by John Edward
* * *
And Dawson heard the sonorous Ian McKellen voice of his guide, C. S. Lewis, intone: “It is exactly suited to the purpose of our being here. Deus volte. God wills it.”
“That’s pretty heavy,” Dawson blurted, forgetting that the others couldn’t hear the voice of his Fallen Master—yet.
Charlene thought he was responding to Anderson. She said, “Darn straight, it is.” Her smile dazzled the men around her, and each found himself more than a little in love with her. She saw her Fallen Master, the Lady, again in the two-piece white business suit, standing close by and nodding with approval.
Of course, the masters of the dark energies needed to stop this. They triggered a rolling blackout throughout L.A. The theater lost power for several seconds. No power, no show … Backup generators kicked in with somewhat weaker power, but it was power nonetheless. The show would go on.
* * *
Rae had been mothering Marcus in the trailer just off the employee entrance of the theater. “Don’t be nervous, boy,” she found herself saying to the son of the late President of the United States. Her smile was infectious, and her maternal concern had its intended effect.
Tyler and Rae were trying to help Marcus, who was still a bit shaky after his ordeal. He was saying that he needed to get inside. But they were uncertain what he was to do once there. They agreed it was just to show the world he was alive—a happy ending to a sad story.
Marcus assured her that he was not nervous. “I’m okay, ma’am,” he said simply. “I kind of know what I have to do—what I have to say. My father has given me the words.”
Tyler said, “I know what that’s like. I’ve had someone putting words in my mouth and thoughts in my head for some time now.”
Rae knew he was thinking of his Fallen Master, Emanuel Swedenborg, but she couldn’t resist: “Oh, Mikey, I’ve never put words in your mouth.”
“Nor have you ever let me get a word in edgewise,” he said, unable to resist.
Rae turned to Marcus and put a warm nurse’s hand on his shoulder.
He possessed a quiet cool about himself. He missed his dad more than anything. The only thing that kept him going was the promise that he would be able to see POTUS again. When he had learned that his dad had been killed and wouldn’t be there for him anymore, it almost destroyed his will to live. And when he had been kidnapped, he had to struggle to regain his survival instinct to fight the utter despair he felt.
When POTUS had come to meet him during his abduction, however, and he received the charge to take on his father’s destiny, a change came over him. This brought about a calmness within him and all around him. Then he had been rescued by the FBI … in his mind it all fitted into a pattern of events unfolding in the world. He was not aware of all the events—for good and ill—that had transpired over the past several days leading up to the Academy Awards evening, but he didn’t have to be tuned into the latest breaking news. He was “on schedule” for his part. He would do what he had been led to do and trust that the results would follow with the intended effect.
What could he do now but trust? After all, he had been brought to this place safe and sound—for a purpose.
* * *
Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Tyler opened it. Bobby Anderson stood there, one of the network producers behind him. “Time to move,” he said simply to his young charge and the nurse and doctor.
* * *
As Marcus Jackson was being escorted into the Hollywood Grand Theatre by a security detail supervised by Special Agent Bobby Anderson, IRA turned to POTUS with a look of contempt and utter betrayal. The boy had been abducted and held for future use by the Tribunal—but now he was free!
Then another figure appeared, and IRA recoiled. It was Caleb, who had finally replaced him as POTUS’s evanescent spirit guide and now was making himself visible. Caleb appeared as an aqua blue aura within whose enveloping presence IRA’s former target stood taller and loomed larger than he had previously. Caleb and POTUS together emanated hugely positive energy all around them.
POTUS said simply, “Your masters’ plan is about to fail, my friend. The world will not be bent to their dark purposes. This I can now see so very clearly, and this I promise you through no power of my own, but with the goodness in every man or woman to throw against you.”
The trickster guide loosed a scream from the core of his being: “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO MEEEEEEE…?”
This visceral attack of energy that reverberated throughout Heaven was the precursor of the intentional attack IRA was directing at the being with whom he had been working and programming for destructive intent.
The time had come. POTUS had, from the first moment he had crossed over to the Other Side, been absorbing impressions and data like a computer hard drive, and processing everything that was thrown at him. It was not unlike when he was in school and college, or in the army when he had learned to observe and act with as much precision as humanly possible. Now he was in a realm that called upon all the resources his mind and soul could tap into. Now he would confront evil face-to-face. Mano a mano. Yet there was something unfathomably poignant about the figure before him. A trickster and false friend who had, the President presumed, once been good—or could have chosen the good over the darkness that consumed him. IRA’s skills were formidable, his message compelling, but POTUS did not fall victim to all his energies and wiles, instead becoming a worthy adversary. To no avail.
POTUS instinctively realized that, in himself, he was no match for the energies being unleashed upon him. He was not yet mature enough in his new state of being, nor did he know how to combat the force of the evil targeting him. So, he simply surrendered to it and allowed his soul to be offered up now for what he recognized was a second time to save his family back on the earthly plane.
