The Heaven Trilogy by Ted Dekker Page A

forward slightly. “Now, that’s a sight, Spencer,” she said in hushed voice.
    Spencer’s palms began to sweat. “What is?”
    “The other side.” She was grinning now like a child unable to contain a secret.
    “The other side of this pain and suffering. The realm of God.” She let it drop without offering more. Spencer blinked, wanting her to continue, knowing that she would—had to.
    Helen hesitated only a moment before dropping the question she had brought him here to ask. “Do you want to see, son?”
    Spencer’s heart jumped in his chest and his fingers tingled cold. Want to see? He swallowed. “See?” he asked, and his voice cracked.
    She gripped the arms of her chair and leaned forward. “Do you want to see what it’s like on the other side?” She spoke hushed, eagerly, quickly. “Do you want to know why death has its end? Why Jesus said, ‘Let the dead bury the dead’? It will help, child.”
    Suddenly his chest felt thick again, and an ache rose through his throat. “Yes,” he said. “Can I see that?”
    Grandma Helen’s mouth split into a broad smile. “Yes! Actually you would’ve been able to see it that first day, I think, but I had to wait until after the funeral, see? I had to let you mourn some. But for some reason things have changed, Spencer. He is allowing us to see.”
    The room was heavy with the unseen. Spencer could feel it, and goose flesh raised on his shoulders. A tear slipped from his eye, but it was a good tear. A strangely welcomed tear. Helen held his gaze for a moment and then took a quick sip of her tea.
    She looked back at him. “Are you ready?”
    He wasn’t sure what ready was, but he nodded anyway, feeling desperate now. Eager.
    “Close your eyes, Spencer.”
    He did.
    It came immediately, like a rush of wind and light. A whirlwind in his mind, or maybe not just in his mind—he didn’t know. His breath left him completely, but that didn’t matter, because the wind filled his chest with enough oxygen to last a lifetime. Or so it felt.
    The darkness behind his eyelids was suddenly full of lights. Souls. People. Angels. Streaking brightly across the horizon. Then hovering, then streaking and looping and twisting. He gasped and felt his mouth stretch open.
    It struck him that the lights were not just shooting about randomly, but they flew in a perfect symmetry. Across the whole of space, as if they were putting on a show. Then he knew they were putting on a show. For him!
    Like a million Blue Angels jets, streaking, hair-raising, perfect, like a billion ballerinas, leaping in stunning unison. But it was their sound that made little Spencer’s heart feel like exploding. Because every single one of them—one billion souls strong—were screaming.
    Screaming with laughter.
    Long, ecstatic peals of barely controlled laughter. And above it all, one voice laughed—soft, yet loud and unmistakably clear. It was his mom’s voice. Gloria was up there with them. Beside herself with joy in this display.
    Then, in a flash, her whole face filled his mind, or maybe all of space. Her head tilted back slightly, and her mouth opened. She was laughing with delight, as he had never seen anyone laugh. Tears streamed over bunched cheeks, and her eyes sparkled bright. The sight did two things to Spencer at once, with crushing finality. It washed some of that joy and desire into his own chest, so that he burst into tears and laughter. And it made him want to be there. Like he had never wanted anything in his whole life. A desperate craving to be there.
    The whole vision lasted maybe two seconds.
    And then it was gone.
    Spencer slumped in his chair like a blubbering, laughing, raggedy doll.
    When Grandma Helen finally took him home two hours later, the world seemed like a strange new place to him. As if it were a dream world and the one he’d seen in Grandma’s house was the real one. But he knew with settling certainty that this world, with trees and houses and his dad’s Lexus