Blood Royal

by Evan Ansot

  Training kicked in for the sailors and marines who were at the meeting, and they began performing first aid. They laid Eddie down, raised his feet, loosened his belt, and unbuttoned his shirt. They checked his airway and made sure he was breathing, and all seemed well enough. A couple of minutes later, Eddie was conscious.

  “What the hell happened?” asked Eddie who was looking around at a dozen pair of eyes staring down at him. One of the marines answered him, “You freaked out, man, and I’ve never seen anything like it. You started speaking gibberish, and next thing you was down for the count, dude.”

  “Holy shit! Are you serious?” asked Eddie. A sailor chimed in, “You looked behind you like someone was touching you when it all happened. What was that all about?”

  Eddie shook the cobwebs from his head and said, “Someone was! And when I looked back, no one was there! At least as much as I can remember. It was all kind of a fog.”

  “Man, that’s some freaky shit there!” said a marine. The counselor who had been with these twenty-four marines and sailors for every meeting asked, “Eddie, have you been taking any drugs lately?”

  Eddie looked at the counselor astonished and said, “Are you serious? Dude, I haven’t taken drugs since I joined Uncle Sam’s canoe club.” Where do they get these guys at? thought Eddie.

  The counselor pressed on, “Did you ever take any hard drugs? Maybe it was a flashback.”

  This was no flashback to Eddie, and the hardest drug he had ever taken was marijuana back in high school, and he doubted that would cause what he just experienced.

  Eddie was annoyed at this point. “I can see your college education has served you well. No, I haven’t.”

  The college-educated counselor was ready to reply but was interrupted by another marine who spoke, “Well, whatever it was is the damndest thing I’ve ever seen. Eddie what was that language you was speaking?”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Eddie. He hadn’t a clue what this marine was asking him.Speaking in a language he didn’t understand? Has everyone here lost their minds?

  “Never mind, buddy, you was going on with some gibberish that nobody understood. That’s all. It was strange, man, like you was calling someone out.”

  “I’ve no idea, dude,” said Eddie. Then he heard a still, small voice in his head, which told him, “Eddie, you were speaking in tongues like the saints of old when they were enveloped with the Holy Spirit.”

  Eddie was about to say something further and decided he would be better off keeping it to himself. None of these dopes would understand.

  The general consensus of the group that night was that due to past experiences with drugs, Eddie must have suffered a flashback. But they weren’t sure. It was all very strange, and it was agreed to keep a close watch on Eddie from that day forward lest it happen again.

  Eddie still had the feeling of bliss in him that would last for three days. He felt light afoot, and everything seemed to float. Marijuana wasn’t anywhere near as good as that experience. His insight and clarity incredible, he could have explained Einstein’s equations in those three days. All the answers to life’s problems seemed to be at his fingertips. It was a feeling in his life that would never be duplicated or forgotten. Eddie had truly felt what so many others had craved. He was indeed truly filled with the Holy Spirit. Who was that who touched me and gave me that filling? Do it again, I dare ya!

  For the rest of the alcohol rehab program, the others would look at him like he was different than them. Eddie didn’t care for that attitude, but he let it go.

  No matter how many people Eddie talked of this experience that would change his life, no one believed that he had been touched by an angel or the hand of God himself. He learned a valuable lesson from all this: what people don’t understand, they will reject. If it hasn’t happened to them, then it doesn’t exist. It was best to keep quiet about such things lest they think you’re crazy.

  Every day for the rest of Eddie’s life, he would harken back to that meeting in South Carolina. He knew what he felt, and if no one believed that, then so be it. He had been touched by a force that was otherworldly, and from that day forward he would read every book he could lay his hands on to try to explain that event. From cover to cover, he read the Bible. No book that was of the spiritual or religious was off-limits to Eddie. What happened to me? Who touched me and why?

