The End is Now Read online

  Amy didn’t expect all of these phone calls by the way Will painted the events on the playground. Will said the kids just laughed at him, they all thought it was some kind of joke. But that was only the half-truth. The older kids laughed at him, but the younger ones, the first and second graders, were deeply concerned. After all, Will was a fifth grader. Fifth graders were at the top of the totem pole at Jefferson Elementary. When they spoke, the younger kids listened. When a fifth grader said something was going to be scary, a first grader’s only response was, “How scary?” By that afternoon, no one who was on the playground talked about the laughing; they only talked about how their classmate, their friend, was dragged off screaming, “The school is going to be destroyed!”

  Some of the fifth graders actually did remember the laughing. But they were laughing when they thought this was going to be no big deal. When they realized that this whole situation was getting traction, that if they acted worried they could get a day off, they decided to play right along. They said they didn’t feel comfortable going to school tomorrow because they thought Will was right. The school was going to be destroyed. He seemed so convinced — how could they not believe him?

  Additionally, to make matters worse, some of the men who’d discovered Will the night before were siding with him. When they heard what went on at Jefferson Elementary, they said it made perfect sense. They expected something like this. They told their wives, kids, and neighbors about what had happened in the cornfields. Many of the men said something to the effect of, “That boy’s telling the truth. I don’t care what he’s saying. It’s true. You should have seen him when we found him. That wasn’t no boy speaking. His voice, his eyes, there was something there, I’m telling you. It was like Jesus was talking. Or maybe the Antichrist.”

  And this endorsement from men, trusted men like Gus Wiley from city council and Curt Benson the veteran, forced everyone to reconsider. Everyone started to think there was a chance that Will was actually telling the truth. And perhaps they shouldn’t be yelling at anyone in the Henderson family, but instead figuring out a way to protect the children that God had given them.

  GOODLAND, KANSAS

  When tourists (which Goodland has very few of — most are family members looking to kill time or travelers on I – 70 who have been trapped in town because of a snow/ice storm) visit The Goodland Museum of History and Culture, the wing that always gets the most attention is the one dedicated to the rapture.

  Now, Goodland doesn’t have an actual museum with a curator and a budget and all of the other scientific and logistical processes that go into making exhibits. Instead, the Goodland Museum of History and Culture is just May Brown’s old bed and breakfast that she turned into a museum five years ago when she realized that people weren’t looking to go to Goodland for a romantic weekend getaway.

  The museum mostly consists of western Kansas oddities; tourists can buy keychain-sized sunflower paintings (which are replicas of Goodland’s prize largest easel painting in the world) and T-shirts that say, “Kansas, There’s No Place Like Home.” The tourists are mildly interested in all of these things, but what they love is walking down the hallway and into the room that’s dedicated to the rapture. Because inside that room there are facts and pictures and exhibits that explain why Goodland is convinced the rapture is coming in their town before it hits the rest of the world.

  A question one of the tourists always asks is, “Why is everyone in Goodland so willing to believe in the rapture in the first place? And not only the rapture — but the rapture happening only here? Isn’t that a little weird?”

  And May Brown always uses this as an opportunity to jump into her explanation of the history of the rapture in Goodland. She tells the room full of tourists that Goodland has long been fascinated with looking for the apocalypse and the end of the world. They’ve been anticipating it for nearly 167 years.

  Still, Goodland hasn’t always been looking toward the sky. Once upon a time the town didn’t even know they should be waiting for anything. Rather, the town was simply founded by traveling farmers who could see how fertile and profitable the ground was. They were people of faith so they planned on planting churches and crops out West.

  The founders settled, constructed cabins, formed a city government, and tried to build a life for themselves. They needed a city name, but sadly they did not have a marketing director or PR manager that could help them be forward thinking and create a memorable brand for their town. So they called their town “Goodland” simply because the land was good to farm. The men liked the name because it was to the point; the women thought it sounded charming.

  But they quickly discovered the land was anything but good.

  It started with the natives. At night, when the moon was the shape of a fingernail, the settlers would huddle together, clutching their rifles and listening as the Navajos and Apaches came near their town. The settlers saw that these natives were not wearing normal things like bonnets and trousers, so they assumed that these natives weren’t humans at all. Maybe they were demons or warlocks or witches. It was tough to say exactly what they were, but the people of Goodland considered the possibility that Satan had sent them to destroy their town. Some of the town’s theologians thought that maybe the western plains of America were the new earth, and maybe they’d been chosen to fight some sort of supernatural epic war. Goodland was being attacked for a reason. They were being singled out.

  Of course that was nonsense.

  There was no reason to think Goodland was that special. People all around the country had been having troubles with natives/demons. But then they saw something no one could explain. It was sort of like the cloud that’s described in Exodus — the one shaped like the pillar that the Israelites followed around in the desert for forty years — only this cloud looked more like an ice cream cone. Not that they had ice cream cones back then, which is really too bad because that’s the perfect way to describe the shape. However, on further thought, maybe ice cream cone is a horrible word to describe this cloud. Because then you might think it was friendly.

