The God Who Sees - Chapter 1

The voice beckoned me inside.  It was not a voice that could be ignored or resisted.  An enormous wooden door creaked open and I entered, took a few steps on a short walkway, and found myself standing on what appeared to be a large circular piece of glass.  Beneath the glass and above my head were only darkness, but ribbons of light were streaming down and swirling around me.  Looking up, I discovered that the light was coming from hundreds, maybe thousands of pictures.  I guess portraits would be more accurate.  I gazed at the faces that were revolving around me in a slow, stately dance.  They were old, young, and everything in between.

My eyes started to go a little blurry the longer I stared at the photos, so I decided to focus on one face.  Astonishingly, as soon as I zeroed in on it, the black and white photo stopped in front of me at eye level.  A young woman who looked to be in her mid-twenties was staring back at me.  She was wearing a dark jacket with a light ruffled shirt underneath.  Two lacy flowers sat just under her throat and I couldn’t tell if they were part of her shirt or accents on the jacket.  Her dark hair was parted on the far right side of her head and pulled down straight from the crown but ending in an abundance of curls that came just below her ears.  She had a rectangular face with a soft jaw, full lips, a medium-sized nose, heavyish eyebrows, and eyes that could have been light brown or maybe even green.  Although her mouth wasn’t smiling, her expression suggested a slight mischievousness and her eyes radiated strength.

I continued studying the young woman before my eyes darted to another portrait.  This time I landed on a man dressed in a military uniform.  The photo of the young woman I’d been looking at swirled out of sight and as before, the photo I was focused on stopped moving and dropped so I could see it clearly.  I guessed the man to be in his late twenties or early thirties.  He was wearing a hat with his uniform, so I couldn’t tell what color his hair was, but he had dark eyebrows that were rather thin for a man.  The photo was another black and white which rendered his eye color indistinguishable except to say that they were on the dark side, although they could have been a deep blue.  His nose was large and prominent, his mouth thin and unsmiling.  His expression wasn’t unpleasant, yet his eyes held a sad, almost haunted look.  Had he seen too much in his military service?

Stepping back from the photo, I turned and wandered to the other side of the glass circle I was standing on and found a black and white portrait of what I assumed was a young family.  A man and woman were standing in a field and the man was holding up an infant between them.  I had nothing definite to go by, but I thought the infant looked like a girl.  She was wearing a light coat with light socks and little booties.  She had one prominent tuft of darkish hair on top of her head.  Her mother was wearing a shirt and skirt that had a matching pattern of squares and lines along with what appeared to be a thin scarf or tie around the collar.  Her dark hair was parted just to the left of center and similar to the previous photo, it was pulled straight and then curled at the ends, although she didn’t have nearly as many curls.  Her husband was wearing a dark, heavy jacket with dark pants and a white shirt that had a stiff collar.  His hair was quite light and he was about a foot taller than his wife.  I couldn’t see many details about their faces because the photo wasn’t a closeup, but all three were smiling and looked genuinely full of joy.  I found myself wishing I had known them.

Another photo caught my attention and stopped in front of me just as I was beginning to look away from the happy family.  I’m not sure what it was about her face that drew me in.  Maybe it was her eye-catching and quite generous nose.  Maybe it was the severity of the way her gray hair was pulled back from her face.  Maybe it was the sepia tone and the way the person processing the photo had added color.  There was something definitely at odds between the pinkish glow of her cheeks and the unnatural smile plastered on her face for the posed photo.  I couldn’t figure out why at first, but I found the picture fairly disturbing.  Then I realized that it was her eyes.  I don’t think I’d ever seen a woman’s eyes so completely devoid of warmth.  I had to find another face.

Mercifully, I spotted exactly what I needed almost immediately—a non-colorized sepia portrait of two young children.  They were obviously brother and sister even though the boy had dark hair and the girl was blonde.  The boy’s thick hair had been parted on the left and slicked down with some sort of pomade.  He had an oval face with a pointed jaw and a wide forehead.  His eyes, most likely green or blue, were piercing.  His nose was slim as were his dark lips.  The girl was the younger of the two.  She had bangs that swept across her forehead and curls that framed her cherubic face.  Her large eyes were exact copies of her brother’s if maybe a bit more pale.  Her nose was slightly upturned and her mouth was a perfectly shaped bow.  Neither child was smiling.  Unlike the earlier photos I had seen, though, their expressions didn’t suggest an underlying puckishness or any kind of youthful exuberance, for that matter.  Their somber bearing seemed far, far too old for their sweet faces.  This was not exactly the balm I desired after that last photo.

I scanned a few more portraits before my brain reminded me to wonder what I was even doing in this place.  One minute I had been sitting in the tea house contemplating what Rachel had said to me, the next I was standing in front of a huge door hearing a voice telling me to go inside.  What was in that tea?

“Um, hello?” I said in my best library voice.  “Is anyone here?”

When no response came after a few seconds, I added a little volume and said, “It’s just, I’m not really sure why I’m here.  Or where here is.”

Still nothing.

“Yeah, these pictures are great and all, but I kind of—well, you know, I—I’ve got some tea that’s probably getting pretty cold right about now.”  I tried to laugh like I had said something funny.  It came out as more of a weak cough.

“Okay, well, I guess I’ll just, you know, keep looking at pictures.”

I returned my attention to the photos that had continued to spin around me and noticed some things that had escaped me the first time I looked, like the fact that all the pictures were framed by ornate silver patterns that seemed to have been drawn in the air.  Those silver lines appeared to be the source of light illuminating the pictures as well.  I leaned back to look up and became aware that all the photos I could see clearly were either straight black and white or had a sepia tone to them.  There were only a few splashes of color here and there which, along with the way the majority of the people were dressed, led me to assume that the photos had been taken quite a while ago.

So many faces, I thought as I continued to gaze at the portraits.  Young women with wide eyes and impish grins.  Old men with lined and wrinkled faces.  Little girls with large bows in their hair, little boys wearing sailor suits.  Couples embracing in front of a car, couples riding a bike, couples at the beach.  Multiple generations of one family posed together.

It struck me rather forcefully that there was a story behind every one of those faces, and as I pondered what those stories might be, I heard the voice again.

“Yes.”

“Yes?  Yes to what?” I asked.

“Stories.”

I waited a beat thinking there would be more.

“Okay, cryptic.  Not one for extraneous conversation, I see,” I finally murmured.  Then, a little louder, “Am—am I supposed to listen to their stories somehow?  Am I supposed to make up stories about them?”

A table appeared in the center of the glass circle I was standing on.  Upon closer inspection, I realized that it was more like a tree trunk had been cut to size.  More of the decorative silver lines that surrounded the photos hovered over the top of the wood.  A small device was somehow resting on the silver lines.  It resembled an old hand-held tape recorder, the kind people used for making verbal notes to themselves, but there was only one button on top.

Not being one who could resist button pushing, I depressed the lone button and immediately heard a voice.  It was a woman and she sounded elderly.  I listened for a few moments, becoming increasingly confused.  She was clearly talking to someone but I was only hearing her side of the conversation.  Eventually, it dawned on me that she was being interviewed.  I couldn’t hear the questions, only her answers.  Intrigued, I began listening intently.