  After reading and rereading everything he could lay his hands on, Eddie’s conclusion was that he had been touched by Jesus that day and filled with the Holy Spirit for three days, but he wasn’t sure.

  In the next ten years it would be a battle for Eddie’s soul between two powerful forces: the Holy Spirit and the demon known as alcoholism.

  As promised to Sarah Rabin that night in Haifa, after Eddie did his six years, he left the United States Navy and was honorably discharged in 1988.

  From there, he took a job working for Southern Bell as an electronic field service technician in Miami, Florida. His job required him to travel all over the Southeastern United States from Key West, Florida, to Moorhead City, North Carolina, maintaining and repairing VHF communications so that boaters who were offshore could make telephone calls.This was before cell phones would become widespread and would phase this job out of existence.

  Eddie was usually out of town for three nights out of five living out of hotel rooms. He knew every comfort inn, best western, and day inns along Highway 95. He also knew where every bar was at.

  He’d spend his typical day either installing or fixing electronic, equipment and his typical night hustling the local women. Two things Eddie had on his side were charm and intelligence, and most of the ladies didn’t stand a chance.

  One other attribute of his was the ability to read someone. Eddie could look right through a woman and, within seconds, know whether or not he was wasting his time. This was an ability that he acquired that fateful night in South Carolina with the hand had touched him. It had left some residual gifts behind, and Eddie had regrettably honed in those gifts for his own purposes.

  After five years of living the high life in South Florida, Eddie decided to cash it all in and move to Northern Michigan near where he grew up. He had a good job lined up there as a maintenance electrician at the local paper mill and decided after another one-night stand, that he didn’t want the lifestyle of the sunny beaches and preferred the seclusion of the forests instead.

  One morning, he woke up hungover in South Florida, looked over to see whom he had slept with the night before, and decided enough was enough. Time to conquer something else in life. Not enough nature in South Beach for me, he thought.

  It was a lot easier to get away with drinking and driving in urban South Florida than it was in rural Northern Michigan where the police didn’t have much else to do. Besides that, drunk driving was good for county revenues in a desolate part of the country.

  The first time Eddie got popped was in 1994 after having three lousy beers at a bar after his shift was over at work. He accrued 1,800 dollars in fines and court costs, insurance premiums that went sky high, followed up by a month of AA meetings. What a joke. Eddie believed that the punishment didn’t fit the crime and that it was a hefty fine for three beers.

  If you get pulled over once, chances are you will again, and in 1995 it happened. This time, the punishment was more severe and he had to spend 24 days behind bars, a 3500-dollar fine and months of rehabilitation, and, of course, the inevitable AA meetings. Eddie was now figuring out why his grandpa had always called the police “revenuers.”

  He gave up drinking for six months and, of course, fell off the wagon to even greater heights of alcoholism.

  The enigma of Eddie is that with all this was going on, he always read scripture and spiritual books. A strong believer of faith in the Lord and faith in the bottle. Give me a bottle of Jack Daniels and let’s have some hallelujahs. Amen!

  It was at this point in time that Eddie would experience his next great spiritual experience in life.

>   June 21, 1991

  Florence, Italy

  While Eddie was still living in South Florida, events that

  he had created were happening elsewhere in the world. It was 6:00 a.m. when Sister Francesca stepped outside the door to the gate of the Badia Fiorentina abbey and saw a crying little child sitting there on the steps. The little girl looked as if she hadn’t bathed or eaten in a week. It was obviously abandoned and had been the object of much neglect. Sister Francesca’s heart went out to her at once. Dear God, what do we have here?

  “What is the matter, my child?”asked the Nun, grabbing the child by the hand and leading it into the abbey.

  “My mommy is gone,” sobbed what looked to be about a four-year-old girl to Sister Francesca.

  “She’s gone?” asked Francesca.

  “Yes, she left a few days ago. She’s with the angels now.” The child went into a long period of sobbing. She would try to talk but just break into sobbing again. Obviously this child needed some attention that she wasn’t getting, the poor thing.

