a difficult year to forget.

If it hadn’t been for you, I’d have gone crazy.

Tara leaned over and took my hands. That was a brutal year for you and your family, and if I recall correctly, I wasn’t very much help to any of you. Somehow it ended up that your trip down to Kentucky for your grandmother’s funeral was what got you grounded again.

She became thoughtful for a moment, remembering. I wondered if she would recall…

You said something to me when you got back.

I nodded my head and looked at the floor. Yep. I did.

You said that you couldn’t tell me what happened down there. Is that what this is all about?

It is. I looked back up into her eyes. After all that we’ve been through in the past year or so, with Donna McNeill and the Picti people… Stephanie O’Leary and your frustration with her stubbornness as you continue to share Christ…it’s caused me to reflect quite a bit about God’s ability to control everything that’s been going on.

Tara’s green eyes peered deeply into my own. She gave me a single nod to continue.

Well, I guess it took all of these recent events to get me to a place where I’m finally willing to talk about what happened that week in Kentucky.

I still wish I could have gone with you to her funeral.

It’s kind of funny to think about now, but your inability to come with me was the camel that broke the straw.

She raised an eyebrow. You mean the straw that broke the camel’s back.

No, Hon. I pridefully thought I was the camel, but God showed me very clearly, in the span of three days, that I was nothing but straw.

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HAVING TOLD TARA that what I wanted to share wasn’t going to be easy—and most certainly wasn’t going to be brief—she suggested coffee and a place a little less comfortable so that neither of us would give in to the desire to call it quits for the night. She wanted to hear the whole thing. We moved from the living room to the dining table. She made two cups of decaf Kahve coffee, set them on the table, and sat down catty-corner from me.

You already know that my jump into occult involvement stemmed from the desire to have control over issues that were going on in my family. What you don’t know is that I still wanted to have as much control as possible when it came to other events in my life, even after the Lord delivered me from witchcraft.

Okay, but who doesn’t? asked Tara.

Do you have any idea how stupid I felt after I had time to reflect about ‘the hike’? All the things that I was oblivious to that were happening right under my nose, things that could have put me on a very destructive course for years to come, if not for the rest of my life. I was so clueless.

Tara’s eyes dropped from mine. I could see that she was internalizing my comment. She had been trying to destroy my Christian walk back then through her own practice of witchcraft, something that everyone else seemed to suspect but me.

Yep. That was me. Mr. Naïveté.

Her discomfort wasn’t my goal, so I let go of her right hand and I placed my left over her left. I waited for her to look up and I smiled. That lovely smile of hers slowly spread across her face and brightened my own.

I’m sure you’ll remember that after our graduation from Summit State I was doing everything that I could to find a job. I put out resumes, made phone calls, and even annoyed human resource managers by just walking in unannounced.

You were driven, that’s for sure.

I was trying to control the situation.

Again, Brent, who doesn’t do that?

You didn’t. Not like I did. You were doing what was needed to get your name out there, but you were also relying on God.

So were you.

I was trying to push God. Tara, I was in such dire need to feel like a man that I was muscling my way through every situation that came across my path.

Ahh, yes. I do remember. You couldn’t be wrong about anything. Things had to be your way. You had to be in charge of everything.

Yeah, I said, dropping my eyes to the table in disgust.

You almost lost me.

Now? Figuratively?

No. Then. Literally.

At that moment I know that I registered a shocked look.

Your so-called ‘control mode’ was really more like ‘jerk mode.’ I was quickly losing interest in an ‘us.’

I…I didn’t know.

Relax, Hon. Remember? It didn’t happen. I actually married you.

How close was the ‘almost-lost-you’ part?

She smiled at me and said, Keep going.

It’s really annoying when she does that to me.

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It was the first Sunday in August, and I still remember the drive down to Kentucky, I began. Mom, Dad, Lydia, and I were driving through Portsmouth."

That’s real close to Shawnee State Forest where we hiked.

