Taji's Syndrome Read Online Free PDF

said Adam for them both, and they trudged out of the room, toward the kitchen.
    “Don’t go far,” Colney admonished them, and then turned to Kirsten, seeing the shock he had expected to find in her eyes. “Before we go much further with this, Sister, I think we’d better have a talk.”
    “About the boys?” she said. “I’ve told you all about them, but you’re not listening to me. You think I’m making it up.”
    “No, not that,” he said, watching to be certain that the kitchen door was closed.
    “I know what’s happening to me. I know that my faith is being tested and that my soul and my body are besieged by the forces of Hell. Won’t you help me? How can I fight them if you won’t help me?”
    “Sister Barenssen, think; it might be a snare, a deception of the Devil to lure you to waste your faith and your strength where it is not necessary so that you will not be able to resist the true enemy.” He decided he would have to phone her physician and find out what the tests had revealed.
    “You told me that I could call upon you, when I am tested. You gave me your word that you would help if—”
    “Yes,” he said mollifyingly. “And I’m pleased that you did. But I think that we’d better discuss your health for a while first. It might have a bearing on . . . how we handle the trouble here.” He wanted to sound as neutral as possible, as removed from judgment as he could be without appearing to question anything that she had revealed to him.
    “We handle the trouble by casting out the Devil. You’ve said that; Scripture says that.” She touched the Bible he held. “All my life I’ve clung to the Word, and trusted in it above all else. Now it is my only defense.”
    “Of course,” said Preacher Colney in a soothing tone as he drew up a slat-backed wooden chair so that he could face her as they talked. “Just as we were promised.”
    “Yes,” she said with inward passion. “Ever since God took their mother, I’ve watched over them. Now I see the Devil in them as my strength fails. I’m . . . I’m frightened,” she admitted, as if she were confessing to breaking all the Commandments at once.
    Will Colney nodded, knowing that his reservations had been well-founded. “I want us to pray together for your health and strength before we try anything more with the twins. First things first, Sister Barenssen.”
    “But the Devil—” There was terror in her eyes now, and her face was paler.
    “The Devil will be with us forever; we can take time to pray together for strength,” he insisted, hoping that the repetition of the words would finally get through to her.
    “I tell you that there is great danger in those twins. I knew it from the first.” She tightened her hands and then met his eyes. “Even before God took their mother, I knew that there was something wrong with them. It was their fault that she died.”
    “She died in an automobile accident, along with thirty-four other people.” Will Colney knew that he would have to proceed carefully with this distraught woman.
    “It was a judgment on them, on all of them. For their wickedness.” She wiped tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands, and Preacher Colney was reminded of how an animal uses its paws. “And caring for her children was God’s judgment on me.”
    “Why should taking care of your brother’s motherless twins be a judgment on you? You offered your care, Sister Barenssen, it wasn’t foisted on you. You gave your charity from the goodness of your heart. Didn’t you?” This last question was deliberately phrased as an afterthought, a gentle prompting to Kirsten to explain.
    “I . . .” She was weeping in earnest now. “She was a frivolous woman. She painted her face and she wore the sort of clothes that . . .”
    “I know she was not part of our faith, but that doesn’t mean that she was wholly without virtue,” said Preacher Colney with great care. “God has admonished us to hate the sin and love