Ghost writer, p.40
Ghost Writer, page 40
“Jonathan, are you saying you’re unwilling to change the ending of this book?” he heard Nellie ask.
Jonathan swallowed. His mouth was dry as cotton. He finally looked up at Nellie, and Nellie only, and said, “That’s what I’m saying.”
Nellie’s disapproving eyes might as well have cut his throat.
“All right,” she said in a forceful, professional tone. “Then let’s vote. Peter?”
Peter’s eyes were downcast on the papers in front of him. “No, Nellie.”
“Lisa?”
A pause, and then, “No.”
“Robert?”
“No.”
“Austin?”
“Nope.”
The last one left was Ezra. Jonathan looked up at him. Ezra met his eyes, and then in a regretful voice said, “No.”
It was as final as death. Nellie jotted down a note or two, then said, “The meeting is adjourned.”
The group rose slowly, gathered their things, and left, each eyeing Jonathan as if he were a freak show at a circus. Nellie was the last one out, and she lingered in the doorway.
“Why’d you do this, Jonathan? You know what this means to your career.”
Jonathan looked up at her, his eyes red and his face splotchy. “I don’t know. I guess I don’t have a lot to lose.”
Nellie tilted her head and frowned. “What do you mean by that? You’ve got so much, Jonathan. This was your big chance. You had a lot to lose today.”
Jonathan hung his head. “Not so much, really.”
Nellie shook her head. “I don’t get it. You used to be my shining star. Now you’re like a black hole. I don’t understand what’s happening to you.”
“Neither do I,” Jonathan managed before his throat swelled so tightly with emotions that he had to turn away. He heard Nellie step out of the room and close the door.
A black hole was right. He’d never felt deader inside.
------
Five o’clock came and went, and around five-thirty he noticed most of the office had left due to the heavy snow that had fallen. He finally managed to get out of his chair. Quietly unlocking his door, he peeked to make sure no one was around.
He went back to his office and grabbed his coat and briefcase. The elevator arrived quickly at his floor and made a quiet descent. When he got off, he started toward the exit where his car was. He didn’t want to go home. But he didn’t know where he needed to go. No certain “place” was going to make him feel any better.
He sighed and decided to go outside at the back of the building, where they had landscaped a small parklike area where editors, writers, agents, and anyone else could come and talk or think. It was quite beautiful in the spring, when the flowers were blooming and the grass was green.
Jonathan walked to the back exit and went outside. The snow covered all the benches and sidewalks, and the pond was glassy ice. It was a winter wonderland that meant nothing to him. Right now it was just a cold place to sit.
He swept off a bench with his bare hand and sat down, hunching over to try to stay warm. He wanted to cry. Hard. But the cold, adding to his already numb body and mind, kept anything from happening other than a tired, old body sitting on a soggy, wooden bench.
A hand touched his shoulder. Jonathan turned around to find Zippy, bundled in a snowsuit, looking down at him.
“Jonathan Harper, what in the world are you doing out here in this weather?” Zippy reached up to swipe at his drippy nose.
Jonathan didn’t bother to continue looking at him. “If you’re wondering about your book, they took it. With flying colors. They loved it.”
Zippy was blowing hot air into his mittens. “You don’t seem too happy about it.”
“I need to be alone right now, Francis. I’m sorry. I’m happy for you. But I need to be alone.”
Zippy plopped his padded form down on the bench next to Jonathan. “I don’t think you need to be alone.”
“I really do.” Jonathan tried to keep his body from shaking.
Zippy arranged himself better on the bench and said, “Clyde’s proposal didn’t go well, did it?”
Jonathan looked up. “How’d you know that? They’ve called all the authors in the house and told them, too?” Jonathan looked away angrily.
“No. It was just a hunch.”
“A hunch? Well, if you had that hunch yesterday, why didn’t you say something? It could’ve saved me a lot of grief.”
He zipped up his snowsuit as high as it would go. “What happened?”
Jonathan sighed, realizing Zippy wasn’t going anywhere soon. “It just . . . it didn’t fly. It was like I had them, all the way to the ending. And then it fell to pieces. They were asking questions I couldn’t answer. I was practically laughed out of the room.” He looked down at the snow. “They asked me to change the ending. And I said no. Isn’t that crazy? I must’ve lost my mind. I said no.”
Zippy wiped his nose with the thumb of his mitten. “Why didn’t you change the ending?”
Jonathan shrugged, a cold shiver crawling up the skin over his spine. “I don’t know, exactly.”
A light snow began to fall, and Jonathan welcomed the small flakes on his face. Then after a long silence, Zippy said, “I do.”
“You do what?”
“I know why you refused to change the ending.”
“You do, do you?”
“Yes, I do.” Zippy’s glasses fogged up, but he continued. “It was because it made sense to you. The other ending didn’t. Sure, it would’ve been a better sell, but you would’ve lost something important in the book.”
Jonathan swallowed and dusted the snow off his face. “You’re right. That’s exactly how I felt.” He looked at Zippy. “How did you know that?”