But what happened next, nobody expected …
The loudest crack! and crash! imaginable were heard throughout the worlds of humans and spirits. On Earth, it was described as if two planes had collided, yet there was nothing visible in telescopes. The world took a deep breath and watched for something akin to a miracle—or the ultimate doom to occur. A heavenly telecast was about to be delivered.…
All communications ceased, as a huge solar flare erupted and reached the Earth, creating a layer of light around the planet, knocking out cell phones and electronic communications everywhere for a few seconds. The Earth, in effect, blinked as it recoiled from the intensity of the flare, behind which the dark matter that threatened all was stopped, at least temporarily, in its path.
Dr. Jason Chang felt the reverberation and immediately ordered a check of all instrumentation at NASA.
Pope Genaro I was on his knees in prayer in his Vatican chamber, and his entire body shook when the cosmic boom echoed across the heavens.
“O Creator,” he prayed, “open our eyes and ears to Your voice—before it is too late.”
* * *
Rae Loona was standing behind Marcus Jackson Jr. when she heard it: a familiar and comforting sound. Music to her soul. It was a voice, the voice she had longed to hear in person. As she turned in slow motion to look, the bluest eyes she ever saw were staring back at her: John Travolta.
Marcus felt a shift in Rae’s energy. He immediately turned to crane his neck to see who it was. At first, he didn’t recognize him; he was too young. He asked his friend in a stage whisper, “Who is that?”
Rae was speechless, unable to blink or breathe. John Travolta smiled at her, as if he knew what she was thinking.…
Rae began to babble like a crazy woman all about the events that led them to that very moment, randomly pulling out pieces of the storyline, hitting Travolta in the arm and telling him how shocked she was that he was standing next to her.
Tyler was standing in the wings, laughing his butt off. He regained his composure after a moment and said to Rae, “You’re going to give Mr. Travolta a black-and-blue, Nurse Loona.”
That’s when John Travolta kissed Rae
on the cheek and thanked her for her heroism. “Rae Loona,” he said, “stands for real nurse.” He flashed his billion-dollar box office smile at her.
At that, Rae passed out. Travolta was there to catch her, and Tyler found a chair backstage on which to deposit her temporarily. But the star couldn’t linger to tend to his Number 1 fan. He walked out onstage to introduce the next act: Ms. Charlene St. John.
CHAPTER
105
Charlene walked partway onstage as the orchestra struck up the overture to her popular Oscar-nominated song. Then she waved at the conductor as she hesitated just beyond the curtain. The orchestra stopped, with the conductor somewhat confused about what was happening. This had not been rehearsed. The spotlight remained on Charlene. She was warmly lit and had never looked more lovely or winning, even at that historic Super Bowl not so many years before.… Tears filled her eyes as she announced to the world that President Jackson’s son, Marcus, had been rescued.
“He is alive and well,” she stated in her clear, sonorous voice. It almost sounded like a song. “And he is here.”
While the whole world watched and sat back, stunned, Marcus walked quietly and confidently onto the stage to a standing ovation. The Hollywood Grand Theatre went wild. Charlene opened her arms, and the young man hugged her as she greeted him.
The broadcast control room erupted into a panic. The director screamed, “Time! Time! We’re supposed to go to commercial in sixty seconds! Somebody help me here!” Ten cameras captured the President’s son as the director lost it. The executive producer looked at him as if he had gone crazy: After all, history was being made here, and they were producing it for the whole planet to see.
The television cameras panned the audience of A-list celebrities. Tears fell down everyone’s cheeks. These moguls and entertainers were no longer celebrities—just people having a very real moment. They were witnesses to a miracle and a true Hollywood happy ending. This night would be written about in the history of the awards as the most memorable in the first century of the Oscar ceremony.
The director of the show now embraced the meaning of this historical broadcast. He immediately projected an image of the late President of the United States onto the enormous screen behind young Marcus. Seeing the larger-than-life image of his dad, he could not help being overcome with emotion. Knowing he would never feel him again, never get to hug him one last time, only fueled the deep feelings stirring inside him.
After several minutes of the standing ovation, Marcus took the microphone from one of the technicians who had been quickly dispatched to mic him up. There was a pause in the pandemonium as the oxygen in the theater became rarified and everyone held his or her breath.
Onstage and in the theater there was absolute, dead silence as Marcus Jackson stood center stage, his hands folded in front of him, wearing a black suit, white shirt, and no tie.
* * *
He looks like he belongs there, in front of the world, Rae Loona thought. She, like everyone else in the audience, was totally absorbed in the scene, focused on the young man who looked eerily like his father, the slain President of the United States.
Some members of the audience later said they could also see the late President himself standing there behind his son, smiling and encouraging him as he spoke.
What Marcus and Rae and all the others could not know was that across the globe, billions of people were also silent, as if a curtain had descended over the Earth and absorbed every wave of sound and blanketed the planet in utter silence.
Dawson Rask, Bobby Anderson, Tyler Michaels, and John Travolta—who stood arm-in-arm with Rae, wrapping her arm through his—watched from backstage. Anderson scoped out the crowd with a practiced eye, looking for signs of threat. He felt, oddly, that the danger had passed.
