ON THE THIRD MORNING OF MY escape I woke to a wool-like world of misty gray. Thick and clammy air embraced me like the fingers of some loathsome toad. Sounds were stifled. Solid shapes were soft as rotten hay. No sun jeweled the sky. My entire world had shrunk down to the frayed margins of the sodden road. I walked as solitary as Adam before the creation of Eve.
As I pressed on through the boundless mist, my damp feet sucking soggy soil, the road went up an incline. Suddenly, I spied what appeared to be a man hovering in the air. Heart pounding, I halted and peered ahead.
Was it a mortal? My first thought was that it was the steward. Or was it a ghost? A demon perhaps? Or was it an angel come from Heaven to take me to the safety of God’s sweet embrace?
Then, with a lurching heart, I realized what it was: a dead man swinging from a crossroads gallows.
I drew close.
It was a man—for so he had once been. Now his face was moldy green and much contorted, with a protruding tongue of blue that reached his chin.
One eye bulged grotesquely. The other was not there. His body oozed from open wounds. Swollen legs and arms flopped with distended disjointed-ness. Bare feet pointed down with toes that curled upon themselves like chicken claws. Such clothing as he wore was nothing more than a loincloth of filthy rags. Sitting on his left shoulder were blue-black crows feasting on his corruption. He stank of death.
A piece of writing was affixed to him by a broken arrow that stuck out from his body. Since I couldn’t read, I had no idea what it said.
Terrified, I sank to my knees and made the sign of the cross. Perhaps there were some outlaws lurking near. Then I thought that it might be some thief brought to his lawful end. I tried to imagine what awful thing he might have done to deserve such a fate. Then with dread, it came to me that God had set the man before me as a warning. The next thought that took hold was that I had already died. That here were the gates of Hell.
How long I stared at the corpse, I do not know. But as I knelt, the mist seemed to ensnare my body like a sticky shroud, intent on dragging me down.
Except—as Jesus is my Savior—as sure as my heart understood anything—I knew then how much I wished, not to die, but to live.
I can give no explanation how I came to this understanding, save that I did not want to become the blighted man who dangled before me, pillaged by the birds.
Knowing how wondrous are the works of God, I thought that perhaps He—in His awful mercy—was speaking to me with this dreadful vision. For I knew that, from that moment on, I was resolved to stay alive.
But which of the crossroads was I to take? North, south, east, or west?
“Please, dear God,” I cried aloud, my eyes streaming hot tears, “choose a path for me.”
In the end I followed the path of the misty sun, which stared down at me from the gray sky like the dead man’s blank and solitary eye.