Excited to share that my next thriller is coming soon! This story is actually where my writing journey started right after I retired in March 2025—even though my other books somehow beat it to the finish line.
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Copyright 2026 by DJ Rawlings
Copyright 2026 by DJ Rawlings
The Last Door
The Last Door
And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.
—Revelation 9:15
I read the verse again, hoping I had misunderstood it.
A spider crossed the cracked ceiling above my bed, skirted a water stain, and disappeared behind the wallpaper. Whatever awaited it that morning, understanding Revelation would not be among its difficulties.
“I hope I’m long gone before the Second Coming.”
Across the room, Elder Johnson paused while tying his shoes. A red zit had appeared in the middle of his forehead overnight. I had been trying not to stare at it since he woke up.
“What are you reading?”
“Revelation.”
“That explains the face.”
“Four angels are going to kill a third of mankind.”
“How many people is that?”
“Somewhere around two billion.”
“You worked it out?”
“Of course I worked it out.”
He considered the number, then finished tying his shoe. “If we’re righteous, we don’t have to worry about it.”
“What about everyone else?”
“Steven, you can’t help two billion people before breakfast.”
“What about one?”
He glanced toward our satchels. “We can try that.”
I closed the Bible. In another month I would be home, with two years of missionary service behind me and college ahead. Mother had sent the University of Utah’s pre-med requirements in her last letter. I had read them several times, trying to imagine myself in a laboratory instead of on another stranger’s doorstep.
I wanted to become a doctor because I wanted to know what to do when someone was hurt. Two billion deaths defeated the ambition before I had begun. The number was easier to accept if I didn’t picture an individual person, then another.
Johnson appeared beside my bed. “You’re doing it again.”
“I’m getting up.”
By nine-thirty, we had studied, prayed, eaten, and stepped into the Manchester rain. At one house, a young mother held a feverish child against her shoulder. I could offer only a return visit. The little girl watched us leave.
***
At eight-forty that evening, Johnson checked his watch.
“We need to go.”
“One more.”
“The mission rules say to return home by nine.”
“We have twenty minutes.”
“We have wet socks.”
Most of the houses were narrow brick terraces. At the end of the lane stood a larger house of dark stone, with tall windows and six worn steps leading to an oak door. Amber light showed behind a curtain.
“That one.”
“Of course you’d pick that creepy old house.”
“You never know which door the Lord has prepared.”
“That sentence has probably ruined more missionary evenings than rain.”
He came with me anyway. I lifted the ring of an iron knocker shaped like a lion’s head. The impact carried deep into the house.
Johnson was reaching for his watch again when a lock turned.
The woman who opened the door was pale and beautiful, with dark hair gathered behind her head and a black dress that fell below her knees. She was young, not much older than we were. I forgot an introduction I had given hundreds of times.
Her eyes passed over Johnson and stopped on me. Something changed in her expression, briefly enough that I might have imagined it.
“Good evening. You’re a long way from home.”
“We’re missionaries.”
“I can see that.”
“I’m Elder Patterson. This is Elder Johnson. We’re from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
“Of course you are.” She opened the door farther. Warm air reached us carrying wood smoke, beeswax, and a faint metallic smell. “My name is Alithea.”
“Alithea?”
“It means truth.”
“We should be getting back,” Johnson said.
“You’ve been in the rain all day. Five minutes beside a fire won’t hurt you.”
“Mission rules—”
“Leave the door open.” She stepped aside.
We should have arranged another visit. But I was tired of doors closing, and here was a fire and someone willing to listen.
“Five minutes,” I said.
Books lined the drawing room. A violin concerto played on a record player near the window. Behind the chairs she offered us stood a Bible, a Book of Mormon, a Qur’an, and several volumes with titles I couldn’t read.
“Religion interests me,” she said.
“Are you religious?”
“No. But believers interest me.”
Johnson began explaining the Restoration. Before he had finished, she turned toward me.
“You believe you existed before you were born.”
“Yes.”
“And came here willingly, knowing you would suffer.”
“Knowing we would have the opportunity to learn and choose.”
“Whether to follow God?”
“Yes.”
“And when someone chooses murder?”
“God doesn’t approve of everything people do with their freedom.”
“Yet He allows it. Even when someone else bears the consequences.”
“Sometimes. That doesn’t mean He abandons the person who suffers.”
Alithea leaned forward. “Cain had agency.”
The name surprised me. “Yes.”
