Demons and Angels

Read Chapter 1 below.

Please note this is a nightmare I actually had and it inspired the book, Demons and Dreams.

Chapter 1

History Lesson:
Caleb Kincade, January 2044

God died on June 1, 2042.

In 2042, American society teetered on the edge of anarchy. Unemployment had reached an all-time high of forty-six percent. International creditors stopped buying US bonds, preventing the US government from taking on more debt and forcing the government to implement true financial reform. They eliminated social support programs like food stamps and health insurance.

The government had a massive job layoff. Unemployment, already high from failed fiscal changes and too many taxes, skyrocketed to new levels—programs designed to help the unemployed and poor shut down. For the first time, millions of Americans went to bed hungry. Many without jobs had already burned through their savings accounts and maxed out their credit cards. They had no money to buy food, and many got kicked out of their homes. The lucky ones still had relatives with houses. The less fortunate wandered the streets.

The hollow pit in the average person’s belly made for a fitful sleep. And when these people dreamed, “I” festered in their minds. I don’t deserve this. Why should I suffer? I deserve better.

Two events in the early spring of 2042 caused the destruction of churches worldwide and killed or forced God’s people into hiding.

The first incident involved Cornell Professor of Paranormal Studies, Doctor Erica Johnson.

In January 2042, Dr. Johnson and RF (Radio Frequency) Engineering professor Lars Schmidt modified a full-spectrum video camera. They added a new sensor developed by Professor Schmidt. Schmidt believed the sensor captured and visually recorded quantum vibrations, but they were unsure if it would work. No one had succeeded yet. Dr. Johnson connected it to a computer with the software she wrote. Preliminary tests were inconclusive, and the scientists felt disappointed. They left the equipment in the lab while they considered their next steps.

Later that same day, the students in Dr. Johnson’s paranormal psychology lab had an assignment. The assignment asked them to attempt an out-of-body experience. One student, Susan, stepped forward to try it. When she awoke from her trance, she announced she had succeeded. She wanted to try again, and her lab partner, Jack, offered to record the session. Then he spied the Professor’s video camera and turned it on. Jack saw Susan lying on the cot on the computer monitor and pushed the “record” button. At first, nothing happened, but then he noticed something odd. A transparent, undulating, multicolored energy field separated from Susan and floated above her. It moved around the room and changed shape like an amoeba.

Jack’s attention shifted between Susan lying on the couch and the monitor. He quietly motioned to the others, and they rushed to the computer. Wide-eyed, they watched the undulating form as it lowered and merged with Susan’s body and disappeared. Then she woke from the trance.

One of the other students ran to find Dr. Johnson and Professor. Schmidt. When they joined the students, Susan repeated what she had done earlier. She entered a trance, and the scientists witnessed what Jack had seen earlier.

Then, all the students attempted out-of-body experiences to ensure it was not a fluke. Those that succeeded showed similar undulating rainbow shapes but differed in intensity, color ranges, and size. Over the next few weeks, Dr. Johnson and her class debated what they saw on the monitor. They concluded they were observing the person’s soul. Dr. Johnson presented the device and video to the university’s administration and select members of the local medical community. They debated the evidence. They were not so quick to believe they witnessed a person’s soul.

Dr. Johnson designed an experiment to verify if the modified video camera detected the out-of-body soul. She and her class would use the device to record the moment of death. If the soul persisted after the body died, it would answer the question: Is there life after death?

In early February, they approached a local hospice facility and asked terminally ill patients for permission to record their deaths. Five of the patients agreed to be a part of the experiment.

As the first patient neared death, Dr. Johnson set up the newly named “Soul Recorder” to record the moment. They witnessed the undulating bands of color develop and leave the body. The shifting shape rose about five feet from the body and dissipated. It took about sixty seconds from when it left the body to when it disappeared. It didn’t float out of the building or zoom off in another direction. It looked like it had dissolved.

They repeated the process with the other four patients with the same results.

Sadly, Dr. Johnson concluded that life after death did not exist since the spiritual energy dissipated so quickly. If the spirit didn’t persist, life after death could not either. Heaven and Hell were wishful thinking.

Weeks passed as Dr. Johnson and her students analyzed the data they collected. The results sadden most of them. They believed they had solved the mystery of life after death and concluded life was pointless, along with morals. Why bother being good if no reward or punishment awaits them after death?

Jack sat on a bar stool nursing a drink when a friend from the Los Angeles Times sat beside him. Jack gave intoxicated details of the experiments that had transpired over the last two months. His reporter friend covertly recorded the conversation and wrote a detailed article about the Soul Recorder the next day, which he submitted to his editor.

The second event involved three celebrities who “died” on Saturday, March 29, the day before Palm Sunday.

The celebrities “died” in unrelated incidents: a traffic accident, a drug overdose, and an attempted suicide, all before dawn on Saturday. Individually, they meant nothing. After ten to fifteen minutes, emergency medical personnel revived each one. They transported them to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. A brain can survive without oxygen, typically between four and six minutes. After ten minutes, they all should have suffered brain damage, but none exhibited any loss of mental faculties. Once stable, the hospital admitted all three for observation.

The Los Angeles Times newspaper received an anonymous tip about the three celebrities’ death and returned to life. It had been a slow news day, so the paper sent rookie reporter Cindy Barlow to check it out.

Cindy arrived by 9:00 a.m. Cindy raised a stink at reception when they denied her celebrity access. The hospital administration feared bad press. After a heated discussion with Miss Barlow, they permitted her to interview the celebrities if they consented. Each star said ‘Yes” to the interview.

They each had different stories, but all gave the same answer when asked if they experienced life after death. They said: “Nothing waits for you after death. Neither Heaven nor Hell existed.”

