The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister Landon Wark (free e books to read .txt) 📖

Jonah bit his lip and looked back down at the notebook. He had gone through all the food that he kept stored in the cabin and if he wanted to eat, outside was the only option. Someday soon he would be able to create his own, but not today.

He looked down at the notebook, wondering if he would be able to remember where he left off when he came back.

With a stroke of his pen he marked his place and got up to make the long journey towards the house.

Jonah’s stomach rumbled grimly as he slammed the screen door shut behind him. The smell of food wafting through the mesh was enough to start his mouth watering. And made him forget that he was in the middle of a rare break in some important experimentation.

The light of the refrigerator nearly blinded him as he swung it open. His face turned up into a grimace as he shuffled around leftovers covered in some kind of fungus he would have to go back to his biology 101 notes to identify. He quickly found the freshest plate and tossed it into a microwave that had mysteriously appeared on the counter since last time he had been in the house.

Above the droning and rattling of the heating platter he could make out the sounds of people in one of the upstairs rooms. As the microwave beeped there was a roaring crescendo of laughter that caused him to raise an eyebrow. He rescued the pasta and grabbed a fork from out of the sink and commenced shovelling. The breeze blowing through the kitchen window cooled the food quickly and as he walked over to close it he caught sight of the orange sun sinking low over a rosy horizon. He paused in his shovelling for a moment to inhale the crisp evening air. The house was quiet for a calming, inspiring moment…

And then another swell of noise from upstairs shattered it.

Jonah put the plate and fork back in the sink and walked slowly up the stairway. He placed the sounds at one of the rooms at the end of the hall, the larger one that had been converted into a media room. Cable and DVDs only. He remembered the day the movers had brought in the equipment and, despite his objections, wired it up. He had had to hide several piles of money they had been storing in the room before they had arrived and kept a watchful eye on them for the entire two hours. Sandy might play fast and loose with the secrecy around here, but he had seen what that sort of lack of vigilance would get him.

He brushed open the door to the large room, just enough to get a look inside. The laughter died down for a moment and he managed to catch hold of some of the words that were causing them.

"If there's one thing I know, having lived in the South for so long, it's when someone is speaking in tongues. Well, that and when they're fake speaking in tongues." Paul’s voice was toned so low that at first he didn’t recognize it. "And if what we're doing here isn't speaking in tongues, and being heard, then I don't know what is."

There were a couple of guffaws and he could hear the woman, Jenny, said something that sounded like an amen.

"I think you're stretching things there, Paul," a second voice said.

This was followed by a series of what might have boos or what might have been overly polite 'Welllllls'.

"I don't know how you can look at an actual miracle and say 'I don't exactly know what's going on'. Trust your eyes. Trust your heart."

"I can't. My heart is too... fallible," Clay replied. "And when Carmen gets here she'll tell you the same thing. It makes us too vulnerable to following crazy assholes."

"Are you saying Jonah's a crazy asshole?" Sandy's voice challenged.

"I've never been in the same room with him long enough to form an opinion," Clay replied.

"I know this," Paul continued. "We need to figure out exactly what the source of these... miracles are. If we can do that... Think of what good proof of the divine would—"

"I have to use the bathroom," Jenny's voice interrupted him.

Jonah backed a step away. The darkness in the hall seemed to split in twain as Jenny Hernandez opened the door. The look of shock and embarrassment on her face was enough to tell him that he was never meant to intrude on what was happening inside.

“Oh...” She was uncertain how much he had heard, that he could gather. “Jonah.”

The room behind her fell quiet, as if the ghost of the departed had just walked in during the wake.

“We were just...”

“Yeah, I know,” he replied dourly.

Each member of the congregated mass looked at each other nervously. Conversion was about as necessary as a candle on the surface of the sun. Paul's brow furrowed.

“Jonah...” The older man looked forlorn. “I’m sorry but... I mean you have to admit... All the rest of us see miracles—”

"Not all the rest of us," Clay muttered inaudibly.

“You see what you want to see,” Jonah said sharply, any embarrassment at having walked in on the private gathering was driven away. “These are natural forces. They have predictable patterns and results.”

“But you don’t know where they come from,” Paul stood his ground, though anyone could see the muscles in his legs tightening.

Jonah swallowed and looked around at the assembly. “I... no.”

“Uncle...” Sandy warned.

“So they could have come from God.”

Jonah shifted nervously, looking from one face to another. They were all expecting something from him.

“It could be anything. It could be another universe with different rules intersecting with ours. It could be that the laws of physics are starting to wind down. I... I don’t