  The nun immediately picked up the child, held it tightly to her bosom, and asked, “Where is your father?”

  “I never had one,” the child answered. She laid her chin on the warmth of the nun’s shoulders. It had been a long time since she had been comforted like this, and it felt good to the little girl. The child didn’t want to let go.

  Sister Francesca took the child into the kitchen area of the abbey, sat her on the counter, grabbed a fresh, clean cloth, and began to clean her up. Thinking after this was finished, she needed to prepare some breakfast for her.

  Mother Anastasia, a woman of forty-five years old who had spent almost all of it with the church in some fashion or another, walked in and asked, “Sister, what have we here?”

  “It’s a child I found this morning on the steps. She’s told me her mother is with the angels and she never had a father,” answered Francesca.

  “Oh,the poor thing.I must call the police and notify them and see if she has any other family,” said Mother Anastasia.

  A few minutes later, Sister Francesca was giving the child a sandwich that she ate as if she was famished then she washed it down with a glass of milk.

  “What is your name, child?” asked Mother Anastasia.

  “Gabriella,” replied the child in between bites.

  “Your last name?”

  “I don’t know.” She broke out in more tears.

  This little girl has been through far too much, thought Mother Anastasia who moved to the child, gave her a big hug, and told her, “There, there now, my child. Don’t you worry about a thing. We will take care of you, you’re safe now.”

  Mother Anastasia spent the day talking to police and the monsignor. It had been agreed that this child was telling the truth and had no family to speak of. Mother Anastasia, being an extremely strong-willed woman, then informed both that the sisters would be adopting this lovely child.

  “God himself put this child at our doorstep, who are we to disobey him?” she told them. She then gave them both a look as if to say, “Don’t you dare disagree with me.”

  They both knew they were defeated by her. Jesus Christ himself would be unable to win an argument with this woman, so they figured why bother.

  “Fill out the necessary paperwork to the bishop, and I will put it all through,” said the monsignor.

  “Fill out the paperwork with the state, and I will make sure it gets through as well,” answered the policeman.

  “I knew you two would see reason,” said Mother Anastasia. “You can tell this is a special child, a gift from Mother Mary herself. She led her to this abbey, and we will not let the Holy Mother down.” She had no idea how close to the truth she was speaking.

  “Of course, Mother, of course,” was all the priest could muster. No point in taking on this woman when she has her mind set on something.

  The policeman followed up on any missing children and found that she was the child of a woman from Livorno who was found dead of an apparent accidental overdose in an apartment five days ago. A search for the child had followed with no results, and he felt satisfied that they had now found the missing child. Yet, he wondered, how the hell did she find her way to Florence from Livorno? She has no living relatives; therefore, it wouldn’t be a problem for the abbey to adopt this child. He felt satisfied that the right thing had been done. Little did he know that her true father lived on the other side of the globe.

  As Gabriella grew, the nuns knew they had themselves a specially gifted child. She would see things the others didn’t, such as the time in 1994 when Sister Francesca was teaching her the scriptures and eight-year-old Gabriella interrupted her to tell her about the beautiful young lady that would float above the abbey every fifteenth of the month.

  “What does she look like, my child?” asked Sister Francesca, humoring Gabriella.

  “I know you don’t believe me, but I will tell you anyway,”

  replied Gabriella.

  Francesca thought, How does she know that I don’t believe her? Is she able to read my mind?

  Gabriella continued, “She is brighter than the sun, and she looks like our statue of mother Mary.”

  “She does?” asked the Nun.

  “Yes, and next month, I can show her to you if you’d like,” the child said.

  Sister Francesca didn’t keep this information to herself, and on the fifteenth the next month, all the nuns were assembled at the front of the church to witness this miracle.

  Gabriella spoke excitedly, “There she is!” and pointed to the top of the door of the church.

