AN IRONY OF TIME
By Emmett O. Saunders III
© 1973

The First Hour

Sunday morning brought with it a multitude of problems. It always had. Yet, Ellinore Dougherty was not a person easily fatigued. Today was the annual parish picnic and after
church, everyone was going to rush for the meadow in hopes of being first to choose his or her own spot. But, Ellinore had forgotten to bake the cupcakes yesterday.
"That will have to be first on the list this morning," she thought, rising rather sleepily.
"Oh, I know. I could stick them in the oven before I leave for church, and then, they would be done by the time I get back."
She hurried through breakfast and was hunting for the cake mix when the doorbell rang.
"Good morning, Miss Ellinore."
"Hello, Bobby," she replied. "Anything good in the news today?"
"No, ma'am. I don't think so," Bobby answered, handing her the paper. "I'd better be on my way, church is in twenty minutes."
"Good-bye then," she called, watching him hurry on to the next yard. She glanced quickly at the headlines on the front page, then tossed the paper on the kitchen table.
"Where did I leave those mix boxes? I'd better hurry up or I'll end up being late."
The Baxters were old neighbors and long-time friends of Ellinore. They lived across the street from her in a small two-story house with a lawn that was mowed only once a month.
Their day had started a bit later than Ellinore's and as a result, was facing an uproar.
"Sarah, where are my socks?"
"In the right hand drawer of the dresser, dear, where I always put them."
"But there aren't any in here."
"In that case, I suppose that I must have forgotten to wash them. Hmm, better make do with what you have."
"But, Sarah ..."
"Church is in fifteen minutes and we don't want to be late, so hurry along now."
Everyone in town, as a matter of fact, seemed to be in a rush this morning. But it was only natural on this particular day. The only people who didn't appear to be in a hurry were Tom Collins and his young wife, who lived next door to the church.
"Are you almost ready, Tom? People are already starting down the sidewalk."
"I don't think I'm going today if it's all the same to you."
"What?"
"There's a pretty good football game on this morning and besides, that preacher always says the same stuff."
"Tom Collins, you get up off that couch this instant," Patricia demanded as she walked into the living room and saw him sprawled across the sofa. "You've never missed a day of church in your entire life, and I don't intend for you to start now."

"Look, why don't you just ask the preacher to type out a copy of what he says and bring it over sometime this week?"

"Get up from there, Tom, and start getting ready for church or I'll ... I'll ..."
"All right, but don't you fall asleep through the sermon this time," he parried, rising.

* * *

The bell had finished ringing and everyone had been seated. Ellinore sat in the second row from the back, silently watching all the people. Wasn't that the McClellan sisters sitting over there on the right? How could they come to church when the entire town knew what had gone on behind Mike Bartley's barn Wednesday night? Some people had all the nerve in the world. Mrs. Baxter looked over at Ellinore just then and Ellinore flashed her one of her most winning smiles.
"Hmph," Ellinore thought quietly, "And there's the biggest hypocrite of them all. Mr. Thomas Collins, why don't you admit your atheism toward everything except football? I bet your wife had to bullwhip you into coming this morning."

"Everyone please rise for the opening hymn, Number 54."

The Second Hour

This was boring. Increasingly boring.
"Good grief," Tom Collins whispered to his wife. "Don't tell me that I missed my game for this old stuff. He's been up there preaching fire and brimstone now for over an hour."
"Hush," she whispered back sternly. "You will listen and get something out of it or I'll get something out of you later when we get home."

WE SHALL ALL BE DESTROYED ON THE JUDGEMENT DAY!

"Psst, Sarah. I think we ought to get up a petition for a new sermon," Mrs. Baxter
whispered.
"Oh, quiet down. I just love it when his face gets all red and puffed up," Sarah returned.

AND WHEN THE FIRES SHALL RAIN DOWN UPON US ...

Missy McClellan pinched her sister and whispered, "Did you see Ellinore sitting way
back there? I bet she knows more than she lets on about you and John Bates."
Before the last word was whispered, Missy received a resounding slap across her face
from her mother.
"Ow!" she yelled.

MY DEAR, HAVE YOU BEEN SAVED?

"What?" she shivered in her seat.

