Knights of Light: Knight Vision

by Mark Moreland

The usual morning sun once peaks over the Superstition Mountain range off in the eastern distance and its rays begin to bathe Schuyler’s room through open blinds. Even though school doesn’t start up again until Tuesday, and this is the last Saturday of summer break, Schuyler’s been up for hours. The night had been one of fitful sleep, with intermittent dreams of light messengers, and the code quest. Thoughts begin to crash in. Wait a minute. Am I really buying all this? This didn’t really happen? It must be some bad dream. What’s gotten into me?

  His attention floats to last night’s conversation with dad. Something about a genetic disposition to alcoholism, watching for the warning signs, his brother Kevin’s death. It was like some sort of out of body experience. Dad was talking, but instead of arguing back as usual, he listened. “Live life on life’s terms, accept what you must, have courage to change what you can.” Information overload.

  Schuyler swings his legs over the side of the bed and winces after his feet have landed firmly on the floor. “Boy, football practice isn’t going to be easy tomorrow.” He obliges the daily ritual, and stands under a hot shower for a long time, feeling it sluice away some of the stiffness from the accident. This must be heaven, he thinks to himself.

  “Thump, thump, thump.” An abrupt knock on the bath room door brings him out of his trance. “Schuyler, you’d better make this shower short,” his mother exclaims. “Ayana’s at the front door. She says it’s urgent.”

  “Ah mom, it’s Sunday morning. Can you ask her to come back later?” Schuyler yells back.

  “Um, no. I believe that would be what your father calls “enabling”. Since I’m accused of it from time to time... You need to handle your own communications. I’ll invite her in for a bit of breakfast while she waits.”

  “Way to go Tate,” he murmurs to himself as he turns off the water and begins to towel off. He quickly brainstorms tactics to get her off this trail. His mind floods with ideas that are quickly dismissed. “Wait a minute. It must’ve happened. Tate was there, because now Ayana’s on my back patio waiting for me. I wonder if she’s the help I was promised?”

  In an odd way, Ayana has been there for Schuyler in the past, particularly when he first moved into the neighborhood from Oregon a year and a half ago. She’s always been a good spy on what the popular girls were saying about him at school. Socially, she’s stealth-like given that she doesn’t have ranking with the ‘in crowd’, and has a tendency to report misdeeds in the student newspaper. Some of this has caused friction in their friendship in the past. He finishes dressing by throwing on an oversized football jersey and flip flops. As he ambles down the stairway, he catches a glimpse of her sitting at the patio table. He takes a deep breath, then heads outside into the sun splashed day.

  “Wow, look at you,” Ayana starts in. “You’re just glowing, I mean your hair could use some gel, but you’re on fire.”

  “Does it really show on my face?” he asks.

  “Nah, I was just kidding, but you do look a little different. I’m not sure what it is,” she says thoughtfully.

  “So, you talked with Tate?” Schuyler asks. He quickly grabs a couple of bagels, hoping to get this over with.

  “Yea we chatted. He sent me some text messages and then I called him back. He can talk a lot faster than he types. We probably talked for an hour before my dad told me to get off the phone. Tate can get on a roll, and he was trying to display his investigative skills. I was gladly pumping him for more details. What the hell happened?”

  Schuyler stares at her in shock, really looking at her squarely for the first time. Ayana is a little under-developed physically than most girls her age – which adds to her invisibility at school. She dresses indistinctly, and has this geeky external aura, which hides a cute intensity. She wears glasses, but no one really knows if they’re prescription, or just a means of disguising her intent. She can come off real chatty, and then lowers the boom with the real question.

  “Interestingly put, Ms. Brown. What do you mean, what the hell happened?”

  “Schuy, I want facts. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Tate was going on about Navajo rituals, Thunderbird and the Great Spirit. He believes the Great Spirit appears in various forms and gives people direction in life.”

  “Who said anything about a Spirit? I mean… did I say that to him? I’m not really sure what I saw. I’m not sure I believe what I saw.”

  “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. Describe what you saw? How did it first appear?”

  “Huh?” he asks confused. “Ayana, why are you so interested in this? What’s your angle? I’m not doing an interview for the school newspaper… you can just get that idea out of your mind. Do you know how crazy I’d look? I’ll only lose ALL my friends.”