Zippy smiled and pushed his fogging glasses up on his bright red nose. “It’s because that’s how I felt about it. That’s how I knew the ending.”
Jonathan sat on his hands and stared out at the frozen pond. “But . . . why? Why does it make sense to us and not everyone else?”
Zippy paused before saying, “Don’t you see, Jonathan? Clyde Baxter didn’t write this book to be another bestseller. He wrote it because there was a message he wanted to send.”
Jonathan blinked away the snow on his lashes. “A message? Well, the message I got from my fellow editors today is that this book is missing a lot of pieces.”
“Like?”
“If the story revolves around this innocent prisoner, why do we never meet him? And what exactly is his motivation for exchanging his life with a guy like Lincoln Smith? Why is the entire story based on a serial killer and his whole plot to kill this guy?” Jonathan shook his head. “I couldn’t answer any of those questions today! I looked like an idiot!”
“I can answer all of them.” Zippy took his glasses off and wiped them with his sleeve.
Jonathan was stunned. “You can?”
Zippy nodded humbly. Then he said, “I can answer those questions because the book wasn’t ever written to be published. I believe, Jonathan, it was written for you.”
Jonathan held his breath. “For me?”
“Yes. Clyde wanted you to see something about your life.”
Jonathan could hardly speak. “What?”
Zippy adjusted himself on the bench and pulled at his mittens. “It’s a story about your life, in a sense.”
“My life?” Jonathan laughed.
“Yes. You see, I believe Clyde was trying to show you a picture of your life without God.” Jonathan swallowed hard. Zippy continued. “The innocent prisoner represents Jesus Christ. The reason you never meet the innocent man who sacrifices his life for the guilty man is that you, Jonathan, don’t know that innocent man. You don’t know Christ. It doesn’t change the fact that He’s willing to die to set guilty men free, to die in their place. But to you, you’re looking from the outside in, like a shell of a story that doesn’t have any meat or motivation. You can see what’s happening, but you don’t know why, and it’s not personal to you.” He rubbed his mitten across his nose.
Jonathan frowned and listened carefully. “Why . . . why is the story told from the point of view of the serial killer?”
Zippy’s glasses fogged over again. “I believe the serial killer represents Satan. Satan is a distraction to us all. His plan is to get rid of the one man who represents everything he is against. But, like Keaton Spade, we all get caught up in his plan and forget to look at Christ’s plan for our lives. But what Donomar intended for evil, the innocent prisoner turned to good. And even though Donomar thought that he had control over the situation, in the end it was the innocent man’s choice to give his life away that caused the events to happen. At any time he could’ve proclaimed his innocence and stopped the execution. There was more than enough outside evidence to do that. But instead, he died quietly for another prisoner.”
Cold tears dripped down Jonathan’s bright red cheeks. “But why would he die for someone like Lincoln Smith? A murderer! Who hung out with prostitutes and drug users?”
Zippy’s eyes focused on Jonathan’s. “Well, I can’t imagine any of us are close to worthy enough to let an innocent man die for our sins, are we? Lincoln Smith represents what all of us look like on the inside. And that’s exactly what Christ died for.”
Jonathan let out a soft cry and turned away, blotting his tears with the edge of his coat. “This is unreal. . . .”
“It is very real. It was obviously real to Clyde Baxter. Real enough for him to write an entire story about it.” Zippy leaned forward to see Jonathan’s face. “And I suspect that this story touches you in a way that is very personal, doesn’t it?” A loud sneeze exploded into Zippy’s mitten, but he wiped away the evidence and sat quietly.
Jonathan couldn’t answer. He was stunned and crushed and revived and grieved all at once. He just nodded his head as the tears poured out of his eyes. He felt Zippy’s mittened hand pat him on the back.
“This is a wonderful thing this man has done for you. He wrote a story that would make sense to you. He knew it would eventually, though I imagine he thought he would be the one to interpret it for you when you looked him in the eye and told him his story had some major holes in it.”
Zippy squeezed Jonathan’s shoulder and said, “He wants you to see there’s a man who was willing to die for you. In place of you. You’re not worthy of it. But He loves you. You just don’t know He loves you because you don’t know Him. He’s just a character in a story to you. But you know of Him, and you know that it is His part of the story that is powerful. It is His part of the story that is worth telling. You’ve been distracted a long time by the enemy and his plot to keep you away from this man and keep your attention on him. But now you’ve come face-to-face with this extraordinary man. You’ve come face-to-face with the truth. With what matters.”
Jonathan’s tears flowed faster. “What do I do?”
Zippy smiled and wiped his nose again. “You get down on your knees and you accept what He’s given you. That’s what you do. And then you pray that you would understand why, and understand Him more, and know Him more.” Zippy stood. “That’s what He wants most. For you to know Him.”
Jonathan looked up at Zippy. The snow had begun to fall harder. “Thank you,” he whispered through his tears.
Zippy nodded, unfogged his glasses, and walked slowly down the sidewalk and back into the building, sneezing and hacking all the way.
