Terminal

“Actually,” Oscar tried correcting her, “Tommy and Mr. Kirby are both right. The Arabs, Jews, and Christians all believe in the same God. He just has different names. It’s his prophets that they disagree with.”

Martha glared at him with eyes like razors, and Oscar got quiet again. Sherm jumped to his feet, head cocked and listening.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“Thought I heard something,” he mouthed. “Voices. Quiet, soft. Check the hall and the lobby.”

I opened my mouth to protest and Sherm cut me off.

“You wanted to be in charge, Tommy.”

Gripping the pistol in my sweaty hand, I crept out into the hall. It was silent and empty. I tilted my head and listened. Nothing. Outside, there was the distant squawk of police radios and the buzz of voices, but inside, there was nothing. I tiptoed toward the lobby and peeked around the corner. It was empty, except for Mac Davis and Kelvin. The dead cop’s eyes stared back at me. A fly crawled across his face.

I ducked back into the vault.

“Anything?” Sherm asked.

“Nothing”— I shook my head—“except for Kelvin and that cop. Their bodies are still lying on the floor.”

Sherm frowned.

“I could have sworn I fucking heard something.”

We grew quiet again, and I replaced Sherm at John’s side.

“So you don’t believe in an afterlife of any kind, I take it?” Roy asked me.

“No, I don’t. There’s no heaven or hell. When we die, we turn into worm food. That’s all. Even worms got to eat.”

“I heard that,” Sherm agreed.

“But what about the soul, Tommy?” Roy continued. “That has to go somewhere, doesn’t it?”

“There’s no such thing as a soul, Mr. Kirby.”

I was surprised to see Dugan nodding in agreement with me.

“I’ve seen men die,” he said slowly, “but I never saw what happened to their souls after. I never saw any leave their bodies, that much I know.”

“Where have you seen men die?” Sherm sneered.

“You must be born again,” Martha broke in before Dugan could answer. “You must be washed in the blood of the lamb! Only blood can do it— blood and sacrifice! The blood of the innocent! The blood of the lamb!”

She stared at Benjy, and Sheila stared back in alarm. None of us responded and she fell silent again.

Blood of the innocent lamb. I didn’t like the sound of that, or the way she’d looked at Benjy when she said it.

“What about ghosts?” Sharon asked.

Sherm snickered. “What about them?”

“Aren’t they proof of some kind of an afterlife?”

“Have you ever seen a ghost?”

“No, but just because I haven’t seen one doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in them. I’ve never seen a polar bear either, but I know that they exist. Why can’t the same thing be true for ghosts?

There are enough eyewitness accounts, photographs, even video footage.”

I thought about it for a moment.

“John thought he saw a ghost once, back when we were kids. Or at least he thought he did. Down at the old quarry between Spring Grove and Hanover. We used to go swimming there. Supposedly there’s a town at the bottom of it. The dam burst back in the twenties and the town was just left standing when the waters flooded the mine. A few kids have drowned there over the years too. It’s supposed to be haunted. People say they see white, human-looking shapes down under the water. But I never saw anything.”

“So you don’t believe in them?”

I shook my head.

“No, I guess I don’t. Ghosts or God. It’s all the same thing, isn’t it? Don’t they call him the holy ghost?”

Nobody responded, and I figured they’d finally shut up and quit asking questions. I found myself wondering again if they’d be this nice to me if I wasn’t one of the guys with a gun. After a few minutes, Oscar stirred. His bare chest had goose bumps.

“Personally, I’ve always believed in reincarnation.”

“What’s that?” Sheila asked.

“Reincarnation? It’s the belief that we’ve all had previous lives before this current one we’re living. It’s commonly accepted in many religions— not Christianity of course, or Judaism, but many others.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of that,” Sherm said. “It means like I could have been Billy the Kid or D. B. Cooper in a past life. Wouldn’t that be the bomb?”

“No doubt,” Oscar said with a straight face. If Sherm noticed the underlying sarcasm in his voice, he didn’t let on.

“Edgar Cayce believed in it,” Oscar continued. “He was a great healer, died in 1945. Back then, they called him a ‘psychic healer,’ but today I guess he’d just be considered a homeopathic practitioner. Whatever you want to call him, he definitely left his mark on the world. He used to do readings and stuff and tell people who they were in their past lives. The transcripts of the readings are all on file at the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia. There must be thousands of them.”

“Sounds like New Age crap to me,” Dugan grunted. “I never bought in to all that worshipping crystals and singing to the whales crap.”

“Some of that is a little far-fetched,” Oscar admitted, “but a lot more of it has been proven outside the mainstream scientific community.”