William: There have been at least five beginnings that actually got on paper but were discarded because, as the story evolved over time, they just did not work out as well.

The first was that the main character was an assassin who was chosen to kill, a political figure whom many world governments believed was the prophesied anti-Christ. He managed to fire and hit the target; however, he was killed by security forces while trying to flee.

The second involved a missionary family who was murdered, and their young son escaped only to be caught and killed later after taking vengeance on his family’s death

The third beginning started with a young man out in the wilderness, an ex-military special forces operative enjoying some well-needed time off. He had rented a cabin and was fishing in a nearby pond still covered in patches of ice from the winter. As he caught the fish, he would throw them over his shoulder onto the snow, saving them for dinner. However, some hungry young bear cubs and their mother smelled the fish, and before he realized they were there, it was too late. Knowing he couldn’t outrun the mother, he decided to jump onto the ice, which would be a manageable distance if he got a running start. It appeared the ice was still attached to the shore on the shaded side of the pond. And he guessed he could run across to the other side and escape that way. After having leapt, his foot landed on the edge of the ice, and it broke, sending him tumbling into the water.  Now trapped beneath the ice, he began swimming under it, trying to find an unfrozen patch of water to catch a breath. However, before he could, hypothermia overtook him.

The fourth start of the story and the last I came up with, but decided not to use, involved a young man and his fiancée out on a horseback ride across a patch of prairie. Taking a leisurely ride, talking about nothing in particular, a gust of wind came out of nowhere. It caught the man’s hat, a recent gift from his partner, and tumbled along until it was caught up in a pile of brush and large rocks. Climbing off his horse, he walked over to where he last saw the Stetson. Looking around, he saw it had fallen between some brush and was lying down inside on top of the rocks. Reaching down as far as he could stretch to grab it, he first felt a pain in his hand, followed by several on his face and neck. Scrambling to his feet, he stood, and the snakes that had bitten him were still attached. Their fangs entangled in his skin and clothes, writhing to get free. He saw his fiancée dismount and run toward him, but before she got to him, he collapsed, filled with enough venom to kill ten men.

These are just a summary of some of the beginnings I thought I would use. As I said, some were not feasible to use after the storyline played out. I will explain why they wouldn’t work in the final chapter commentary. This last one with the snakes could have worked as well as the one chosen for the book. I let my daughter decide which of the two she liked, and we went with that one.

William:  As I researched for this chapter, I explored what people who said they had died and came back experienced. Most commonly it was the vivid colors and a sense of acceptance, so I added that into the narrative.

William: In this chapter we are introduced to a central character, his name is Bei May. I envisioned him as looking like the character in the” Kill Bill” series, Pai Mei. All the villagers will be dressed similarly to him, which I attempt to describe in the narration. For clarity, I would look up the character if you haven’t seen the series. I would consult the map inside the front cover whenever a location inside or outside the village is discussed until you have a picture of where things are located.

William: I got the idea of the character of the minister from an experience I had at 13 years old. I was diagnosed with chronic ITP and no treatments were working. My father had heard from someone at work that a minister near where we lived had cured a man’s wife who had terminal cancer. So, one Friday evening my mother and father told me to get dressed nicely, and we were going someplace together but wouldn’t say where. We got in the car and drove for about an hour and pulled into a parking lot that was full of cars. People were going inside- some in wheelchairs pulling oxygen tanks behind them, or walking on crutches. I looked at my parents, wondering what we were doing there. My father said, “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to”. I didn’t know what that meant but followed them inside. The rest of the story pretty much depicts what I remember going on once we got inside. I decided not to go up on stage and afterwards we left. We never talked about it again.  As an adult, I learned of the minister’s extravagant lifestyle, and slowly his character was born.

William: In this chapter we learn a couple of things. First, that almost everyone who arrives loses all the memories of the past. This made it much more difficult to write the story, since there is little history to write about on many of the characters. But logically, I couldn’t see a way where any two people who were mortal enemies through war or past relationships in the previous life could coexist together. So, to resolve the issue, dreams will become a way for them to recover what they believe their former life was like. However, this is a double-edged sword, as we will find out as the story moves forward.

Secondly, we read about an odd but important test that Bei May gives to our main character Kunzang upon arrival and then a journey together away from everyone for a period of time.

