I backed away from the man and woman who slipped into the room. They didn’t seem to notice us as we stood observing them. Then I watched as the fool torched solemn vows made twenty-five years before and threw ashes to the wind.

“Stop!” I cried. “Don’t you see what you’re doing?”

He couldn’t hear me, or wouldn’t. Suddenly I saw the dropping blade of a guillotine, spilling my blood on the clean sheets of a luxury hotel. I saw the face of the woman of my dreams after a night of blind passion, when beauty faded and she became demanding and ugly, one more dried-up carcass on the great web, a revolting reminder of my own condition.

Then I saw the worst of it, hidden from me until that moment.

The drama, everything I’d just seen, was being acted out on a stage—and in the audience sat Marci. She stared at us, at me and the other woman. Marci silently watched me betray her, watched me violate my vows, watched the ugly procession of the lies I had become. I saw her sobs, her grief, her anger, and then watched as her face hardened against me, against life itself.

“Marci, I’m sorry,” I cried out. “I didn’t mean to hurt you!” She couldn’t hear me. Too little, too late.

Just when I thought nothing could be more horrible, I saw Brian and Amy seated beside their mother, observing the same ugliness, watching their father weave his own web. They saw me embrace this woman in our “secret” hotel room that was on center stage of the universe. I ran in front of them to block their view.

“No—you don’t understand,” I cried. “It wasn’t like that; it wasn’t as bad as it appears.”

But I realized I had no power to reinterpret the truth, for everyone in that cosmic auditorium, including my wife and children, knew it was exactly as it appeared.

Brian and Amy could see right through me, right through the traitor they once loved and now despised. I saw the stunned looks on their faces, the disgust, the brooding anger, felt the heart-stab of their hurt and confusion. I watched them turn from me.

“Amy, Brian—I’m sorry!” I said the words I’d never said on Earth.

I watched them recklessly run away from the auditorium. I knew they were going to choose their own wrong roads—I’d already seen that—because the man they trusted was a turncoat and a liar and a cheat. I saw them hating themselves for having once loved me.

If there was a hell, was I there already? Was this the first installment of what the travelers called Erebus?

I turned to look for Joshua. He was gone. Only Shadrach was there.