Waking Lazarus Read online

  Praise for Waking Lazarus

  ‘‘This taut inspirational thriller will keep readers guessing. . . .’’

  Library Journal

  ‘‘Readers who consider most faith thrillers too tame should find this satisfactorily chilling.’’

  Publishers Weekly

  ‘‘This book is compelling as well as spell-binding . . . an excellent murder-mystery . . .’’

  Alan Paul Curtis, Who-Dunnit.com

  ‘‘From the opening sentence, Hines delivers. Waking Lazarus is a twisting, thrilling, and satisfying ride. With a deft hand, Hines weaves supernatural and human mysteries into a colorful tapestry. Keep an eye on this guy.’’

  Scott Nicholson, bestselling author of The Farm

  ‘‘What’s better than a fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat, insanely original thriller with deep characters and lots of heart? One that’s well crafted by a true wordsmith and raconteur. That’s what you get with Waking Lazarus. It’s a riveting novel you won’t soon forget, and T. L. Hines is an enormous talent with a bright future.’’

  Robert Liparulo, author of Comes a Horseman and Germ

  ‘‘Waking Lazarus provides the reader with a rare treat, a supernatural thriller managing to be spiritual, intelligent, and imaginative while consistently maintaining page-turning, heart-racing suspense.’’

  William Hjortsberg, author of Falling Angel

  ‘‘Waking Lazarus is a thought-provoking seat-of-your-pants thriller of personal redemption; like Lazarus himself, this book rises to the occasion.’’

  Craig Johnson, author of The Cold Dish and Death Without Company

  ‘‘T. L. Hines probes characters’ thoughts and motives to give readers a psychological thriller that is both suspense-filled and spiritually complex.’’

  James BeauSeigneur, author of THE CHRIST CLONE TRILOGY

  ‘‘T. L. Hines is a fresh voice in the field of suspense, balancing dark moods with moments of emotion and redemption. . . . With flawless pacing, Hines leads us to a final twist which is startling, yet satisfying.’’

  Eric Wilson, author of Expiration Date and Dark to Mortal Eyes

  ‘‘Rarely anymore do I read something and immediately think . . . ‘I wish I’d written that.’ With Waking Lazarus the thought kept recurring constantly. . . . I had despaired of finding another suspense writer to love. Now I don’t have to.’’

  Chandler McGrew, author of In Shadows and The Darkening

  ‘‘Waking Lazarus has it all! An exciting, intelligent plot with layers of meaning and truly unforgettable characters. Readers looking for a first-rate novel of suspense will want to put this tale at the top of their must-read list. No doubt about it—T. L. Hines is an author to watch!

  Margaret Coel, NY Times bestselling author of The Drowning Man and Eye of the Wolf

  ‘‘Waking Lazarus is a spooky, creepy, engrossing supernatural suspense novel in the tradition of Frank Peretti, Bill Myers, and Brandilyn Collins. Don’t read this book late at night! Strongly recommended for the reader who thinks he can’t be scared.’’

  Randy Ingermanson, Christy-award winning author of Double Vision.

  ‘‘A good read for those who enjoy thought with their thrill. T. L. Hines handles his characters with confidence and compassion and invites readers to keep turning the pages through the twist at the very end.’’

  Jill Morrow, author of Angel Caf and The Open Channel

  WAKING LAZARUS

  Books by T.L. Hines

  Waking Lazarus

  The Dead Whisper On

  T.L. HINES

  WAKING

  LAZARUS

  Waking Lazarus

  Copyright © 2006

  T. L. Hines

  Cover design by Gearbox Studios

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7642-0344-2

  ISBN-10: 0-7642-0344-4

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Hines, T. L.

  Waking Lazarus / T. L. Hines.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-7642-0204-9 (alk. paper)

  1. Supernatural—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.I5726W35 2006

  813'.6—dc22

  2006007776

  To Nancy and Jillian,

  for always believing.

  Table of Contents

  1 DROWNING: 24 Years Ago

  2 BECOMING: Now

  3 HIDING

  4 LIGHTNING: 16 Years Ago

  5 RINGING: Now

  6 UNLOCKING

  7 READING

  8 THINKING

  9 COUNTING

  10 SHAMING

  11 SEEING

  12 DREAMING

  13 LEAKING

  14 SAVING

  15 FREEZING: Eight Years Ago

  16 CONFESSING Now

  17 SHARPENING

  18 REMEMBERING

  19 SCREAMING

  20 THUMPING

  21 SEARCHING

  22 FREEING

  23 MISUNDERSTANDING

  24 DISCOVERING

  25 CHOPPING

  26 VISITING

  27 RECHARGING

  28 QUESTIONING

  29 CONNECTING

  30 TESTING

  31 TREMBLING

  32 ACCEPTING

  33 CLEANSING

  34 SWITCHING

  35 MISSING

  36 RECONCILING

  37 REAPING

  38 MEETING

  39 CONFRONTING

  40 REVEALING

  41 DYING

  42 WAKING

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him. These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazar us sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.

