Untaken Read online

  UNTAKEN

  By Yul Calsto

  Jake approached his bedroom curtains cautiously. The light that was streaming in was bright and golden. It was just past midnight. There were no noises that had alerted him. No bump in the night that jolted him out of sleep. He had awakened because of the light. The pure, bright, golden light from outside.

  He pulled the curtain to the side just slightly, only enough so he could take a peek outside. He expected to see a searchlight directed at his window from the side of a police van. Or a spotlight from a silent helicopter overhead. There was neither of these. In fact, there was nothing. There were only the bright clouds of the night reflecting a golden light onto the world. The darkness had transformed into day. The moon was out, and it was lit up a bright corn color.

  Jake heard a dog bark. It was the only noise that disturbed the peaceful night air. He looked to his neighbor’s house, hoping to see that they were also peeking out from behind their curtains for an explanation to why the night was bright. Nobody was there. There was nothing. It was silent, and there was no movement outside.

  He made sure to close the curtain back to its original position and he made his way out of his bedroom, through his house, and softly walked to the front door. He put one eye to the peephole. The street was quiet. The golden light was bright on his porch, and it sent a pin-sized beam through the peephole. He kept his eye up to the door for a spell. His hand went to the doorknob and he unlocked it, slowly opening the door to a crack. He put his head out and took a quick survey of his front porch. It was so quiet, as if there was a freshly fallen blanket of snow that muffled any type of noises that might float by on the airwaves. The December snow had fallen just days before, and had remained on the ground even last night. Looking at his front lawn now, the ground was dry. The dead, brown grass was crispy, as if it had received too much sunlight and too little water. The golden light had melted the snow and dried the ground overnight.

  Only the dog’s bark was heard in the distance.

  He turned his head around and looked at the wall clock in his living room to double-check the time. It was 12:07am. It should be pitch dark outside. He took one step out onto his porch. It looked as if it was noon, except that there was no sun. The clouds were bright and golden and the moon reflected sunny light. Even as a reflection, the moon was difficult to look directly at.

  So still.

  Then a humming noise. Up the street, a car was creeping along the pavement, up the long stretch of road in the neighborhood. There was no driver. The car crept forward. The slight uphill of the road kept the car at a slow pace. It passed by Jake and his front porch, slowly inching by his house. It found its way to a stop in the ditch ahead, softly planting itself in the grass, the engine still on.

  The dog barked again. Jake had been in this neighborhood for three years. That dog was usually quiet, especially at night when the world was silent.

  Jake took another step out onto his porch and down to the pavement of the walk. He looked up and down the street. His neighborhood was crowded with housing, built close together with tiny yards that were no bigger than the driveways that led up to the garages. It was all motionless. He wondered if everyone in the neighborhood was asleep, and if he was the only person seeing this. But it was so bright out. Even brighter than the light of day, he thought.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Jake’s voice was held low. It was very peaceful outside, and warm to almost a summery temperature, but the golden light that seemed to emanate from nowhere and the unmanned car that had rolled down his street made him too uncomfortable to enjoy the tranquility. If there was anything dangerous outside, Jake didn’t want to draw attention to himself.

  The dog barked again.

  In his bare feet, Jake ran across the street to his neighbor’s house. He peeked over the fence. The dog was running in wide circles around the backyard, his collar jingling with each step. Every so often, the dog would bring its head up and bark.

  “Shhh….Oscar,” Jake kept his voice low. “What’s the matter, boy?”

  Oscar stopped running and looked at Jake perched on the fence. He trotted over to Jake, but kept some distance between them, hesitant to approach within his reach.

  “Are you scared, boy? What’s wrong?”

  Oscar backed away from Jake, barked several times to the east, and then continued his run around the backyard.

  “Shhh…it’s ok, Oscar,” Jake said. He turned his eyes to the direction that Oscar had barked. A shudder of fear went through him.

  In the distance, the golden sky stretched far, but it all came to a sudden stop on the horizon. There, against the bright golden peace, heavy, dark red clouds were rolling in. The clouds were violent and rolled quickly in place, but they were held from moving forward too swiftly. They tumbled and plumed strongly, as if they were plowing against a sheet of glass that divided the clouds from the golden sky. Despite their forceful efforts, the clouds were making very slow progress. There was no sound coming forth from the clouds, which made them that much more fearful. A silent rumble of energy. Dark, and red, and black, and menacing in the distance.

  Jake climbed off the fence. He stood watching the clouds. It scared him. This was not a thunderstorm, nor a tornado, and not a hurricane.

  There was evil in these foreboding clouds.

  As peaceful and soothing as the golden sky around him appeared, the wickedness that the clouds displayed in the distance struck terror in him.

  “Jake.” He heard a voice behind him. “Hey, Jake.”

  “Where are you?” Jake called back.

  “Quiet. Keep your voice down. I’m back here, in the window.”

  Jake looked around to the next house over on his street. He ran over to the window well and peered in. His neighbor, Bill, was sitting in the window of the basement, all but hidden in the well.