"The preacher wants to know if you've been saved," her mother answered rather loudly. By this time, Missy had begun to turn redder by the minute. Practically the whole congregation was staring at her now. Somewhere within her, she grasped her voice long enough to reply, "Yes, sir, I sure have."

FINE. NOT AS IT HAS BEEN WRITTEN, THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN SAVED ...

Once the situation had returned to normal, the congregation began its dreary return to a
sleepless stupor. Missy calmed down quickly when she realized the preacher had only asked for an answer to his question and hadn't meant to put her on the spot.
"Those questions are just a waste of time anyway," she thought to herself. "But that still
doesn't mean that I'm free of talking in church. I wonder what punishment Mother will give me this time?"

AND THERE SHALL BE SIGNS AND WONDERS BEFORE US TO THE END OF
TIME. AMEN.

"Now, let us turn to Hymn No. 41 and sing 'Now Thank We All Our God."

Now Thank We All Our God, With Hearts and Hands and Voices,
Who Wondrous Things …

The rest was interrupted for a moment by the rumble of thunder in the distance.

...Has Done, In Whom His World ...

The rumbling became more distinct and clearer.

...Rejoices, Who From Our Mother's Arms ...

The roar was becoming deafening now and the statues in the church had begun to shake. As one, the entire congregation stopped singing and glanced nervously among themselves. The heavy cross in the front had begun to sway now.
Panic seized them all, yet fear held them motionless. The rumbling gave way to a great
cracking sound which seemed to break the paralysis overshadowing them. At once, everyone raced from the pews for the entrances which had suddenly become transformed to survival exits. Rafters began falling and the cries of the ones trapped beneath were exceeded only by the increasing strength of the rumblings.

Ellinore was the first to reach the rear exit. When she flung the door open, she realized,
with horror, that her first step to freedom from the madness surrounding her would be certain death.
The steps at the front of the building had mysteriously disappeared and the entire church was falling through air. She tried to scream but could find no sound to summon forth. Then, the rest of the crowd was upon her and before she could stop them, several had taken their final steps through the door.
"Stop! Stop!" she cried hoarsely, but found herself being forced brutally toward the open door by the sheer force of the mob. She turned quickly and was struck in the face by a piece of shattered stained glass window. She fell to the floor, her last conscious thoughts of saving the people forcing their way through the open airway.

The Third Hour

When the first signs of panic had become apparent, Tom Collins had dragged his wife under the bench part of the pew where she had remained, screaming. The lights had gone out and now the only illumination came from the overturned candles lying on the floor in the front of the church.
Mr. Baxter reached for one of the candles only to be struck unconscious by the end of a rafter beam which pinned a mother and her child under its crushing weight. Sarah screamed once and then fainted as the church began to tilt in its descent at a sickening
angle of ninety degrees, hurling the remainder of the conscious and living against the walls.
There, they were pinned by dead bodies, rafter beams, statues, or shattered stained glass. Still others were thrown through the now open windows to their deaths deep within the depths of the earth.
The McClellan sisters were the only ones left to witness the macabre spectacle since Missy and her sister had fled to the altar in hopes of safety, only to see the enormous wooden cross swing loose from its anchor bolts and crush the preacher's head through the floor.
The screaming and the panic ended only when the last person had fallen from the balcony to the floor and had proceeded from there through a waiting window. The church, or what was left of it, continued to plunge through the inky darkness, finally landing roughly on a rock shelf, with a jolt that started a downpouring of bodies that were against the wall to the floor as the building righted itself.
The first signs of life stirred when Tom and Pat Collins rose to their feet. They peered intently at the remains scattered around by means of the dim light filtering through a hole in the roof. Pat took one look and fainted outright, but Tom set up a laugh loud enough to wake the dead. He continued until the final vestiges of despair crashed in upon him and he sank sobbing to the floor.
Ellinore, in the meantime, had been awakened by the loud laughter and she arose stiffly from where she had been thrown. She was almost smothered to death by the bodies heaped on top of and all around her. Parts of bodies had been hurled helter-skelter in the lobby as though sown there by the Grim Reaper himself. She took in all the destruction at a glance, but the clutching fear that she might be alone in this nightmare compelled her to enter the main body of the church.
The search was short and awarded her only the satisfaction of having accomplished it.