  It wasn’t friendly.

  It destroyed whatever it touched. It turned cabins into piles of splinter, barns into rubble, and livestock into dinner. Nothing survived the angry, twisty cloud. And no one had ever seen anything like this, let alone heard of anything like this. Surely, this was a miracle — this cloud was the hand of God. Perhaps God was angry. Perhaps once again he wanted the earth destroyed. The end was near and it was starting at Goodland. The beginning of the end would happen in this fair town. They were being targeted for something special. After all, when they wrote their friends and family out East about the destructive clouds, their friends had no idea what they were talking about.

  It was all the talk at church services. They were a chosen people. Jesus was coming back for everybody, sure, but what if he was coming for them first? The mantra of the town became “Stay a Night, Stay a Lifetime.” Posters and preachers and just about everything else repeated the mantra. Everyone knew it wasn’t a sure thing, but many asked, “Isn’t it possible God takes us before everybody else? God has favorites, doesn’t He?” And these ideas became something grandparents told their grandchildren. “God is watching Goodland closely. He is waiting to take us home.”

  In the 1930s, Oscar Thomas got so inspired by these stories that he wrote a radio drama about them. The drama was presented as a newscast and it gave an account of the rapture coming instantly and leaving many in the town behind. Oscar thought the rapture drama would be a wonderful homage — a delightful, spiritual experience that would highlight all that Goodland had to look forward to. But he was wrong.

  The radio dramatization had disastrous consequences. Most in the town didn’t know it was a drama; they thought these events were actually happening (and who could blame them; it was being presented as a newscast). Many thought they were surefire candidates for the rapture and were horrified to discover they’d been left behind. If that wasn’t frightening en
ough, when the newscaster started to describe the four horsemen of the apocalypse descending on Goodland, everything went crazy. Model T’s wrecked, stores were looted, and violence and mayhem spread throughout the town. Many of the town’s citizens made brash decisions. Couples got married because they figured they could love, honor, and respect one another until the world came to an end. Others called their bosses and told them where they could stick their jobs. Few thought to look up at the sky to see if there was any accuracy to the rapture account, and those who did would later swear they saw something.

  It wasn’t until the next day that the citizens discovered the whole thing was fictional. It took months for the people of Good-land to rebuild their town, get marriages annulled, and find new jobs. And during the reconstruction the cynicism started to set in. That’s when some started to think that all of the apocalyptic talk was nonsense. The rapture became taboo. Talk of it dissipated, and believing in it made a person seem archaic and foolish.

  And for a while Goodland forgot all about its fascination with the end of the world.

  But thoughts about the rapture were ingrained too deep to simply disappear. As Goodland entered the twenty-first century, there were so many things that seemed fragile. Technology was linking everything together but that only made it easier for everything to crash. Modern conveniences like chat rooms, text messaging, and eHarmony made everyone more connected yet somehow all the more isolated. The world was getting smaller, but the threat of annihilation by weapons of mass destruction was only growing.

  It just seemed like things couldn’t go on forever.

  It seemed like God had to come sooner or later.

  When May Brown finished talking, everyone was always dead silent. They were a little frightened by how she ended her story. Then she’d smile from ear to ear as if to let everyone know, “It’s okay, it was just a ghost story,” and they’d politely clap for her. Some would say, “You had us there for a moment. You actually had us believing the end of the world was coming.” Everyone would be so relieved the apocalypse was not coming that they would buy lots of keychains and T-shirts.

  Of course May Brown didn’t tell everyone what she really thought about the subject, that Goodland would be raptured first. They would be the warning sign God used to tell the world about the end. There were still people — a lot of people — in Goodland who believed that. And rumors of the Henderson boy seemed to make the clock tick louder than it ever had before. She wouldn’t be giving these little presentations very much longer. Soon she’d be on the other side and it would be up to police and FBI agents and scientists to figure out why half of Goodland had just up and disappeared.

  EMILY HENDERSON

  Emily Henderson knew about the history of the rapture, but it was always in the back of her mind. Something for other people to think and worry about. Today was no different; it just hit a little closer to home.

  The rapture was something for her family to freak out about. Her parents were freaked out about it because it had something to do with Will causing a big commotion at school. And that created lots of arguments and tension in the house. Her parents were arguing with each other. They were arguing with Will. They were pacing back and forth and making phone calls and squawking at whoever was on the other end of the line about what was going on.

  And it drove Emily crazy.

  She tried to escape from the problem by locking herself in her room, chatting on her laptop with potential homecoming dates. But they didn’t want to talk about homecoming. They didn’t want to talk about where they’d go to dinner and what they’d wear. They were asking her what she thought about Will being arrested.

