Michelle, Gary, Nina, and Shelly went out trying to warn the world online, on TV, on the radio, and in newspapers and magazines everywhere. They wasted no time giving their message maximum circulation.

Naturally, though he didn’t get along with his brother, Gary tried to convince Cam to be prepared for what was surely to come. They were arguing in Cam’s office in the country club.

“Oh, come on, Cam!” Gary said in frustration. “The earthquake at the golf course didn’t convince you, the thunderstorm at the Wellses’ mansion, the sea storm that killed the rich people on that yacht out in the Pacific Ocean, and the death of Lipton in the Texas mine: none of these things is even coming close to making you suspicious of what’s going on?”

“None of it,” Cam said with a smug smirk. “They were just freak accidents, Gary. Stop overthinking what happened. Stop making them into something that they weren’t. Stop making connections where there aren’t any. You and your ridiculous pagan gods. Christ!”

“Cam, I’m begging you. You’re my brother. I don’t want you and your wife to die. Give me an opportunity to get you to a safe place.”

“Gary, I have work to do in this country club. I’m much too busy to be wandering off somewhere to find some ‘giant box.’ We have to repair damages caused by the earthquake. We have customers we have to reassure, so they’ll keep coming back.”

“The earthquake that claimed the lives of at least a dozen members, whom we saw die that day, killed by the gods, who clearly sympathize with neither your business nor your clientele.” 

Cam sighed. “Go home, Gary. Pray to your gods if this is so important to you.”

Gary sighed and left the room, saying, “Well, I tried.”

Many of the common people, though, not just Wiccans and other neopagans, but also many who knew of how supernatural each of the four incidents were, took the warnings seriously and would find the four boxes that Michelle, Gary, Shelly, and Nina told them about. Other boxes would be provided for all the other parts of the world where there was a substantial number of people willing to heed the warnings. They would all manage to fit in, despite the mass of the multitudes, for the gods’ power would help them all find room.

Michelle, for example, was much more successful than Gary was in convincing her family and close friends to go with her and find the huge box provided for them. This was so in spite of the fact that none of them shared her pagan beliefs.

“Here it is,” she said to those in her car as they all looked at the box from the base of a grassy hill where it sat on top. Like all the others, it looked like a giant wooden rectangular crate, though it also shone and glistened in a special way that those who looked at it could intuitively feel it was safe…for the gods were giving them that reassuring intuition. “Isn’t that amazing?”

“Yeah,” her mother said as she looked out the window from the passenger seat beside Michelle. “As strange a thing as that is to go inside, I’m getting this even stranger, but reassuring feeling that I’ll be perfectly safe in it. I’m not getting that reassurance from Jesus, though. I have no idea why I’m feeling that way, but I am.”

“I can tell you why, mama,” Michelle said. “It’s because the gods are giving you that feeling. Everyone who sees those things, wherever they appear on the Earth—and that’s around the world, from the reports I’m getting on social media—gets the same reassuring feeling that they’ll be perfectly safe in those boxes, as unlikely as such a feeling would be had the gods not been telling us.”

“I see,” her mom said, with a skeptical, but open-minded attitude. I insist on there being only one God in three persons—though I’ll admit that I’ve been wrong before. Those books Michelle bought me certainly challenged my faith, and they were written by an Episcopalian, of all people, as I am, so I can’t just dismiss the ideas outright. Finally, there’s that dream I had, which Michelle also had, the exact same dream. I’m still not sure: were the speakers gods, or God’s angels?

Nina was talking to Steve that night about the coming danger.

“Look, honey,” he said. “I’m cool with you practicing your…pagan spirituality, whatever it is…but I don’t share your beliefs in it. I respect your views; can you please respect mine?”

“Steve,” Nina said. “This isn’t about agreeing to disagree. Something terrible is about to happen—all over the world, and I don’t want you to perish in it, because you will, if you don’t come with me to the giant box where it is.”

“I don’t get how we’re going to be safe in a…giant box…from the end of the world, as you’re describing it,” he said. “No offence, honey, but this all sounds crazy. I think you need to see a doctor. As wild and as scary as what happened to me and Lipton at the mine, I’m still convinced it was just a freak occurrence. The voice I heard from the hole must have been a hallucination, because of the stress of the moment.”

“It was the voice of Hades!” Nina insisted. “I heard his voice at the mine!”

“I’m sure there must be some kind of scientific explanation for it. You’re making way too big a deal out of it. The stress from all of your concern for the environment is getting to you.”

“And the stress of being a miner is not getting to you?” she said. “You don’t think flying out of that hole was supernatural? What scientific explanation could cover what happened out there? Look, just come with me in the car, and let me show you where the box is. When you see it, you’ll understand.”

“How is ‘seeing it’ going to make me automatically understand, Nina?”