Yeah. The sight of the Long John Silver’s where all of us had eaten before heading back home triggered a lot of memories, not to mention a lot of self-loathing. I shook my head. I still find it amazing just how naïve I was during that trip—all that evidence that so many things had been purposefully orchestrated against me.

Tara didn’t look down this time. Instead a playful smirk worked itself across her lips and I chuckled.

You were good, I said.

Past tense?

"Well, back then you were a master manipulator. Now you’re a master ezer kenegdo and sometimes-intentional brat."

This time she laughed. What were we, then? She did a quick mental calculation. I was twenty-four, so that would have made youuuu…older.

"That would have made me a year more mature, I said, stressing my point. An-ee-way…I remember wishing that I could have driven down to the funeral on my own. I didn’t enjoy feeling like a kid in his parents’ car on another family trip. But having wrecked my car a couple weeks prior made driving on my own an impossibility. I can’t even begin to tell you how antsy I felt.

When I was a kid, most of the time I felt like Dad drove too slowly. It irritated me that he wouldn’t pick up the pace just a little. That day, though, I felt the opposite. Everything was moving too fast. I didn’t want to come face to face with the reality of my mamaw’s death.

Tara’s face became sympathetically pained. That’s the reason I wish I could have gone with you. We may not have been romantically involved at that time, but our friendship was strong. I thought I could make a difference.

She was probably right. Fortunately for me, though, Tara hadn’t come. I gave her hand a gentle squeeze and continued.

I remember that while the rest of us were dressed casually, Lydia was sitting to my left in the back seat wearing her Air Force uniform—her dress blues. Her polished exterior sat in stark contrast to her lifeless facial expression. She and my mom looked like opposite sides of the same coin. Both of them were emotionally played out, but where Lydia looked very presentable, at least physically, my mom looked miserable. She hadn’t wanted to go through the trouble of getting ‘made up.’

I paused as I realized that I was tapping my left heel rapidly on the dining-room floor, a long-practiced means of unconsciously showing apprehension. I briefly rested my hand on Tara’s, stood up, and walked to the glass door that led to the patio. I looked out into the darkness. The emotions from so long ago were beginning to stir again.

"I wanted out of that car—badly. I just wanted to find a quiet place to walk around and think and maybe even pray. Regardless, I definitely wanted to slow my progress.

I distinctly remember looking back at my occult involvement as a teen and how it had promised me so much control. What a lie that was, right? Want to hear some irony? Not only was I denied the control that was promised by the Enemy, but then God wanted to be the one to whom I completely resigned control.

Turning from the door back to Tara, I laughed. "I didn’t have any control, yet God still wanted me to hand it over. Seems so paradoxical, doesn’t it?"

Tara smiled and nodded.

Leaning backward against the glass door, I put my hands in my pockets and continued. "It’s hard to put into words what I thought about God at that time. I had seen him work miracles in your life and in mine. He set us free from so much and proved over and over how much he loves us. But here I was, growing angry at him for how my life seemed to be taking a turn for the worse. My freedom to get around on my own, my inability to get a job, wanting to extricate myself from my parents’ home and be on my own, the exodus of my—of our—friends. There were other things, too, but it all came down to my having a growing resentment toward God. If he was so in control of things, then why didn’t anything seem to be working out? You know what I mean?"

Emotion was welling up in me. Tears were slowly gathering in my eyes as I looked away from Tara and stared through to the living room. And now, on top of everything else, my grandmother... my mamaw… A sob wracked my chest. I closed my eyes and let my head hang. I could hear Tara push her chair back from the table and approach me. She moved her hands up behind my shoulders and drew close to me, her head pressed against my chest. She didn’t say a word. She just lent me her strength—her ezer.

Father, thank you for this woman.

The ache in my chest felt like a persistent command from my body to stop sharing, but I ignored it. The woman whose love kept me safe in the midst of my darkest hours was now dead. It was too soon! I was so mad at God, Tara. I wanted to hate him for the grand theft that was taking place in so many areas of my life. Freedom, friends, finances, and family. Who knew there were so many good ‘F’ words, huh? And they were all disappearing.

