Arena Read online

  “Through vibrant description and well-paced action, Karen Hancock creates a compelling world of both horror and hope. Arena gives Christian fantasy lovers something to cheer about.”

  —Brandilyn Collins, bestselling author of Eyes of Elisha

  “When other books are long forgotten and out of print, I believe people will still be reading Arena. It’s destined to be a classic.”

  —Rene Gutteridge, author of Ghost Writer

  “An allegory for the third millennium! If you liked Pilgrim’s Progress and The Matrix, then you’ll love Arena.”

  —Randall Ingermanson, co-author of Oxygen

  “Arena is a wonderful and clever allegorical tale with all the excitement of good science fiction.”

  —Judith Pella, author of Written on the Wind

  “Clever, creative and full of non-stop action, Arena is a wonderful introduction to new writer Karen Hancock. Don’t miss the opportunity to wrap your mind around this fascinating book.”

  —Gayle Roper, author of Summer Shadows and Spring Rain

  “Karen Hancock’s Arena sets a new benchmark for contemporary allegory—thoroughly imagined, intelligently written, and as vivid as last night’s unsettling dreams. Well done!”

  —Kathy Tyers, author of the FIREBIRD trilogy

  KAREN HANCOCK

  © 2002 by Karen Hancock

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  E-book edition created 2011

  The Scripture quotation of Romans 8:31 on page 313 is taken from the King James Version of the Bible. All other Scripture quotations are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE,® Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission. www.lockman.org

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-7064-1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.

  Cover design by Lookout Design Group, Inc.

  To Kathy Tyers

  KAREN HANCOCK graduated in 1975 from the University of Arizona with bachelor’s degrees in Biology and Wildlife Biology. Along with writing, she is a semi-professional watercolorist and has exhibited her work in a number of national juried shows. Arena is her first novel. She, her husband, and their son, whom Karen homeschooled for eight years, reside in Arizona.

  For discussion and further information, Karen invites you to visit her Web site at www.kmhancock.com.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With gratitude and appreciation . . .

  To my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in whom we live and move and have our being and for whom all things have been created, who alone is worthy of praise.

  To Colonel R. B. Thieme, Jr., my pastor and teacher for twenty years, and to Robert R. McLaughlin, my pastor now, for their tireless devotion to the daily study and teaching of the Word of God and willingness to stand upon the truth regardless of how unpopular such a stand might be. Without their daily teaching, I never would have been able to write this book.

  To Nancy Belt, Donna Henley, and Kelli Nolen, those rare and precious true friends who know how to sift the wheat from the chaff, overlook transgressions, and lift up a brother when he has fallen. You are refreshments to my soul.

  To my husband, Stuart, who has labored alone for years, allowing me the time and opportunity to write, even when it appeared nothing would come of it.

  To my son, Adam, who has been a joy and a privilege to raise, and whose fascination with Super Mario Brothers sparked the germ for this story.

  To Kathy Tyers, for critique, encouragement, and steadfast assistance over the years.

  To Steve Laube, for kindness, persistence, insightful editing, and most of all, for taking the risk.

  To all the other readers and critiquers God provided before He saw fit to grant me the social validation of publication—you will never know how much satisfaction and encouragement you gave: Linda Smith; Edward Willett; Greg and Katie Solewin; Jeanette, Aimee, and Kris Ratzlaff; Lelia Foreman; Travis Langley; and Penny Olsen.

  And finally, to God the Father, for His marvelous plan for my life, which includes not only seeing this book in print, but all the years of waiting for His perfect timing.

  The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who diligently seeks Him.

  Contents

  CALLED

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  TRANSFORMED

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  RAISED UP

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  EPILOGUE

  CALLED

  “IF YOU SEEK HIM,

  HE WILL LET YOU FIND HIM . . .”

  1 CHRONICLES 28 : 9

  CHAPTER

  1

  “They won’t be taking blood or anything, will they?” Callie Hayes looked up from the clipboard in her hands to the dimpled youth behind the receptionist’s counter.

  “Our physical evaluations are noninvasive,” he assured her. “Completely painless.”

  “For goodness’ sake, Callie,” Meg Riley protested beside her. “It’s only a psychology experiment. Why are you giving him the third degree?”

  “I want to know what I’m getting into this time.” Callie pushed slipping wire-rim glasses back up her nose as she flashed an accusing glance at her companion.

  Meg was petite, freckled, and green-eyed, her face framed by chin-length black curls. She wore a white spaghetti-strap T-shirt with blue shorts, and she’d been Callie’s best friend since fourth grade. Together they’d endured adolescence, the divorce of Meg’s parents, a two-year obsession with Zane Grey novels, high school, and college. After graduating from the University of Arizona four years ago, they’d both settled into a holding pattern—Meg waiting for a teaching position at one of the Tucson school districts, and Callie just waiting. It was through Meg’s temporary job with the university’s Psychology Department that she stumbled onto the world of the paid guinea pig. “Easy money,” she dubbed it.