William: This was one of the most difficult chapters to write and had many variations. The final version is long but contains a lot of vital information, I believe if anyone is going to stop reading this story this will be the place where it happens. However, even though my brilliant editor suggested otherwise I decided to keep it and not shorten it as suggested. I am/was concerned it sounds a bit “preachy” in places but couldn’t come up with any other way to get the information across for the remainder of the story to make sense. Here we learn not only the history of where our characters find themselves, but also the additional burden Kunzang and Bei May carry.

William: While writing this chapter, I imagined a specific musician, singer, or actor in the role if it were adapted beyond a novel.  For those too young to remember him, you should look up John Denver if you want an idea of how I envision our newly introduced character.

Bei May and Kunzang, now named Longfist, after a fighting style, return to the village and Longfist begins having dreams about his former life.

William: Longfist takes his first journey to Heaven’s Gate with Bei May to escort the recently passed minister from a previous chapter to judgment. And Bei May questions him about May Lee.

William: I always enjoyed writing any chapter with Running Water in it. He is a very likable person who had a rough childhood. When I was in high school, there was a kid who was very quiet and withdrawn. He always wore the same ragged clothes to school and never seemed clean. I never had any classes with him and didn’t know anything about him. However, some people told me he lived in a room above a rundown bar with his mother, and they had no electricity or running water. I sort of picture Running Water as living like him but with a significant handicap, and imagined his accent similar to Festus from the western series Gunsmoke.

William: In this chapter we are introduced in more detail to, Kilimanjaro, named after the mountain because of his size. In the my past, I worked with two large men, one was rumored to have played as a lineman on an NFL team until his knees got too bad. When I wrote about this character, I usually thought of them and how they would handle the situation. Also, Treehump begins to show his true character, endearing him to no-one.

William: Treehump, confronted by an ultimatum, finds himself in more than one kind of trouble. He is another character that was fun to write about, and his role in the story becomes more involved as the story evolves. In this chapter, the interaction between him and Running Water, who were on two social extremes in the mortal realm, carry no significance here. And now, stripped of his money and influence, we find who the ‘bigger’ person really is.

William: This was an easy chapter to write. There were various versions most were very similar.

William: Another easy chapter that was somewhat enjoyable to write. Again there were multiple versions all similar.

William: An interesting chapter, a red streak across the sky signifies a new arrival and the painful meaning it brings with it.

Longfist talks with the stunning Wind Dancer for the first time, struck by her beauty. In one of the story lines, they flirt with a romantic relationship as the story progresses, but this was changed as it did not seem organic.

Longfist takes his first journey across the River Styx toward Hell, also called Hells Keep, and is shocked along the way. I envision the specters to look similar to the inferi in the Harry Potter series, but maybe more deformed.

William: One of my favorite chapters in the whole novel. When I had my co-author read it, she made two changes which I felt added much more gravity to the chapter. She changed one of the humans leashed to a demon ,who I had as a man, to a small female with an injured arm.

I envision the demons to look like the Orcs from The Lord of the Rings.

As I researched the demonic and listened to various podcasts with exorcists and others explaining the theology behind the Satanic, I found Satan hates everything about God. Therefore, since humans are made in God’s image, he cannot look upon them unless they are suffering, mutilated or serving him in some way. So throughout the story, you will never see a human who is not in one of these states. Here they are chained like dogs to a cruel master, never allowed to stand and forced to fight or suffer at their whim.

I heard on one or more podcasts that Satan mimics God as a way of mocking him. God gives us Guardian Angels and Satan has assigned a demon to every human, who if condemned, they will spend eternity with. Some of the demons, it is told, are more cruel than others, and in this chapter we see some of that.

Also, demons have a hierarchy and the lowest of them are the crude and unrefined we see in movies and such. But those who are in higher standing are actually much more refined, intelligent, persuasive, and beguiling. Satan, being at the pinnacle as we will see later in the story, is a perfect example of that.

The condemned man who is brought before Satan is now faced with eternal torture. His condemnation comes in no small part due to his wanton destruction of God’s creatures for profit or sport. Both human and animal.

After having witnessed such cruelty, Longfist finds he no longer is the same person upon his return and tries to push the memories to the back of his mind.