Mr. and Mrs. Collins were alive, but what good would they be in an emergency? The
McClellan sisters had also survived but they should have been the first to go since both had been sitting with their parents. And their parents? There they were ... buried underneath the first rafter that had fallen. What was the answer? Ellinore didn't especially care to arrive at answers now.
"No, better to wait until after we're all collected," she thought, "rather than create any more unnecessary problems."
Who else? Oh yes, there was Mrs. Baxter. Her breathing was so slow, could she possibly be
dead? Refusing to accept the thought, Ellinore continued looking until she saw Mr. Baxter lying beside some woman crushed beneath a beam. He appeared to be breathing regularly so she went over to see if she could help.
She knelt beside him and felt for the slow, steady pulsebeat that would indicate remaining life.
She found it, then proceeded to grope for a candle.
"Missy?" a faint voice was heard calling. "Are you there?"
"Yeah, but just barely. Is there anyone else here?"
"I don't think so. Wait a minute. I grabbed this pack of matches off the pulpit stand. I need a second to ..."
The feeble light revealed Ellinore still searching for the now existent light source.
"Well, look there. If it isn't High and Mighty, herself. Miss Ellinore Dougherty, don't tell me you're on your dainty hands and knees before me?"
Ellinore grabbed the closest thing near her and threw it at the eldest McClellan sister.
Missing her head, it ended up on the floor next to Missy who immediately moved to her
sister's side. Her eyes glowering, she joined in the taunting remarks.
"My, my, why she's so brave. Now she can even throw little babies' bodies around."
Ellinore recoiled in horror as she recognized that her projectile had indeed been the pinned woman's child. She sank slowly to the floor for a moment, trying to secure some inner reserve of strength. But the deed weighed heavily on her, and she rose to face them.
"What's the matter? Your dress too soiled? Can't wear it ever again?"
"My, and such a dress, sister. Why she couldn't have worn it more than twenty times since I last saw her."
"Listen, you two," Ellinore replied calmly.
"What do you want?"
"I said, LISTEN, YOU TWO!"
"Yeah, we're listening ..."
"I think that we should all be brave about this and show a little concern for the injured around us," Ellinore snapped. "If we ever hope to get out of this alive, we'd better start
sticking together."
"Please, Miss Dougherty, we're sorry. Truly, we are. I guess it's just the predicament and all," Missy answered for her sister.
"You can say you're sorry," her sister broke in, "but I'm not. I'm glad you're finally getting what you deserve, Ellinore, and I'm just sorry I have to be here with you."
"Don't be petty," replied Ellinore. "I thought disaster brought out the best in everybody, but I suppose you're the exception to the rule, as there is in almost every instance. I want to make one thing clear to you, Miss McClellan ..."
"She knows my name, imagine that!"
"One thing," Ellinore repeated, "John Bates left me for you, not the other way around. And he only did it because I wasn't quite ready to get married. But I must say, he couldn't have picked a more ideal choice for a partner than you. You're infinitely more lively than I could ever hope to be, so let's not talk on the subject anymore, shall we? We have enough to contend with for awhile."
There was no answer to her reply except a slight shuffling of feet and a whispered
conversation between the sisters.
"My sister and I," Missy solemnly announced, "are willing to call a truce for the time being, but understand this ... the truce exists only for now."
"Very well," Ellinore answered, "now let's get started on grouping together the survivors, shall we?"

