Imagine... the Giant's Fall Read online

  WHAT PARENTS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE IMAGINE SERIES

  “I felt the author did a great job pulling the reader into the story. I felt like I was actually in the story.”

  –Patti Pierce, author of Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy blog

  “…a fun read which kept us turning pages, imagining what it may have been like during Noah’s time and remembering that things change, but God doesn’t, and we should always be thankful. I would definitely recommend the story to those looking for clean reading for kids and biblical fiction!”

  –Martianne Stanger, author of Training Happy Hearts blog

  “This one is a page-turner. Once you start, you won’t want to put it down. The writing fills your imagination with vivid imagery. One thing that was fun for us to discuss, after everyone had a turn with the book, was how the [story] aligned with the Bible.”

  –Crystal Heft, author of Living Abundantly blog

  “.a great book and we loved reading it aloud together! I recommend you grabbing a copy for your own family to read!”

  –Felicia Mollohan, author of Homeschool4Life blog

  © 2019 by Matt Koceich

  Print ISBN 978-1-68322-944-5

  eBook Editions:

  Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-64352-123-7

  Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-64352-124-4

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.

  Churches and other noncommercial interests may reproduce portions of this book without the express written permission of Barbour Publishing, provided that the text does not exceed 500 words or 5 percent of the entire book, whichever is less, and that the text is not material quoted from another publisher. When reproducing text from this book, include the following credit line: “From Imagine…The Giant’s Fall, published by Barbour Publishing, Inc. Used by permission.”

  Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Barbour Books, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., 1810 Barbour Drive, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.barbourbooks.com

  Our mission is to inspire the world with the life-changing message of the Bible.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  06496 0419 BP

  THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO

  The giant grabbed the girl and lifted her high into the air. He yanked her up so hard and fast she thought she was going to pass out. Her struggle to get out of the monster’s powerful grip was over. Despite the way the Bible story ended, it appeared the girl was not going to be as lucky as the young shepherd boy.

  Ten-year-old Wren Evans enjoyed the feeling of victory. She had come face-to-face with the gargantuan man they called Goliath. She had survived his presence once before, but now her luck had run out.

  She writhed in his powerful grip like a snake, trying to break free. It was no use. She was just a fourth-grader, and he was a nine-foot-tall superhuman.

  The giant squeezed his fist and slowly pushed the air from Wren’s lungs.

  As she hung there, high above the plain, her life began to slip away….

  CONTENTS

  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 1

  PRESENT DAY

  MULVANE, KANSAS

  “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

  “Matthew nineteen twenty-one,” Wren said as she looked at the index card in her hand. She turned to stare out the school bus window, lost in thought. She saw a black-and-white cow with its head up, like it was trying to say hi to her.

  “Twenty-six.”

  “What?” She was still distracted by the Chick-fil-A cow that stared at her from the field.

  “Twenty-six. You said twenty-one, but the verse is nineteen twenty-six.”

  “Beth, look at that cow. Not a care in the world. No school. Nothing.”

  “Wren, you want to be a cow? Really?”

  Beth was a great friend. She was always good for a laugh to ease the stress.

  “No, I don’t want to be a cow. I just wish things were different.”

  The light turned green, and the school bus chugged forward. Wren watched the cow go back to eating grass. She looked down at the Bible verse her mother had written on the neon-green index card. It had been her mother’s favorite verse. She had prayed it over her baby girl every morning before she left for her teaching job at the elementary school.

  Wren asked Beth the next question. “Can you come over later and look at the book before I mail it off?”

  They had been working on a kids’ picture book about a girl who loses her mother to cancer. The book was written to honor Wren’s mom who had passed away from cancer only a year ago. The girls planned to give any money they earned to cancer research. Their teacher had a friend who worked for a publishing house and agreed to print the book.

  “Of course,” Beth said. “My brother doesn’t have baseball tonight. I’ll ask my mom for a ride.”

  “Okay. Just text me.” Wren kept her eyes on the index card. It was the only piece of her mother she had left that really meant something. There were the pictures and the memories, but the index card was the thing that gave her hope.

  The bus traveled on down the country road, navigating the curves and straightaways all the same: slow. The beauty of nature was erased by Wren’s impatience. All she wanted to do was get home and look at the book draft one last time. It was homemade, nothing but the printed pages glued to construction paper along with their hand-drawn pictures, but it felt like the real deal.

  Her father promised they would get it to the post office before the five o’clock pickup. That way the publisher could have it by the beginning of next week.

  Added to the slowness of the bus was the silence that hung over the students. Normally, the ride home was a cacophony of noises: shouts, laughs, whispers, coughs, sneezes, singing. Now all Wren could hear was the buzzing of the big bus tires rolling over Highway 15. Even Lucy Jones was quiet. And that girl could talk.

