This would be off-putting and angering if it wasn’t coming from Mrs. Ramos. Why would she assume that Emma and Matt didn’t know God? Why does Mrs. Ramos think that she has any questions about Jesus? Emma would have felt offended had this come from anyone else, but she squeezes Mrs. Ramos’s hand, smiling.
The rabbi looks over the simple wooden casket to Simon, his father, and his two sisters, and reads the eulogy for Simon’s mother. He is mid-sentence when sounds of explosions shake the cemetery grounds. Mourners scream and cover their heads, falling to their knees. Elliott grabs the woman standing next to him and pulls her down, but the explosions have ended as abruptly as they started. The air in the cemetery is still, with no signs of fire or smoke. Elliott, Simon, and the others begin to stand as they hear a woman’s hysterical cries behind them. The woman’s words send a chill down Elliott’s spine.
“Where are Arthur and Lenora? They were right here!” Elliott pivots, looking for the elderly man and woman who were standing behind him a moment ago. Bloodcurdling screams from the burial taking place across the drive make Elliott’s body tremble.
“Where’s Mother?”
Elliott and others from among the mourners at Simon’s mother’s funeral run toward that burial site. A woman in her fifties is looking into an empty casket, the top off its hinges.
“Oh my God! Where’s Mother?” she shrieks. “Oh my God!”
Emma puts her hand on Mrs. Ramos’s shoulder, easing her to lie back on the table, but Emma’s hand slips through her, as if pushing against air, and she stumbles into the table. Inexplicably, Mrs. Ramos is gone. “Mrs. Ramos!” Emma panics, grasping her head with her hands as she spins around, looking all over the room, screaming. “Mrs. Ramos! Oh my God!” She screams louder, terrified. “Mrs. Ramos!”
“Where’s Carrie?” Emma turns to see Linda at the front desk, who looks stricken and is trying to sit down. Linda’s voice doesn’t even sound like her. “She was right here and handed me this file, and…!” Linda is making noises that Emma has never heard from another human and can hear her own heart beating in her ears.
“Reggie’s gone!” Mateo yells, looking frantically.
Elliott stumbles backward as he looks across the cemetery. Many graves are wide open, revealing empty caskets, the dirt scattered atop the ground as if from bombs that had exploded from within. “What’s happening?” he says, his head swiveling to take it all in.
“I don’t know,” Simon shouts, his voice stretched thin. “I don’t know!”
They hear cries and spin around to see the same woman who had been looking into the empty casket. She is on her knees, sobbing and shrieking. “Where’s Ellen? Where’s my Ellen?”
“Where’s Uncle Bill?” another voice howls. The small group of mourners is desperate in their search, holding each other up or covering their mouths as others slump to the ground.
Elliott and Simon run through the cemetery littered with cavernous holes and scattered earth, heading for the columbarium. Several marble plaques lay broken on the ground; Elliott’s hand trembles as he reaches inside one of the openings for an urn. The lid is off, and he looks inside. “It’s empty.” He and Simon frantically reach for urns along the wall, their breathing frenzied and quick as they look inside each one.
A man yelling on the street outside the cemetery catches Elliott’s attention as he stumbles toward the road. The man is outside his car, waving his arms. “Pulled right out in front of me, and now he’s gone! Look what he did to my car!” The man is looking in all directions. “Where did he go? Did anybody see him?” Other drivers are honking as they try to pull around the accident.
Elliott and Simon look up and down the street. A couple is walking and holding hands, unaware of what’s just happened inside the cemetery. Others are headed to a nearby market or to work without distraction, while some seem to be looking behind them or inside an open business as if they’re searching for someone. Elliott runs toward a cable truck parked at the side of the road with the driver’s side door open. A cell phone appears as if it had been left on the front seat. “What’s going on, Simon?” Elliott asks, looking terrified. “How do graves burst open? How do ashes get sucked out of an urn?”
“Where did they go?” Simon asks, his voice as tense as his eyes. “Where did all these people go?”
Linda calls the police, and Emma can hear her yelling but can’t make out the words; they’re garbled and distorted in her ears. She feels lightheaded and reaches to steady herself on the window ledge. Her hand crushes the bag with the Cuban sandwich that Mrs. Ramos had brought her; she clutches it, leaning against the ledge, crying. Her phone rings, and she pulls it out of her pocket. It’s her sister. “Sarah! Oh my God!” she says, breathless. She can’t hear and covers her other ear, but Sarah is out of her mind, screaming into the phone and Emma shouts, “What? I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Mom is gone!” Sarah’s voice sounds like it’s shredding.
Blood drains from Emma’s head and she tries to take a breath. “Don’t say that, Sarah! Don’t tell me that! I just talked to her! Not Mom!”
“I’m freaking out, Emma! She was here! We were talking! But she’s gone! She’s gone!” Sarah begins to wail and moan, and Emma’s legs weaken. She can’t move. Shock has taken over and she can’t speak. Sarah continues to scream, but then the line goes dead. Emma’s entire body shakes and she feels like throwing up. How can she live in a world without her mom in it? The room turns black; she tries to catch herself but wavers, collapsing to the floor.
To discover more about the biblical facts behind the story, read Where in the Word? on page 187, or continue reading the novel.
CHAPTER 5
Israel
Zerah grabs a cup of coffee before taking a seat in the conference room. He and a team of researchers will be discussing recent findings in Parkinson’s disease at Hadassah Medical Center. Dr. Akiva Benjamin takes a seat at the middle of the conference table and opens his computer. Zerah and four other doctors spread files and their own computers in front of them.
“Where’s Dr. Haas?” asks Dr. Benjamin.
“She’s coming,” Zerah says. “I just saw her in the hallway.”
Dr. Benjamin has never tolerated tardiness. “Dr. Adler, would you find her, please?”
Zerah rises from his seat. “She might have gotten pulled aside for a consult.”
As he leaves the room, Zerah can hear Dr. Benjamin begin discussing their latest research. The hallway outside the conference room is empty; Zerah walks to the main lobby, where several hallways branch out through the department. “Have either of you seen Dr. Haas?” he asks two colleagues standing at the reception desk.
“Not since this morning,” one of them says.
“Do you know where Dr. Haas is?” Zerah asks, moving to the young woman on the phone at the desk.
She shakes her head, and Zerah goes back to the conference room. Dr. Benjamin looks up when he enters, and Zerah shrugs. “I can’t find her. She was right behind me as we were headed here.”