Skinwalker chapter 5 (standard:travel stories, 8996 words) [5/5] show all parts
Author: Eutychus	Added: Mar 28 2018	Views/Reads: 1667/1245	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Jerry and Moe move beyond the library and into the circle of the heretics and beyond that to the circle of the wrathful.

"As in poker?" 

"Yes. After he lost his eyebrows again he shrugged over the fact of
having his face engulfed by flames. That gesture to me said he 
understands that this is how things are. That was resignation. For the 
believer, there is no such thing as resignation, and should be no 
giving in to despair. Sure we can be overwhelmed by the circumstances 
of the moment, but because we know who God is and that He has a plan 
for history, we know that our present circumstances do not govern the 
outcome of history. Even the difficult becomes filled with meaning." 

Moe sighed but said nothing. 

"What's the story with the open graves?" 

"Epicureans. These held to a philosophy that there was no afterlife, so
they will remain in their uncomfortably hot tombs for eternity." 

"Since the tombs are open, what keeps the occupants from leaving them?" 

"I suppose that a two hundred degree crypt is preferable to being
consumed by flames, which is what happens should they venture above the 
lip of their tombs." 

"So leaving their sarcophagus would be a little like dropping sodium
into water?" 

"Very much like that, yes." 

"There's a bit of irony at play here, isn't there?" 

"How do you mean?" 

"The covers are for the most part removed, meaning that if they wanted
to leave the grave they could. At Christ's return, graves will be 
opened and the righteous dead shall leave them. These folks will be 
eternally on the verge of a resurrection of sorts, being in an opened 
grave, but be unable to leave those graves on account of the flames, 
thereby living out in eternity the attitude they held in life, that 
there is nothing but the grave after death." 

The slight breeze blowing uphill was warm and as we walked into the
field of tombs I understood why. Each iron tomb radiated heat. Of 
course, if it was two hundred degrees inside the tomb, eventually the 
outside of the tomb would reach the same temperature and emit heat into 
the air around it. And the breeze was probably a result of the air 
rising above the wall of Dis. As it rose, comparatively cooler air 
rushed in to take its place. 

"Recognize anyone?" Moe asked. I wondered why he would ask and then I
noticed a lid. Embossed lettering gave details regarding the person 
inside. Name, birth and death dates, degrees conferred, and even an 
abstract concerning accomplishments in life. I slowed down, read a few 
and decided that the abstract was less a list of achievements and more 
an indictment of why they wound up here. 

"Yes. This person was a Supreme Court justice, though not a particularly
religious one. How would someone with no awareness of God in their life 
end up a heretic?" 

"Again, Dante viewed heretics as people who knew truth but preferred
their own judgment of matters over that known truth. Typically this 
would apply to Biblical truth, but truth comes in other contexts as 
well. Could that have been true of this person?" 

"That could be true of anyone at one time or another. But a Supreme
Court justice, most definitely. At its outset, the purpose of the 
Supreme Court was that it be the highest court of appeal, but it has 
increasingly become the proving ground for contentious legislation. A 
recent example had something to do with how healthcare is administered 
in the country. New law was written that required employers who 
purchased insurance for their employees include in that coverage 
medications that result in an aborted pregnancy." 

"Isn't there some agency that keeps such dangerous drugs from ever


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