Lazarus
By
Jim Jones
Chapter 1
The Birth
Part I
Run of the Gauntlet
The air was unusually warm for a clear December night in Lancaster, Michigan. Fifty six degrees was 40 degrees above normal; Most years before 1972, the launch of winter meant two feet of snow on the roadways and sharp freezing winds slicing through you like shrapnel through softened butter. Chilling your flesh to the bones, your teeth clattering together almost harmonically. Making the cartilage in your joints chatter and the pores in your skin rigid with goose bumps.
This has been the warmest winter on record. The people of Lancaster were more than ready for a thick winter, with their beanies, scarves, and mittens, a cup of hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows waiting for them when they decided to retire in doors for the evening. A crackling fire would�ve heated their souls. but this year, it was an unnecessary preparation. The usual winter storm was off behind the horizon somewhere, approaching slowly, but when will it arrive? The storm was a month late. and the people where over prepared.
The streets, where the snow had completely covered years before, making it next to impossible to travel, were lucid and dry, constructing an easy path for a rushed trip to the emergency room.
Mary Lawrence, a taller woman with lengthy curled hair of marigold, was nine months pregnant and moments away from delivery. Her petite body made her only pregnancy especially painful, making it impossible for her to hide her anguish. It was an instinctive choice for David Lawrence to rush his young wife to the hospital when her pains grew long, and her temperature rose to a dangerous level. Sweat rolled from her clammy but smooth skin, and her shivers where constant, keeping discomfort and irritability close to her. Her flesh felt cold and every time David touched her she would scream in agony. It was like he was mutilating her with his soft touch
The trip from 1216 Bayleaf cir. To St. Mary�s Medical Center was about a thirty-minute drive doing the speed limit of 35 mph and stopping at all the signals. But the streets where free from ice and the traffic was almost nil at twelve midnight, which made it easy for David to boost his speed to almost 50 miles an hour on the two lane road that led through the mid-sized community. A speed, at which, on the freeway that was almost fifteen miles away, was appropriate, but through town, that speed would be another high-stake ticket, getting lost in the system, binding you to the courts for months.
The towering street lamps that reflected a dull orange light off of the road led a path through the eerie community. Three Story houses with gables that held confirmation to the greatest ghost stories lined the sides of the two-lane street. Every one of them were completed with the round Victorian attic window with a ghostly image peering out of the highest peek. The figure would watch you. Wait for you. Make your spine crawl with fright as you carelessly pass by.
But during the day, the story was told in a much different manner. The various dogwood trees that lined the sidewalks provided a family aura about the community, leaving the fresh sent of newly blossoming flowers to lounge around your nose in the springtime, enticing your memory to think of the children �Playing hide �n� go seek�. Taking cover behind the blossoming branches, and kneeling in between the azalea bushes beneath the fine wood trim windows. Letting your thoughts linger on the tranquility of a family oriented neighborhood. But the blooming spring was months away.
David grew up in Lancaster. The scenery hadn�t changed much since attending Lancaster High and practicing football on the front lawns. Taking Mary Beth Parker to the Prom. David dated Mary Beth Parker the last three years of his high school career. She lived at 3465 Keeling ave. {the house he had just passed. The house that would eventually decide David�s death.} She was the one that every one thought would marry David, but on the inside of her heart, there was this stain, the stain of satans blood, just sitting there, glaring at you. The stain was proved to be true to its expression. On one occasion, she had Jake Jacobs, the school tyrant, hide behind the outer wall of the school building, and when David turned the corner, �WHAM�, A wooden plank slammed across his forehead. Leaving David confused and confined to the hospital for three weeks, he suffered from a major skull fracture and amnesia. Till this day, the scar is still visible underneath the right lighting. It was a major topic for Mary Goldman, {his wife} and himself on their first date.
Being that he was from around these parts, his sense of direction was almost instantaneous. The lights had just helped him see the silhouette of parked cars along the curb. He knew about the stop sign on the corner of Maple ave. and his road, Keeling blvd. {The oldest road in the city and named after Adam Keeling, the founder of Keelington, now known as Lancaster.} He also knew about the red light, the one that seems to take forever when you�re in a rush, at the corner of Keeling blvd. and route 669, the major pass-through of Lancaster. {If you stayed east on 669, you would end up on I-75; from there you could travel north to the Upper Peninsula or go south to Florida.} but 669 was the only road that left Lancaster.
That�s where Larry Keys, a local police officer, clocked his speed at 56 Mph. Without hesitation, he flicked the chrome switch and his silent trap had turned into a carnival midway, with the siren blasting and the flashing red and blue lights making the dark street strobe with brightness and brilliance. {It left a few of the residences feeling safe knowing that the local law enforcements are keeping the streets free of those unwanted criminals. �ridden us of the slime that crept up from the greasy swamps.� As the Great Chief of police �Pete Gordon,� claimed in his campaign speech.} But a few where skeptic, those are the ones that would soon be on-seekers to the most Ghastly crime that this town has ever seen.
Keys pressed the accelerator to pursue the speeder and the mobile carnival unit raced down the street. It was a chase that would�ve happened a little more exotic, if David would have done the speed limit; it was the speeding that turned a silent mission into a chaotic commotion, alerting the people of the night�s events.
Another red light would be disobeyed along with a few more stop signs. And as David made his desperate race towards St. Mary�s, stinging sweat flourished from his brow and made its way into the socket of his eyes, causing his vision to blur, like there was this oily film on the lens of his minds camera. But he was an unwavering man, only GOD could prevent him from taking his wife out of harms way.