The reporter submitted her article before the deadline for the Palm Sunday Edition.

The chief editor knew news gold when he saw it. He intentionally placed both articles side-by-side on March 30, 2042, in the Palm Sunday print and electronic editions.

When the faithful and others read the Palm Sunday article, great cries of anger and anguish floated to the heavens. Those with unshakable faith cried, “That isn’t true! Heaven and Hell do exist. You need the salvation Jesus offers!”

Atheists smugly responded, “See, we told you so. Your faith is worthless.”

For decades, the church’s moderating influence on society had waned, and the population of believers in a single God dwindled. Those who professed faith in a single God, like Christians, Jews, and Muslims, often suffered discrimination in the workplace, in social clubs, in home buying, and more. In many states, it became illegal to proclaim faith in God publicly.

The nation had a crisis of faith. The atheists smugly rubbed these findings in the faces of believers everywhere. Devout people of God refused to believe the Soul Recorder worked, and those with weak faith abandoned the church. Within a week, most of the unbelieving population came to a grim conclusion. All the churches of a single God lied. There is no afterlife.

Like gasoline fumes, fear, selfishness, and anger permeated society. The celebrities’ report of nothing existing after death and Dr. Johnson’s conclusion became the spark people needed to blame others for their woes. The spark ignited the vapor, and society exploded; however, not with the random destruction of a typical explosion. Instead, like multiple cruise missiles, they rocketed toward only one type of target— any building where they taught or displayed there is only one God.

On Easter Sunday, April 6, 2042, the first salvo of missiles launched, detonated, and mortally wounded God on Earth.

The rockets flew to Manhattan. Angry crowds had gathered Easter morning at places of worship within the borough: churches, synagogues, and mosques.

“There is no Heaven! There is no Hell! The church lied!” screamed the mobs, demanding their pound of flesh. As the angry crowds built, believers gathered to defend their places of worship. The faithful threw together whatever they could find to create make-shift barriers. With their backs to their houses of worship, they faced enraged mobs.

The largest crowd gathered at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, where Bishop Kirkland stood in front of his beloved church, wrapped in his robes of office. The bishop spoke of calm and peace when a crane belching black smoke rolled to a stop before the church.

It raised its mighty arm to full height, and a wrecking ball hung from the end of the wrist-thick cable. The engine roared, and with a giant swing, the ball sailed towards the front doors of St. Patrick’s and Bishop Kirkland. He died with the first blow to his beloved church.

The Purge of God from this world began.

The crowd went wild. Rocks struck the faithful. Gunshots rang out, and people screamed as they fell wounded or dead to the ground. The wrecking ball pounded the church’s front wall, creating a great hole. The mob rushed forward. Mercy withered in the hearts of the attackers as they killed every defending parishioner. A river of blood flowed in the gutter.

Looters ran into the church, then jogged out with whatever valuables they could find before the wrecking ball finished the job.

By the end of the day, half the houses of worship in Manhattan were in flames or leveled by heavy construction equipment. The crowds murdered tens of thousands of believers of all three faiths.

On April 7, 2042, the angry mobs swelled again, and every church in the five boroughs of New York City crumbled.

Within a week, crowds in every city in America attacked all religious buildings within its borders. And like spokes on a wheel radiating from the urban centers, places of worship in the suburbs and countryside fell like dominos. Mobs snuffed out the lives of millions of defending believers.

The few remaining faithful in law enforcement and local fire departments left their posts to stand with the church’s defenders. They died while their fellow officers watched, unwilling to intervene.

Within weeks, rioters demolished every holy place in America. When the mobs ran out of buildings to plunder and destroy, they hunted the faithful. Gangs roamed the streets, interrogating anyone they met and asking them one question. “Do you believe in the God of the Bible, the Torah, or the Qur’an?” If they answered yes, they died. Christians, Jews, and Muslims fell or hid from the rampaging thugs.

Dump trucks carried the dead outside the city limits. Excavators dug stadium-size holes into which the trucks dumped their grisly loads. Then, the excavators returned and covered the bodies. The process of burying the bodies took months.

Ironically, tens of thousands of atheists also died as people began killing anyone with whom they held a grudge. With no faith-based morality to restrain them, people randomly killed those they hated. Police overwhelmed or non-existent, ignored corpses piling up in the streets.

The rioters attacked any building displaying a religious phrase or the Ten Commandments with sledgehammers or jackhammers. The gangs burned mountains of Bibles and other holy books.

The insanity spread to every nation in the world. Within two months, the worldwide mobs had erased all evidence that God existed.

Nobody knows how many people died during those months. Before the Purge, the world population was ten billion people. The last reliable survey of religions happened in the 2020s. At that time, the number of practitioners of those three faiths was about fifty-five percent of the world. In 2042, it had shrunk to about thirty percent. Those weak in the faith abandoned all three religions by the millions. The government estimated that up to two and a half billion people died or went into hiding worldwide. Economies and governments neared total collapse.

All governments instituted martial law and herded their populations into the major metropolitan centers. Like lost sheep, their citizens willingly followed their Shepard’s voice, enabling governments to concentrate and control them. The government put all these unemployed people to work on infrastructure. They built residential skyscrapers, sewers, water reclamation, and treatment plants. The army erected walls to keep the sheep penned but not to keep out the wolves.

Outside the giant cities lived factory and farm workers, miners, criminals, and the remnant of God’s believers.

The government dealt with those outside the city when their communities grew to more than one hundred people. Then, they would send a missile barrage while they slept to eradicate them.

I wrote this narrative based on eyewitness accounts, newspaper reports, and television interviews to help future generations remember what transpired in those dark days of 2042.

Forever God’s servant,

Caleb Kincade

January 15, 2044