  Suddenly sirens tore through the quiet, ripping it to shreds. Just as the bus crossed over Dog Creek, Wren saw the red lights. The bus pulled over. A fire engine pulled out onto the road in front of them and drove north. Seconds later, a police SUV zoomed past with its lights flashing and siren wailing, warning drivers to get out of the way.

  The bus resumed its mission of delivering the children of Jobe Elementary to their respective houses. Wren still stared at the card. Oh, how she wished her mother would be home to greet her.

  “I see smoke! Look!”

  The voice belonged to Allen Decker, the obnoxious class clown. He sat in the front seat by the main bus door. Wren saw that Allen was looking through the huge windshield, his neck craned to get a good view.

  “Wow! Whatever’s burning is toast!” Allen added the last word for effect, as if something burning wasn’t enough drama.

  She couldn’t see anything from her seat.

>   And just like that, the silence was erased. The bus erupted in nervous chatter as the children offered a hundred thousand guesses about what was burning.

  As the bus crawled to a halt, Wren noticed they weren’t at a regular stop. She got up and leaned over the seats directly across the aisle and saw why the bus had stopped. Her entire street had been blocked off by emergency vehicles. She thought she saw her dad standing in the middle of the street, surrounded by rescue personnel.

  “Let me out!” Wren hustled up the aisle toward the front of the bus.

  The driver had the door open for her. “Be careful.”

  But Wren wasn’t listening. She was already running down Southcrest Drive.

  Once her eyes scanned the street and her brain caught up and realized it was her house that was burning, her legs seemed to slow down. It was like her feet had gone from concrete to quicksand. She willed herself forward to where her dad was standing. When she got to him, his arms opened to receive her in a bear hug.

  “I’m sorry, honey! I’m so sorry!”

  “What happened?” The question was out of Wren’s mouth before she could take it back.

  “I don’t know. I was out back on a phone call. When I came in, I smelled something burning. It was the TV wire in my bedroom. By the time I got in there, the curtains were burning. I tried to put it out, but it spread too fast.”

  Wren looked at the black shell of her house. The destroyed structure stood there like a charcoal skeleton. Three firefighters were holding the firehose and shooting water over it. This could not be happening.

  Her book manuscript!

  “Dad, the box on my desk. Did you grab it?”

  “I’m sorry, angel. I grabbed our laptops. The firefighters came and pulled me out. Oh baby, I’m so sorry!” He grabbed Wren in another hug.

  But the nightmare kept getting worse. Wren couldn’t do this anymore. Her life was a dead end. Impossible to overcome. It felt like God had simply walked away and let her and her dad fend for themselves.

  She pulled away from her father’s embrace and took off running. If her lungs and heart could handle it, she’d run forever and never stop.

  She ran down the street.

  Away from the fire.

  Away from her dad.

  Away from the pain.

  When her legs and lungs finally protested, she collapsed on the sidewalk. She put her face to her knees. The green index card was still in her hand.

  “Open her eyes.”

  The voice belonged to a woman, but when Wren looked around, no one was there.

  She must be losing her mind. The fire was the last straw. Why would God allow this? It was too much for anyone to bear, let alone a young kid.

  The world was broken.

  Gone.

  Wren closed her eyes and prayed that when she opened them again, she’d be staring at her phone and the alarm to get up for school would be ringing. And this whole wicked day would never have happened.

  She cried out to God, “Why did You forget me and my dad? Why?” Her body shook from the stress of it all. She clenched her fists and tried to hold back a new flood of tears. It was just too much.

  Way too much.

  She rubbed her face and wished more than anything that this whole day—whole life, really—was just a bad dream she’d wake up from any second now. She wished she could see her mother one more time. Just one more hug…

  But she wasn’t in a dream. And her mother wasn’t here to give her a comforting hug.

  CHAPTER 2

  1020 B.C.

  BETHLEHEM

  Wren opened her eyes.

  Panic set in as she saw an utterly different landscape than her street. Wherever she was, it certainly wasn’t Kansas. She stood and turned in a complete circle, hoping to see the woman who had said something about opening someone’s eyes.

  What happened? Where am I?

  She looked around and couldn’t see anything that resembled her home. She was in the middle of a beautiful green pasture!

  No. No. No.

  What just happened?

  “Where am I?” Wren asked the new world around her.

  She took in more of the landscape. She was standing on one side of a large valley. Where the pasture stopped, a massive field of grain grew. It looked like all the wheat she saw back home. Her grandfather grew wheat on his farm and loved to tell her random facts about it. Like Kansas produces the most wheat in the United States, and all the wheat grown there in one year would fill train cars that stretched from western Kansas all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

  She was still holding her mother’s neon-green index card.

