Beyond Gehenna: Beyond Gehenna, Book 1

By: Scott Leddy

Narrated by: Brian Cheney

Attempting to escape his troubled past and his horrific nightmares, Elgin Thomas enlists in the army and eventually finds himself floundering deep in the heart of Vietnam’s central highland’s district. Soon exposed to a corrupt and decadent society—a society plagued with chaos and injustice, where the laws of man are subjective and God appears to have turned a deaf ear—the war for him takes a heavy toll.

Summoned to Saigon by his superiors, Elgin is eventually recruited as the leader of a rogue band of misfit soldiers, whose clandestine mission is to infiltrate an enemy stronghold near the Cambodian border and neutralize several North Vietnamese high-ranking generals. Traversing through the Vietnam scrublands proves difficult, however, and there are many casualties along the way.

Elgin was raised by his domineering mother—a woman fixated on the paranormal—and his aunt, who has strong ties to the occult. Elgin hoped that by escaping to Vietnam, he would leave behind his ghastly dreams and his connection with the supernatural—a seemingly impossible feat. Along our protagonist’s travels, he meets up with a sinister black crow that pops up every now and then to taunt and intimidate him. Unclear whether the mystical creature is a spy or messenger from another world, Elgin shuns this beast of burden, but to no avail.

It isn’t until Elgin and his trusted friend, Scout, stumble upon a vacant, dilapidated Buddhist Temple, appearing out of place for the surroundings, does he realize that his past has crept up on him.

The mission turns deadly when Elgin is soon confronted by the ruthless Khmer Rouge, in Cambodia’s deadly killing fields. Faced with his own mortality and continuing to question his faith, he must choose whether to abandon his mission and flee, or stay and complete his objectives. However, when he is fatally shot, a bad situation quickly turns into the unthinkable.

©2008 Scott Leddy (P)2023 Scott Leddy