The Real Thing
an excerpt

Author's note: Daniel's sister Sheba recently committed suicide. The first extract is from early in the book and takes place a few days after the funeral.

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“Jeanie, Jeanie … “ Tears were flowing down his father’s face now as he dropped to his knees and took his wife’s hands in his own. “You have to stop this. It doesn’t help to question God. It doesn’t change anything. We just have to trust, have to have faith…”

Daniel shifted his gaze away from his parents, unable to watch them any longer. He’d grown up with God as a kind of third parent in the home, only he was the one who never slept and always knew what Daniel was up to, no matter where he was or what he was doing. And he’d had enough. Just looking at them now, being slowly destroyed by the fear that their beautiful, precious daughter might even now be burning in some fiery pit in some unimaginable universe where God was absent and only torment and demons and devilish laughter ruled supreme, was enough to impel him forward.

He spun on his heel, faced them and raised his voice, making it strong, harsh. “You’re both wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.”

That got their attention. “What?” His father’s face, full of pain and tears, was nearly his undoing. He steeled himself to topple the their kingdom, the walls of tradition and faith that they’d set up for themselves years before.

“Listen to you both! So afraid, groping in the dark for reassurances that just aren’t there.”

He looked from one to the other.

“I grew up hearing all about a God who was just this huge mass of contradictions. He loved me, you said. He gave me free will so I could choose to love him back. But then,” and he raised a finger, “then he turns around and loads all the bases, says ‘fine, you have free will but if you choose wrong, you end up in hell, where you will burn forever.’ What kind of choice is that, anyway? It’s rubbish. All of it.”

He stopped, breathing hard and fast, feeling his heart tumble-turning in his chest. His legs were weak with fear, an old fear from over a decade ago.

“God didn’t send Sheba to hell. He didn’t have to because she had already spent half her life there. Because of you and your God and his impossible demands.”

They were frozen in place now, staring in horror as he opened his mouth and committed what was, in their eyes, the ultimate sin.

“God never sent Sheba to hell. He couldn’t, because he doesn’t exist.”

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Author's note: In the second extract, Daniel has just had an existential-type experience while on the top of a mountain in Egypt, which really shook him up. He and his companion Gil are now climbing back down again.

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“Gil!” He stopped, pulled the camera over his head and started opening the case. Gil stopped halfway onto the next step and looked up. “I just want to do some pictures, the light is great here. Do you mind?”

“Great idea.” Gil sat down in the middle of the pathway and grinned up at him. “It’ll give me a chance to pretend I’m not out of breath and panting like a fool.”

Daniel laughed, reassured by the utter normality of the exchange and feeling his panic subsiding even further. He looked around and spotted a flat rock a few feet off the path. Ducking under the rail, he tested it with his foot and found it sturdy.

“Careful.” Gil upended his own water bottle and drank. “The wind is pretty fierce up here.”

Daniel nodded, and adjusted the settings on the camera. He snapped off a series of shots, moving across a steady curve from right to left, capturing the entire valley frame by frame. The light was perfect and he relaxed even further. This was what he was good at, where he excelled. If nothing else came of this trip, at least he’d have an awesome file of stock photos, and maybe even a few that would be worth selling. He stepped back, adjusting the focus slightly. The rock wobbled slightly and he froze. The last thing he needed now was to slip and drop the camera or sprain an ankle. He shifted his foot back to the centre and breathing slowly, tilted the camera, looking back up the path they had just descended.

Perfect. The amazing white light seemed to be everywhere at once, illuminating every single crevice and joint, throwing boulders into hollow relief, filling his viewfinder with images that seemed to resonate with life and depth and—

Without warning and without a sound, the world fell away from under him.

Where moments ago there had been solid, sun-warmed rock, there was now only empty air rushing past him at a frightening speed. The mountain tilted to one side, spilling sky behind it and throwing the distant horizon up towards the sun. He fell past dark granite, past rough brown boulders, past shrubs and grasses and shale, all dissolving at warp speed to a green-grey blur. He heard a voice screaming, the words incomprehensible as they ravaged his throat. Pain took him down, striking with vicious precision at his hip, his shoulder, his belly, the back of his head and then his legs were falling over his head, spinning him as if he were a gymnast performing a double back flip off the side of the mountain, the great mountain, the mountain of the one god, a god of hope and fire and law and death, roasting you in sacrificial flames and then chewing you up and spitting out the bones of your surrender, throwing your sacrifice back in your face and turning the world dark, black as night, black as sin, filling you with grief and pain ... then tantalizing you with hope, with promises of a better life only life never got better, it never did, it was a lie, a fucking lie he’d bought into for far, far too long, only now it was too late, it was all over, he was dying here, dying in a million little pieces scattered across the face of the great mountain, and he didn’t know, still didn’t know--.

The world thudded to a standstill and for a brief moment all he could see were tiny grains of sand, inches from his eyes. Then it seemed as if the god of the mountain stepped down and trod him underfoot, breaking every bone in his body. He even heard the cracking as the pain carried him far away….

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