  “Ok, this is strictly off the record. I’m interested because it’s something I can’t explain away… and I really need to. It’s my nature. Besides, in some goofy way - you’ve been like the brother I never had, and I want to help if I can,” she smiles perhaps disingenuously.

  “Seriously? Is that really why you came over so early on a Sunday morning, our last weekend before school? You’re such a spaz.”

  “Thanks,” she says smiling at him. “It comes in handy sometimes.”

  Schuyler’s twelve year old brother Colin suddenly appears from inside the patio door. “Schuyler. Umm, mom says you’re supposed to share the bagels with me.”

  “Only if you look Ayana in the eyes, and say hello,” he responds.

  With a hint of effort, he looks directly at Ayana and says: “Hello Ayana. Nice to see you today. Lovely weather we’re having, don’t you think?”

  “It is nice, Colin, and thank you. Good to see you as well.”

  With that, Schuyler hands him the remaining plate of bagels which he promptly brings inside.

  “Interesting,” Ayana remarks. “Your brother speaks so formally.”

  “That’s part of Asperger’s. He’s socially awkward, but can converse in an adult tone – almost like he’s reading a script. He’s really a remarkable kid, better than I give him credit for. He’s the ultimate in ‘differently abled’. He’s got this photographic memory that we’d all die for.”

  “That will probably come in handy,” Ayana says. “Back to Tate and this Great Spirit business…”

  “Great Spirit?” he says. “What made you guys get into all that?”

  “I was pumping Tate for info. He warned me that you’d be evasive about what happened. He thinks he caught a glimpse of something himself. That’s what he could make out of it. You guys are weird.”

  “Hey, I didn’t invite you to come over, and frankly I’d rather you’d leave right now,” he insists.

  “See you are evasive,” she volleys.

  “Evasive? Think about how crazy all of this sounds? I mean it ranks somewhere between a UFO citing, and seeing the Virgin Mother in a grease stain. I’m not in the mood for throwing my life away at a relatively young age.”

  “Oh really, that’s not what I hear,” Ayana says.

  “Really? And what is it you hear? Do tell, Ayana.”

  “Schuy, you’ve got to know that several people saw your escapades Thursday night at the clubhouse. Come on, you have to admit these things keep happening to you. Remember last March when you passed out drunk and puked in your lap in the back of Johnny Mac’s car.”

  “I get caught up in these drinking games with upper classmen. They gang up on me, and put me on my ass.”

  “Yeah, you are a bit of target – some are jealous of your football skills. Sounds like you need to refrain from those games, or hanging out with seniors,” she says.

  “Whatever,” he responds. “Can we talk about something else, like UFO’s?”

  “We’ll get to that. There’s also the legal trouble you got into afterwards. Something about a calling card incident, I believe it was.”

  “How in the hell did you know about that? Were you on some sort of Police scanner,
or did you hack into your father’s attorney database?”

  No, but those are great ideas. Actually, your dad came over yesterday afternoon seeking some legal advice from my father. They just happened to be speaking underneath my bedroom window. It sounds like you’re in a pickle.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got to appear in Juvenile Court next week to find out what happens to me. Look can we talk about something else?”

  “We will. Suffice it to say for now that you won’t have to appear at your arraignment date. My dad will work out a deal with his friend the D.A. so you’ll only have to enroll in a diversion program, and do some limited community service hours.”

  “Diversion, that sounds ominous. I wonder if I’ll have to wear pink underwear at Sheriff Joe’s tent city.”

  “I don’t think so, although … I’d come to visit you if you were wearing some pink butt huggers.” She laughs. “Back to this UFO business - what do you think it was?”

  Schuyler pauses a moment. “More like ULO – Unidentified Light Object. Whatever… er… whoever it was, knew me very personally, and I kind of felt the same way.”

  “Whoever? You’re not suggesting… look, if we’re going to get into this, I’m going to need all the information,” she says. “Start at the beginning, when the dirt bike cut you off.”