My editor suggested shortening the chapter, he thought it was too long. But I told him to leave it because I found after reading it I felt almost as exhausted as Longfist must have felt. Shortening it would have ruined the effect.

 You can leave your opinion on any of these commentaries on our authors’ website. At least I told the publisher that is how I wanted it set up.

William: Here we have characters who are opposites in many ways, but they are the easiest to write. They’re friendship just flows so naturally.

William: I envision Wind Dancer as a woman I once saw on a televised program featuring Irish dancers. Graceful, pretty, strong, and determined. In this chapter Kilimanjaro feels embarrassed to ask her to do what he considers ‘men’s work’. However, in this situation he has no other choice but to ask her to help Running Water, which is the catalyst for them moving forward.

William: I needed to find a way for Running Water, Longfist, and Wind Dancer to interact in a natural way, so I decided that the water hauling job would be a good link. In this chapter, Running Water begins to confide in Longfist about his past, his fascination with Wind dancer, and his desire to play an instrument.

Meanwhile, Bei May obsesses over what he believes is an impending attack. And Longfist devises a plan to remove wind Dancer and Running Water from danger.

William: As I previously stated, I started formulating this story driving to a night class at a nearby university. The radio was on and the Pink Floyd song ‘Us and Them’ was playing. It was after listening to that song that the idea of a battle between good vs evil came into my head. There is no way I could have ever envisioned forty years later I would still be working on it.

  In this chapter, there is some significance in what Satan does prior to the battle. With mutilated humans on the front line, emaciated and cowering, they seem like anything but a fighting force. But as I noted earlier, Satan loves to mimic God. So, in the story you will have read how he stands in the shape of a cross and invisible demons rise to possess the humans. A mockery of how God gives the Holy Spirit to indwell in Christians.

Longfist experiences for the first time the power of the weapons. On two specific social media accounts, I have seen some depictions of what I envision the demon and possessed to look like when they erupt in flames- Christianrealfacts and the aibibleofficial. It is something you should look up to get a good impression of what I think their incineration/destruction would look.

As I stated earlier, demons have a hierarchy and the highest of them are very polished and sophisticated. They have been around well before humans and are far more knowledgeable and powerful than any human in the mortal realm. However, in this reality between Heaven and Hell, their power is muted to the point they are vulnerable to a skilled human fighter. Satan on the other hand, still retains supernatural power, though somewhat diminished. Since humans were made in God’s image and demons try to copy Him, these high-ranking demons appear as perfectly formed humans trying to mirror God Himself.

I toyed with the idea of coming up with a way the demons acquire their ranking, especially among the top seven depicted here. While not in this version of the story, it was lost or deleted from a previous version I abandoned, I had the idea that any human condemned because of the specific demon they were assigned and the sin they represented (Greed, Lust, Pride, Gluttony, Sloth, Envy, Wrath), that demon would split the power they obtain from the human soul between themselves and Satan. Thus, the more souls they claimed, the higher their rank.

William: Running Water and Wind Dancer grow closer to each other, and she feels sorry for him because of his past abuse and has the urge to protect him from any further harm. Something was mistakenly left out of this iteration of the chapter. Inside his storyline revealed in this chapter there was a section lost through time and rewrites that says something like: “Tha las’ time ah was sold off ta a man he hit meh so hard when ah woke up ah could only see outa one eye. That’s when ah knew ah had ta go.” Wind Dancer with misty eyes took a step closer to him, and Running Water fought back the reflex to move away. As she reached out to him, he closed his eyes and felt the warmth from her hand on his face and the kind gentle touch that settled for a moment on the scar above his blind eye. At that moment Running Water wondered if this is how it felt to be touched by an Angel.

William: Longfist is in a panic because he can’t find Bei May, who he fears is on the verge of departing this world, and the fact that he cannot find the weapons.

Treehump has injuries from his tumble down the river rapids but doesn’t want to get into the pond to be healed because he believes it only heals those injuries caused by demons. Therefore, he is in a bit of a panic to figure out a reason why he didn’t get in with the others.