“I can’t explain it to you, but I know that many other people have had the experience of just seeing one of the boxes, and they know, intuitively, that going in them will be good for them. Please, Steve, indulge me. Let’s just go for a ride in the car and see the box. I’ve seen it; I know where it is.”

“Very well,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “If it will make you feel better, I’ll do what you want.”

“Trust me. You won’t regret it.”

They had been driving for about twenty minutes, Steve sneering and sighing the whole time in the passenger seat of their car. Then, far off on top of a hill, Nina was straining her eyes to see a tiny, shining rectangular box.

“Look!” she said, pointing straight ahead. “There it is!”

“What?” he said, squinting his eyes to see. “I don’t see—“

Then, the rectangle got bigger as they neared it, and it shone more clearly.

“What the—?” he asked, sneering in disbelief.

They were now close enough to see it properly. She stopped the car at the foot of the hill. She looked over at him with a smirk.

“Do you believe me now?” 

He just stared through the passenger window at the shiny giant box, in a trance.

“Let’s make sure we’re here…when the time comes,” he said in a monotone voice.

“Good,” Nina said with a smile. “Very good, Steve.”

Shelly didn’t even bother trying to convince those she knew wouldn’t believe the warnings. She simply planned to take them on rides in her car as she looked for the box. When it was finally found, they would see it, and instinctively they would know to get in when the time came.

“Come on, everybody,” she said to them as they sat bored in the living room, watching a TV that had nothing interesting on. “What do you all say we get in the car, go for a ride, get some fresh air, and have a picnic?”

“OK,” her husband said. “Where will we go?”

“I’ve already prepared the food and drinks,” she said. “Let’s just get in the car, be spontaneous, and I’m sure we’ll find a good place.”

“Well, alright,” her sister, Jeannine, said. “We’ve nothing better to do here, and the weather’s nice out, without being too hot. Let’s go.”

As they were driving and driving, her at the wheel, she was whispering to the gods to guide her to wherever the box was.

“Shelly?” her husband asked as he looked with a sneer at her moving mouth. “Are you talking to yourself?”

“Oh?” she said, then fumbled in her mind for an explanation. “Oh, I’m just singing the words to a song to myself.”

“I don’t hear a melody,” he said.

“Well, you know what a bad singer I am.” 

He chuckled.

Then, she felt a kind of psychic pull in the right direction.

“Oh, I know where to go,” she said, then she took a right turn at an intersection.

“Where’s that?” Jeannine asked.

“You’ll see, soon enough.”

“Where?” her husband asked.

“I want it to be a surprise.”

“Oh, very well, then.”

After another two minutes, they found a hill with a box on it, shining and huge.

“Look up there, everybody, to your right,” she said. “Up at the top of that hill.”

Her husband, sister, and mother all looked out their windows and saw the box.

“Do you all see it?” she asked.

“Yes,” they all said as if in a trance.

Then her husband said, still in that mesmeric state. “I have a feeling…we’ll need to come back here again soon.”

“I have that feeling, too,” Jeannine said.

“Me, three,” her mom said.

“Good,” Shelly said. “Very good.”

She opened her car door and got out.

Her husband got out next. “We’re having our picnic here?”

“Yes,” she said, then shut her door and went to the trunk to get out the picnic basket.

“I like it,” he said as he stared at the box. “I like it a lot.”

“Me, too,” Jeannine said, also staring at the box in a trance.

“Me, three,” their mom said.

I’m so glad I didn’t have to argue with them or convince them, Shelly thought as she took the basket out of the trunk. When it comes to getting people to do things your way, sometimes less is more.

At the appointed time, the four neopagans waited, with other neopagan family and friends, for signs from, again, to use the Greek names that they were all accustomed to using, Zeus, Poseidon, Gaea, and Hades.

After a mere ten minutes of waiting, Shelly and those with her saw a face form in the clouds, one with a beard.

“Zeus,” she called out to the sky. “May I call you Zeus?”

“If you wish, mortal,” the sky-father said in a booming voice. “Your Earth names for us are all acceptable.”

“Thank you,” she said. “What is your will, Zeus? Why are all of these killings happening? We believers suspect your motives, but we want to be sure.”

“We gods have been dormant for millennia,” he said. “Not any longer, though. I tire of the smoke that blackens my skies, and of the acid rain.” His voice was heard in the minds’ ears, as it were, of all the others watching, waiting, and listening for signs in all four mutually faraway places, and anywhere else in the world where people had ears to hear. Cellphones weren’t even needed: the gods made all voices, human and divine, heard as if everyone was in the same room.

Around that time, Michelle saw a face forming in the water near her feet as they, dangling from the pier, touched the surface.

“I have endured the senseless killing of my children—fish, whales, coral reefs, sharks, and all others,” Poseidon said. “I’ll endure the pollution and scathing of my babies no longer.”