  The Nuns looked and saw nothing. But Gabriella was adamant that Mother Mary was there whether they could see her or not.

  So the next month, on the fifteenth, Gabriella asked Mother Mary to give the rest of them a sign of her visit. When the nuns had assembled the next fifteenth, they once again saw nothing, but when they went back into the abbey, the statue of the Mother Mary had changed the color of its dress from blue to white.

  Mother Anastasia and the rest of the nuns were in shock as Gabriella announced, “See, I told you she would give us all a sign. I knew she wouldn’t let me down.”

  They knew better than to report this to the monsignor or the bishop. It was best for the nuns to keep this to themselves. When the monsignor asked about the change of Mother Mary’s dress, they lied and told him they decided to paint it just to change things up a bit. He was shocked at this, but once again he knew better than to take on Mother Anastasia.

  So the Nuns started a tradition to meet in the yard every fifteenth of the month before breakfast just to see if Mother Mary had some new miracle for them. Once the statue had been painted a different color, another time it had glowed briefly for twelve minutes, yet another time it had shed tears for twelve minutes. This tradition that began in 1994 would last for years. Most of the time Mother Mary just gave them a monthly blessing, but every now and then a miracle would come about.

  The statue of Mother Mary had become holy to Mother Anastasia and her nuns. Yet they had kept the secret to themselves. They knew if the Vatican got a hold of this, it would turn into a circus and put little Gabriella in jeopardy. They knew what had happened to Sister Lucia from the Fatima Prophecy, and the nuns weren’t going to let that happen here. They would not let the Vatican put a gag order on young Gabriella. She was far too precious a child for that.

  It was all agreed upon by the Nuns that they would keep all this hush-hush. Yet many of the nuns would now pray to or touch the statue of Mary on a regular basis. The priests knew that something was up, yet they couldn’t penetrate the nuns for information. A strict code of silence was adhered to by Mother Anastasia and her order of nuns. They would be keeping the Holy Mother Mary all to themselves, or so they thought.

  March 31, 1996

  Manistee, Michigan

  Eddie was boozing, cruising, and flying high on the night

  of March 31, 1996. He had spent all day in the middle of
a twenty-four-team springtime slow pitch softball tournament held in Manistee. For those not familiar with slow pitch softball, massive quantities of beer are usually involved, and Eddie did his fair share.

  Eddie is the pitcher for the state champion, Charlie’s bar team out of nearby Freesoil, Michigan. They had played five games that day and won them all. Six teams were left, and they were all slated to play the next day, and Charlie’s was scheduled to play their hated rival the Moose Lodge of Manistee starting at nine in the morning.

  After dusting off the Scottville VFW team eleven to four, Eddie went to the Second Street bar and placed a call to his latest bedmate, Debbie LaLonde.

  “What ya doin tonight, sweetheart?”

  “Eddie, are you drunk again?”

  “No, of course not, just playing a little ball with the

  fellas,” lied Eddie.

  “Yes, and I know what happens when you play softball.

  You get drunk and then you call me because you’re feeling

  frisky,” said Debbie. She had his routine down pat by now,

  yet she just couldn’t seem to help herself against him. She

  knew deep down that Eddie would never settle down

  and that he wasn’t right for her, but she loved him and

  was hoping that sooner or later he would change his selfdestructive ways. The truth is, like most women who had

  relationships with Eddie, she was addicted to the man. “Well, ya know, I could use a little company, are you

  game?” asked Eddie.

  “I don’t know, I just put Katie down and was going to

  relax, watch a movie, and go to bed.”

  “I’ll grab a pizza on the way and watch the movie with

  you. Which one did you get?” asked Eddie.

  “Apollo 13,” answered Debbie.

  “Cool, I haven’t seen that one yet. I heard it’s good. It’s

  got Tom Hanks in it, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, he’s in it. It’s a bit long though,” she answered. “Well, don’t start it until I get there. What do you want