  —John 11:9b–11

  WAKING LAZARUS

  1

  DROWNING

  24 Years Ago

  The first time Jude Allman died, he was eight years old.

  It happened after a day of ice fishing with his father, William. Mid-January. Duck Lake. Twenty degrees above zero on the thermometer, and something far below that on the wind-chill scale. Jude sat on an overturned pickle bucket most of the day, occasionally threading a hook through fresh corn or salmon eggs before dropping his line into the inky hole at his feet. A few times, when he was impatient for a bite, he put his face over the hole and cupped his hands to peer at the watery world beneath. He saw a few sunfish, but no perch—none of the perch his father considered such ‘‘good eatin’.’’

  ‘‘Should be headin’ back,’’ William finally said. The comment startled Jude, partly because he himself had been ready to leave for hours, partly because it was only his father’s third sentence of the day. (The first two, respectively, had been ‘‘Ready to get goin’?’’ and ‘‘Hungry?’’) Jude slid off the bucket and reeled in his line. His hook had no salmon egg. Maybe an unseen good-eatin’ perch had nibbled it, or maybe the egg had shriveled and slid into the chilly water, resigning itself to fate.

  The
y gathered their gear and started toward the pickup. Jude counted each footfall: from memory, he knew it would be 327 steps.

  For several steps, all Jude could hear was the steady crunch of their boots, amplified into a hollow echo by the ice. Every so often, a forced cough from his dad, one of those quick huffs to clear the lungs. Jude stared down at his boots, watching as he continued to count. Fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight. He lifted his gaze again to stare at William’s broad back, wishing he could match his father’s long, loping strides. It was 327 steps for him; how many would that be for his father? Seventy-two, seventy-three, seventy-four. He pictured his mother, waiting at home with a steaming cup of hot chocolate, maybe a cookie or two. Chocolate chip. Eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty—

  For a moment, he felt as if he were on the roller coaster at the county fair as gravity’s pull licked at his stomach.

  Instantly he knew what was happening. The lake was swallowing him, pulling him in, whispering his name.

  He opened his mouth to call for his dad, to scream, to do anything, but the water was alive as it raced down his throat, and the bitter cold was a red starburst as he closed his eyes, and the world was a dark, fading memory as he felt himself sinking.

  Sinking.

  William heard a whisper, a sudden gust of wind, followed by something even more unsettling: silence. The steady chunk-chunk-chunk of Jude’s footsteps behind him had disappeared.

  He turned, wondering why Jude hadn’t cried out if he had slipped on the ice.

  Jude was gone. Only a dark patch of water, swirling like a drain. It was an auger hole (Jude fell through) left by previous fishermen (Jude fell through), and it wasn’t possible, wasn’t possible at all for Jude to—

  Jude fell through.

  Following this thought, another idea came to William, an unsavory idea he chewed on for a moment while looking at the black hole of water. He glanced at his old Ford pickup parked at the lake’s edge, his mind caressing the idea’s rough, brutal edges.

  Then the liquid sucking sound of the hole at his feet pulled him out of the thought. Pulled him to his knees.

  William plunged his arm deep into the gaping hole, and the frigid waters of the lake made him suck in a deep breath, a ragged gasp of protest from his sinew and muscles.

  Images of his son began to haunt his mind. Jude’s thin body sliding through the ice. Jude’s mouth stretching into a small ‘o’ as the last gasp of air escaped his lungs. Jude’s limp body floating beneath the ice, forever out of reach just inches from his fingers.

  William’s hand found nothing. Nothing at all.

  He pulled his arm out of the water, trying to banish the terrifying pictures that muddied his thinking. Cold and snow swirled around him, but his throat became a desert of grit as panic slid into his stomach. Jude was drowning.

  He plunged his head into the hole, not really knowing why, but driven by a need to do something else, anything else. He tried to open his eyes under the water, really tried, yet his body refused to cooperate. He pulled his head from the water, gasped for air, and felt rivulets of trickling water beginning to freeze as they traced lines down his forehead.

  A few more seconds. Rushed panting. Thinking.

  William thrust his arm back into the murky water, stretching it as far as possible and willing his fingers to touch something, anything other than ice and liquid. Although he’d never been a religious man, he subconsciously begged God to—

  His finger brushed something. Then, not just his finger, but his whole hand. He grasped and pulled, closing his eyes against the exertion. The dull purple of Jude’s winter coat surfaced, now slick and shiny with water. William used both hands to reclaim his son’s motionless body from the lake.

  Streams poured from Jude’s clothing as if he were a sunken treasure lifted to the surface after centuries in the murky depths. William rubbed at Jude’s face, tried to open the eyes, find a breath, a heartbeat, anything.

  Jude was still.

  William looked to the pickup again, tore off his own coat, and wrapped it around the lifeless form. He picked up the body and turned toward the shore, then slipped and sprawled across the ice after a few steps.

  But he wasn’t going to lose his grip on Jude. Not now.

