The Gates of Bixbus

“I expected a city of light. What we got was a fence, a severed head, and dust that settled like doubt.”

As we crested the final hill, the sight of a small encampment came into view — a scattered, ramshackle collection of tents and makeshift structures that clung to the dry ground like forgotten remnants of some half-formed civilisation.

It stopped me in my tracks.

This — this — was the New Jerusalem?

Not towers of light. Not gleaming spires or gates of pearl. Just patched canvas, corrugated iron, and tarps weighted with stones. A disordered sprawl that looked more like a relief camp than a promised city.

I felt a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. Cold and low. It coiled there, feeding off every unspoken fear I’d been trying to suppress since the moment we stepped through that cursed Portal.

A growing sense of unease settled over me, heavy and impossible to shake.

“Why the large fence?” I asked, my voice laced with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation.

The structure loomed before us—tall and uncompromising, built from heavy-duty chain-link stretched tight between solid steel posts anchored deep into the ground. Industrial-grade, professionally installed. It wasn’t decorative. It was deliberate. And its message was unmistakable: something out there was not meant to come in.

“For protection,” Paul answered, his tone clipped and evasive.

I glanced at him sharply, noting the way his gaze shifted — just slightly — avoiding mine.

He wasn’t lying, but he wasn’t telling the whole truth either. And I could feel it — the way his shoulders tightened, the way his grip on Jerome’s shoulder subtly firmed.

He was holding something back. Something about what we were walking into. Something he didn’t want me to know.

Not yet.

As we approached the entrance to the camp, Jerome’s voice cut through the tense silence.

“What is that?” he asked, his words filled with a morbid fascination that sent a chill down my spine.

There was something in his tone—not fear exactly, but a raw, unsettled curiosity—that made me pause. I followed his gaze, scanning the gate ahead until my eyes fixed on the object in question.

And then my blood ran cold.

Mounted above the entrance was the severed head of some great, unnatural beast. Its jaw hung open in a frozen snarl, fangs yellowed and uneven, but it wasn’t the teeth that stopped me—it was the fur. Coarse and black, still clinging to the skull in patches, thickest around the brow and temples, giving it the surreal look of something only half-dead. The eye sockets, empty and cavernous, stared out with a blankness that felt anything but lifeless.

Watching. Judging.

“Noah, that’s… that’s revolting. I can’t— I can’t look at it,” I managed, my voice trembling with a visceral horror I hadn’t known I could feel.

I clutched at my husband’s arm, burying my face in his chest, desperate to block out the grotesque display. The fabric of his shirt was rough beneath my cheek, still dusty from the journey, but it was a small barrier against the ugliness beyond.

“Is it really necessary?” I mumbled, my words muffled by the fabric, each syllable shaped by disbelief and revulsion.

I could feel Noah’s body tense beneath my grip — his chest rising sharply, then holding. He didn’t speak, but the unease that radiated from him came in waves.

I didn’t need words. The set of his jaw, the stiff line of his spine, the way his hand rested uncertainly on my back — all of it told me what I already feared.

He was just as shaken as I was.

“We were attacked a few nights ago,” Paul explained, his words heavy with a grim resignation. “It is a reminder that we need to remain vigilant to the dangers that surround us.”

The statement hung in the air, dull and leaden.

Attacked.

The word echoed in my chest like a thunderclap. The sense of dread that had been simmering beneath the surface surged upward, quick and choking. My pulse spiked, and a cold sweat broke out across my brow, beading along my hairline and trickling down my spine.

An attack? Dangers? What kind of nightmare had we stumbled into?

And how had we ever let Luke lead us here?

As if sensing the growing unease among us, Paul quickened his pace, urging us forward with a sense of urgency that did little to quell my fears.

There was something in his gait now — a tension, a tightness — as though he was trying to outrun our questions, or perhaps shield us from what we might see next. The ground crunched beneath our feet, sandy and dry, each step a jarring echo in the silence.

The gate to the camp rattled ominously as we passed through — a hollow, metallic clang that rang in my ears like the tolling of a bell.

It wasn’t loud, but it reverberated with a strange finality, as if marking the moment our lives split in two: before and after. A harbinger of the trials and tribulations that lay ahead — and of the parts of ourselves we might lose along the way.

Inside the settlement, a trio of men were preparing to head out, their movements brisk and purposeful. Dust clung to their boots and sleeves, and their faces bore the lean, weathered look of people who had long stopped expecting comfort.

“We’re off to get this shed finished,” one of them announced, his voice gruff and businesslike.

“Hopefully get the second one finished, too,” another added, his words laced with a steely resolve that seemed almost incongruous with the crutches he leaned on for support.

His voice didn’t waver. There was no self-pity in it. Only determination. It sent a small shiver through me — a reminder that whatever this place demanded, these people had already begun to pay the price.

Paul responded with a perfunctory nod, barely slowing his stride, his attention already shifting back to us — the spectacle we must have presented in our rumpled pyjamas and dressing gowns.

I could feel it. The weight of their eyes.

The glance that lingered too long. The slight tilt of the head. The murmurs carried just out of reach.

Curious stares, hushed conversations — the kind that weren’t meant to be unkind, but stung all the same.

They looked at us with a mix of amusement and bemusement, as though unsure whether to laugh or to pity us. Probably both.

