“You get used to someone being there, and then they’re gone, never to return again,” said Carter. “Every step you take in that same house will remind you of all the times they did something in that room, or on that chair, or in that yard. The memories flood in and overtake you like a tsunami wave.”
Carter and Brenda each worked at a place where they were more or less assistants, and their absence wouldn’t be devastating to their employers. It was a nice set-up for both sides because the employers did not have to pay health benefits and the employees didn’t have to pay taxes. They both made the phone call, and certainly under such tragic circumstances, a big deal was not about to be made.
By nightfall, Carter and Brenda had each packed a suitcase for the trip east. It was about 2000 miles, and the cost of a last minute flight out of Denver International Airport and into Logan Airport would set them back about one dollar per mile. That was much too steep for them, so they figured they might be able to hit Boston in two days if they switched off driving and went nonstop.
They did have a mission to accomplish; a bit of work that needed to be done before their eyes would open the next day. They had so much information they needed to get from that other realm, but they could not do it alone. They needed desperately to connect with Angie or Charlie, or both.
As they were walking out of their bedroom, a plastic ball slowly bounced down the hall to Carter’s feet. One of the twins ran down the hall and stopped at Carter’s feet. The boy looked at the ball, then looked up at Carter and smiled. Carter bent down, looking closely into the boy’s smile. “Are you Willy?” Carter asked.
“Yes, I’m Willy.” The boy giggled as he grabbed his ball and ran back to where Billy was waiting for him to continue their game.
“Aha!” Carter yelled back to Brenda.
“What’s up?”
“I saw it!”
“Saw what, hon?”
“The difference… I saw the difference.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Carter?”
“The twins… I saw the crossed over bottom tooth and recognized him as Willy, and then he confirmed it when I asked him his name.”
“Congratulations Carter. It’s probably Billy pretending to be Willy to throw you off. You must be very proud.”
“I am. I am very proud. Now I’ll be able to tell which one is which. I know one thing… one of them is worse than the other.”
The outside was deep into the night and consumed by pitch darkness, as crickets stirred and their chorus chanted. Soon the clock struck midnight and there was nary a Blankenship awake. Carter and Brenda were both pretty exhausted by the time one o’clock in the morning came around, so they retreated to the bedroom after unwinding with a few episodes of Cops.
Brenda slipped into her nightgown as Carter shed down to his boxers. She set up Carter so that he was lying on his back and his head was on a puffed up pillow. There were no covers on top of his body. She told him to close his eyes and she proceeded to gently rub his body from head to toe. “Don’t say anything unless I tell you to,” she directed.
“Do I ever?”
“Smartass… shush.” Brenda continued to gently rub him down to get him comfortable and relaxed. The sound of crickets and occasional directions from Brenda were the only sounds entering Carter’s ears. He was very relaxed within fifteen minutes, and he could feel waves washing over his eyes as he began to tire.
“Remember what I said to do to try to reach Angie?” Brenda shifted her body back away from Carter to give him space. “Follow those instructions when you’re ready, but call out to… actually… call out to both Angie and Charlie. If we can make contact with one of them, then it may be our ticket to the other. Get started now before you fall asleep.”
Brenda waited, but Carter wasn’t saying anything. She looked at him, and thought that he might have actually fallen asleep, so she nudged him.
“Okay… I’m thinking,” he said. Then he began. “Angie, I know you’re up there. Charlie, I know you’re up there too. I need something from both of you. If I can only reach one of you, I want answers to two things. Charlie, I need to know what happened to you. If you can let me know what happened to you, maybe I can get you justice.” Carter then made a loud, short crying noise, but suppressed it enough to continue. “Angie, I still need to know why you ran out on Brenda and me. What was it that you saw during our reading that was so bad? We need to know if there is something that we need to watch out for or something bad that is about to hit us, so we can possibly avoid it. Charlie… Angie… if you are aware of what I am asking… and you can get answers for me, make your presence known. Give me a chance to figure some things out. Contact me, and make it in a way that I will be able to understand.”
Carter finished speaking and looked at Brenda. Then something very bizarre began to happen right in front of his face. She began speaking to him, but her face began to blur and her dialect began to garble. He rubbed his eyes for a better look at what was happening, unsure of the realm he was in. He continued to watch Brenda’s transformation and saw that her face and body were being transformed into Charlie. Her voice then became Charlie’s voice. He could not tell which realm he was in, but he could still hear the crickets. Once the visual transformation was complete, the garble undoubtedly became Charlie’s voice… clearly Charlie’s voice.
Charlie’s message continued on, but Carter may have lost what he had said because he was too startled with the transformation taking place before his eyes. He just stared at Charlie intently, hoping to get the message he had requested. For such a scenario, Carter was surprised that he was not totally shocked that his dead friend was sitting on the end of his bed seemingly alive and well, talking to him as if it were the old days. He watched his mouth as it delivered a message. He was more curious about the message than he was by the messenger.