  “Get down, you idiot,” Bill said. Jake hopped down into the well and squatted next to Bill. He saw that Bill was holding a sword. It was a short, Roman sword, one that looked very old but he could tell that it still held a sharp edge.

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s the end.”

  “The end? The end of what?”

  “The end of the world. The Rapture,” Bill explained as one hand went to push his long gray hair back behind his ear.

  Jake stood up in the window well and took a step back when he heard the words, doubtful.

  “Get down,” Bill said and grabbed Jake’s arm, yanking him down into the well and out of view from anything that might be outside.

  Bill was a hippie. He had many grand notions of government conspiracies and alien invasions. Jake had entertained him by listening to them all for the past three years. Bill had rarely spoken about the Rapture before, however.

  “C’mon, get inside.” Bill motioned for Jake to get into the basement through the window. Bill took one last peek outside and ducked into the basement after Jake.

  His basement was a fort. The walls were all reinforced with cement that was laid up to five inches thick in some places. Against the cement, there were tubes of steel that were bundled together by rope and stacked on top of each other to create a wall. There was metal piping that came vertically from the floor to the ceiling that lined up the tubes and prevented them from falling over. At the base of the tube walls were bags of mixed concrete that Bill had not yet gotten to, stacked like another security wall. It looked as though this shelter had been in the works for years.

  The ceiling was low. There were no rugs, no carpet. There was a hose that came up out of the concrete floor and was dripping water into the center of the basement floor down a built-in drain. There were jugs of water lined up next to the metal tubes, and there was a large stack of non-perishable food. A stack of flashlights la
y in a pile next to the jugs, and next to those were a dozen pre-made torches assembled from sticks and old shirts. The smell of kerosene oozed off of them. The room had a light, but it was not on. The room was lit up only by the golden light that streamed in from the window.

  “Nothing can burn in here. We’re safe, for now,” Bill said as he closed the window and moved a bundle of steel tubes over the window opening and locked it into place between the vertical metal piping.

  “Safe? What’s going to happen?” Jake asked.

  “Here put these on.” Bill handed Jake a pair of coveralls. Jake was still in the t-shirt and boxer shorts that he had slept in.

  Jake pulled them on. They were a bit loose, but they felt heavy and protective.

  “These too.” Bill tossed a pair of socks to Jake. “If we need to fight, here’s what we have to do it with,” Bill said and he showed a table full of weapons to Jake.

  Bill was an odd person, Jake knew that, but the old man had an even odder selection of weapons. In addition to the short Roman sword that Bill still held in his hands, the table shelved chainmail armor, a battle axe, a long curled dagger, a can of mace spray, a dozen arrows and a crossbow, a staff, a fencing sword, a baseball bat, a WWII flamethrower, and a samurai sword that looked dull and rusted. There was also a Spartan helmet that looked like spray-painted tinfoil and papier-mâché.

  “Why will we need to fight? What’s going to happen?” Jake asked again.

  Bill looked at Jake. He raised his short sword up and made a quick jabbing motion in the air toward Jake’s torso.

  “The demons,” Bill said with a smile and a thirsty chuckle. He jabbed the air again with the sword and then placed it on his shoulder. Jake stood looking at him, skeptical.

  "For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." Bill quoted the Bible’s book of Revelation.

  “What do you mean?” Jake asked again, still a bit dumbfounded. He was not a spiritual person, and yes there were end-of-days doomsayer’s these past months leading up to this December day, but he put no belief in such a thing and ignored the overly dramatic warnings.

  “Weren’t you awake? Didn’t you see?” Bill asked.

  “See what?”

  “The Second Coming.”

  “What?” Jake almost laughed this out.

  “The clouds. The light. You had to have seen it. You weren’t awake?”

  “No.”

  “It happened so fast. I was awake. Watching. I was waiting for it.”

  “What happened?”

  Bill put his hand up to his chin and rubbed his gray beard, twisting it in his fingers and smiling to himself. “The white light came first, as bright as I’ve ever seen…”

  “When?”

  “Just now.”

  “Just now? I’ve been outside. You saw me outside just now,” Jake said.

  The old man rambled with glazed eyes, “The light is still out there. Just before you came out of your house, the light was so bright, the clouds were white and majestic. They rolled through, up our streets, into the houses. I saw it coming. It was so fast.”

  “What is going on? Where is everybody? Our neighbors?” Jake asked.

  “Taken. By the Lord.”

  Jake wanted to laugh, but it was all too real to be funny. The cold winter night had turned bright and warm in just a few short hours since he had fallen asleep. The sky was a beautiful golden light. The neighborhood was deserted as far as he could tell, and in the distance…those horrific, dark red clouds.

  He looked at Bill. The old hippie’s eyes were clear and steady. The sword was still held on his shoulders.

  “What about us?” Jake asked.

  “We weren’t taken. We were left behind to fend for ourselves.”

  “Fend against what?”

  “The demons,” Bill said again.

  “What demons? Where?” Jake was growing impatient.

  "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken." Bill was quoting scripture again.

  “Bill,” Jake said, “You mean the red clouds?”

  “To the east.”