Gary was watching the wind blow on the grass of the golf course his manager brother had allowed him to come in. At one point, the wind shaped the grass into a woman’s sad face. His eyes widened as he saw the ‘mouth’ begin to move.

“I have been as patient as I could while trees, grass, bushes, and animals—all my children—have been butchered,” she said in sobs. Gary saw a dew-like tear drop from grassy shadows shaped into her right eye. “I have been prepared to forgive man’s brutality and disrespect. I cannot afford to keep waiting for man to show remorse. Either I kill him, or he kills everything.”

If only Cam were here to see and hear this, Gary thought with a frown on his face. He’d have all the proof he needs; but he never listens to me or opens his mind to any of this! How am I going to save him from the gods’ coming wrath?

Nina was sitting by the opening to the mine, having put away her phone, since she could naturally hear what was being said among the others, who also heard all the voices of the gods and human participants, loud voices from far off, to be heard as if whispered right by their ears, so everyone could participate in this conversation among such far-away places.

Just when Gaea had finished speaking from the grass on the golf course, Nina was startled by the loud, bass voice coming from the hole: “Man is making the Earth his hell, his grave. We will accelerate the process.”

“But, what of us, we who have always honoured you?” Michelle asked when Hades had finished speaking. “Surely you don’t plan to kill the good with the wicked.”

“No,” Gaea said. “You will be spared. But be careful. Take cover as we bring disaster to the sinful. Make sure you distance yourselves from them.”

“Warn the evil, too,” said Zeus. “None of them will listen to you, but at least give them fair warning.”

“They will scoff at you, and mock you,” Poseidon said. “But do what is just.”

“Their scoffing will come back on them…hard,” Hades said.

“But how can we be sure that we will be safe?” Nina asked. “And how can we save innocent children?”

“We will provide…huge wooden boxes…for you to be protected in, giant versions of the chest given to Deucalion and Pyrrha,” Gaea said. “Put as many children in them as you can fit, as well as yourselves, your families, and your friends.”

“Warn the world,” Zeus repeated. “So those with ears, who listen, will come to your boxes and be saved.”

“Yes, Zeus,” Michelle said. “We will do your bidding, and we will look for your boxes.”

“I’m telling you,” Michelle typed in a message shared with three other neopagans in a private conversation on Facebook. “There are people who have come forward and said they saw faces in the sky, in the ocean, on the grass in the golf course, and in the underground mine.”

“I’ve heard a couple of claims like that, too,” said Gary to the others. “The claims could be true—we don’t know.”

“What’s interesting, regardless of whether these face stories are true or not, is that all the people killed were rich people publicly known for not caring about the environment at all,” Shelly said. “Not that these connections, of course, were ever acknowledged in the mainstream media, who are on the payroll of the rich. To know the connections, you have to do additional research, as I did.”

“That’s right,” said Nina. “I did a little of that independent research, too. The victims made no secret about their contempt for the poor and for our Mother Earth. Any staff in the areas where these natural disasters occurred survived. At worst, they got a little hurt and a big scare, like my miner husband. Then there are the shared dreams we have all had. All the evidence suggests intervention from the gods to save our planet.”

“So, what should we do?” Gary asked.

“Gary, you live close to that golf course your brother manages,” Michelle said. “How about you go there and wait for signs from Gaea? I’m near the California Yacht Club; I’ll go sit by the pier, watch the water, and wait for a sign from Poseidon. Nina, since you live near the mine in Texas, can you go over there, as close as they’ll allow you, and wait for signs from Hades?”

“My husband’s a miner, as I said before,” Nina said. “Steve was badly hurt and got one hell of a scare from the experience, but thank the gods he’s going to be all right. He refuses to believe the gods had anything to do with what happened, but he can get me inside the property with a key he once stole from Lipton’s office. Now that he is dead, Lipton won’t object to the petty larceny. I can get right up to the holes and listen for Hades’ words.”

“Good,” Shelly said. “I can drive up near the Wells mansion in Vermont. I’ll park there, look up at the sky, and wait for signs from Zeus.”

“We can also message each other by phone to keep the conversation a four-way one, with each god, too…we hope,” Michelle said.

“Great,” Gary said. “Let’s all do this, well, at 10:00 PM my time. You can all work out the time zones in your areas. You know mine: Gary, from Gary, Indiana—so easy to remember.”

The other three responded with “Yeah, lol.”

And before I go on the green in the golf course, I’ll make another attempt to get my brother to listen to me about the coming danger, Gary thought. The rest of our family are opening their minds to this. Please, gods, help me to get him and his wife to open their minds!

Similarly, Michelle prayed, Please, gods, help my mother to see my gods as real as she does her Jesus.

And Nina prayed, O gods, help Steve to understand that he didn’t hallucinate Hades’ voice!