“Carter… listen up. The dude was a dick who came into the store waving his gun around. My first reaction was to rush him, and I went at him from about 20 feet away. The asshole… how tough can you be if you can only be the aggressor if you have a gun? Mr. Tough Guy! He turned around right before I tackled him to the ground, and I heard a shot or two, but that was all that I remember. He actually, for a split second, looked familiar, but I couldn’t be too sure because of the chaotic scene. Looked like that Trevor dude we went to High School with… I mean… really looked like him, but something happened and I couldn’t get a better look… for some reason… I don’t know.”
“I think I know who you’re talking… ”
“The dude never really saw who was charging him. If it was Trevor, he’s a big guy now, but he was always a punk-ass in high school… friend of a friend… hung out a few times, but thought he would be recipient of the Most Likely to Amount to Nothing award.”
“Wasn’t he the guy who… ”
“I’m okay, though… I guess.”
Carter realized that he was talking, but he wasn’t saying anything, because Charlie could not hear him. It was a one-sided conversation. He thought of the irony of it, because when he was on that side of the world, he could not deliver a message, but received all of the incoming prayers. He didn’t have time to figure out why that was happening. He knew that he just had to listen. He wasn’t sure where he was at this point in time, and he didn’t know where Brenda was… nor Angie, for that matter. Shit… Charlie too. Everybody was somewhere, but the only thing Carter knew was that it appeared Charlie was sitting on the bed where Brenda had been, and he was having a one-sided conversation with Carter; a monologue.
“So I think I’m okay. I haven’t even told Cynthia about my day yet, but I’ll tell her when I get home. She’s gonna freak out. She hates when I stick my nose into situations that appear dangerous even when I feel t
hat I’m doing the right thing. This one’s gonna be a doozy for her. Look at me though… not a scratch on me.” Charlie held his arms up and looked from arm to arm, and then up and down his body. “Not a damn scratch!” Charlie then smiled at Carter.
Carter could only watch, but he did learn what he needed to do. He needed to watch and just absorb everything Charlie told him, like a human sponge. He had gotten some very good information, but he was shocked to learn that Charlie was unaware that he was dead. Charlie believed that he really was just sitting on Carter’s bed having a conversation, even though he had yet to come out to Colorado to visit. Carter did know one thing without being coached. He was not going to be the one to tell Charlie that he had died from his injuries during that robbery.
“Forgot to mention… too busy telling you about me, but some older chick… she looked almost gypsy-like was just talking my ear off. She said that she knew you and Brenda. She was going on and on about how you two came to her and she was preparing you for something and… ”
“Charlie, are you okay?” Carter looked at Charlie, who began that transformation blur with that garbled voice. He witnessed the complete transformation as Brenda replaced Charlie and his voice became hers, resulting in Brenda shaking Carter at the knee and asking if he was okay.
“Yeah… fine,” said Carter. “Really… I’m fine.”
Brenda wasn’t buying what he was selling, and he knew it. Besides, she had been there the whole time, and he was probably twitching and contorting his face. There was no way she would buy “fine” from him, so he took it off the market.
“Actually, Brenda, I’m not sure if you were aware of it, but you turned into Charlie.” Carter looked into Brenda’s eyes, which were now on the same level, since Carter was now sitting up on the bed.
“Carter, that was probably as bizarre for you as it was for me. I saw something come over you, then the wave seemed to overshoot you as I seemed to have blacked out for a while until just now. When I finally came to… I started pushing on your knee to wake you. Do you have any idea what happened just now? I’m still sort of in a daze.” Brenda stopped speaking and waited to hear what Carter had to say. She was staring into his eyes and Carter could see her mouth shut tight, awaiting his reply.
“Ahhhh… yeah… it was truly bizarre. I saw your face contort and your voice began to change until finally Charlie was sitting right where you are now. You became Charlie.”
“Oh my God! Charlie must have used me as a capsule to deliver his message. Carter, what did he say to you?”
Carter shifted around uncomfortably, and slowly began to relive this most bizarre occurrence. “Charlie began telling me about how that convenience store was robbed by a dude waving a gun around. He said that he went to tackle the guy, and the guy turned at the last second and he heard a shot, maybe two, and that he may even know the gunman. He said that it looked… or resembled… a guy named Trevor… a guy we both went to school with. Maybe Trevor shot him because he didn’t recognize Charlie until after the gun went off. Maybe he did recognize Charlie and shot him because he would have been identified. Only Trevor knows, if that indeed was him, but I tell you what… when we go back east, I’m gonna get a better idea of whether it’s the same dude we went to school with.”
“Carter, how are you going to do that?”
“I don’t know just yet. Maybe I’ll ask around or look him up and track him down somehow.”
“You’re going to put your life in jeopardy?”
“Charlie was my best friend! You know he was. He must have come to me with that information for a reason, and he didn’t even know he was dead!”