  Schuyler slowly begins to recount the various details starting off with his near miss wipeout at the edge of the Sedona wash. A few minutes into a rather clinical recitation, he stops. Tears begin to well up in his eyes: “Ayana, I know all of this sounds loony, but I don’t have anyone else to talk to about this. I think I was talking to some ultimate ‘life force’ of the universe – it was like getting a glimpse behind the scenes of all this – what’s really driving this world – and everything in it. But more than speaking or thinking, it was the whole feeling. The odd thing about it was that it didn’t seem disconnected from me. I mean it came to me, and there was a window with a tunnel – but the tunnel engulfed me – instead of me going anywhere. And at first it seemed like this separate thing, but while we were talking, I was washed up in this whole white light energy force. For a while there, a movie of my life was playing, literally flashing before me. It was like I was in the movie with this light thing. We were watching but reliving it at the same time. It was surreal. At one moment, we were agonizing, the next, celebrating depending upon what WE had done. It was like my other half had joined me.”

  Ayana’s mouth has dropped open, and now she was staring back at him, looking for any hint of insincerity. She pauses to look around, seeing if anyone is watching. “No way . . . you guys are just yanking my chain. This little prank of yours isn’t going to help Tate get on the newspaper staff. No way!”

  “Prank? Do you think I’m enjoying this? This sucks. At least the old me thinks that. But something’s changed. I can’t explain it. Besides, Tate and I aren’t exactly buddies you know. We don’t hang out together. Our moms do.”

  “Funny, he said the same thing about you. You’re either well rehearsed or ... Sorry. Go on. I’ll try not to interrupt.”

  “Listen, Ayana. I need you to keep an open mind. I know you form opinions quickly, but I really need your smarts on this. You can’t be disbelieving and dismissing, Miss Diss.”

  “That was a backhanded compliment, but I understand what you’re saying. Ok, I promise to listen with an open mind.” She pauses for a moment, “Was there anything else, any prophesy for the future?” she says with a grin.

  Schuyler shoots her a wayward glance. “Look, I know this is hard to take. Believe me, I wouldn’t even have told you voluntarily, but here we are in my parents’ backyard. You’ve come to me, like the ULO said would happen. You’re my help, your part of this. All of this really did happen, and now we have this assignment. Something, we apparently signed up for long ago.”

  “We?” she asks. “Seriously? You can’t mean I’m somehow implicated in this?”

  “Yes, you. I was told that help would come to me. Boom, here you are.”

  What assignment?” Her voice cracks a little. “What were the instructions? Bring a message to the President? Stop global warming?”

  “No, nothing like that,” he insists. “There wasn’t a prophesy per se, about the future. We’re supposed to find something, something left behind but not completed.”

  Sensing something concrete she can finally dig into, she states: “Schuy, you know me about as well as anyone I allow. You know I’m a huge skeptic. I make people prove things to me before I believe what they say. In the event any of this actually happened, we’ll need to gather some proof. What are we looking for, and where do we find it?”

  “I don’t know,” he answers plainly.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” she looks at him lowering her eyebrows.

  “I don’t. I wasn’t handed a road map. The message was like, I’ll recognize it when I see it – but it wasn’t like gps coordinates or anything. I remember seeing this very cool hologram of Black Mountain. Light was shining on the craggy side, somewhere around that old Mormon Girl mine.”

  She pulls her cell phone out of her pocket. “I’m calling Tate. We’ll need his desert foothills experience for this.”

  Schuyler grimaces. “Do we really have to involve others?”

  Putting her hand over the mouth piece, she replies: “Hey, he’s involved, remember. Part of this cavalry to help you. Besides, he’ll probably spill the beans if we don’t include him. Relax, you guys might turn out to be really good friends before this is all over,” she says smiling.

  Schuyler exhales deeply as Ayana manages the conversation with Tate. “Meet us at the base of Black Mountain near School House Road in half an hour.” She quickly ends the conversation on her smart phone, and turns to Schuyler. “Tate says we’ll have to follow his lead. Mommy rattlesnakes have recently given birth and the babies are real aggressive. Something about not knowing how to preserve their venom supplies.”

  “What am I getting myself into here?” he says barely audible as he unconsciously rubs his ankles.

  “Relax Oregon boy, you’re in good hands.”