The War in Heaven by Kenneth Zeigler Page B

see a young woman dressed in gray tattered rags like mine. At first it didn’t register in my mind who she was. Then my mind and heart opened and I saw her for who she was—my daughter Serena. I whispered her name.
    “Yes, it’s me, Mommy,” she replied. There were tears flowing from her eyes. She was shedding tears for me. Then I saw who stood beside her … the very essence of evil, Satan.
    “He reveled over his victory. He accused me of hardening my daughter’s heart. He told me that I was the reason she was here. He now had us both.
    “I was in pain, a greater pain than I had even known in that furnace. I’d sentenced my own daughter to Hell. I cried, begged Serena to please forgive me. I belonged here, but not her, not my baby.
    “Satan turned to my daughter, offering to give her time to vent her rage upon me, to punish me for what I’d done. Then came the greatest miracle she refused. She reached out and touched me on the cheek. She forgave me for all that I had done. She kissed me…asked me not to cry … told me she loved me. Where such mercy had come from, I cannot say.”
    Bedillia sat on the bed beside Tom and started to cry. “After all that I had done, there was still love in her heart.”
    Tom placed a trembling arm around Bedillia. Yet he said nothing.
    It was almost a minute before Bedillia continued. “Satan seemed amazed, then enraged. He nearly demanded that my daughter strike me, but she refused. She stood with her arms around me, trying to comfort me. Then he pulled her away from me and threw her to the ground. My anger soared against him…the anger of a mother toward someone who had harmed her child. I didn’t care what he did to me. I screamed at him, demanded that he leave her alone. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore, I saw him for what he was… detestable, an abomination. I remember his hand going around my neck to strangle me. But he didn’t get far.
    “My daughter rose to her feet and plowed right into him. She nearly knocked him off his feet. I wonder if any human had ever done such a thing to him, but my daughter did. She did it to protect me. Yet she was no match for his strength. He grabbed her and swung her around like an old rag doll. Then he declared his intention. He was going to sentence her to the Sea of Fire, to suffer forever adrift in its vastness … and I was going to have to watch through some sort of mystical portal. I would become a witness to the carrying out of my own daughter’s sentence.
    “He dragged her from the furnace. I saw him take her to the precipice of a great cliff overlooking a sea like no other. It was a turbulent sea of blackness, flames riding on its surface. He tried to get her to beg and plead before him, but she wouldn’t play his game. She removed her sandals and walked right to the edge. I cried out to her. I told her how much I loved her, but I don’t think she could hear me. A moment later, I watched in horror as she cast herself from that cliff into a sea of burning, boiling oil. A moment later, I saw her in the distance. The currents were sweeping her out to sea. Her hair was on fire.”
    Again Bedillia hesitated. “To her credit, know that she went bravely. I can say no more than that. As the door to my crematorium was closed and locked once more, as the flames returned to ravage me, my last thoughts were of her. The last of my humanity had perished. Or so I thought. In thefollowing year I was numb, not to the pain, I still felt that, but to my spirit. I was little more than a tormented animal, occasionally howling in the fire. I was all instinct and no humanity. Then one day the flames once more died around me. The chamber had not even had time to cool before the metal door opened. They entered…three angels of a kind I had never seen before, a group of dark angels. That was the first time I ever laid eyes upon Abaddon. He shattered my chains with his sword and took me from that horrible place. He brought me here where I have been