Charlene glanced back to blow a kiss to Dawson. Was this really happening? What in heaven’s name did it mean? Everyone present knew that something bordering on the supernatural had occurred—was occurring. But what?
* * *
Mama G stepped toward the small group backstage. She thought she heard the voice of the Governor of the Council of Elders whispering in her ear. “Do you see now what your purpose has been? You have been a part of bringing all these people together. You and the Fallen Masters who have guided them. Just as I have guided you.”
There stood Asima, visible only to Patricia Rose Greenidge—just as Mama G was visible only to those in this immediate circle of living human beings and Fallen Masters.
She silently thanked the Governor. The visions she had been privileged to see all came flooding back to her, jolting her with the force of a positive, powerful electricity, then gave way to a glimpse of the future … almost too bright to behold. Would it come true?
The words of the Governor now filled her consciousness: “Behold, as the stars and the planets align in their courses and the people of Earth choose the Light over the Darkness, this shall come to pass. The shadow will be lifted, if the people heed the words they will hear this night.”
Dear Lord, Mama G prayed, thank You for Your gifts to me. Please help me be worthy and to be grateful for all You have done. And let me know what else is left for me to do for You, as long as I am on this Earth.
“Come, dear Mama,” Asima said. “Your time on this plane has ended. I am here to escort you to the Other Side. You are one of us now—one with us in the realm of the spirit.”
“But how—why?” She was confused, but she did not resist the gentle voice and the unworldly “touch” of the spirit guide, the lovely young woman who had given her life to save her boy’s life—to give him life a second time, at the cost of her own.
“Come. You shall see. All shall be revealed to you, as it is written.”
“In the stars?”
Asima smiled. “Yes, in the stars that represent the souls of all who have come before us.”
* * *
What is happening? This thought was the one thing that all those in the Hollywood Grand Theatre and billions around the globe were wondering. The moment unfolded before their eyes as if in a dream.
Marcus finally spoke.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry to interrupt tonight’s broadcast. As you can see, I survived and am grateful to those who found me and rescued me today. People who were entrusted with my well-being kidnapped me and caused a great deal of suffering to my family. Although I am looking forward to going home and being with my mom and family, I won’t be reunited with my dad—my best friend and the best dad in the world—who was taken from this world … our world—” He paused, swallowing hard. “—my world. Tonight I stand before you and ask you in his honor to make a choice. He inspired me to look for the goodness or Godness in every person. When 9/11 happened over ten years ago, he told me even then, that those men were good at their core but just chose evil instead.
“My father is alive, though he is not with us in body,” Marcus said. The hush became even deeper, as if everyone had stopped breathing.
“My father is dead. You all know that, and you know that I was kidnapped. I still don’t know why this has all happened, just that it has. And it is over now. But my father is still with us. He has spoken to me, and he wants me to share what he said with everyone who can hear me—with everyone who will listen.
“There are bad people and bad spirits threatening us. Just like those who kidnapped me. I guess they thought they could make some kind of big deal about having the son of the President in their power. I don’t know. But I do know that my dad was able to break through the wall that separates us from souls who are dead. If he has the power to do that, then he has the power to fight evil.
“He told me that I have the ability to make the right choice—that all of us have the same power, to choose right over wrong, love over evil, light over darkness. I believe him.
“The words I am speaking are not my own. As you can see, I’m just a kid, really, with a pretty good education—at least my parents have sent me to good schools, ev
en if I haven’t studied all that hard all the time. But I did not know anything about the world and the truth of the world, until I was taken from my family, until I lost my father and my best friend. What do any of us really know about life until we experience pain and loss and disappointment? What can we know about happiness unless we have known about sadness and experienced it in ourselves? Like I said, I didn’t know anything, and I can’t claim to even now—but I am here to share with all of you what has been shared with me.
“The message is this: Together we can turn back the forces that want to destroy our world. We have seen this with my kidnappers and the one who shot my dad. There is evil all around us. Look at your own lives. You will see it. To resist such evil is simple but not easy. And we can do it right now—together.”
As one, the Hollywood Grand Theatre audience took in a deep, gasping breath.
“I have been given the Key of Understanding by my father. My message is, Do not give up your freedom. Make a different choice—the right choice. As hard as it is at a time like this when so much seems to be going wrong and the Earth itself is threatened by physical and spiritual forces beyond our understanding…” The young man paused and unfolded his hands, raising them to shoulder level and looking directly into the primary television camera.
“My message is not really my message at all, but comes from a Source of all that is good, a creative, loving Source that wants all human beings to be happy and fulfilled in their lives. Whatever your religious faith, or whether you do not have any faith in your heart—that is not the point.”
* * *
Rae Loona and Tyler Michaels were transfixed. Neither said a word, but they looked at each other for a second in total understanding. Never had Tyler felt moved in this way, and he could feel the presence of Karen and his unborn child. He also felt another unseen presence, one that had been “dispatched” by Karen and had watched over him for a long time, ever since her death.
Charlene had walked backstage and now stood next to Dawson. Neither said a word but drew closer together.