  But Callie discovered there were reasons guinea pigs got paid.

  “Thirty dollars,” Meg had promised last time, “and all we have to do is lie in the sun for a few hours.”

  Ha! It was bad enough having strangers smear squares of sunscreen on her bottom and peer at them every fifteen minutes, but when the local news crews showed up, Callie nearly died of embarr
assment—and swore she’d never let Meg talk her into any such thing again.

  “This isn’t like the sunscreen business,” Meg assured her. She turned to the receptionist. “We had one bad experience, and now she’s paranoid.”

  The baby-faced youth nodded. His nameplate read Gabe, and though he looked like a high schooler, Callie guessed he was a college freshman.

  “Ask as many questions as you like,” he said. “I’ll answer anything that won’t affect the integrity of the experiment.”

  Callie frowned, fingering the end of the thick red braid that hung over her shoulder. “No drugs?”

  Gabe’s blue eyes widened. “Of course not! As our flyer says, we offer evaluation of and instruction in the decision-making process. There are absolutely no drugs.”

  “So what do we have to do for the fifty dollars?”

  “You’ll be negotiating an obstacle course and—”

  “Obstacle course?” Callie looked up from the waiver. “That won’t involve heights, will it? Rope climbing, that sort of thing?”

  “Good grief, Cal,” Meg cried. “It’s not boot camp.”

  “Just let the man answer, okay?”

  “It is on the ninth floor,” Gabe said. “Are you acrophobic?”

  “Only once I get to the tenth floor.” She laughed nervously.

  “Maybe we can help with that.”

  “I was just joking.” The last thing she needed was another bout with a shrink.

  Gabe shrugged. “Well, we’ve had good success with phobias—and fear in general, for that matter.”

  “See?” Meg’s short dark curls brushed Callie’s shoulder as she leaned close. “It’s not like that other thing at all. In fact, it might even give you an excuse to miss your sister’s birthday bash tonight. Unless you think the Mr. Right she’s got for you this time really will be Mr. Right.”

  Callie snorted. Her sister, Lisa, moved in an alien world—upscale, fashion-fixated, and socially saturated. Lisa’s Mr. Rights were inevitably lawyers or MBAs, all acquaintances or co-workers of her husband’s. Expecting another version of Lisa, the men were always disappointed when they met her short, dull, tongue-tied little sister.

  Callie detested the whole scenario. And the possibility of having an excuse for missing the affair was a powerful incentive. “How long will it take?” she asked Gabe.

  “Not more than a few hours if you follow instructions. We do ask that you commit to finishing the experiment, however.”

  “And we won’t have to do anything embarrassing or improper?”

  He looked amused. “Only if you choose to.”

  “Come on, Cal,” Meg murmured. “You said you’d do this.”

  “Oh, all right.” Callie signed the waiver and handed it over. It’s only for a couple of hours, she consoled herself. And who knows—maybe I will gain new and powerful insights. Maybe I’ll learn how to say no to Lisa. Maybe it’ll even turn my life around like the flyer promises. There’s no denying it could use some turning around.

  Four years out of college, she was still making minimum wage raising rats for biology experiments. She still lived in a rented apartment, still had to endure her mother’s lectures about finding a man and getting focused, and still wasn’t any closer to doing what she really wanted to do—paint. Unfortunately that was something both her mother and sister considered completely unacceptable. A career in art was too unreliable. Worse, her deadbeat father was an artist—when he wasn’t following the horse races or losing his money in Las Vegas—and she didn’t want to be like him, did she?

  At her mother’s insistence, she had gone into pre-med. But she was not accepted at med school after graduation—much to her relief—and thus far the only thing her science degree had turned up was the rat-raising job. A job that somehow spilled from part time into full and consumed all her energy, so that little art got done, and she stayed where she was, trapped, frustrated, and waiting for a miracle to set her free.

  Gabe told them to go on up and indicated an elevator panel in the textured beige wall beside the desk. Meg hesitated, looking uncertain, then leaned over the counter. “Alex Chapman was supposed to meet us—”

  “Yes. He’s waiting upstairs.”

  As they entered the elevator Meg nudged Callie’s arm. “He’s waiting for us! Did you hear?” She fluffed her black curls and groped in her purse for a breath mint. “Do I look okay? What am I gonna say?”

  “Hello usually works.” Callie tried not to think of the dark well of space beneath her feet, pushed away thoughts of cables snapping and cars plummeting. The last thing she wanted was to have an attack here.

  “But what about after hello?” Meg persisted.

  “You never had any problems talking to Jack.”

  “There’s a light-year of difference between Jack and Alex. Wait’ll you see him, Cal. He is so gorgeous.”

