The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister - Landon Wark (bill gates best books TXT) 📗

“Evidence. We know,” Paul interjected. “So then it could be God.”

"I'm warning you, Paul," Clay muttered. "That God is gonna get smaller."

Jonah felt as if all the eyes in the world were upon him. He knew how to respond, but not whether he should respond. There were too many questions. Maybe he should just give up and…

“At this point any theory is as good as any other,” he said. “Assumptions are dangerous.”

From where she sat, next to the large television in the corner, Sandy glanced around at the others and then to Jonah. He looked as if he were about to break down and cry where he stood. She had never seen him like this before, but then again she had never seen him around this many people before.

She thought back on the judging laughter of the women in the call centre and her heart twitched in her chest. A burst of sympathy for him welled up.

“Who are you to tell him what’s going on?” she said. “How much time have you spent out in that shack trying to figure it out?”

“Will he let us try, is the question,” Clay asked, half wistful, half genuine.

All eyes shifted back to Jonah as if they were watching a tennis match.

“It’s for your safety,” he replied. “I’ve had some… accidents.”

“Convenient,” Ezra grumbled.

In the silence that followed, Clay said, "I mean, he's not wrong."

Sandy stared around incredulously. "What is going on?"

"It’s okay, Sandy," Jonah shuffled his feet back towards the hall. "I... I better get back to it. You can all believe whatever you want to believe."

As he turned to beat a hasty retreat back to the tranquility of the cabin Jonah nearly barrelled over Carmen; rushing to inspect the standoff that was taking place in the room she had left minutes before. The syringe and the quarter sized plastic bag that she was in the process of stuffing into her pocket fell to the ground. The smooth cylinder skipped over to the wall while the yellowish mass stood out for the entire world to gaze at with their judgmental eyes.

"What is that?" Jonah managed as he stumbled through a few words he was trying to get out.

"I—" Carmen Carruthers looked as if the principal had just called her out on the first day of kindergarten.

Despite his limited experience with such matters Jonah managed to infer exactly what the waxy yellowish substance was.

"How did you get that in here?" he breathed.

"I... well, um—"

"She needs it, Jonah." Sandy tried to come to Carmen's defence. "For now. Until—"

"Please tell me you didn't." Jonah took a half-step backwards toward the door.

"Well, we—"

"Tell me you didn't!" Jonah shouted.

Everyone started.

"Ohhhhhh. Shit," he muttered, his face turning a colour nearly identical to substance perched on the floor before Carmen. "Ohhhhhhh."

Jonah stumbled back through the door. Even as Sandy tried to come after him, he was regaining his footing, rushing down the stairs. A word died on her lips as he burst through the door and was out into the night air once again. The silhouette of his thin figure marching down the path towards the cabin greeted her as Sandy managed to reach the bottom of the stairs.

The door rocked on its hinges as he shoved it aside. Running his hand through his hair he marched an almost desperate pace along the floor of the cabin. He managed to hold off the worst of the old muttering habit that went along with his intermittent cursing.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!" He lashed out with a foot, sending his small waste basket flying across the room.

The fact that he had forgotten to lock or even to close the door behind him grated over him as Sandy approached. For a moment he considered a hasty slamming of the door in her face, but found his legs were too weak to proceed and so he merely tried to wave her off. She ignored him.

"This is bad, Sandy," he moaned slightly, head in his hands, supported by his elbows on the counter. "This is really bad."

"We need her, Jonah," Sandy said cautiously as she put a hand on the green sofa along the window closest to the house. "Have you read some of the things she's written? Carmen half convinced me the Governor's a lizard person."

"I—Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Just a little light headed from running out here."

"Do you know the kind of consequences that could come with us making goddamn heroin out here?" Jonah went back to pacing the floor. "That was heroin, right? I have no idea what heroin looks like."

"Neither do I," Sandy replied. "We wanted the desperate people! Some of those people come with baggage, Jonah. If you try to convince a bunch of saints... you're probably going to have to put up with some more proselytizing."

"I have to put up with that anyway," he grumbled. "One of them is making drugs, the other is trying to have us look for God."

"Yeah, I didn't really think the analogy through," Sandy muttered. "I've seen Carmen go through withdrawal and it's not pretty. She's in pain."

"I don't doubt it. I asked you to control the situation and..." She was right. He had asked her to find these people. But the amount of baggage coming with this particular lost soul—the stigmas and the guilt-by-association. His progress was a slow grind as it was.

"It's just one more person for you to help," Sandy prodded.

Jonah placed his hands on his bench and exhaled deeply. Things were starting to get out of hand. He was quickly losing control.

"She's going to have to get in line."

As she sat with the note-taking app of her phone open, a red error message informing her that anything she wrote would go unsynced, locked within the memory of the device, Carmen