Hellbound: The Tally Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

defines it as accepting Christ’s sacrifice as substitutionary punishment for your own wrongs and agreeing to love God.
    To quote Shakespeare, ‘Ah, there’s the rub.’
    In reality, people in Hell would never repent, having had their entire lives on Earth to do so. It is inconceivable that any punishment for those souls in Hell would ever change their minds. But a Hell comprised of those who would never repent poses a hypothetical notion. Would not a person repentant in Hell, have taken the opportunity to do so on Earth before they died.
    And would a man unable to feel remorse, labelled by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as a sociopath, even be allowed entry into Heaven? If he was, would his sins be forgiven.
    * * *
    The smell of ozone permeated the air around him, slowly teasing Obadiah from his reverie. Nearby wind chimes, announcing a breeze in the air, gently played their lonely sound. He sat and glanced around, blinking as he took in the unfamiliar environment. The room was vast - white walls and beige carpets. A mahogany bureau was against the far wall, joined by a set of wardrobes. Photographs were visible beside the bed on which Obadiah lay. One was of an attractive, brown haired woman. Another was of a young girl, possibly aged three or four. The one that caught his attention was the one with three people in it - the woman, the girl and a man. He reached over and snatched the frame from the bedside cabinet, confused about the moment of time captured within it.
    In its background was a shimmering, cerulean expanse of ocean. Boats were visible on the horizon, children and adults present in the milieu. The three people in the photograph’s foreground were smiling a genuine smile. It depicted an obviously happy period, the man draping his arm around the dark-haired woman’s shoulder, the young girl, with her long, red hair flowing to her shoulders, squinting as if the sun were in her eyes. The man appeared relaxed with their company, his eyes betraying the love he felt for them.
    But the photograph told a lie. Obadiah couldn’t remember the last time he felt love for anything or anyone. And given that it was him in the photograph, he realised that was a problem. He didn’t know the woman, the child or the location. Nor did he recognise where he currently was. Though panic wasn’t an emotion Obadiah was familiar with, he knew anxiety, despite having conditioned himself to avoid such a distracting, human frailty.
    Climbing out of the bed, he walked to the window to better orientate himself. Pulling the curtains open presented him with a vista of greenery and blue skies. The horizon implied that an ocean was nearby, the sounds of seagulls searching the shoreline audible through the open window. The sun was filtered through the leaves of the trees directly outside the window, creating dappled sunshine on the ground below and jumpstarting a memory of a childhood home similar to this one. But this couldn’t be his home.
    Obadiah searched his mind, trying to ground the creeping disquiet he could feel rising. He remembered his final moments, strapped to the gurney as lethal chemicals where infused into his bloodstream. He could still recall the pinprick-like sensation he had felt as they had coursed round his cardiovascular system, making the entire journey in approximately twelve seconds. The sight of the people in the witness room, crying, angry, satisfied, was burned into his mind’s eye. The acerbic emotions had come off them in waves, as he had slowly drifted off into darkness. They remained almost tangible in the air. It was as if only moments ago he had been there, in Absolom. Waiting his turn to die. And he had died. The quintillion of synapses in his brain simply ceasing to spark off each other.
    But what of his soul? Father Hicks has tried to convince him that his soul, however dark, would be redeemed after his death and live on beyond his mortal body. So had it simply existed