  “So you’ve said. Many times.”

  “Have I?” Meg giggled.

  Callie watched the six blink out and the seven appear over the door. Uneasiness churned in her middle. She was okay up to the seventh floor, but after that, things got dicey. Floor-level fear was a fairly common manifestation of acrophobia, but because it didn’t match the stereotypical fear of heights, it was harder for others to relate to. You were expected to freak out when you looked out a lofty window or stepped onto a rooftop observation deck, and most people nursed enough of their own latent acrophobia to sympathize. But falling into a full-blown panic just because the numbers changed on an elevator panel? Even she knew it made no sense.

  Not that it mattered. Above the sixth floor, she got jittery. And above the ninth . . . STOP it! Don’t think about it!

  “Frankly, I think you were an idiot to return Jack’s ring,” she said to Meg, desperate to distract herself. “He’s a good guy, and he loves you.”

  Meg gestured dismissively. “Jack’s even more predictable than you are. He’s a stick-in-the-mud. I want some excitement.”

  “Excitement.” The seven gave way to an eight. “You have lost your mind.”

  Meg grinned. “You mean my heart.”

  “You don’t even know the man.”

  The eight changed to a nine, a chime pinged, and the elevator opened at the end of a gleaming, door-lined corridor. On the ninth floor.

  Don’t think about it. Everything’s fine.

  She followed Meg into the hallway, smelling the pleasant crayon scent of the floor wax and feeling abruptly disoriented. Hadn’t the elevator faced across the building’s width when they’d boarded it?

  The dark-haired youth awaiting them distracted her from further musing. This must be the famous Alex—the handsome-as-a-Greek-god, I-die-a-thousand-deaths-each-time-he-looks-at-me real reason Meg was here. A graduate teaching assistant for Dr. Charis’s Psych 101 and a doctoral candidate in the psychology of the paranormal, Alex was set to receive his degree in less than a month. Meg figured she had to make a connection today, or forget him.

  Though Meg had billed the guy as movie-star caliber, Callie found him unexceptional. Dressed in a white tunic and slacks, he was of average stature, with glossy black hair and dark, long-lashed eyes. His face was open and friendly, but hardly stunning. Gabe, the receptionist, was better looking.

  He did have a nice smile.

  “Meg! Great to see you. And you brought a friend!”

  As Meg introduced them Callie had to admit he was a likable guy, one of those people who instantly made you feel at ease.

  “We really appreciate what you’re doing here,” he told them. “Without volunteers like you, our project would be nothing. I hope you’ll find it worth your while.” He motioned down the hall. “Shall we get started?”

  “So what is this obstacle course like?” Callie asked as they walked.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Alex replied. “The experiment demands that all participants begin with the same level of . . .” He smiled at her sidelong. “Well, ignorance.”

  “You mean we have to go in
to this blind?”

  “More or less.”

  Alarms went off in her head. Red lights flashed around images of experimenters hovering over her posterior and TV reporters aiming large-lensed cameras.

  “I hope the obstacles aren’t tires and ropes,” said Meg, “because we’re hardly dressed—”

  “Oh, we’ll provide appropriate apparel.”

  “You mean it is tires and ropes?” Callie asked, aghast.

  Alex laughed but wouldn’t commit either way.

  He led them to an L-shaped room where three people waited in white plastic chairs lined against peach-colored walls. A picture window dressed with vertical blinds—thankfully closed against the morning sun—filled the left wall. Callie took care not to look at the window and concentrated on following Meg and Alex to the counter. There a boyish Asian in a gray-yoked tunic gave them clipboards with medical forms to fill out, after which they were called to the examination room at the back. Callie went first, leaving Meg in happy conversation with Alex.

  The exam was decidedly unorthodox. Instead of using blood pressure cuffs, thermometers, and blood vials, the lab tech, a handsome, muscular youth named Angelo, pressed her hand against a jellylike plate and flipped a switch.

  “This is pretty fancy equipment,” she exclaimed as the plate vibrated beneath her palm.

  “Takes fingerprints, temperature, blood pressure, and blood chemistry all at the same time,” he boasted with a grin. “State of the art. Now please step up onto this disk.”

  She complied, looking around curiously. “It must be a pretty physical obstacle course if you have to examine us first.”

  “Just follow the instructions, and you’ll be fine. You need to put your jewelry and such in the bowl there.” He gestured to a steel receptacle sliding out of the wall. “Glasses, too.”

  As Callie deposited watch, earrings, and glasses in the bowl, Angelo stepped into a cubicle across the room. Then a low hum sounded above her and a studded circular plate descended from the ceiling, stopping well above arm’s reach. She heard some clicks, and the hum changed pitch. Abruptly, ribbons of multicolored light swirled around her, the incongruous scent of warm taffy tickling her nostrils.