“Carter, breathe… deep breaths… I understand, and if that’s what you need to do, then I’ll be right there by your side. I wanna help, but we also need to be careful. Now did he mention anything about Angie?”
“He started to tell me something about Angie reaching out to him, but then he transitioned back to you, so that’s where my investigation ended. I almost had it. I came so damn close to nabbing that information.”
“Damn it!” said Brenda. “I really screwed that one up. I hope to hell there’ll be another time. For now, we should really get some sleep, because we need to head out early in the morning. We have our work cut out for us now. How much time do you think we’ll need for the round trip?”
“Let’s see… I was thinking about that earlier. If we drove back and forth… nonstop… with both of us driving… I would say that part would take about five days. Maybe a few days in Boston… build in a couple… let’s just say about two weeks. We can both swing that with our jobs, and the tenants will take care of the house. Besides, the Blankenships will probably love to have free reign of the house in the early stages as they get settled. Hopefully they’ll let us back in when we return.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was early morning when the alarm clock blared, telling them that it was time to hit the road. Since they were already packed, Carter and Brenda showered and dressed, and joined the Blankenships at the breakfast table. They had twin boys, so their days started early every day. Wendy knew that they were planning on the long drive, so she did her army-sized scrambled egg breakfast to see them off. The smell of bacon hit them all hard in the nose in whatever room of the house they were in. They sat down at the kitchen table in the second round and began eating by themselves, since the Blankenships had already eaten.
“This is wonderful,” said Brenda.
“Yeah,” said Carter. “Thank you so much. Now we can get going without having to stop.”
“Oh, it’s my pleasure,” said Wendy. She was the one doing the preparing as Carl was busy crinkling newspaper that he read with his coffee.
“We wish you a safe trip,” said Carl, “and God bless the girl who lost her fiancé. We’ll certainly say another prayer for her strength.”
“Thank you,” said Carter. “That’s very kind of you. It’s a great loss. Charlie was like a brother to me.”
“I know he was,” said Wendy. “You two really seemed to have a history. Don’t you worry about a thing with this place. It’s in good hands.”
“We appreciate that,” said Brenda as she finished her plate and brought it to the sink.
“Leave the dishes for me,” said Wendy, “and you two run along.”
And that they did. Once their suitcases were packed into the trunk of the car, they were off. They shot northeast to Nebraska, and spent the rest of day one trying to get to the other end of the cornhusker state. It seemed endless. What a long state, and to think, there were so many more states to go, but at least none of them would even come close to matching the length of Nebraska.
By the time they reached Iowa, Carter had to throw in the towel and handed the steering wheel off to Brenda, so it was a good thing that she had been snoozing for much of the ride. Since she was still a little bit tired, they stopped so Brenda could freshen up with a cup of coffee, and off she went, hammering away at Iowa and counting away the miles to Illinois.
Twenty-eight hours into the trip put them in the danger zone as dual-driver hypnosis was taking place once Chicago had spit them out less than one-hundred miles from the Indiana border. It was a good run, but they would be a danger to anybody else on the road if they continued. Carter did not object when Brenda suggested they take the next exit, which showed a picture of a motel.
They were both zombies at this point, and one good snooze would put them back on the highway perhaps just after midnight or whenever they awoke fresh, since it was almost 2 o’clock in the afternoon. When they set sail after resting, they would be able to make it all the way to their destination in Boston, specifically Carter’s house. They had been in contact with Cynthia, and the tentative plan was for them to stay with her to
help her through the next couple of days. She kept reiterating that she preferred to grieve alone, but Brenda wouldn’t hear of it, figuring that most people are onboard with misery loves company.
They exited the freeway, and there was only one motel from which to choose, so they chose that one. There was a dimly lit neon marque with lights out on two of the letters, and another letter blinking. Vines grew up the pole and were entangled all the way to the sign, and there were more cracks in the old parking lot than there were at any Plumber’s convention. Let’s just say that it was a rundown shit hole that doubled as a trucker’s paradise and a lover’s hideaway.
They got out of the car and looked around. The weeds were trying desperately to break through the cracks in the parking lot. The motel was a long L-shape that was one story on a slab. It had a filthy appearance, and there were not many lights on in the rooms. Only six cars occupied the parking lot, and that probably included employees. The septic aroma was the icing on the cake.
“Should we move on?” Brenda asked.
“We can’t move on, Brenda. We could be driving for miles before we find something else, and we don’t know where we are. It’s too risky, and we’re in no shape to persevere. Too tired… too dangerous… no way. Sorry.”
Brenda glanced at the wreck before them one more time. “I guess this is where we’ll call home for the day.” She made a face, and then started moving toward the office, followed by Carter. When they reached the office, Carter opened the screen door toward him and it produced a loud screech. He turned and looked at Brenda, and then they proceeded into the office and were met with an empty front desk. Carter saw a bell on the counter, and decided to press it after about a minute.
Desert Son Trilogy: Desert Son, Wayward Soul, Spiritual Intervention (Books 1-3) Page 27