by S. B. Niccum
Finally, she reaches my old house, the house where I first found her, where she met up with Pete. I’m way ahead of her, and I float up to the attic, and with the tip of my sword I start opening boxes, desperately trying to find her some better clothes to wear, something practical and warm. Unfortunately all my practical clothes must have been donated, only some of my dresses remain. I go through some of Alex’s things and find some old uniforms of his. They will be huge on her, but better for the cold. I have them all laid out for her when she makes it up the stairs, and she smiles with a sigh. “I see you beat me to it,” she says casually.
Upon further inspection, I see that her scratch is a lot deeper than I first anticipated. She’s lost a lot of blood and she’s now shivering and looking pale. There’s no first aid kit, no bandages, nothing. I open one of my boxes and take out one of my old dresses. With the edge of the sword I slice it into strips. “No…not that one,” she moans. “Of all the dresses! Seriously?” she whines, obviously harboring a preference to that dress.
“I’ll make you another,” I tell her, while I drape the strips of fabric over the sword and gently drop them over her wounded leg.
“Thanks,” she says dryly, and her attitude reminds me that she’s still a teenager and necessity has not taken the attitude away. But, in spite of it all, she rolls up her pant leg and starts wrapping her leg with the strips. “Not exactly how I wanted to wear that particular dress, but…” she sighs. “If I had lived with you, in your time period, I would have made dresses too,” she declares, then shudders in spite of herself. The cold is finally sinking in and I see that her lips are turning purple.
From between the rafters I see Valerie’s head pop up. “Oh! There you are. So glad I found you,” she says with a sigh of relief. “I stopped by the house, just to make sure you made it out. The whole place was in chaos.”
“I broke a window and she escaped through there. I’m afraid she got hurt,” I say, pointing to the leg she’s bandaging. “She needs to sterilize it, or it’ll get infected.”
“Yes…but I’m afraid that’s not the worst of her problems.”
“No? What is?” I ask, puzzled. I know things are not ideal, but I figured that now that she is free, it’s all a matter of letting Pete know and taking them to the underground.
“Martin was taken to a prison for murdering a ROWE official. He’ll probably get special treatment though because the official happened to be his father and…he keeps insisting that the only reason he shot his father was because Sam was a rebellion operative. He’s claiming that he was trying to shoot her.”
“They’re going to believe him?”
“I’m afraid so.” Valerie nods grimly. “His mother is hysterical, and afraid of him, so she’s going to testify in his favor.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Pete and Sam need to leave. Now.”
“What’s gotten into you? I don’t even know you anymore?” Dane says to his son through gritted teeth, not caring so much about being overheard, but mostly to keep his cool down. “You’ve been reticent to us and downright rude to Tess—to Tess! Did you know that she went back to earth to relieve your mother and me, so she could take back her charge as a guardian angel? She didn’t have to, she could have stayed, but she did it to give you some space, because you have done nothing but ignore her. Son, do you realize what she’s done for you? Do you realize what she’s put at stake, just to save you?” Dane sighed and paced in a circle. “Sure, she went about it all wrong, like you, I might add. But her intentions were sincere.”
Alex looks at his father with mild interest. He’s never seen his otherwise cool and collected father in such a state of excitement. In life, Dane had been a psychiatrist, a good, methodical man who never pressed his children to talk until they were ready. He would often cross their path in the kitchen or knock at their door and simply state that he was available to talk any time they felt like talking—and he always was. Many times Alex could call or corner his father, even at odd times—day or night—and his dad would always drop whatever he was doing and talk for as long as Alex needed. If he happened to be in with a patient, he would have the kindest way of saying he was otherwise engaged. Dane always knew how to say things the right way. However, Alex had never seen his father agitated or upset, not like this.
Even so, shrugging with indifference, Alex turns away from his father. “I’m not ready to talk,” he says drily. He knew he was being rude, but he couldn’t help it. Something had broken inside of him, ever since he saw Tess gliding by his bubble, ignoring him completely. Thinking that it was a mistake, he had followed her, and when she finally looked at him, she told him to stay away. Then she disappeared, leaving him to rot in Hell. To add insult to injury, sometime after that, they had briefly linked minds, only to find that Tess was safely enjoying herself in Heaven, attending weddings and designing dresses as if nothing was ever wrong in her world. Everything changed for him then. Something shut down inside him at that moment, and now he was different.