The Fourth and Fifth Hours

They were all assembled. Mr. and Mrs. Baxter, the Collins, the McClellan sisters, and of course, herself. Everyone else was either dead or missing.
Mr. Baxter was consistently improving under the watchful care of Mrs. Baxter. Mr. and Mrs. Collins sat a short distance away from the group. Mrs. Collins, trying not to grasp the stark reality of it all, and Mr. Collins, trying to comfort her, effectively blocked out any effort from the others to return them to the group.
Ellinore and Missy had found a supply of candles in the back room of a foyer just off from the main altar. These they lit hurriedly for fear that some other accident might occur and they would be left in darkness once more. The church was illuminated more brightly than before, yet still retained shadows that seemed to speak of the catastrophe of the preceding hours.
Ellinore was the first to venture outside. The ground on the ledge had been strewn with rock and volcanic ash probably left over from previous disaster. The ledge was about fifty feet by seventy-five feet and the church was snuggled securely a good twenty feet from the edge.
The two sides of the earth had not entirely closed and the twinkling of the stars could be seen far away. There was an air supply at least. Thank God for that, Ellinore thought, as her mind filled with stories of trapped miners dying from lack of air.
She could stand the hunger and the thirst, but without an air supply, they would have been finished. She breathed deeply as she remembered moonlit nights she and John Bates had spent watching the golden orb speed through its nightly journey.
"Ellinore?"
It was Mrs. Baxter calling her back from the remembrances.
"Dear, I hate to bother you, but I think Bill is dying."
"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Baxter. Is there anything ... I mean," Ellinore began, but gave it up as useless.
Mrs. Baxter was on the verge of tears, but attempted a brave image in the hope of stemming her rising tide of pain. It was all so senseless, now. The deaths, the horror, everything swam together in her mind.
Still Ellinore comforted her, "There now, Mrs. Baxter, let's not alarm the others. We must convince them there's still hope."
Ellinore stopped as she saw the panic-stricken face of Mrs. Baxter staring back at her through the semi-darkness. She uttered no sound whatsoever, but turned and walked slowly back into the church.
"Oh, Lord," Ellinore thought swiftly. "What have I done now? If Mrs. Baxter had retained any grip on her sanity, I've probably destroyed it for her. Am I the only one to figure out the answers?"
She cast one look at the sky again before she, too, went back to join her fellow survivors.

* * *

Morning brought with it a clear, fresh breeze. It was caught and clung to by the walls and the people inside the church. Each in his own way needing relief, for a time, from the melancholy burden with which they were confronted. Mrs. Baxter had taken her husband's death calmly, a little too calmly, much to Ellinore's dismay. Was it that she didn't care or just resigned to the prospect that Ellinore had given her the night before? Ellinore didn't know, but Mrs. Baxter sat marking lines on the floor of the church.
Ellinore tried to avoid her for the remainder of the morning which proved easy enough since the older woman didn't stir once from the spot where she was seated. Missy had awakened Ellinore once during the night, but it was just a memory. The shouting, falling, deaths and more deaths had numbed her ability to recall, but a sudden thought caused her to begin a search for the sisters.
She walked over to where the Collins were seated. But upon inquiry, she learned they had not seen the McClellan sisters for quite awhile either. As Ellinore turned to leave, Mr. Collins let forth a yell that drove her quickly outside the church to a rock by the entrance. Here she rested for a moment to collect her thoughts.
The dark which had seemed menacing last night appeared just as formidable this morning. Or was it morning? She felt sure it had to be morning. Still, there was no indication of any change.
The darkness prevailed over all. Was there to be no sunshine? Had the world gone mad? How far had they really fallen? Would they be buried within the earth forever? The questions cried for answers. The opening above their heads was still dark.
The stars that were apparent last night now fell with velvety silence to the floor of the ledge. Ellinore stood up and walked to where the stars had fallen. She knelt and gathered the cool, wet substance in her hand. It was water. The thought lifted her spirits momentarily and she hurried back into the church for a container. As she searched through open cabinets, the shattered fragments of candle holders fell at her feet. A fleeting thought of not being able to store a drop of the precious liquid filled her with dread.
"Wait a minute," she thought. "There must be storage cabinets in the balcony, too. I think I'd better have a look up there."
She paused at the foot of the stairs. They hadn't bothered to look up there since the accident. Suppose there were still more bloody horrors to contend with? Her thirst finally overcame her fear and she began the long climb upward. As she neared the turn in the steps, however, she drew her breath in sharply. There was a moving shadow on the wall ahead.

