None of them had secrets now, not even Mark. Kevin had watched revealing visions from many caverns; he’d seen monstrous deeds exposed. He’d watched Susan seduce David to feed her voracious vanity; he knew Karyn had won the part of Lorinda Loving by sleeping with the director of
A Thousand Tomorrows
. He learned that Lisa despised her parents and the children in her care; he discovered that Mark had murdered thirty-two young women for sheer sport.
The revelation of Mark’s homicides disturbed the women so much they avoided him altogether, but Mark’s forthright crimes paled in comparison to some of the murderous thoughts revealed by the skull’s impartial eye. Kevin found it hard to believe that the painted lips, sweet smiles, and fluttering lashes of his closest female friends could disguise vicious intentions, but the skull did not lie.
He had come to know and despise these people, yet the scale remained balanced because the others knew his secrets too. They’d watched him scheme and lie and deceive and lust. Every disloyal thought had been broadcast in surround sound; every dastardly deed depicted in extra-rich detail.
Though Mark spent most of his time in exile on the other side of the island, occasionally he ran into Kevin on the beach. The man still refused to accept the obvious. He attributed the eternal daylight to an atmospheric anomaly; he spent hours hacking at the ant-infested bamboo with which he planned to build a more stable raft. Lately he’d begun to insist that biochemical agents had mutated their organs, enabling them to survive indefinitely without sustenance. He grew more obstinate with each encounter, but Karyn said his stubbornness wouldn’t last. One day he’d be confronted with a power he could not deny or manipulate, and then he would break.
Lisa, who had spent more time in church than any of them, kept insisting this was not their final destination. One day, she predicted, they’d pay, not only for the secret crimes that kept replaying in the recesses of the skull, but for the callous indifference that plagued the characters of John’s book.
Her confidence troubled Kevin. He had never made time for anything but his personal ambitions and pleasures. Assured by countless psychologists, talk-show hosts, and intellectuals that life would end with his last breath, he had moved confidently and foolishly toward this unexpected destination.
Yet despite this island’s awfulness, he was not eager to move on.
Karyn sat on the edge of the beach, a collection of glass and plastic behind her. She had spent hours gathering beer bottles, milk jugs, and two-liter soda containers, some still brightly labeled as Diet Pepsi (Susan’s favorite), Diet Dr. Pepper (Lisa’s soda of choice), and Diet Coke.
She didn’t understand everything about this place, but she had grasped a few governing principles. The items on the beach—their former earthly possessions—weren’t the actual
things
, but copies of those things, just as their bodies were copies of the bodies that had probably washed up on some island near Kwajalein. Unlike their earthly shells, which were subject to decay, these eternal bodies were destined to forever suffer the consequences of their life choices.
They would never die.
But neither would her hope.
She had squandered her life on foolish choices, but Sarah still had a chance. John had said it was impossible for anyone to cross the chasm separating their worlds, but God had once disturbed her sleep with a dream of David. If God was gracious enough to send a warning in the guise of a man she trusted, perhaps He would hear her prayers for Sarah.
So she limped over the beach, searching the sand for bottles and containers. When she had gathered a dozen or so, she scoured the underbrush, where most of the books had been blown by the temperamental wind. With trembling fingers she picked up book after book, searching for
Happily Ever After
. When she’d gathered several copies, she carried them to the beach, tore out the pages, and pricked her wrist with a thorn.
With the blood flowing from her veins, she used the thorn to scrawl a message in the margin of the first set of pages:
Sarah—trust this. Because I love you.
When the blood had dried, she curled the pages into a roll, slid them into a bottle, and plugged the opening with a mixture of dried grass and warm tar. While the plug set, she prepared another bottle, and another, until her piles of books and bottles were depleted.
Then Karyn stood, picked up a container, and flung it as far as her strength allowed. Occasionally Kevin would come to observe; he usually watched silently, his hands in his pockets. Sometimes he would help her cast out the last few containers.
Invariably, when the last message was gone, he would turn to her and say, “This is useless, you know.”
And she would look at the glass and plastic bobbing in the surf and know the stubborn tide was likely to return every last bottle.
Still she did it. Until the waiting ended, she would hope.
While the television drones from her foster parents’ bedroom, Sarah slips her feet into flip-flops, then opens the kitchen door. The door alarm chimes, as she knew it would.
She leaves the door ajar, steps onto the back deck, and counts to ten. When she moves back into the kitchen, Glenn is knotting the belt of his robe by the microwave, the green numerals casting an odd glow on his face.
“Sarah? What are you doing outside?”
She runs a hand through her hair, mimicking one of her mother’s dramatic gestures. “I don’t know where it is.” She forces a note of panic into her voice. “I had it on this afternoon when we were at the beach. I was wearing it when I got into the car, so it has to be somewhere in the yard.”
“
What
has to be in the yard?”
“My locket—the one my mother gave me.” She looks up, not surprised to find real tears in her eyes. “I can’t lose that; I
can’t
.”
Glenn’s chest rises and falls in a deep sigh. “Can’t you look in the morning?”
“No! I mean, what if it rains? It’ll be ruined.”
“Gold doesn’t rust, Sarah.”
“But the pictures inside would get wet. And I can’t let them be ruined. I don’t think I can sleep without my locket.”
A pale hand appears at Glenn’s waist, then Evangeline peeks around his shoulder. “Sarah, it’s late.”
“I won’t be long, I promise. Let me leave the door cracked so I won’t wake you while I look around.”
Glenn dips his head toward his wife. “She’s lost her locket.”