Maybe he had been naïve to believe that love could survive death. Maybe there was a reason why mortals only promise to love each other “’til death do us part”. Or maybe it had nothing to do with love, maybe it was something else; but whatever the reason Alex felt nothing—no pity, no guilt, no hate…no love. Half the time he wasn’t even sure if any of what was going on around him now was real. For all he knew he was still in that prison imagining all of this.
“So that’s it? You don’t care anymore?”
Alex stares blankly at his father. If he says anything, it would be something rude, something that would no doubt upset his father and alienate him even further.
“Remember when we used to sail in the Caribbean? Remember what would happen when the wind would die down and there was not so much as a breeze to fill the sails and move us?” Alex looks up at his father, remembering the vacations they used to take with Russell, his grandfather. “What did you guys used to call that?”
“Becalmed,” Alex mutters, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Becalmed,” Dane nods in agreement. “You’re becalmed, just like a sailboat without wind. And you will remain this way until you take out your oars and start paddling. There is no motor here. You’ll have to get yourself out of this. Save yourself, or be damned.” Dane states with an uncharacteristic tone of finality that Alex has never seen his father have. “I’ve said what I needed to say to you.” He looks at Alex square in the face, there’s no trace of anger there, just sadness. “Farewell, son.” And with that said, Dane takes off suddenly.
Alex watches his father take off, and sees as he grows in brightness. As he flies away, Dane gets brighter and brighter until, in the distance, he seems to explode in light. Suspended in mid-air, he goes supernova, and Alex silently observes as the brilliant light envelops his father completely. Once he is full of light, Dane takes off just like a shooting star across the night sky, leaving Alex awestruck.
“Wow! What was that?” Henry asks, pointing to Dane’s fading light.
“My father.”
“Dane? What happened to him?” Eugenia asks with alarm.
“He—he exploded into light.”
“You mean he Opened,” Henry clarifies. “It was bound to happen. He looked ready. I guess he just had to straighten a few things with you first.” He looks down to a gadget he’s been fumbling with, and arbitrarily starts pressing buttons, making the object emit all kinds of sounds.
“What does that mean?”
“What?” Henry looks up from the apparatus distractedly, as if he has just been pulled away from another realm of existence.
“What you said, that he ‘Opened’. What does that mean?”
“What, you don’t know?” Henry murmurs absentmindedly, as he lifts the device eyelevel and squinting takes new inventory of it. Eugenia rips the offending gadget from Henry’s hand, as she would from a misbehaving child.
“Pay attention!” she scolds. “He’s asking
you a question.”
“What?” He inquires, baffled by this sudden outburst. “Oh, yeah. Opening.” Henry shakes his head as if clearing it. “He…haven’t you gone to any of the meetings with your Spirit Guide?”
“Spirit Guide? What’s a spirit guide? No, I haven’t. Have you?”
“Of course,” Henry looks insulted, and Eugenia nods knowingly.
“That was one of the first things they told us about when we got here, didn’t you hear?” Eugenia asks delicately, not wanting to make Alex feel like an idiot.
“No, I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I’d say! They only told us to set up a meeting with a Spirit Guide about a hundred times,” Henry blurts out, not worried in the least about Alex’s feelings.
“What does that have to do with Opening?”
“That’s the whole point of meeting with your Spirit Guide—Opening! It’s why you do it.”
Rolling her eyes Eugenia pushes Henry out of the way and tosses him his gadget back, turned on and all ready to go, then turns her attention back to Alex. “You saw how your dad exploded in light? You saw how brilliant Tess is?” She bit her tongue the moment she mentioned Tess’ name, but no matter, it was done. “Well, they are Open. That means that they have resolved all their issues and they are like an open book. They have nothing to hide, no blemish, no spot, no darkness in them. They’ve been purified. Not perfect, just pure, like a child.”
“Oh, nothing to hide…” he echoes softly, then clamps back up like he has been ever since he got to Paradise.