William: This chapter is the first time we witness someone leaving the village to go to what we assume to be Heaven. You read Bei May described as glowing. I got his idea from when Jesus was on the mountain with Peter, James, and John, and Moses and Elijah, and its stated, ‘in their glory appeared radiating bright light’. My thinking here is that when you are ready to enter heaven you will be transformed and ‘radiate’ light as they did. As a corollary, the more suffering you endure, mental or physical, it lessens the amount of time you spend in the ‘between”.

William: Longfist for the first time sees someone else hold the weapons, and though he was told of their effect, he had to see it to believe it. He is also relieved that he is not solely responsible for overseeing the village.

An introduction to the other characters in the story occurs in this chapter.

 Alchemist came from a PhD. Chemist I had the pleasure to work with for a few years before he retired. Truly a brilliant man and I had the utmost respect for him.

 The General came from a High School teacher where I went. I never took one of his classes, I think he taught history. But whenever you would see him sitting or standing his back was always ram rod straight with a serious look or scowl on his face.

 Alo, named from the Hopi Nation language, is a Native American and though I have known no-one that represents him, he is a cherished imaginary character representing peace and tranquility.

The brown haired man with the boyish face I imagined as the John Denver character.

William: Nothing of note on this chapter.

William: Longfist contemplates what Alo says about not being able to leave until someone can handle the weapons.

One of the first dreams comes to Longfist. It is the start of many that will shape the story, and Alo takes interest in them. Longfist begins to draw what he remembers of his dreams, both men wonder if they are past memories or if something else is at work.

William: In this chapter, each of the characters settle into their assigned role and Longfist has another dream he and Alo discuss. In a prior version, I had Longfist describing verbally what May Lee looked like. But later changed it to him drawing her image, sometimes it almost seemed supernaturally guided.

William: Throughout this story, the line between dreams and visions are rather blurred. Not only for the reader but also in the character’s mind. They have a difficult time distinguishing between the two because both seem so real.

Satan uses his deception and trickery to fool Treehump. One has to wonder if Treehump really believes it or if he just likes the promises made, regardless of the truth. During the writing process and to this day, I don’t know his true motivation, but I would favor the latter.

William: Treehump concocts a story about why he didn’t enter the healing water with everyone else.

Alchemist and his assistant make a big discovery. I had to come up with a way to try to neutralize the advantage the demons had over the villagers. I came up with this because I would sometimes do a demonstration for students in my chemistry course using the elemental form of sodium, which looks like a silvery metal and the addition of water will cause it to combust.

William: This chapter changed from the original over time. In the original storyline Longfist and Wind Dancer were contemplating being something more than friends. However, in the end, I didn’t want Running Water to feel he was her second choice. As I contemplated how Running Water would respond if he was rebuffed by Wind Dancer, it led to him being tempted by Satan so he could have her to himself. In one of the chapters a little of that is left where you read Running Water had a dream and was promised whatever he wanted. So when I changed it, I had to go back and take out that part of the story.  As you read this chapter you will come to a part where Wind Dancer wants to say something but doesn’t. In the old storyline, she told him here about her feelings for Longfist. It was painful to go back and delete so much material, as it takes me hours to sometimes write just one page. But in the end I was happy with the change. Running Water deserves to be her first choice.

William:  I needed to come up with a way for Treehump to try to interact with Longfist and came up with this idea.

The part about the training came from experience. I mentioned earlier I had ITP, an autoimmune disease, and in my case it turned out to be chronic. We were told any hit to the head would likely lead to severe hemorrhaging inside my brain since I had essentially no platelets in my blood for clotting. My father, who went to school with a Chinese martial artist, signed me up for classes so I could defend myself. Getting strong legs was a priority for this style of fighting.

William :  As I continued formulating this story in my mind before putting anything on paper, a lot of it came to me in pieces before the internet. I had read of a man able to play guitar without arms. Somehow this stuck with me and I recalled that as I wrote the nocel. Now with internet you can look it up and see it’s true.

William: It is an interesting phenomenon how different metals give off different colored flames depending on their electron configuration. Here the pink and white flames are likely from sodium and potassium. I sometimes camp with people who will put a copper pipe in a campfire to see the colored flames that it emits.

William: This is just an imagined history of General and nothing related to any real life events. The strategy of using shields to aid in fighting is a fairly new development.