Jonathan cried harder than he had ever cried in his life, and before he could stop himself, he fell to his knees in the cold, packed snow and clasped his hands together. No words came. None that were verbal, anyway. He knew he didn’t have to say anything. He knew the prisoner in that cell heard his heart.
But what he didn’t know was that, as he knelt down on the ground and gave his life to God, a soft blanket of snow had covered him. He was finally pure.
chapter 28
You will go to the old park.
You will follow the path into the trees.
There you will meet your Maker.
Be there. For your family’s sake.
Jonathan was completely soaked, even through his coat, but he didn’t notice. His frozen hand held a single sheet of paper that he had pulled out of a manila envelope he found underneath the snow on the windshield of his car.
He reread the four sentences carefully. He knew the old park. It was twenty minutes from his house. He and his family used to go there all the time, until they built the newer one three miles away from their home. Now this one sat on the outskirts of town, barely used. Not too many people even knew it still existed. In fact, he and Kathy hadn’t even taken Sophie there. It had only one piece of playground equipment. The new one had fifty-two pieces, plus a gigantic rocket slide.
The path into the trees was always off limits. At least to the children. It led to a thick grouping of trees that always seemed ominous. One time Meg had run in there and gotten lost for ten minutes.
Jonathan swallowed hard as he looked at the paper again. There you will meet your Maker. Jonathan couldn’t help but laugh a little, and he said out loud, “I just did.” But the humor faded at the very real possibility that the writer meant that this would be the night he would die. He thought he had it all figured out. He thought his death was spiritual. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Jonathan managed to move his stiff body enough to get into his vehicle and turn on the heat. His nose was still running from all the cold and emotions he had just experienced. The heavy, invisible burden that had hunched his shoulders for so long was gone. He’d never felt freer. He’d never felt more loved.
And now he never felt more scared.
Be there. For your family’s sake. Would something happen to his family if he didn’t go? The thought sickened him. He needed God now more than ever. Tonight was the night that the writer had destined for him to die. Just when he had found life. Jonathan shook his head at the irony, then carefully set the sheet of paper down next to him on the passenger’s-side seat.
He leaned his head against the steering wheel. There was no choice to be made. If something were to happen to his family, he would never forgive himself. If this is what he had to do to save them, then he would go.
He backed out of his parking space and drove three miles to the highway that would take him to the park. He wanted to call Kathy. He wanted to tell her everything. But he didn’t want to frighten her. Not knowing what to expect, he wasn’t about to tell her his life had been threatened and he was on his way to see if the threat was real.
The drive in the snow took forty-five minutes. He exited off the highway onto Sandler, then made a right and drove north on Ashley. The park was a mile away. On the right.
Jonathan slowed his vehicle down and turned onto the small gravel road that led into the parking lot of the park. There was no one else around, and the park wasn’t even lit anymore. The moon’s light bouncing off the snow gave an eerie glow to the night.
He shut off the engine and opened his briefcase. He took out a piece of paper and pen and wrote: Kathy, I love you. If you are reading this, it probably means I’m dead. But I want you to know that if I am dead, I’m still alive. In heaven. With God. I did it today. I kneeled down and did it. I love you. And the girls, too. Always know that. J.
He placed the note on the seat beside him, then cautiously got out of his car and locked it. He looked around and saw the path that led into the trees. As he started to go toward it, he noticed something. Taped to one of the swings on the swing set was a manila envelope. It swung slightly in the evening breeze.
Jonathan buttoned his coat, still wet from the snow, and walked over to it. He yanked it free and opened it. A single, white sheet of paper read:
Don’t forget your briefcase.
Jonathan was stunned. His briefcase? Why would he need his briefcase? He looked at the paper one more time, then went back to his car and got his briefcase. He locked his car again and slowly continued up the path into the dark woods. The moon was filtered more by the trees now, and the snow didn’t reflect as much light.
The trail wound a little. His feet crunched against the icy path and dead leaves. If someone was waiting for him, they certainly would hear him coming. If not for the crunching snow, then for his pounding heart. The cold air made it hard enough to breathe without the fear of losing his life. He clutched his briefcase in front of his chest and slowly made his way deeper into the woods. He had no idea how thick the woods were, but the light was becoming scarcer.
He rounded a large tree and stopped. Sitting in the middle of a small clearing was a hurricane lamp with a small votive candle in the middle of it. Around it were some small stones to keep it from falling over in a strong wind. That tiny flame illuminated everything around it, including a small Bible set on a white cloth in the snow, held open by two tiny rocks.
Jonathan approached slowly and looked around. Three sets of footprints led away from the candle, each in opposite directions and into the darkness of the woods. A bush nearby wiggled and crackled. A small rabbit hopped out and then ran for his life.
Jonathan ran his hand through his hair and closed his eyes. He was shaking terribly. He managed to refocus on the Bible in front of him. He walked past the candle and toward the Bible. Kneeling down in the snow, he slowly removed the rocks. The print was small and he had trouble seeing anything but blurry letters. He moved toward the light of the candle. Several verses were highlighted on the page that was opened:
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Another one read:
