The Second Messiah

The Toyota Land Cruiser bumped over the desert trail and where it ended Jack cut the engine and jerked on the handbrake.

He stared over at the grave, the gravel chips a mess where Buddy had dug up the scroll. The heat of the desert drifted in through the open windows. Beside him, Lela handed him the water bottle and the flowers from the backseat.

Jack said, “My father told me once that the ancients believed the spirits of the dead lingered near their tombs. That he’d always be here for me, when I needed to talk.” He looked out over the rugged, desolate landscape. “It’s why I keep coming back. To be near them.”

She touched his hand. “Can I tell you a secret? I used to drive out here too. Sit here and remember that day and how close I felt to you.” Lela smiled. “You probably think I’m a sad case, don’t you?”

“What I’m thinking is, would you have dinner with me tonight? Somewhere in Jerusalem that serves good food and a half-decent bottle of wine?”

Lela’s fingers brushed against his face, and swept his hair off his forehead. She looked into his eyes and shook her head. “Not unless I can let you in on another secret.”

“There’s more?”

“I’ve been waiting a long time for you to ask me a question like that. Maybe part of me has always been waiting. Hoping that we’d meet once more. Of course, it can never be the same as it was and it’s foolish to expect it to be so. But I’m just glad that we’ve seen each other again.”

A smile broke on Jack’s lips. “Is that a yes or a no?”

She smiled back and moved her mouth over his, kissed him, gently at first, then more hungrily, until she slowly pulled away, and stroked his arm. “I think you already know the answer to that. Go talk to them, Jack. They’ll be waiting.”

The still desert air was dry as a bone as he stepped in front of the grave. The sun beat down. No murmur of wind disturbed the solitude, no hawk overheard to desecrate the silence.

He tidied the gravel chips, then went to sit on the boulder. He laid the flowers where he always did and filled the parched oasis from the plastic water bottle. Then he sat back and studied the words on the chiseled granite that inscribed his pain. Miss you always, love you forever.

Today he had so much to talk about. But as always, out of habit the same whispered questions echoed in his mind: Do the ghosts of the dead hear the words of the living?

Timeless questions that came from the core of him. Do we meet again? Does the love we nurture on this earth go on forever, beyond this universe, for all eternity?

No answers came, they never did, but that afternoon something strange happened.

Something that he would remember to the end of his days.

His questions had barely passed his lips when he felt a powerful current of air sweep in from the parched Judean desert.

It erupted out of nowhere, brushed across the sands, sending balls of camel thorn brush tumbling in its path. He closed his eyes, felt the wind’s breath on his face, as cool as a balm.

He opened his eyes again. They filled with water, reacting to the hot, gritty air.

The whistling wind had sent a swirl of dust across the sands. It raced out into the wilderness and then it was gone.

Silence once more filled the desert.

He felt it then, a presence at his shoulder. It went beyond anything natural. But it felt so real that the shock of it made him turn.

There was no one there.

His heart quickened.

The incident, coming out of nowhere, caused the hairs on the back of his neck to rise. At the same time he felt a strange, inexplicable feeling of calm, an intuition that he wasn’t alone. That in this desolate patch in the middle of the Judean desert, he was being watched over. It made him think of that day long ago with his father beneath the pyramids of Cheops.

You won’t see or touch us, but we’ll be standing next to you.

Was the spurious gust a sign? An answer to his questions? Had it merely been a trick of nature? Or had some wilful spirit caused it so?

In the deepest recess of his soul, in the void that we all know, the place where each of us alone meets with God and where we hear the echo of a voice, somehow he already knew his answer.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

It took well over forty years for authorities to make public the bulk of the translated texts found at Qumran. While many scholars believe that all of the texts have been revealed, others assert suspiciously that the Vatican has secretly held back explosive material of a disturbing and prophetic nature.

Despite their statements to the contrary, this assertion has never been properly or openly addressed by the Vatican.