Tara’s soft voice reached me like a soothing balm. I didn’t know the extent of your pain, Brent. I’m so sorry I couldn’t provide more of what you needed at that time in your life.

Did you hear that? She did it again. She didn’t dismiss my pain, didn’t display before me the error within my thoughts as a hurting young man. This woman feels every bit like the flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone that Adam must have experienced after Eve had been revealed to him by God. I wonder how long it took before Adam realized what God meant by calling Eve his ezer kenegdo?

As I stood there feeling my wife breathe against my body, I realized then just how much the English translations of the Bible did a disservice to those words. What so many of our Bibles translate as helpmate or helper couldn’t be further from the fullness of that tiny word. Ezer was used throughout the Old Testament as a means of describing attributes of God—power and strength to assist. A woman was created to be an assisting strength and power—ezer—pressed against her man—kenegdo.

How true those words are of my woman—my wife—my own ezer kenegdo.

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Ithink the drive took somewhere between five-and-a-half and six hours to get to my grandmother’s farmhouse from Millsville. I remember pulling into the gravel and grass driveway. The century-old farmhouse already seemed as though the life had been robbed from it. It stood there as a shell of memories. I didn’t want to walk through the door.

"My Uncle Joe and Aunt Sally stepped out of the house to greet us. Sad smiles appeared on everyone’s faces. Not mine, though. I couldn’t muster the beginnings of a smile. I accepted their hugs, but found no comfort in them. I just kept staring at my mamaw’s bedroom window. The shade was up. I remember that, because I was thinking about what it used to mean. It used to mean that my mamaw was up and about and that anyone who had a mind to was welcome to come by and visit.

She enjoyed when people came by. That August afternoon would have been an ideal day for people to do just that. For some reason, I had felt that the shade, like Mamaw’s eyes, would remain drawn down forever.

Tilting my head down, I kissed the top of Tara’s head then straightened up from the door against which I’d been leaning. Tara took a step back and looked up into my eyes. She rested the palm of her hand on the side of my face and brushed her thumb across my cheek.

There is such comfort in your touch, Wife.

The smile that came to my face was a benefit to both of us in that moment.

Would you like to sit back down? she asked.

Let’s do that.

Back at the dining room table I carried on with my story.

"I don’t know what I was expecting, but my grandmother wasn’t on the property. For some reason I had it in my head that we’d arrive at the house and she’d be inside somewhere—probably on her bed—laid out for viewing. In reality, her body was already being prepared for the funeral.

We were the first of the out-of-town family members to arrive, so we’d have the house to ourselves for at least a few hours. My aunts, uncles, and cousins would be arriving at the house starting late that night and into the next day. You remember that house could easily hold a few families as long as the younger members were willing to make do with sleeping bags and air mattresses.

I’ve had the pleasure of those floors several times with you, Tara said with a smile and a wink.

My back hurts just thinking about it, I replied with a soft laugh and continued. I still remember that night talking with Lydia…

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THE FARMHOUSE WAS quiet. Brent and Lydia sat in the dining-room booth. It was a semi-oval, the color of a Granny Smith apple, and very similar to what one might find in an old-fashioned diner. The booth curved around a marble-top dining table, where brother and sister sat directly across from one another, an unopened book before him and a glass of orange juice in front of her.

Having been at the old house for a few hours, Lydia had readily changed from her uniform into civilian clothing—a pair of shorts and a Garfield T-shirt.

How are you holding up? Brent asked softly.

I’m making it. Just a little bit uncomfortable in this house, Lydia replied. You?

About the same, I guess. You’ve got to be exhausted after driving over seven hours to Millsville from Langley Air Force Base. It’s too bad you couldn’t have caught a flight out of Norfolk.

It was too late to book a flight, and besides, it would have cost a lot of money.

Still, you could have driven straight here from Virginia. You turned what could have been a seven-and-a-half hour trip into more than thirteen by choosing to sit in the backseat of the family car.

I couldn’t come here alone. I needed to be with all of you.

Brent nodded in assent. What are you going to do about the bed?

