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The Wake of Dreams The Celestine Prophecy meets The Silence of the Lambs |
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PROLOGUE I am
evil. It is important you
know this from the start. Not
just a little evil either. I
am a fiend. I have
committed acts of unspeakable cruelty in large and small ways, acts so
depraved you will recoil in revulsion before my tale is finished.
I write this without pride, without any sense of accomplishment
for my foul deeds. I write
now for the same reason I’ve done so many horrible things.
Because of Love.
Still with me? Good.
Keep reading. You
know what kind of man I am; I have told you.
If you keep reading my words, then perhaps you are evil too. Maybe not as much as I, but a little. Enough. Enough
to appreciate what happened to me to make me this way. Maybe you will understand in a way I never will.
Maybe you and I will meet someday and you can explain it to me.
Maybe then I won’t destroy your life as I have so many others. Maybe or maybe not. I
can’t guarantee anything. Because
I’m evil.
I wasn’t always evil. I
was born in a small town in Iowa in the early fifties, the youngest of
four sons of a Presbyterian minister.
My father named me Ephraim after Joseph’s younger son.
I came more than several years after my next older brother.
One day my brothers jealously observed that my mother was at my
"beck and call." From
then on I was nicknamed "Mr. Beck and Call" which eventually
was shortened to "Bek."
I
was raised to believe that God had a plan.
It was laid out for us when the world began and all the flow of
history was His divine watch unwinding slowly, that all people great and
small are just performers filling roles in each other’s lives.
It is both a comforting and daunting philosophy.
I was a very devout boy. I said my prayers on bended knee each and every night with my elbows on the patchwork quilt my grandmother finished making for me the day I was born. I attended church services on Sundays and listened to my father’s strong voice call out that we could never know God’s plan but it was there. I can see him in the pulpit in his dark suit, his long fingers tightly grasping the polished wood. His hands would always shake because, even though he fervently believed in his message, he never got over a horror for public speaking. He pointed at his flock with his beaky nose and stammered that we were all threads in God’s quilt, and if we tried very hard we may see one or two of the patches, but we could never know the whole quilt. I believed, I trusted, I was comforted on those terrible occasions when life went awry for me. Like the time I lost the county spelling bee on the word "cinnamon." I thought that the proctor said "synonym." I should have asked for a sentence. But God’s plan said that I would lose, and I did. It stung for a time. I still dislike the taste of cinnamon because of it. Isn’t life strange? |
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