  She didn’t know exactly what to say. She barely understood what happened herself. All she really knew was that last night Will saw a ghost or the devil or Jesus or something in the Johnsons’ cornfield. Emily wasn’t sure exactly what Will had seen because her parents were being so secretive about it. This morning when she asked, “What happened last night?” they quickly said, “Nothing.” But the way they answered, they were so nervous, it was like walking up to a car and asking a get-away driver what time it was in the middle of a bank heist. Any question would make the get-away driver crack because he had so much to hide. And that morning her parents were a couple of get-away drivers. They were carrying the weight of some secret, but Emily didn’t have the energy to find out what it was.

  By that afternoon it seemed like the secrets had only multiplied. When Emily got home, her kitchen was packed with her mom, dad, Will, Sergeant Mike, and some other officer. They were arguing. The police were saying that for the rest of the week Will was under house arrest. He could not leave the house for any reason.

  “What if it’s on fire?” her mom asked.

  “Okay, only if it’s on fire,” Officer Mike said.

  “Or what if — ”

  “Amy, you know what we’re trying to say. He needs to stay inside unless there’s an emergency.”

  “This is so unfair,” she said. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  The police said maybe not, but there were a lot of people in town really upset by what happened. “There could be lawsuits,” they said. At that Emily watched her dad turn a pasty white.

  She didn’t want to listen anymore. It was making her sick. She walked away from the kitchen and up to her room. She plopped onto her bed and stared at the ceiling wondering, if I lay here long enough, will my problems eventually melt away? Maybe if she stayed in her room and gave things enough time, she would go back downstairs and discover things had returned to normal. It would be like a sitcom. Everything would reset and the Henderson family would be ready for another adventure. Because the adventure that was important in her life right now was becoming homecoming queen. And there was no way she was going to be able to do that while her brother was screaming about the end of the world during recess.

  A couple of hours later — after she was done answering for the hundredth time, “Do you think your brother can see the future? Or is he just crazy?” — Emily came back downstairs and realized her problems were still there waiting for her. At least the police were gone, but now her family was gathered around the TV.

  They were all sitting on the couch and the blue glow from the television was bouncing off their faces. They were watching Wheel of Fortune. “Will’s going to be on the news tonight,” her mom said.

  “He’s what?” Emily asked.

  “That’s what I heard from Fran Morris,” she said without looking up from the TV. “Fran knows Tiffany Peters. And Tiffany Peters is friends with a gal who does all the makeup for the newscasts.”

  “Oh.” Emily said. But that’s not what she wanted to say. What she wanted to say was, “On TV? Are you kidding me? Really? He’s going to be on TV? That’s just great. It’s bad enough everyone’s talking, and now you’re telling me the whole town is going to be watching this. You’re telling me my brother’s freaky problems are going to be broadcast!”

  Then no one said another word because the newscast started. Emily sat on the dark blue recliner in the corner and watched with the rest of her family, wondering what the media would say about her little baby brother.

  The news kicked off that night with Sean McGuire reporting live from Jefferson Elementary. As the news anchors turned it over to Sean, he stood in the middle of the playground with the twisted silhouettes of merry-go-rounds and monkey bars serving as a somewhat ominous backdrop.

  “There’s a lot of panic and fear tonight over a scene that happened on Jefferson Elementary’s playground today,” Sean said. “The worry started when a fifth-grade boy began to tell the other students that the school was going to be destroyed. The boy didn’t say he was going to destroy the school, rather, he said he’d had a vision. Administrators and the police are yet to comment if this is being treated like a threat or if this is simply a misguided student. To be honest, there seems to be a lot of confusion with this story thus far. But here’s what some eyewitnesses and parents had t
o say about the incident.”

  The newscast cut to a boy in a yellow jacket. “I probably wouldn’t say he was screaming. But he was yelling really loud. He was saying something bad is going to happen to Jefferson.”

  The newscast cut to a sour-looking mother. “I don’t know if I should believe this boy or not. Who knows him? I don’t know him. Do you know him? And is he going to commit some sort of violence if his ‘prediction’ doesn’t come true?”

  The newscast cut to a mom loading her kids into a minivan. “Am I going to send my kids to school tomorrow? Absolutely not! Not if people are saying it’s going to be destroyed or violent or whatever. I don’t care if it’s true or not. If there’s even a chance anything could happen I’m keeping my kids home.”

  The newscast cut to two girls — both in the second grade, both wearing pink, and both with pigtails. “Yeah, he said not to come to school.”

  “He said he knew he sounded crazy.”

  “Or weird.”

  “Or maybe weird crazy.”

  “But he said a meteor was going to blow things up.”

  “Or a laser.”

  “Or a meteor with a laser. And he said it’s going to happen in three days.”

  “Which means tomorrow.”

  “Or the day after tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, the day after tomorrow.”

  The newscast cut back to Sean McGuire. “There is actually quite a bit of debate over when this alleged ‘event’ is going to happen. I would say about two-thirds of the people I’ve polled believe it’s going to be tomorrow, everyone else thinks the day after.”