Evangeline presses her lips into a straight line, and Sarah knows the woman is biting back words. She believes teenagers belong inside after 11:00 p.m., but she also knows how important the locket is to Sarah.
Evangeline and Glenn Benson are proud that they’re decent people. They’ll let her go out to look.
“All right,” Evangeline finally says, settling into the crook of Glenn’s arm. “Turn on the floodlights and look around. But don’t stay out too long, and don’t forget to lock up when you come back in, okay? You remember how to set the alarm?”
Sarah nods and manages a wavering smile. “I’ll be back as soon as I find it.”
She opens the screen door and flip-flops her way onto the deck, pretending to peer under lawn chairs and the covered grill. When the light in the master bedroom window goes out, she slips down the staircase and ducks beneath the structure to find the flashlight she’s hidden beneath the steps.
Flashlight in hand, she avoids the noisy gravel and hurries over the lawn. She lengthens her stride after reaching asphalt and feels a grin creep across her face. If only Jeremy Tyler could see her now! He doesn’t believe her real mother was a famous actress, but tonight’s performance would have convinced him. If the Bensons hadn’t caved when they did, she’d have opened the floodgates, wailing like a baby until they agreed to let her out of the house.
The road is clear, a straight black stripe that runs to the beach, but she clicks on the flashlight and moves it in an arc to be sure no nasty surprises lie ahead. Her blood freezes when a pair of feral eyes glimmers from the tall grass by the Pickerings’ mailbox, then the creature turns and flees up the driveway.
A cat. Only a cat.
She draws a breath of warm air to calm her racing heart and lifts her eyes to the night sky, where a nearly full moon brightens the east and beams at the silver sprinkles of stars.
Fifty more yards.
She can smell the sea now, hear the rumbling breaths of the Atlantic. She pulls her locket from beneath her sweater and holds it tightly, for luck. Glenn and Evangeline hardly ever come out of their room after going to bed; only an unexpected chime of the door alarm would rouse them. So everything ought to be okay . . .
She exhales in a rush when her feet hit the sand. The ground is thick and uneven, so she proceeds carefully, using the flashlight to guide her steps until she reaches the smooth sand of the surf-swept shore. For a moment her heart stops—could the tide have taken it away?—then she spies a plastic gleam in a stand of sea grass.
A wave of relief threatens to buckle her knees, but she runs forward and scoops up the container. A quick jab of light into the interior verifies that this is
the
bottle, the one filled with papers and her name in a handwriting that now seems eerily familiar.
Clutching the bottle to her chest, Sarah turns and hurries through the darkness toward home.
Discussion Questions for Readers’ Groups
Angela Hunt offers a special service to book clubs. Schedule permitting, she will call your book club meeting for interaction with club members—the only equipment required is a speakerphone. For more information, visit her Web site: www.angelahuntbooks.com.
1. Angela Hunt writes parables, or “earthly stories with a heavenly meaning.” In what ways is this story a parable? What are some objects that clearly represent one thing in the story and something else in the “big picture”?
2. Susan Brantley Dodson is beautiful. Psychological studies have shown that beautiful people often have an edge over people who aren’t as physically well favored. What does Susan do with her beauty? What could she have done with it?
3. Read the parable of the sower in Matthew 13:3–9. In what way is this parable applicable to the characters in
Uncharted
?
4. Jesus told another parable that greatly influenced the writing of
Uncharted
. Did you recognize it in the story? (Hint: see Luke 16:19–31.)
5. George Eliot, the English novelist whose real name was Mary Ann Evans, once wrote, “He said he should prefer not to know the sources of the Nile, and that there should be some unknown regions preserved as hunting-grounds for the poetic imagination” (
Middlemarch
). In what way does Hunt explore an unknown “hunting ground” in this story?
6. According to Luke 8:17, “Everything that is hidden or secret will eventually be brought to light and made plain to all.” How does this verse relate to the story? Do you think this applies to unbelievers only, or to believers as well?
7. In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the Greek word for the rich man’s destination is not
hell
, but
Hades
. There is a difference. Hell is the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels after the Judgment (Matthew 25:41); Hades is the waiting place where unbelievers await judgment. Walter Elwell said that Scripture speaks of hell as a place where there is nothing good, only the misery and torment of an evil conscience. Hell is the complete and deserved separation from God and from all that is pure, holy, and beautiful. How is this idea illustrated in the story?
8. Do you find it odd that Lisa Melvin, who attended church regularly and lived an apparently “virtuous” life, finds herself in the same position as serial killer Mark Morris? Do you think he will be punished equally or more severely at the final judgment?
9. Has this novel changed your outlook in any way? Will it make a difference in how you live your life?
10. If you could ask the author any question, what would it be?
Q: I’ve got to ask—why did you write this story? It’s such a departure from everything else you’ve written.
A: (Laughing). Aren’t all my books a departure from the one before? Seriously, I wrote this book because Hades is a terrible place. I don’t want anyone to go there.
Q: You obviously used the story of Lazarus and the rich man as the background for this novel. But the rich man was in hell, wasn’t he? Your characters aren’t.
A: Remember, I intend this story to be a metaphor. Instead of saying, “Some of the dead go to a strange island with black sand,” I’m saying, “Some of the dead go to a place that’s
like
a strange island with black sand.”
And if we look at the Greek root of the word translated “hell” in Luke 16:22–24, we find that the rich man went to
Hades
, a waiting area for the ungodly. All those who wait in Hades will be released, but not until the Day of Judgment. At that point unbelievers will be judged for their sins and sent to what we commonly think of as hell. That’s why it’s so important we tell people that faith in Jesus is the only way to escape such a fate.