The Sixth Hour

Her small candle gave only a dim light, yet there was no mistake. Someone or something had been standing at the top of the stairs and now began its descent. Ellinore's mind, fighting with the possibilities of the situation, blocked out all thought of flight. The figure had moved rapidly and now stood in front of her. She shrank against the railing in fear until she heard a voice trying to calm her.
"Careful, these steps are broken. The railing isn't completely gone, though."
"Oh, I'm sorry," she replied, "You frightened me."
"Then I'm the one who should be apologizing for frightening you."
"Who are you?" Ellinore asked.
"My name's Zeke, Ezekiel Robbins."
"I'm glad to ... meet you, Mr. Robbins."
"No, you're not and I don't see why you're pretending," he released her hand. "Call me Zeke."
"If we're going to be perfectly frank with each other," Ellinore began, "What are you doing up here anyway? The balcony was supposed to be for the choir members only."
"Well, I'm not a choir member as you may have guessed," Zeke explained. "As a matter of fact, I'm a thief. Now, don't seem so shocked ..."
"It's just that ..."
"Yeah, I know, you've never met a thief in your life."
"I didn't mean to infer that I was perfect."
"Forget it. Is there anyone downstairs?"
"Yes, there are other survivors. Shall we go down?"
The scene remained as she remembered it. Mr. and Mrs. Collins had joined the small circle of people in the center of the church. Mrs. Baxter sat across from them peering intently at the death surrounding them. Then Ellinore remembered the missing McClellan sisters.
"They can't have gone far," she murmured softly.
"Did you say something?" Zeke whispered.
"No, I just remembered that the McClellan sisters were missing," she explained. "I was only thinking that they couldn't have gotten very far since the rock ledge outside is about a hundred feet."
"No, ma'am, you're wrong," he corrected her. "I was out there last night and there were caves set back in the walls about five feet. If those sisters went down one of those things . they won't be coming back."
"Another problem to add to the growing pile," Ellinore replied. "Let's go see if we can
find them."
"Not until I get some decent food and some fresh water to drink," Zeke demanded.
Ellinore sighed as she recalled her own raging thirst which had been stifled only too quickly by Zeke's appearance on the steps.
"I don't imagine it would do any good to look if we weren't in the mood for searching. Okay, we find a container for the water first," she replied.

* * *

"We've been climbing for hours, can't we rest?"
"No, keep going, we're bound to find a way out of this mess soon."
"I know, but I've been leading and you know how my blood pressure goes up ..."
"All right, I'll lead, but make sure you stay right behind me."
"Oops, careful! Don't let the candle go out. Oh, Missy, why can't you be more careful?"
"It's okay. It just blew out. Here it is by this rock. Now, just give me a match and we can be out of here in no time at all."
"But, Missy, that was our last match. Now, we're really in the dark. We might never find our way back."
"No more talk like that," her sister warned. "Or we won't get out of here. Follow me, and hang on to my skirt. Where's your hand? Oh, there. Fine, let's take it real slow and go forward. It can't be too far now and we've come too far already to go back with the others."
"All ... all right," came the feebly whispered reply.
"Now, then ... one step ... two ... two steps ... three ..."
Her sentence was never finished as her body followed her foot through the gaping hole hewn in the rock. A scream escaped as her sister, her hand entangled in the folds of the skirt, joined her in their journey to oblivion.

* * *

"Wait a minute," Ellinore cried as she raced across the ledge toward Zeke.
"What is it?" he barked back at her.
"Where are you going? I thought we were going to search for them together."
"Maybe that's the way you see it, but I don't. Look, you have too many people depending on you back there."
"Oh, I see," she mused, "and you think that I'm going to play nursemaid while you're out here making your escape?"
"Or on my way to the grave," he admitted truthfully.
"You can't mean that!" Ellinore replied, horrified at the gruesome thought.
"Well, it's pretty hard to ignore," he pointed out. "In which case, who tends to those people back there?"
"They ... they can just fend for themselves."
"Now you're the one who can't mean that."
"I most certainly do," she answered. "They had just as much of a chance for survival as I did and they just cracked ... just cracked up. I guess maybe they didn't have as much of a chance after all."
"That's it, fight those egotistical feelings," Zeke encouraged her. "Think of this whole thing as merely a test. A test of God, if you will, or a test of time, and you have a chance of winning. Now, listen closely, if I'm not back by nightfall, you assume that I'm dead ... don't give me that look, assume that I'm dead start off on your own."
"I couldn't, I just ..."
"Look, it's your only chance for survival and you can't turn your back on it."
"All right," she answered shakily. "Good luck, Zeke, and God be with you."

"God?" he asked curiously. "I thought you would have guessed by now ... I'm an atheist!"
"God be with you anyway," Ellinore repeated quietly as he walked into the nearest cave and promptly vanished from sight.