“He killed his brother. God cursed him, marked him, and sent him away. Did Cain choose any of that?”
“He chose to murder Abel.”
“You haven’t answered me.”
“No, he didn’t choose his punishment. Being able to choose doesn’t mean we can decide what follows.”
“And his children? What did they choose?”
“Children aren’t guilty of their parents’ crimes.”
“Does that spare them anything?”
I thought of the little girl in her mother’s arms that morning. “It should matter how we treat them.”
Alithea’s fingers tightened against the chair.
“Easy words from someone who has never inherited another person’s punishment.”
“Inherited?”
“I was speaking generally.”
It hadn’t sounded general. Johnson moved his satchel onto his lap.
“Thank you for letting us warm up. We should go.”
“Does your God value blood, Elder Patterson?”
I hesitated.
“You speak of being cleansed through Christ’s blood,” she continued. “His death benefits others. What makes that different from a man taking a life for his own benefit?”
“Christ gave His life willingly.”
“And that changes everything?”
“Christ chose what to give. Abel had no choice in what Cain took.”
She regarded me without speaking. I became conscious of the fire against my back and the cold in my wet shoes.
“You defend Him quickly.”
“I’m a missionary.”
“That doesn’t account for all of it. Some people stop believing when they cannot find an answer. You keep looking.”
Something in her face resembled disappointment.
“You don’t know me.”
“No?”
She sounded as though she were checking something she already knew.
Johnson rose. I stood beside him.
“My shawl is in the library,” Alithea said. “Would you bring it, Elder Patterson? The black one over the chair.”
“We really have to leave,” Johnson said.
“It’s just through there.”
The doorway was only a few steps along the hall. I wanted to leave, but I also wanted to stop feeling foolish for being frightened of our hostess.
“I’ll get it.”
The library was colder than the drawing room. A lamp illuminated a desk beside the reading chair. I found the shawl, then noticed the map beneath the lamp.
Our address was circled in red.
Other marked addresses belonged to missionaries we knew. Photographs showed elders leaving chapels and boarding buses. There were other people too: a woman carrying boxes into a shelter, an older man unlocking a youth center, a police officer outside a church hall. Dates and addresses appeared beneath their photographs.
Beside them lay an open leather ledger. Names, dates, and places filled a branching chart. Near the top of one page, a word had been written in larger letters.
MAHAN.
A separate sheet carried my full name.
STEVEN PATTERSON.
Born in Utah. Missionary in England.
Below those details were observations: resistance to coercion, concern for the suffering of others, faith despite unresolved questions.
The last entry was underlined.
Potential interference.
“Elder Johnson?”
My voice came out too quietly. I lifted the sheet.
The door closed. Alithea stood beside it.
“Who wrote this?” I asked.
“Put it down.”
“You’ve been following us.”
“Not only you.”
“Mahan. Is that Master Mahan?”
She said nothing.
“Cain?”
I held up the page. She had known what was written there while she questioned me beside the fire.
“Interference with what?”
“Something you haven’t lived long enough to trouble.”
I moved toward the door. She reached it before me, so quickly I stopped against the desk. I hadn’t seen her take a step.
“What the flip.”
Her attention settled on my throat.
I shouted for Johnson. Alithea caught my coat and drove me backward. The desk struck my hips. Papers slid to the floor, and the lamp toppled against the ledger. I tried to shove her away. She held me without effort.
“Let me go.”
Someone tried the handle behind her.
“Your companion can’t help you,” she said.
“What do you want?”
“To prevent a mistake.”
My name lay beneath her shoe. She had brought me into this room to kill me. Perhaps the questions had been a last attempt to find a reason she didn’t need to.
Johnson struck the door. Before I could call to him, Alithea gripped my hair and forced my head sideways.
Two sharp points entered beneath my jaw.
I caught her wrist with both hands. Her mouth pressed against my neck, and my strength ran out through the wound. Beyond her I heard Johnson shouting, the handle rattling, something heavy scraping across the floor.
Then warmth swept through me. It overwhelmed the pain, followed by pleasure so fierce that I could no longer keep my hands closed. I had never taken a drug, but I understood how someone might surrender everything for a sensation. Some part of me wanted this while I knew it was killing me.
My knees folded. Alithea held me upright. I tried to pray and couldn’t gather the words.
The door crashed open. Johnson’s face appeared beyond her shoulder, his mouth moving, his voice impossibly far away.
The warmth surged again, and I lost him.
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