Glory "Amen" Johnson

(Have to back track her a little.  Read  Glory's story from June 18th, 2011 for background information.  Then follow her to the Book Woman's Club Meeting on June 23rd.  Sorry, but this was not written in sequence and I have to get all the characters to the June 23rd meeting!  When the characters speak.... )

It was dark outside when Glory "Amen" Johnson came to.  Starlight shimmered through the cathedral windows of Glory's dinning-room,  the white light transformed into ruby red, emerald green and cobalt blue, as it passed through the rich colors of century old stained glass. Glory lifted her face out of the pool of saliva that had run out her open mouth as she lay on the hardwood floor in the entryway of her house.  She wiped the spit off her face and sat up, dazed and confused, not knowing why she was on the floor! She shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs that clouded her memory, and then painfully pulled herself up off of the floor.  Glory groaned as she tried to straighten her bruised knees, and she pressed at the lump that had formed on her forehead.  Had someone assaulted her when she came in the house?  Her purse lay at her feet, the contents scattered like leaves blown by fall winds.  Glory frantically looked around, her pulse beginning to race in fear!  Was someone in the house with her?  She backed up against the front door, tripping over her band of keys...and then she remembered!         Lucifer!
          Glory "Amen" Johnson's bruised knees buckled and she clutched the doorknob, gripping it like a lifeline thrown out on troubled waters, as she tried to keep herself from falling out on the floor again!  She remembered!  Glory nearly fell to the floor, overcome with unearthly fear, remembering what she had witnessed earlier that day, after the Book Woman Club Meeting!  Thunderbird's unholy transformation into Satan, her...his dark wings lifting him...her into the sky at the corner of Teal and James Street, right here in Syracuse, New York!  
         "Merciful father!", Glory cried out and the words traveled through her dark house.  Her fear became a black winged demon, flying from her imagination and into the corners of each room, lurking; ready to grab Glory and to take her down to hell!  She released the doorknob, turned the deadbolt lock and ran to the kitchen.  From a draw to the left of the sink, she grabbed a large butcher knife that had been passed down to Glory "Amen" Johnson's mother by her mother and then down to Glory.  Glory crept from her kitchen with the knife held out in front of her, and began to look for the demon!  Thunderbird! Lucifer!
          Glory first searched the dinning-room, where her face was bathed in the fiery colors of the light flowing from the stained glass windows.  Glory felt like the light came from Heaven itself and it fortified her as she searched her bathroom, and then her living-room, without incident.  She then bravely stepped into the circular room that she used for prayer.  Tall windows formed the street wall of the prayer room.  The floor to ceiling windows had multiple clear glass panes, and tonight they glowed with the white light of the full moon.  In this room, Glory "Amen" Johnson read her bible everyday when she woke up, and she finished everyday of her life with its holy pages open in her lap.  The shadowy shimmer of dozens of crosses echoed each other on the half circle of walls across the back of the room, and covered Glory's face in their protective symbol.  Glory's mother had left her the house when she died, and to bless the house, Glory had used her holy oil covered index finger to painstakingly trace the sign of the cross on each pane.  Glory went to each window, the knife still held in one out-stretched hand, and closed the stark white curtains, giving Satan no view into this sacred space.  Trembling, Glory continued her search for her evil adversary; the Dark One, the Anti-Christ, Lucifer...Satan!
            Step by creaking step, Glory ascended to the top floor of her Victorian home.  She cautiously looked down the hall, her head rising through the staircase opening as she walked, the rest of her shaking body following its ascent.  She immediately pressed her back against the hallway wall.  She edged along the wall towards the door leading to the attic.  Glory checked the three hasp locks and the dead bolt.  They were untouched.  The attic was secure from outside forces.  She slid over the door and continued down the hall, her back sliding towards the next bedroom door, the butcher knife now held in both hands.  There were four bedrooms on the second floor.  Glory slid along the wall and entered the closest room; the room that her mother had used in her last months on earth before God took her to be with Him.  Glory smelled her mother's perfume as she slowly circled the room.  Every morning Glory "Amen" Johnson sprayed her mother's favorite perfume, Chanel #5, on the pillow where her mother's head had last rested before her departure to Heaven.  She tip-toed to the closet, took a deep breath and flung open the door, the huge knife raised and ready to strike!   The closet was empty, except for her dead mothers clothing; they too refreshed each morning by a spritz of Chanel #5.  Glory slid on down the hall to the rest of the bedrooms, her own monk like bedroom being the last, and found nothing in any of them to do battle with.   She exhaled, not realizing until this moment, that she had been holding her breath.  God had delivered her from being waylaid by Satan, and she took big gulps of air and relief!
     Now, Glory's bedroom was in the smallest of the rooms on the second floor.  It held a dresser, a padded dressing table chair, and a single bed.  Her closet was empty. (Glory hung her cloths on a rack that sat in the corner of the room.)    Glory "Amen" Johnson entered the closet, set the butcher knife on the floor and closed the door.  Dropping to her knees in the dark closet, she began to pray, beginning as she always did with words from Matthew, Chapter 6, verse 6.  "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into the closet and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to they Father which is in secret; and thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."  Glory's praying continued, her  prayer to the Lord pleading for deliverance from evil, "...For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and ever..."  Her voice rose to a fevered pitch as she ended the prayer with the age old word that was her middle name, the word her mother murmered each time she kissed young Glory goodnight on the forehead, after leading her through an hour of prayer; "Amen"!  In the dark of that closet she prayed a third prayer for guidance and waited for an answer from God.  She waited on the hard floor of that dark closet, her bruised knees throbbing their pain.                  
She waited.

And when the answer came, Glory felt around the floor in the dark of that prayer closet for the butcher knife.  Finding it, she closed her hand around it's blade; wincing as the long, sharp pain of the knife slashed into the tender skin in the palm of her right hand.  Ignoring the pain, Glory held tightly onto the knife's blade and stood up.  She opened the closet door and with eyes glazed over like one who has seen the answers to the great mysteries, Glory headed downstairs, drops of blood marring the carpet on the stairs and the wood floors of her dinning-room and then her living-room, as she made the journey to her prayer room.  The blood followed Glory into her circular prayer room and, as she stopped walking, poured over her shoes to pool at at her feet.  She bent and set the knife down in the blood.  With her bloody right hand, Glory lifted her heavy  black bible from the table where it was left after her morning prayer.  She raised the Holy Book into the air, and with a shouted "Hallelujah!", she threw the bloody bible onto the floor!  It hit the pooling blood with a loud, wet thud, it's open pages skidding across the room!  She slowly followed the trail of flung blood, her bloody footprints in tow, and picked up the Book. Glory "Amen" Johnson read God's words.

She knew exactly what she was called to do!