Lydia looked up at her brother with mournful eyes. She had been offered the opportunity to sleep in Mamaw’s bed. Every visit to the old house since she was a child included being allowed to sleep next to a very special woman. Brent knew she had always loved that privilege. He could remember lying on the floor in the living room, listening to the two of them talk for several minutes each night before they’d go to sleep. Special times for Lydia, to be sure. And probably just as special to their Mamaw.

I don’t know. I’m scared of how it will feel.

Well, you know that if you don’t take it, others arriving tonight and tomorrow will.

She just nodded.

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SO, DID LYDIA sleep in her bed?

Yeah. She told me on our way back home to Millsville that it had initially been a little…I don’t think she said it was creepy, but it was definitely uncomfortable for her. But after the first night she said that it was a memory she was glad to have had. She could smell Mamaw’s body soap and lotion on the pillows and sheets. It ended up being a comfort as much as a sorrow.

How was your first night?

The first night was filled with lack of sleep. As it turned out, my Uncle Dave and Aunt Jeanette and their son and daughter showed up around 1:00 a.m. Everyone got up from where they were resting to help them get situated. We were up again for a while as more tears were shed between my mom and her older brother. It was the next day when things really became difficult.

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That next morning, I awoke sweating. A sleeping bag definitely made the living room floor softer, but it sure didn’t do much to relieve the heat and humidity."

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GOOD MORNING, SAID a vibrant voice at Brent’s feet.

Brent propped himself up on his elbows to see his dad sitting in one of the living-room chairs, a cup of coffee in his right hand.

`Morning, Brent half-echoed. What time is it?

His dad looked at his watch. About 9:15. You’re the last one up.

Brent knew that wasn’t a surprise to anyone. How he had slept through all of the foot traffic in the house to that point, though, was anyone’s guess.

Brent looked around the room. The dark-wood walls seemed to soak up the sunlight that filtered through the windows. So many memories were laid out upon the walls. Four generations of photographs filled all of the available wall space surrounding built-in bookshelves. Every time Brent visited the old house, he had found himself slowly walking the perimeter of this room of memories, studying the faces and clothing of those immortalized on photographic paper.

There was one photograph that he was always drawn to, and stood in front of for minutes at a time. It was an old black and white of his mamaw and papaw—looking very young, maybe in their mid-twenties—standing side by side.

Photographs were a luxury back then, his dad had once told him. You couldn’t just take your film to a store and have it developed in an hour. And most people didn’t have their own cameras. If you wanted a photograph, it was likely that you had to hire someone to take it.

No smiles. There wasn’t a photograph in the house taken in the 1800s or early 1900s that showed happiness.

It was serious business to have a photograph taken back then, his dad had also said. They were taken for posterity, not for remembering a time of opening presents or cataloging trips to the beach.

That photo of his grandparents, though certainly lacking in visible emotion, showed two people that wanted to be together. There may not have been a smile playing across his mamaw’s lips, but her eyes were vibrant with happiness, maybe even a little playfulness. It showed the beginning stages of a powerful shared love that ended in two people being separated much too soon because of his grandfather’s death.

Brent pondered what he would he look like right now in an old black and white photograph. He imagined that his eyes would be devoid of life. He wouldn’t have to work to keep a smile from his face as the shutter of the camera opened and then closed upon his life.

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TARA STARED AT me for a moment, her eyes deep pools of empathy. Her past was no less painful than mine. I was glad for someone who understood my loss.

I could feel the burn of tears forming in my eyes. It was so long ago, but recounting these events in my life reopened some old wounds. Maybe reopened was the wrong word to use; God’s compassion and grace had healed me back then. But I guess one never stops missing the impact players in one’s life.

I know your pain, Brent.

I know you do. I’m grateful for that. As the account moves forward, though, you’re going to transition from empathy to… I couldn’t help but laugh at this point. You’re going to wonder about me.

Her eyes grew big, a smile playing at the corners of her lips.

Moi? Nooo.

Have I told you, yet, how much I adore this woman?

Just you wait. I’m looking forward to saying, ‘I told you so.’

Tara took a sip of her coffee, as did I.

"My dad