How the World Ends by Joel Varty Read Free Book Online

comply, like some deep-rooted purpose within me, rising to the surface. Surprisingly, Michael’s face erupts in a smile, those white teeth flashing with a delightful brilliance which belies the perturbing nature of his puzzling speech. “Don’t worry too much though,” he says through the smile. “I can give you a hand.” He squeezes my shoulder again and starts toward the stairs.
    “Come on,” he says, waving me forward without looking back.
    I start to follow him, and then I see a door, off in the shadows, on an outside wall. It seems a strange place for a door to be, so I walk over and open it. There are a set of stairs leading down, and I start walking down them.
    “Not yet, Jonah,” calls Michael from upstairs. “You got to wait till later to take that route out of town.”
    “What?” I ask, totally perplexed as to how this doorway could lead out of town. “Where does this go.”
    There is no answer. I return to the other stairs and climb back up to the main hall.
    When I get there, Michael is gone.
    I feel the rumble of the thunder right through the floor before I hear the enormous crashing of its sound.
    I reach the top of the steps and look over at the table with its burning Christ candle flickering slightly in the breeze caused by the vibrations. Something niggles at the back of m mind, and I wonder if I should be frightened or not. I decide that I’m not.
    Michael: he hadn’t even waited for his answer. Will you serve? It’s not the kind of question you get asked these days; it’s too open ended, too much room for misinterpretation, although, in this case, and in this place, it doesn’t seem to matter. I know exactly what he means by serve, I just don’t know what I am supposed to do.
    I sit down on the steps that lead down into the rows of pews. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think. I wonder if I have been imagining voices in my head – whether it be guilt, or stress, or some innate need to right a wrong, I don’t know. I am guilty, I think. I am guilty.
    I close my eyes and wonder what it is that I could possibly do to help sort out the wrongs I have caused. But all the time, I can’t really believe that it is my fault. What could I have done differently? Where did I make a choice that could have been different? Why am I guilty?
    When the article with Ruben’s research was first published, we were hit with a deluge of phone calls and reporters asking for quotes, or offering money for a “scoop.” The research that I had published brought the world tantalizing close to God-like powers of biological dominion – close but not quite. And there was a key element to the research that I felt had been left out, purposefully, so that the work could be validated, but not implemented.
    Ruben’s son Aeron had come back to stay with us at the time following his father’s death. The change in him from kind, gentle and easy-going, to cold, distant and hard had been nearly instantaneous. It had been a switch that flipped in him – a decision, I am sure, that he felt compelled to make in order to justify his own place in a world that would take his father from him. With all the hype and press coverage, it seemed best for him to get away for a time.
    Aeron went from my place back to boarding school. It seemed the best thing to do at the time. What he was doing now, I don’t know. I have put the matter as far from my mind as I can. The passing of time and the creation of space was supposed to help us to heal, but all it seemed to do was insulate me temporarily from the ills I had caused. It was my fault that Ruben’s work had been squandered – my fault that his son had been pushed away from the family that was meant to help him through his difficult times. What could I have done differently? Everything.
    I close my eyes against the tears that won’t come.
    “We sink into guilt sometimes, Jonah,” a voice says from the back of the church. “It’s like a quagmire that waits for