William: In this chapter, remnants of a story line I deleted remain. In that version which, I previously mentioned, Wind Dancer and Longfist have a romance beginning to stir between them. On this night she was going to tell Longfist of her feelings toward him and when Running Water finds out he was seriously going to contemplate taking the advice of the voice he is hearing in his dreams and find out how he could get her back. It was in this chapter that I decided to go another route and frustratingly deleted months of work with a lot of rewriting to reimagine the story. However, pieces such as this sometimes remain.

William: An easy chapter to write that helps the story flow along.

William: As an interesting aside, Lithium metal reacts like this as well but more violently. For the demonstrations for my college class, I had to store the  sodium in oil within a sealed glass jar to keep out moisture.  Thich is why you don’t try and put out a battery fire with water.

Treehump gets increasingly more nervous and impatient as he tries to assure himself no-one else had stolen the weapons.

William: In the back of his mind Longfist is worried about May Lee. He is realizing he needs less sleep lately and worries he may soon not be able to see her at all. What should his final message to her be?

William: The day of Running Waters plan to impress Wind Dancer arrives. I imagined Nevada to be like John Denver, as I said earlier, so I picked one of his songs for him to sing- Annies Song. However my editor said there could be copyright issues so we had to change the actual lyrics to more of general idea of the song was about. But if you have a chance, listen to it and imagine Running Water singing it to her around the campfire.

William: Longfist has a more vivid dream of him and May Lee. He completes his sketch of her and, worried about his decreased need for sleep, asks Alo for advice on what he should say to her if he has a final chance.

This was difficult to write and I had some ideas of how to write it, but my co-author and editor had something else in mind so I went with their thoughts because I wasn’t completely happy with my version. In the end I wanted something that sounded ridiculous when taken out of context. You will see why shortly.

There is a lot in this chapter and it is quite long compared to others. There are is also something left out and I don’t know how it happened, which is why I am glad to have this web site to fill in missing parts. So, to begin, while the council members are discussing  the idea of time, Alo tells them a story about how to think of eternity. It reads something like this:

As the group sat in silence contemplating the thought of how time passed in this reality they found themselves in,  Alo softly spoke up breaking the silence.

“Well” he said. “Since time appears to pass here, as we have seen most recently by the departure of Bei May, we must not yet be in eternity.” The group turned to listen as he continued. “In eternity there is no passage of time. As an example, I have a story about eternity I heard in one of my dreams. God was there and I asked what is eternity like and with a wave of his hand we were standing beside an ocean on a beach. He said to me, ‘you see all this sand?’ and pointed up and down the beach as far as I could see. I nodded. He said. ‘I want you to pick up each grain individually and carry it to this valley’. He waved his had and miles away I saw a large canyon miles deep. ‘Pick up one grain of sand  and carry it to the valley, where you will leave it. Then come back and get another until every grain of sand is off the entire beach as far as it reaches’. And he added, ‘there is one more thing, you can only take one step every ten thousand years’. I blinked thinking how long that would take and gasped.

“But that will take forever.” I said

“No” He replied, “ it won’t take forever. When you are done not even one second of eternity will have passed”.

Another key point in this chapter, which took decades to resolve, is understanding why Satan needs the weapons.  It was a huge dilemma that, without a resolution, would leave the entire story pointless. A further question was raised, why the demons would depart after having taken control of the village.  It made no sense, so for many years I dwelled and prayed for a solution while I worked on the rest of the story. Just before I was about to write the last couple of chapters, the answer came to me, like I said,  after years of prayer and thought.

Alchemist calculates time in this realm relative to earth. I came up with this idea by remembering a story I had heard in my Catholic elementary school years. I think I was in seventh grade and a teacher nun told us a story she heard from a priest she knew. She said, there were two priests assigned to a church and they shared a rectory together. They would eat dinner together every night and after evening prayers go to their own rooms to sleep. One night one of the priests awoke when he heard the voice of the other speaking. He sat up in bed and heard him saying, ‘we had an agreement that whoever passes first, the other will pray for them and offer masses to lessen our time in purgatory. I have spent years here and not a single prayer was said for me. I am very sad you didn’t live up to our agreement’. Stunned the priest leapt out of bed thinking it was a bad dream and ran to the other priests room, where he discovered he had died only a few minutes ago his body still warm.

