The Brightness of His Coming: God Walks The Dark Hills Book IV

By B. L. Blankenship

Self-serving machiavellian aristocratic figures have long walked among us just out of sight. These shadow governments and the plutocratic ruling class that make them up via their dark agendas write the historical mythologies that most mortals deem as truth. Through grave disinformation and half-truths, they call good evil and evil good, kno

• Language: English
• Publisher: B. L. Blankenship
• Release date: Nov 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781088068458

B. L. Blankenship

About the AuthorB. L. BlankenshipBenjamin Lee Blankenship was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1981 to his two southern parents Larry Brown Blankenship of Giles County, Tennessee & Jonelle Blankenship of Harlan, Kentucky. During his youth in the mid-1990s, he moved to Roane County, Tennessee. Having a deep love for literature and history, he's studied many aspects of the American Civil War.Like many Americans his ancestors fought on both sides of the war. Each of his direct bloodline kindred that fought for the Federal Government (i.e. Union Army) lived in the Republican stronghold of Harlan County, Kentucky. They were: • James H. Ticky Howard (1832-1922)• Leonard Samuel Scott (1825-1889)• David E. Lee (1824-1905)• Elijah G. Helton (1829-1904)• William Burton "Gabby Burt" Hensley (1832-1906)Each of these willingly submitted to the federal draft under the direction of Robert Hays, Prevost Martial of the 8th Kentucky District.Likewise, his family housed many proud Democrats who fought for the Confederate States of America. Unlike the array of Harlan Co. Union Soldiers within his bloodline, those who chose to serve as Confederates were spread abroad; they were:CONFEDERATE HERITAGE:Richard Pierce Stracener (1843-1906)7th Reg. Georgia Infantry--------------------------James W. Farmer (1834-1910)Company C, North Carolina 3rd Light Artillery Battalion--------------------------Jefferson Pack (1830-1864)35th Regiment Tennessee Infantry, 5th Infantry,1st Mountain Rifle Regiment--------------------------Granville Smith (1843-1923)60th Regiment Virginia Infantry3rd Regiment Wise Legion, Company A--------------------------Gabrial "Rial" Smith (1820-1912)4th Regiment, Virginia Reserves, Company F--------------------------William Riley Thurman (1816-1907)2nd Battalion, Arkansas Infantry--------------------------All of B. L. Blankenship's direct bloodline ancestors lived through the American Civil War except for the confederate Jefferson Pack. He was born in Stokes, North Carolina (1830) and died on November 12th, 1864 while imprisoned at Camp Douglas, Illinois.

Book preview

COPYRIGHT 2022

the

brightness

of his

coming

god walks the dark hills book iv

Dedication

  Really, this book (like many of mine) is so vile that I’d be afraid to dedicate it to anyone - as it would likely offend them. There are a lot of independent presses that I’ve had private conversations with who put it out there that they’re all hardcore and no holds barred that have told me that inwardly they’re fearful of putting out a lot of things as the bigoted internet mobs will undoubtably try and rial up others like a pack of wolves against them.

  I don’t have that problem. My books say that they’re vile and offensive. I genuinely try to talk people out of buying them comparing them to some of the most wicked movies and books ever made. Upfront it is well known that they’re not for everybody. Howbeit, if you’ve made it this far then I presume it is for you. I’ve had some authors ask me what I thought of trigger warnings. My answer is simply, if you need trigger warnings, or for that matter are offended by anything - don’t read my books. I don’t say that to be mean. I say that to do people a favor. It is a kindness. My books, particularly the God Walks The Dark Hills series is anything but kind.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

