THE NEPHILIM AGE
Chapter One:
THE AWAKENING
BY David DeLane Snow
The slap was loud and unwarranted as the sting from the woman’s hand immediately began to show its welting print on the young boy’s cheek. The boy was no more than six years old. He tried to rub his right ear, but the woman continued to violently shake him by the shoulders while screaming at him. She was angry about having been prematurely awakened. The frightened child did his best not to cry out because he knew that always angered her even more.
Just as she raised her hand for a second blow, another boy jumped in between them both. The nine year old shoved the younger to the ground making him skid to a fall a few steps away. The older boy shouted, “Leave him alone! Run little brother, I’ll hold her off.” With that the thin blond-haired boy on the ground scrambled to get away, but not before catching a glimpse of her beating his rescuer. The tall dark haired hero then fell to the floor and curled up as the angry woman began furiously kicking him in the back and ribs, shouting, “So you think you can handle this instead - alright!”
Crouched behind his nearby bed the younger boy could only watch in silent horror as the beating continued until the woman grew tired, then quitting on her own accord.
Jacob woke up wide eyed and breathing heavily from his dream. Its realism was disturbing as he sat up on the side of his bed rubbing his ear, and the sleep from his eyes. His sleeping wife rolled over and continued to lay undisturbed. Jacob seemed to have suppressed so much in his life; amazed by how a single nightmare could have resurrected a host of unremembered emotions - long thought forgotten. But, the haunting vision of those two boys -- his mind strained to put their faces back into focus. He almost knew their names, but the attempt to recall them was futile.
The phone rang.
“Hello? Morn’, James. Yeah, go ahead and order three black and four baby blue ones, they seem to sell a lot. Alright, yeah, I’ll see you at regular time tomorrow. Bye.” Then, just like that with the phone returned to its cradle it was gone again; his dream and any concept of its recollection.
Jacob had always thought that it was his fate in life not to have a family history, because he had been in and out of orphanages and foster homes for most of his life. He had no memory of his mother, and only the vaguest flashes of a brother and father watching Star Trek in a dimly-lit living room. Yet those nearly forgotten happy thoughts were overshadowed by layers of darker experiences.
The first foster dad that Jacob ever remembered was an alcoholic bum who lay about the house in boxers barking out orders to him and his three other abused foster-siblings. By his second family, Jacob had decided to be a loner among four foster sisters who showed him no interest whatsoever.
Creepiest of all was his third foster home, which had luckily only been a three week stay with an elderly couple. They smoked constantly, had a million cats, smelled of Ben Gay, and saw his teenage years as a sign of their own coming deaths. Their mantra was, “I remember when we used to do such and such, we’ll be long dead and buried before you’ll even recall our names.” Ironically, years later he never could remember the pronunciation of their Austrian names.
Three days after Jacob’s sixteenth birthday, he was finally adopted into his fairy tale family. Even though his new parents, Patricia and Charles Douglas, belonged to an ultra conservative “thou shalt not” religious group, they at least loved him. They were caring and accepted him with all his flaws, such as still being afraid of the dark, a bit reclusive, and a chronic nail bitter. They had two other sons who accepted Jacob into their family as if he had been raised among them the entire time; Marcus and Mich. In appearance they could have been twins, but were as different as night and day. One was a rock-n-roller and the other a sci-fi nerd; Jacob himself fell somewhere in between the two.
It was during the time he lived with the Douglas family that Jacob began dating a red-headed girl named Arlene Stapleton. She didn’t have a father, but lived with her mother and grandmother across town. After meeting her, Jacob would peddle his ten-speed bike over to her home and spend his every waking moment visiting with her; whenever he could steal away the chance.
One day, before his senior prom, after Jacob return home from one of his best visits with Arlene, everything changed. The entire evening had been marred by one of the worst thunderstorms he would ever remember. Leaning his bike against the wall of the leaking car port, Jacob arrived home soaking wet. Standing just outside the back door fumbling with his house keys, he could hear the seventh ring of the kitchen phone. Entering as fast as he could hoping to catch the ringing before it stopped he nearly slipped.
Jacob almost yelled into the receiver, “Hello?” The A/C had been left on, yet the conversation turned his spine colder than his dripping clothes.
“Hello, Jacob?” Came the familiar voice in an awkward tone.
“Yes.”
“This is pastor Conner. I’ve got some bad news for you son.”
“Ok.”
“I’m so, sorry to be the one to inform you, and like this over the phone; we‘ve been trying to reach you all afternoon. Jacob, everyone in your family was involved in a really bad car accident. They - they didn’t make it.”
“Make it?”
“They’re all dead Jacob. We’re here at the…”
Just like that he was all alone again. Hollow and numb did not begin to describe the emptiness that had swallowed him whole. His entire family had been killed by a drunk driver and now he was alone.
Nothing was the same after that.
Nothing.
He didn’t graduate, moved into a friend’s house, and gave up on God, the church, and the whole world. Had it not been for the love and support of Arlene’s friendship, Jacob would have ended it all that day.
Yet, through it all, Arlene was there for him. The funerals, studying for his GED and job searches. She became a constant presence for him, and continually reassured Jacob that he would find his own place in life; and God willing one day even the family of his good memories. Jacob had found his lifeline in her, for Arlene had become his only solace and a reason for getting up in the morning. A few months later they were married in the very park where they first met, on his way to school.
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