William: Alo’s story has changed many times over the years. Before this version, he was on a Native American reservation and went with his friends to visit a medicine man. It went something like this.

Alo and a group of his friends, just barely in their teenage years, had heard there was a visiting medicine man who was telling people their future. They decided to get in line with the others and when their turn arrived they went into a hut and sat down next to each other. One by one the medicine man told each of them what they would do in the future but when he came to Alo he just looked at him and passed by. As they rose to leave Alo asked why he didn’t tell him his future.  He said your future is not here on earth but what you will do when you leave.

Longfist shows Alo the drawing he made of May Lee from his dreams. It is so good Alo silently wonders if something supernatural is at work.

Running Water confides in Alo his concerns that Wind Dancer may be upset with him after his song to her the night before.

Longfist discovers Wind Dancers secret and she performs a song for Running Water. Just like the previous song my editor said there could be copyright issues. The song I had in mind is sung by a couple people, but my favorite is by Art Garfunkel, “I Only Have Eyes For You”. When you have time, please take a listen.

Treehump is given an even more enticing temptation and he confronts Running Water who is defended by Wind Dancer.

William: This is rather recent development in the story. I was trying to figure out a way to give Longfist more of a chance of defeating the demon army and Satan, especially since BeiMay is gone. This idea came to me about the same time the metal tipped arrows did. I think it helps make the outcome more believable.

William: Longfist’s nightmare comes true. What he has been worrying about subconsciously comes to fruition and he feels publicly distraught and conflicted.

William: Longfist makes a decision. Unsure of whether he will be able to leave May Lee behind in Hell or if he will stay with her, he forces Kilimanjaro to stay behind. If he does  stay with her, he doesn’t want Kilimanjaro to be trapped in Hell with him, trying to find his own way back. Longfist thinks  he may be too weak to leave her behind, so he throws the spear back to shore. If he does stay, at least Satan will only have one weapon, which is some consolation to him.

William: A written history and a scary, previously unknown, prophecy is discovered. If there was ever to be a sequel this would play a part in it.

William: At this point of the story I had a couple thoughts about where to go with it, if I wanted to make it longer and put a twist in the story I thought of this:

Longfist goes to Hell, and is tempted, but leaves and goes back to the village, as it it written in the book. But then Running Water and Wind Dancer end up having relationship problems and break up. Eventually depressed and heartbroken Longfist comforts Wind Dancer and they become an item. Jealous, Running Water turns to Satan to get her back and he, along with Treehump, work together to get the weapons or they fight each other over them. In the end I decided to go with version in the story, but it is an interesting story line to contemplate.

William: There is a true story in this chapter, it starts where it says, “I was married at the time…” It happened to me exactly as I describe it here and I can still hear the voice behind me and picture the child standing beside me. There was just one part I left out- as I walked back home, down the alley, the groundskeeper for the church was outside looking around. The noise had woke him up because he only lived a few houses away. I didn’t tell him the whole story, only if there was any damage it came from them. He is the one who told me who they were.

I believe I said in a previous commentary I would explain some of the motivation/compulsion to write this story. This incident had a part in it. While I was sitting in church before all this happened, I was thinking about the possibility of writing this book and had, for awhile been, asking for some sign, but I had many reservations. One of the biggest was the dauting task, but also something an English professor told me on the last day of class. As we were walking out the door, she was standing beside it passing back our last essay. As she handed it to me she said, “Don’t sign up for the next semester with me because you won’t pass.” I looked at my paper- I received a “D”. Clearly, I kept telling myself, I am not a writer.

What changed my mind was what happened a year or two later. My father had been diagnosed with mesothelioma and was in hospice inside  my childhood home. My mother taking care of him. He was thin, frail, and barley conscious most of the time, barely able to lift his head. The last time I saw him my mother woke him up to see me. When he opened his eyes through the drug-induced haze, he seemed to suddenly clear and his eyes blazed blue. He sat up with a strength I didn’t know he still had and looked at me. “Why are you here?” He said in a voice belying his weakend state. ‘You should be telling them. It’s to late for me. What are you waiting for?” Then he started talking about streets that shined like silver and shimmered like water. My mother,  who I think was shocked by the energy he just exhibited, then stepped in and calmed him down. He collapsed back into his previous semiconscious state and I took to heart this was the confirmation I had been waiting to hear.