  William crawled to his feet and started shuffling toward shore once more. He listened to the slow drizzle of water draining away from Jude’s clothes. Or maybe it was the sound of time draining away from him. For a second—just for a second when Jude slipped through the ice—he had thought about . . . Again he pushed the idea from his mind. Couldn’t think about that now. Couldn’t think about that ever. Had to get to the hospital.

  He opened the passenger door and pushed aside a jar of pickled beets as he slid Jude into the cab. He ran to the other side of the pickup, put the key in the ignition, and turned it. The old Ford roared to life, and William had it in gear before it was hitting on all cylinders, spraying snow and ice from the tires as he turned and started the twenty miles back to town.

  As his pickup and his heart raced each other down the icy county road, an odd realization settled into his brain: Dead. His mind didn’t reject the thought but instead embraced it. Dead, and ain’t nobody gonna change it. He knew they were easily half an hour from the nearest telephone, maybe twenty-five minutes from the hospital. Jude’s last breath had been something like ten minutes ago. So, Jude’s body would be almost forty minutes gone before . . .

  William skidded around a lazy corner, chirping across the road and toward the ditch. At the last moment he regained control of the pickup and straightened its path again. The adrenaline circulated in his veins, and the word returned to his mind: Dead.

  The hospital’s automatic front doors slid open. William blinked a few times before stepping inside. Pink, the lobby was pink. What were they thinking? He pushed the irritation from the front of his mind and took in more of the scene. A woman sat behind a large desk. Evidently she hadn’t heard him, because she was still reading.

  But how could that be? Couldn’t she hear the deafening roar of water leaking from Jude and spilling onto the floor? He shifted his weight to his other foot as he looked at Jude’s dull blue face again. Okay, the water wasn’t really coming out in a stream now, more like a steady drip, but the cursed drip was deafeningly loud. Drip. He could hear the sound bouncing off the harsh pink-tinted walls. Drip.

  The nurse still didn’t acknowledge him, so he took another step toward her oak-finished desk and cleared his throat. She finally looked up and focused tired red eyes on William. Then, her eyes widened.

  Drip.

  William didn’t have to say anything after all. The nurse shifted gears, dialed a phone, said something he couldn’t quite decipher, then rushed around the counter. Running footsteps approached, bringing a woman and a man—a nurse and a doctor, he guessed—to take Jude from his arms.

  It wasn’t difficult to let go. It was a relief, really, to feel the wet body being lifted from him. Now it really was out of his hands, ha ha, had always been out of his hands, hadn’t it?

  ‘‘I said, you his father?’’ The doctor’s question brought him back into focus. Guy didn’t have one of those white lab coats, but he had to be a doctor. He was obviously in charge of the situation, directing the two women to cover Jude’s body with some kind of blankets. Blankets. Yeah, those would help a boy who’s been dead over half an hour.

  The doctor must have sensed William’s thoughts. ‘‘Need to bring up his core temperature,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Sure,’’ William answered.

  The doctor and the nurses started to push Jude’s cart down the hall, toward a pair of large steel doors with small windows. He looked back toward William again. ‘‘What happened?’’

  ‘‘Fell through the ice,’’ William answered.

  The doctor looked as if he wanted to hear something else when the front of the gurney crashed into the doors. ‘‘Just wait here,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ll—’’ He kept on barking something, but the s
teel doors whisking shut behind him swallowed the words. Not that it mattered. Jude was dead. William knew that. Even the doctor knew it.

  He walked down the hallway to the steel doors, peeked through one of the windows, and saw nothing. A large sign told him HOSPITAL STAFF ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT.

  He didn’t move. He stood at the door for what felt like five hours, occasionally looking through the small glass window.

  No sign of the doctor.

  He tried to ignore the gaping, insistent thought his mind had birthed on the ice, the thought that now continued to grow inside and threatened to devour every other thought.

  ‘‘Sir?’’ The voice echoed off the tiled hallway behind him. William whirled around and couldn’t help feeling as if the doctor had known what he was thinking.

  ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ the young doctor said. ‘‘We couldn’t save him.’’

  William stared for a few moments, half expecting the doctor to add something, to say I know what you were thinking out there on the ice, but he simply returned the gaze. William nodded, thinking the doctor would take that as a cue to leave. The doctor had to go first; if William did, it would seem shallow, callous.

  ‘‘We tried to raise his temperature,’’ he offered. William noticed the doctor studying his own face now, gauging his reactions. ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ the doctor finished abruptly. ‘‘We tried everything we could.’’

  William nodded again, hoping that would be enough to send the doctor on his way.

  It was. The doctor backed through the steel doors and disappeared into the bowels of the pink-tinged hospital.

  Now it was time to go home and tell his wife their son was dead.

  When Jude awoke, he didn’t move. Didn’t even open his eyes. He felt the crisp linen of a sheet pressed against his face, pressed against his whole body, and the sensation made him realize his clothes were missing. Buck-naked, as Mom always said when he popped out of the bathtub. And something was tied to his toe. A piece of string? What kind of game was that? Not one he liked, he decided.