The Seventh Hour

"I'm an atheist."
The words seemed to stick in her mind long after nightfall. She thought over everything that had happened that day. The McClellan sisters had disappeared, water had been discovered, and the arrival of Zeke finally began to take on a new aspect in her tortured mind. God didn't care! He didn't care about them. God-fearing Christians or atheists were alike in His sight. It didn't make any difference whether the church was saved or perished in the depths of the earth.
"Miss Dougherty?"
Her mind, haunted by the shape of timeless things, failed to bring the cry to her attention.
"MISS DOUGHERTY!"
Who was it? Someone calling from someplace far away? Calling for what? She turned her head toward the figure.
"Yes, what do you want?" she answered tiredly.
"I'm sorry to bother you, but I think something is happening outside."
Why didn't they leave her alone? Couldn't they tell what a burden it was to try and remain sane? Why worry about the outside? It was the inside that mattered.
She had heard the rumblings before, but she hadn't paid any attention to them.
"Stay calm, Mr. Collins," she answered him. "Let's move the others outside."
"What? Are we all going to die? Now? Already?"
"Mr. Collins, please. We still have plenty of time if we hurry to the caves."
"Already? Already?"
Mr. Collins' voice repeated over and over. It was a scratched record of despair, Ellinore
thought, a searing testimony of human existence perishing in the very earth which had spawned it.
"Come, hurry, Mrs. Baxter! Mrs. Collins? Aren't you coming? Please, hurry. We don't have much time."
Mrs. Baxter remained sitting in her motionless position as the darkness danced through the broken windows. All attempts to move her proved futile. And after examining Mrs. Collins, who appeared to be in some type of comatose state, Ellinore decided against moving her. Mr. Collins continued to run down the aisles, taking short steps which appeared more like hops than walking. Every few moments he would stop and yell his now familiar "already?" and continue onward. Ellinore left them all as she made her way swiftly to the front door of the church.
A grinding sound had begun to obliterate all other sounds. Slowly, yet unremittingly, the walls drew together in their destructive union. The church perched precariously upon the rock ledge as Ellinore ran for the caves.

The jarring of the wall against the ledge spun her around and to the ground. Panic-stricken, she watched as the remnants of the church were crushed, destroying the remaining life within it.
Her piercing scream filled the corners of the cavern before a pair of strong arms yanked her into the safety of the cave. She wheeled around to find herself facing Zeke.
"Ezekiel Robbins! You have some nerve giving me such a scare."
"Maybe I should have just let you lie there and be crushed?"
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it. But I think we'd better get further back, that wall will probably be coming in a few more feet when the entrance slams shut."
They fled quickly as the sealing of the two walls brought a shower of earth and rocks down around them. They stopped only to rest on one of the larger rocks.
"Oh, Zeke, those poor people."
"You did what you could to help them."
"Did I? Or did I just save myself?"
"Look," he replied sternly, "They were going to die anyway."
"But, Zeke, I might have saved a couple of them. I should have ..."
"Get off it, Ellinore. Do you want to play the martyr routine the rest of your life? The situation was finished. You saw that, they didn't. Come on, now. We have to hurry and reach the passage before this candle burns out. I don't have any more, do you?"
"No, I don't. There weren't very many left in the church and I ... I should have brought more with me."
"Forget it, let's get moving."

* * *

"We're almost there," he announced, pulling her forward. "The candle's giving out now. But we aren't finished yet."
"I can't see, Zeke. It's too dark in here."
"Don't worry. Just follow me and we should be out of here in no time at all ..."
His voice trailed off abruptly and Ellinore took a few hesitant steps before stopping. Where had he gone? He had been right in front of her up until that last turn.
Ellinore quickly decided that she must have wandered down a different tunnel and turned to retrace her route. Something scraped against her head and she fell, but picked herself up to begin again. However, now it seemed there was nowhere to turn in the inky blackness. Her desperate yearning for freedom drove her forward only to stumble aimlessly, first forward, then backward. Trying vainly to locate some familiar landmark, she flung herself screaming onto the floor of the tunnel in front of her. It was air.

* * *

"Ellinore?"
Zeke, finding the entrance to the outside world too dazzling, retreated to the more comfortable twilight regions of the cave.
"Ellinore, are you there? Are you hurt? Can you hear me? Oh, my God, there's a turnoff right here at the bend. She must have taken the other tunnel, the other way out."
He turned resignedly and walked toward the mouth of the cave.