William:  I thought of a few songs that reminded me of the pain Longfist must have felt as he left the one he loved behind and took the trip back across the river. One is Rodrigo’s famous Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra. I believe it is the second movement. The music starts out very dark, this is where he begins his journey back distraught and devastated. As the music progresses it becomes a bit lighter, especially when the guitar comes in again. I envision him looking toward the shore and the sunrise where his friends await as this part begins, a bit of hope rising inside him.

A more contemporary song is “Time” by Alan Parsons Project. I envision this song as being used as he leaves with May Lee on the journey over. There are many others which I have heard but can’t recall, that bring to mind different scenes in the story. If I recall them, I’ll create a list after my final commentary.

William: Nothing of real note in this chapter was ever changed.

William: This is one of my favorite chapters. Here Satan has a large role to play and it shows his sophistication and intelligence when playing the truth against lies with  adeptness. He skillfully weaves webs of lies and partial truth, too subtle to tell them apart, making wrong decisions look like the right one. He does the same with us here on earth.

The idea of the book with tallied sins written inside made me think, not only of how thick mine would be, but would anybody have an empty book? It made me think of Jesus when he said, ‘you must be like a child to enter into heaven’. What does that mean? I concluded that children must be sinless before the age of reasoning. They do not know right from wrong, and anyone with a mental disability who cannot distinguish right from wrong would also have no pages in the book. I can only imagine, as they stand before God and God asks Satan what sins he has convicted them of,  and Satan begrudglingly says ‘none’, how happy they will be when God receives them into his kingdom and rightfully places them in an esteemed position. I believe they will share their position with those who cared for and protected them on earth while they were most vulnerable. The first will be last and the last shall be first.

I think the idea of archers, flammable metal, and the shield wall made this final battle seem more in line with what could actually happen. All these ideas came recently within the last year or so. I wrestled with how to make it more a realistic outcome and I am pleased with how it turned out.

William: I like the idea of Bei May helping from the other side as he said he would if he was able. I had some concern about the final outcome for Treehump. I wondered if he could condemn himself without God’s judgement, but then I listened to a message by Father Ripperger titled “The first person you meet after death.” From that, I gathered you make your decision everyday where you want to find yourself in eternity, and Treehump had made that decision repeatedly over time. So my next thought was, how to send him to his final destination? If he was destroyed by the  villagers, wouldn’t he just be incapacitated like them and then have to be delivered to Hell? I think the resolution I came up with is reasonable, if not entirely plausible.

To envision the “conflagration” that the demons and Satan experience at their destruction, I would again ask you to go to the two previous web sites I mentioned earlier and look for a large tornado of fire and imaginge frozen onlookers observing.

I like the ending and if you had read the commentary from Chapter one describing the various beginnings, I said then that some of them would probably not work. The reason why  it came down to either the version of the snakes or the storm is because in both cases I could write in the scenario, or elude to it, that Longfists loved one was nearby. What wasn’t stated is that May Lee died trying to save Longfist and they both passed on just seconds from each other. This was done to make the time scenario work according to the story with May Lee’s arrival at the end.

The dream that Longfist had been having about May Lee was real, and it wasn’t just his imagination. But Satan was able to see inside that dream and when Longfist showed Alo his drawing of her. Satan used that to create an illusion to decieve both of them when the next female was condemned. There was a clue earlier that you may have caught causing you to question whether it was actually May Lee he took to Hell. It occurred when the group was sitting on the shore after Longfist left to take her to Hell. Wind Dancer said, “Well, you never know who you are going to love until it happens.” Which is a polite way of saying, it didn’t seem like the person anyone  would have expected him to pick as a partner, but then she had chosen Running Water.

As a final song I would suggest you play Hauser “The Lonely Shepherd” after you read the last chapter to help get a feel for the ending.

I hope you have enjoyed this commentary. I am glad I was able to do it. There was so much lost work involved over the years, storylines changed or omitted, and things I regretted not being able to include in the actual story for various reasons. Writing them here has helped to reduce that sense of loss. My daughter (Co- Author) and I hope you have found reading this story a worthwhile use of your time and imagination.

 William M. Yerman