  “That’s…the demons?”

  “Satan himself and all his minions.”

  “Why were we left here?”

  “I’m a bad man, Jake.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve stolen, I’ve cheated, I’ve lied, and I am not welcome in the Kingdom of Heaven.” Bill turned his eyes into a squint with one eyebrow raised higher than the other. He cocked his head sideways and stared inquisitively through Jake’s skull. “What have you done?”

  Jake was shaken. He didn’t believe in silly predictions and the end-of-the-world clairvoyants. He went to bed last night just as he did the night before and the night before that. “I don’t know. I’m good.”

  “You weren’t taken,” Bill said flatly.

  “You’re a fool.”

  “God has taken the good. What is left is the evil.” Bill was surprisingly open and no caution was taken on his part to withhold insult.

  “I’m not evil.”

  “You’re not good.”

  “I’m not bad.”

  “I knew I wasn’t going to be among the saved. You’re not among the good. You would have been taken, trust me.”

  “I wouldn’t trust you if you were the last man on earth.”

  They both looked at each other and Jake realized the heaviness of his statement. There had to be more people out there like him. More people who were untaken.

  Jake wondered why he was left behind. He wasn’t a churchgoer, but he wasn’t particularly bad in his own mind. He treated others well. The way he wanted to be treated in return. He believed in God, but not as much as he did in science, however, he had never really put any thought into it. He had been raised a Protestant, but his family rarely went to church in his youth. When he left home after graduating high school, he adopted a semi-agnostic approach to religion.

  Jake walked toward the staircase in the basement and took two steps up before seeing that the stairs had been barricaded by what looked to be the contents of Bill’s living room.

  “You can’t get out that way.”

  “I’m not staying here.”

  “You will wish you had if you go out there,” Bill pointed through the window with his short sword.

  “What do you plan to do? Stay in this…vault? You don’t think that…they will get you in here?”

  “I won’t go easily. I plan to fight. They’ll get me. I surely have a place in Hell. But you…maybe not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The saved have been taken. Evil remains. But are you among the damned?”

  Jake took Bill’s words with a grain of salt. He knew the old man was eccentric. Yet, he was far from being able to explain the situation himself. He had listened to the old man’s stories for the past three years since he moved into the neighborhood. Stories of being yanked out of bed by angels and being told the end date of the world by God himself in his dreams. This solidified Jake’s assessment of the old man as a first-class kook.

  Bill remained standing in the center of the basement, the garden hose trickling water at his feet. Jake walked past him to the window and lifted the steel tube makeshift wall that guarded the exit.

  “Here, take this.” Bill moved from the table of collected weapons and handed him the curled dagger. Jake took it and put it in the pocket of the coveralls. The pockets were deep and the dagger was concealed.

  “You’ll need this too,” the old man said and picked up one of the jugs of water. Kneeling, he poured it into one of the many thermos containers that were piled next to the row of jugs. He twisted the top closed and held it out at arm’s length for Jake.

  “What’s that for?”

  “If they confront you, pour it on them. Use it sparingl
y at first. I don’t know how much you’ll need for each one.”

  “Water?”

  “Holy water. Blessed by the priest at Holy Apostles Church.”

  Jake was skeptical, and turned toward the window. Light poured in and the sky was still a peaceful golden veil. He crawled into the window well and peeked his head up, looking to the east. The crimson clouds were rumbling silently in, closer than before.

  He turned back to Bill in the basement. The old man still held the thermos out in one hand. Jake took it and put it in the other pocket of the coveralls.

  “Thanks.”

  Jake ran across the front yard, keeping his eyes on the dark clouds. The driverless car still lay in the ditch across the street, the engine was off now, which seemed odd. He looked to the west, away from the darkness. The golden sky stretched itself into a glorious white cloud that seemed to shift across the land like a blizzard, sweeping in and around the city buildings in the far distance. He hopped onto his porch and into his open front door.

  Locking the front door behind him, he sat himself down on the couch in his living room. Could this really be it? The end times. Is he among the damned? It sounded absurd to him as he thought it over. He held his head in his hands and rocked forward on the couch. He needed to call his father.

  His dad lived alone, in the same neighborhood as him. Jake’s mother died bringing him into the world.

  He went to his room and picked his cell phone off the nightstand. It was off, and no amount of pushing the power button was going to resurrect it. The alarm clock was out too. He opened the closet and grabbed his pair of loafers out of habit, then paused and dropped the loafers in favor of his running shoes. If this was truly evil coming his way, he would need to be able to run. He didn’t own a gun. The dagger in his pocket and the thermos of holy water were his only weapons.

  He ran through the house and out the front door, leaving it open behind him. The world was still lit up outside. He went to the house directly next door to his on the street. Climbing the stairs to the front porch, he pushed the doorbell, but he didn’t hear it chime. There was no answer. He knocked several times and waited, but there was still no answer. Trying the doorknob, he found that it was locked. He stepped back on the porch and kicked at the door, but it didn’t give. He was about to try again when the door opened suddenly and the cold metal of a double-barreled shotgun was pressed against his forehead.