I felt a hot flush creeping up my neck, a burning sensation that spread across my cheeks like wildfire.

Here we were — strangers in a strange land, dressed in our nightclothes like a family of vagabonds stumbling through someone else's reality. It was humiliating. Disorienting.

And it was a far cry from the carefully cultivated image of respectability and piety I had always strived to maintain. The immaculate church dresses. The proper tone. The way my children were scrubbed and reverent on Sundays.

This — this spectacle — was not that. This was something raw, exposed, and painfully out of my control.

A jarring contrast to the life I had built.

And suddenly I wasn’t sure what part of that life, if any, would survive this place.

As the men departed, their off-handed remarks about our appearance still ringing in my ears, Paul began to point out the various features of the settlement.

I tried to listen, I really did, but everything he said seemed to wash over me in a haze. The caravans and motorhomes, the military-looking tents, the concrete slabs and sputtering bonfire — all of it blurred together beneath the relentless glare of the sun.

Dust clung to the air, catching the light in a dull shimmer. The voices around me merged with the low crackle of flames and the distant creak of shifting metal. It was a jumble of unfamiliar sights and sounds, each one layered atop the next, until I could barely tell where the world ended and my confusion began.

I felt adrift — as if I were floating just above the ground, untethered, trying to make sense of something I had never been prepared to see.

And then, almost as an afterthought, Paul mentioned the river that snaked behind the tents — the lagoon just beyond the hills.

I saw Jerome’s face light up instantly.

A spark of interest. A glimmer of excitement. It flared so suddenly across his features that I was caught off guard by its brightness — a break in the gloom, however fleeting.

And for a breath, just a breath, I saw the boy he’d been before all of this. The one who lit up at the idea of skipping stones, of dipping bare feet in cold water. The one who still, somehow, managed to find wonder.

But Paul — perhaps sensing the dangerous pull of the unknown, the temptation of distraction or escape — quickly moved on, snapping the moment shut before it could fully unfurl.

“And there, you have it,” he said, wrapping up his impromptu tour with a brusque finality.

Noah turned to Paul with a furrowed brow.

“Is this it?” he asked, his voice tinged with a note of disappointment that mirrored my own.

We had followed Luke across space — maybe across time, who knew — only to find ourselves in what looked like a half-finished camping trip on sacred land.

“Yep. Welcome to Bixbus,” Paul confirmed, his words carrying a strange mix of pride and resignation.

As if even he hadn’t yet made peace with it. As if he, too, was still trying to believe that this — this — could ever be enough.

I cleared my throat, the question that had been burning in my mind since the moment we arrived finally spilling from my lips.

“So, this isn't the New Jerusalem?” I asked, my voice small and uncertain, almost lost in the vastness of the desert that stretched out before us.

The atmosphere shifted instantly — heavy and awkward, like the camp itself had sucked in a breath and held it. My words hung in the air like a leaden balloon, impossible to ignore.

From somewhere nearby, Karen’s voice cut through the silence, rough and sardonic.

“What the fuck's a New Jerusalem?” she mumbled, her tone soaked in cynicism, her words landing like grit against my skin.

I turned my head sharply, eyes narrowing, and caught sight of her — sweaty, unimpressed, arms folded tightly across her chest. There was something in the way she stood, in the flatness of her voice, that made my stomach turn. It was as if every inch of her radiated disdain — not just for me, but for everything I had hoped this place would be.

I glanced over at Paul, saw the way his face had drained of colour. His eyes flitted from face to face, avoiding mine, his lips pressed into a thin, anxious line. He looked like a man backed into a corner, trying to find a way out without admitting he’d led us there.

And in that moment — that flicker of panic behind his eyes — I knew.

With a slow, sinking certainty, I understood that we had been duped.

The grand promises of a sacred refuge, of a holy city built on the foundations of prophecy and faith — they had crumbled in an instant, revealed as nothing more than fantasy. A cruel and empty lie dressed in spiritual language.

“Karen,” Paul called out, his voice strained and hesitant, already pivoting to salvage what he could. He gestured vaguely toward the woman — the one who had spat out her disdain like it was second nature.

“Do you happen to know where we might be able to find some temporary clothing for my parents?”

It was a clumsy diversion, a feeble attempt to redirect the conversation — to patch over the rupture with something practical. But I could feel the futility in it, as clear and biting as the heat that radiated from the barren earth beneath our feet.

Karen, to her credit, didn’t roll her eyes. She pondered a moment, her brow knitting with reluctant thought, then nodded towards a cluster of caravans and motorhomes on the far side of the camp.

“Follow me,” she said, her voice brusque but not unkind.

And so, we followed. Or rather, we trudged — Noah and I, side by side, a quiet trail of dust rising at our heels. My hand found his elbow, more out of habit than comfort, and I leaned into him just slightly, as if doing so could keep me from falling apart.

I felt the weight of the morning finally catch up with me — a sudden, all-consuming exhaustion, like my very bones had turned to lead.

The Portal. The heat. The stares. The awful truth about this place.

It all came crashing down like a landslide — loud, messy, and impossible to stop. My legs felt heavy beneath me. My thoughts, slower now, spiralled with doubt and dread.

Was this what Luke had dragged us here for?

Was this where faith had brought us?