- Carl Gustavo Jung

Contents

DEDICATION

pg. 6

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EPIGRAPH

pg. 7

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

pg. 10

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INTRODUCTION

pg. 11

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CHAPTER 1: UNFORGIVEN

pg. 13

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CHAPTER 2: GO WEST

pg. 17

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CHAPTER 3: AMONGST MEN

pg. 21

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CHAPTER 4: ONWARD

pg. 24

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CHAPTER 5: BOOTS ON THE GROUND

pg. 28

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CHAPTER 6: A NOBLE EFFORT

pg. 33

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CHAPTER 7: THE OLD JEW

pg. 37

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CHAPTER 8: THE MISSION PROCEEDS

pg. 42

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CHAPTER 9: REFECTIONS

pg. 47

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CHAPTER 10: TOOTHLESS

pg. 51

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CHAPTER 11: THE DEVIL’S TEETH

pg. 54

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CHAPTER 12: HOME

pg. 58

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CHAPTER 13: SUNDAY MORNING COMING DOWN

pg. 61

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CHAPTER 14: THE SONG OF THE TWO

pg. 70

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CHAPTER 15: SON OF A PREACHER MAN

pg. 78

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

pg. 82

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Acknowledgements

  I am so very grateful to all of my fellow authors, readers, booksellers, and such who’ve been so encouraging to me as I’ve written one fiction book after another so far. Particularly, I’m thankful for my proofreaders/editors. From early on it is something that I knew was needed to me. I tend to read things that I’ve written the way I think them instead of how they’re written on the page in front of me. Professional Make-up Artist, haunter, & horror enthusiast Kristen Keaton and gothic/slow-burn horror author L.B. Stimson have been helpful in the past. While Horror really isn’t my wife’s thing, I tend to have her (Victoria Blankenship) proofread introductions, acknowledgments, and all of those parts like that to make certain that they’re not filled with errors.

  Moreover, my fellow author, Tennessean, and friend Megan Stockton has been instrumental as a proofreader over my last several books. She's written dystopian, true crime, and horror, as well as some Western Horror short stories. Additionally, I’m thankful for the Horror Community. Within literature, there are a lot of cliques and factions. One individual who holds a leadership position within a certain area authors' group told me that she doesn’t play well with others. Many authors' groups schedule their get-togethers in a way that prohibits people who aren’t retirees, jobless, or full-time authors to attend. There certainly are a number of snobs out there. Fortunately, every single one of them that I know of in this area are people who I’m outselling and running circles around. There are a lot of terrific, caring, and competent people within the horror community who do play well with others and aren’t bigoted toward anyone. It’s a friendly inclusive group.

  All of this has helped me. I’m thankful for people who put on well-put-together events that are marketed nicely where I see my readers returning to get my newest books, as well as meeting folks for the first time. I’m thankful for all of the bookstores and libraries who’ve allowed me to come and do book signings/meet and greets and so forth.

  Finally, I’m thankful for the growing number of podcasts and such that interview me, review my books, and else wise help spread the word about my interesting and offensive literature.

Introduction

  Today, as I write this; it is a somber November morning. The birds have ceased to sing, though the East Tennessee temperature outside is likely a cool sort of perfect. There is no snow on the ground, nor is there any wind. Rather, as the day progresses on it’ll continue to get too hot for anything but a short-sleeved shirt or light jacket at most.

  It is generally early in the day before heading out to my 8 AM - 5 PM, Monday-Friday job as a graphic artist that I pen most of the chapters in my books. Sometimes in the evening, I’ll get home, eat, watch a television show or listen to a chapter from a Francine Rivers novel or whatnot with my wife, her mother, and (of course) the dog - thereafter slipping away into my small room reserved for creating art, literature, and lyrical music via my computer that rests upon its three-sided corner desk.

  I’m somewhat obsessed with order, and though I tend not to complain, even when circumstances in life call for it, disorder eats away at me like a cancer. In my mind, at least in some sense, it is the mark of a fool, a deficiency that impedes progress brought on as a symptomatic result of grave depression, a lack of ambition, or for lack of explanation - nothing good. As a Christian, I’d say that it is a minor thing but a bad testimony. Theologically speaking, the God who created the cosmos from chaos doesn’t want people to live in homes that look like they’re from television episodes of hoarders. Presumably, no one walking into such a place would aspire to collect such heaps of things that there is no real place for them and think how they wish to be like that.

  I once read that the best way to begin your day is to make your bed. These are only things that I say because I’m obsessed with attention to detail. The things that I don’t mention in stories (leaving certain details vague) are intentional. It seems good to me for the reader to imagine what characters look like beyond what is necessary unless certain things need to be said. When I am writing about cities, I look at historical maps and name real roads, businesses, and such. I study as to how many gas-lit lanterns there are on each city block, and so forth. That only matters to me because I want my fiction to seem real. When I say that real-life characters said something (that do not involve their interaction with fictional characters), I don’t make it up. They really said those things.