  “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

  Reading the verse again gave her a boost of confidence. She had to figure out what was going on. When she looked to the right—where her neighborhood should be—Wren saw a herd of sheep grazing. There were at least thirty of the fluffy white animals roaming around. Petting the creatures would surely help ease the stress of her day.

  She blinked a few more times and shook her head. Her mind had to be playing tricks on her from the drama of the day. But the sheep were still grazing, and there was no concrete, no houses, and no Kansas around for miles.

  I’ll pet the sheep and calm down. That’s the plan. Pet the cute sheep and calm down!

  Wren slowly walked up to the closest sheep and stuck her hand out. She always did that with her friend’s dog so it could sniff her first. Did sheep follow the same rules?

  The sheep licked her hand instead of sniffing it. Its tongue felt like sandpaper. It tickled and made her laugh. She kneeled down and rubbed the serene animal behind the ears. The other sheep were curious and started to come closer to her.

  Wherever she was, it was more relaxing than the real world of Mulvane, Kansas. Maybe this was heaven. Maybe her very young heart had finally had enough of all the stress and simply stopped beating. But if this was heaven, where were all the people?

  Wren welcomed the sheep as they surrounded her. It felt good to be here. No sadness. Just beautiful sunlight. Clear blue sky. Endless green prairie that stretched to the horizon.

  The adorable sheep.

  She needed to find her dad and bring him here too.

  She absorbed the beauty of the moment.

  But just like back home, all beautiful things had to end.

  When she looked up from petting the sheep, she couldn’t believe what she saw. A brown bear stood on the crest of a nearby hill. The huge creature had to weigh more than three grown men! The bear looked at her and swung its big fuzzy head back and forth.

  The bear began walking down the hillside in her direction. Its massive legs worked like a machine to push the lumbering giant forward.

  After a few paces, the bear had built up momentum and began running. Wren figured she looked appetizing to the bear and didn’t want to imagine what would happen when it finally caught up to her. She immediately thought of her Uncle Nick.

  He had a cat named Bandit, and when Wren was little she loved playing with him. She would get rough with the cat, and her uncle would say, “Careful. If you keep playing with Bandit like that, there’ll be nothing left of you except your hair, teeth, and eyeballs.”

  If bears could talk, the one coming after her would surely be quoting Uncle Nick.

  She looked around the pasture. There was a huge boulder sitting about a football field’s length away.

  She had no choice. Wren had to make a run for it. She was a sitting duck where she was, and today she didn’t feel like getting eaten by a bear.

  She jumped to her feet and ran as fast as she could to the boulder. She prayed she didn’t trip over anything, because if she did, that would be the end of it.

  As she ran, she could hear the bear grunting. The sound got louder as the humongous animal got closer. She looked over her shoulder and saw that the bear was so close. She guessed only twenty yards behind!

  Wren thanked the Lord she had
done gymnastics for the last five years. She decided that she was going to do a killer vault up onto the rock and escape her attacker.

  But the bear had different plans. It closed the gap on its human prey. Only fifteen yards behind…like a runaway train barreling down the tracks.

  Lord, please help me get to the rock!

  Wren pushed harder. She concentrated on pumping her legs up and down, as fast as she could get them to move.

  The bear closed the distance between them. Only ten yards behind…

  Lord, please get me to the rock!

  So close now. But then a sharp, stabbing pain shot up her right leg, from her ankle all the way up to her hip. It interrupted her stride. Her right leg buckled, causing her to slow down.

  The animal’s grunting grew louder. It sounded like a boat motor, gurgling and churning in the water.

  Only five yards behind.

  This was it.

  Wren took a deep breath and used every ounce of strength she could muster—and jumped.

  She made it without falling and executed her best vault yet, landing almost near the top of the massive stone. The bear’s claws raked against the boulder, and a disappointed roar came from its hungry mouth. It stood on its hind legs, and with its left paw on the boulder, swatted at her with its right.

  The bear kept clawing while she prayed he would forget he was hungry or get distracted by something else.

  Minutes passed, and the bear eventually lost interest. He dropped to all four paws and turned back to the pasture. She realized that her prayer was being answered. The bear had his sights set on a new meal: the sheep.

  There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t run after the bear and make it go away.

  She watched in utter helplessness as the bear trotted up to one of the peaceful creatures. Wren couldn’t look. She shut her eyes and covered her ears.

  After a minute, she opened her eyes and put her hands down. That’s when she saw a young man standing between her and the flock. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen but had biceps that would make her gymnastics coach proud.