of the Terrestrial veil always means Sabre activity.
“Elle,” Jake says. “Do you know much about the history of Stratus?”
I spin my chair toward him. “I know that Kaylee’s great-great-great something was one of the first mayors, and that Dad’s mom’s dad drew up the plans for Crooked Leg Bridge.”
Jake’s back is still to me, his fingers moving over the keyboard. “No, I mean the spiritual history?”
I shake my head. “Never thought about it before.”
“Look at this,” he says, printing out a document. I roll my chair over, parking it next to his as he pulls the paper from the tray.
“Where’d you get this?” I ask, taking it from him.
It’s the scan of an old church bulletin. A sixteen-year-old bulletin from Stratus Presbyterian. The little church in town. Our church.
“Off their website. According to the info here, Pastor Noah’s been doing what he can to get old sermon transcripts, answered prayer reports, and church bulletins uploaded onto the site.” Jake reads off the screen. “He says here, ‘Our history is a part of who we are. A part of Stratus, Oregon. It would do us well to remember where we once were and what God has done for us.’”
“Smart guy,” I say, continuing to scan the page.
This document is not unfamiliar to me. I’m handed one every Sunday morning by Sister Pat, a white-haired lady in sparkly heels. A sheet of letter-sized paper, normally folded in half with some sort of flower or cross design on the front. This scan is of the inside, so I can’t see the image on the front, but the layout is nearly identical to what I receive each week.
Below the headline is the date. Sunday, July 14, 1996. As always, the right-hand side is a weekly calendar. Monday night Bible study, Wednesday night prayer, Saturday afternoon potluck, Sunday morning church.
I shake my head as I read. It’s amazing how little has changed.
Below the calendar is a festive-looking box labeled Answered Prayers. Our bulletins still have this box, though the contents here are different from any kind of prayer report I’ve ever read. I’m used to seeing things like “Lanie Simpkins got that job we’ve been praying for!” and “James Childer is expected to make a full recovery after falling from his own apple tree.”
Stratus in July of 1996 was an entirely different place.
The awning has been repaired after the building was shaken following Wednesday’s prayer meeting. We thank Danny Jones for the repair, and our Heavenly Father for the shaking.
Thomas Grady has been healed. The cancer is gone! His doctor will be here next Sunday to speak about this miraculous event.
High school sophomore Ashley Carroll reports that seven of her girlfriends gave their hearts to the Lord at a birthday sleepover.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” I ask.
“I might be the wrong person to ask,” Jake says. “But this kind of activity tells me something was going on back then. Here, read this one.”
Jake hands me another bulletin he’s printed. Same weekly calendar, two weeks earlier.
The Banderas family sends their love and thanks for prayers. They’ve had several new converts and yesterday watched as an entire family was healed of Chagas disease.
“I know this name,” I say.
“Chagas? It’s awful. It’s transmitted by insects—”
“No, not the disease. The family. The church still supports these missionaries. I saw their picture in the foyer.”
We read through the bulletins for the entire summer of that year. Every single one claiming supernatural activity of some sort.
“What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I think we need to keep looking. But at the very least, we know that the year your mother went missing there seemed to be some supernatural activity here.”
“Sabres?”
“That’d be my guess. But we should talk to Pastor Noah. He’d be able to give us a better idea of what that year was like.”
He continues on, researching other area churches. I return to Canaan’s desk and my investigation into the Benson Elementary School fire. The details online are pretty sparse, but nothing in my dreams contradicts what I find on the Internet. One person was killed, a Susanne Holt, who was survived by her daughter. She was graciously taken in by her paternal grandfather, Henry Madison, of the Ingenui Foundation.
Graciously. Taken. In.
I’ve been yawning for hours, but around eleven o’clock Jake follows suit, and we stumble into a vicious cycle we can’t seem to stop. A few minutes later Jake disappears. He returns with a mug of coffee the size of Crescent