  To know what I know, I read a lot of primary source material, rather than revisionist history. For example, if there was a battle, I’d read accounts from the people who were there with different viewpoints (ideologies) and make determinations about how things happened from there. When I’m writing about Abraham Lincoln (who died several books ago), I draw from his public speeches and those biographies written close to his death by people who actually knew him. They say a lot of unfavorable things, by the way. Essentially, beyond his known mental disorders, troubled marriage, and documented involvement within spiritualism (as an audience member), he was every bit a politician and knew how to play to the crowd.

  For whatever reason, these introductions and whatnot before the chapters in a book are the most difficult things for me to write. It’s not that I’m not personable. In fact, I’m extremely personable, forthcoming, and very much an orator and spokesman with the duality of being able to close myself up in a tunnel to create things.

  Having finished writing this novel, before my writing this introduction, I would like to say that I sufficiently feel that it is so disturbingly violent (in places) that it holds up to the others well. It also is a book that allows me to contrast and flush out characters’ back stories, which is something that I like very much.

Chapter 1:

unforgiven

  The Sunday morning Sun crawled above the Eastern horizon spreading its light across the New Mexico Territory’s arid terrain. It was the dawning of a new day. Shadows began to dance along the craggy surfaces of the limestone peaks. Creeping things crawled and slithered back into their holes with the departure of night. There in a valley, standing alone by itself upon a long spanning flat stretch of land was a modest sized adobe church house. There were several stairs leading up to the front door, a few windows, and a crucifix was erected atop it signifying its vocation.

  Gradually, the parishioners gathered together to rejoice in the Lord Jesus Christ and His righteousness. As the congregation came together and sang the music fluttered across the dead dry places, ministering life and goodness to the area. It was a place of peace and a place of comfort where they’d all pray for one another lifting up holy hands without wrath or doubting. Initially, their pastor stood before them declaring, This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. To which, the whole church said, Amen.

  The minister wore an attire that concealed the abundance of scars canvassing his body. His beard was trimmed nice and neat, and hair as styled as it ever had been in his life, slicked back behind his ears, and falling just below his collar in the back. This clergyman had been such a hard man, marked by the brutal Northern invasion during The War for Southern Independence from the time of Lincoln’s reign. He had borne the Confederate gray. Something in him died during those dark days. There amidst the horrors of war he found the blessed peace and salvation pure and true in Christ.

  More than the scars that marked him, the preacher was a man marked by the irrefutable change that the Lord had made. He used to be the vilest and most profane of sinners. For so long now, he’d been on the righteous path leaving those things behind him and pressing on with Heaven as his aim. While he gave no details about his life, he asked no details about others either. The church and spread out community had few enough people that everyone knew everyone. Howbeit, things were in such a way that the locals didn’t necessarily know too much about anyone else at all.

  And so beneath this veil of reclusiveness their pastor The Reverend Bob Cummins stood before the people and recited the twelfth verse of the one-hundred and third Psalm. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. And with those words so on began another Sunday sermon. Speaking in general terms he told of how the Native Americans had been robbed, slaughtered, and herded around like cattle by the United States government. Additionally, he spoke of the war that he had fought. Never giving any personal details to reveal what he once was, the former guerrilla soldier of the black sheep Confederate militia Heaven’s Seven kept his cool. Keeping the gospel message on course he related all of the ugliness that had happened throughout the course of the United States in regards to their remote location far from the reaches of an overbearing government as an allegorical kinship to the verse. At one point he stated, I thank God we’re nowhere near Washington, D.C. which resulted in a few of the people enthusiastically cheering with a Yes and Amen.

  Their pastor, Robert Cummins had found his way to the remote area sometime before, and now thought of it as home. There in the New Mexican wilderness he felt himself to be invisible to the eyes of the United States government, and safe from retaliation from those who might pursue him. There was a peace to be found there in seclusion. Just like in scripture, he found that there was a sense of Holiness to the desert wilderness. There free from distractions, voices of men, and the noise of a crowded populace