When I looked in front of me, I didn’t see Jeremiah Sanford. I saw myself. And when I looked down at my body, I was wearing a black suit, my hands ghostly pale. I stared into my own eyes and saw Jeremiah’s bright blue ones staring back at me.

I felt dissolved, the boundaries of myself disappearing, the whole universe swooping into my soul. I became a part of everything.

I saw myself standing in a suit, a congregation of people around me, old people, folks young and beautiful, all races and ages alike, hollering and singing and dancing while I spoke to them, my voice rising high and lovely above the crowd like honeysuckle on the wind. I told them my visions, and they lapped up every single word. They loved my visions. They loved me. It was glorious. It was my calling.

I felt Jeremiah whispering into my ear, breathing his breath into me, his words and spirit and life.

And then I was back in the barn with Murphy and Grandma and the rest, Horace’s body writhing on the floor. But I still heard Jeremiah’s voice, sweet and rich as honey, bellowing out over the rain and storm and wind.

“. . . and before me I saw a rift in the earth, an open growing maw, and from it streamed smoke of black and yellow and green and purple, a living haze, a cloud of fire. And in the haze I saw the moon and stars and all the night sky, a new world becoming, and I perceived a presence so great and strong and powerful I fell to my knees, the gash in the earth spewing up smoke and vapor, incense, perfume, power. I heard a voice bellow from inside the maw, as if the earth itself were speaking. ‘You are my true disciple, and in you my Spirit is present. Lead my people.’”

I realized it was me speaking those words. It was my voice, but the same cadence, the same pitch as Jeremiah’s. Jeremiah had been training me all this time, teaching me how to see like him, how to hear like him. Most importantly, he’d been teaching me how to speak like him. When I opened my mouth, out came his beautiful, melodious song of a voice, his words, his heart, his thoughts. They were lovely, and they had power. And now they were mine. Now I had power. Now I would gather the Farm together, a newer, better church. I would have a new family, people who loved me, people who needed me. It would be the start of something beautiful, all of us together, working toward a perfect world.

I believed in him. I believed in the Farm. I believed in myself.

“Alone we are weak, we are nothing,” I spoke. “But together—yes, together we can be a power unlike any the earth has ever seen.”