“This device is incredible! Look at all the things it can do! But I fail to see what its primary function is,” Henry murmurs, as he glides back to their side distractedly. “It’s something that mortals will invent! It’s—it’s…”
“It’s a smartphone, you idiot!” Eugenia blusters. “It’s been invented for ages!”
“Has it really? You—you’ve had this at your disposal? What is a smartphone? And what else did you have?” Henry asks admiringly, impervious to Eugenia’s insults.
Eugenia sweeps a hand over her face, then gets an idea. “I know!” She says enthusiastically. “I heard of a place, a museum of sorts, that has all kinds of relics and devices,” she adds, turning to Henry. “Not just modern things but all kinds of artifacts that have been around since the dawn of man.”
“Not interested,” Henry declares.
“No, you don’t understand. It has all things ever invented and yet to be invented!”
“Oh. Okay, I’m in,” Henry changes his position once more. “You with us, Alex?” Alex shrugs noncommittally, but follows them. But once they’re at the museum, he starts getting interested in the different spiritual objects that are on display, and ends up reading about all of them and their significance.
“Ancient Religious Relics?” Eugenia reads a sign that points toward the right. “Let’s go this way,” she insists and they follow her down a dimly lit hallway. Each artifact has its own spotlight shining down on it, making it look even more Heavenly.
“I liked the modern relics better,” Henry whines as he peers unimpressed at the two tablets before him.
“Are you kidding me? You’re looking at the Ten Commandments!” Eugenia protests.
Henry shrugs and walks on. “They’re just two stones.”
“Written by God,” Eugenia clarifies.
“Still two stones.”
Eugenia looks at Alex for any sign of commiseration, but sees none. Alex looks impervious to the banter in which Henry and Eugenia are engaged. He simply looks at each object and reads the captions with the same amount of interest as he would at any normal museum.
“The Holy Grail, King Solomon’s riches, Sampson’s hair, the original Dead Sea Scrolls, very interesting, yes, yes, can we go now?” Henry asks.
“No!” Eugenia barks in annoyance, mostly upset at herself for mentioning Tess’ name and ruining this outing.
“Hold on.” Henry screeches to a halt right in front of an odd looking pair of white rocks that are attached together like a peculiar pair of glasses. “What are these?” He peers down at the plaque that explains what the rocks were. “The Seer Stones,” he says with awe and reads the rest to himself in a low murmur.
“They look like goggles with stone lenses,” Eugenia whispers.
“It says here that chosen men, from the time of Adam on, have used these stones to see the future as it would take shape should things continue to proceed as they are at the time the Seer looks into them.”
“What, like a crystal ball?” Eugenia asks, frowning as she grabs the spiritual stones and inspects them from all angles.
“Sounds like it,” Henry replies. “May I?” He takes the stones from Eugenia and turns the contraption in his hands, looking for some hidden mechanism. On seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he gingerly puts them over his head and slides them down toward his eyes.
“I don’t think—” Alex tries to stop him, but he’s too late, and Henry freezes in place like a manikin. He and Eugenia exchange puzzled looks, then turn to look back at Henry, who after a few minutes removes the apparatus with a wide, pleased smile on his face.
“Wow! Now that’s grand!” Henry’s Irish accent comes out genuinely strong and fresh, making the other two smirk.
“How does it work?” Eugenia asks, taking the apparatus from him.
“Well you just—okay, never mind,” Henry stops explaining when he sees that his explanations are no longer necessary, because Eugenia places the stones over her eyes and goes rigid at once.
After a few minutes, Eugenia too, takes off the stones and places them slowly back in the display case. She’s more quiet and subdued than before, like she’s still digesting the information she got from the stones.
“What? What did you guys see?” Alex asks, piqued now with interest.
“It was incredible,” Henry says.
“And freaky,” Eugenia adds. “But yeah, incredible,” she darts her eyes briefly toward Henry, who had his eyes fixed on her. The two hold each other’s gaze for a few moments, then look away embarrassed.
“Let me see that.” Alex reaches over and starts putting the stones over his head. “If this is all a ruse, I swear…”
“Oh it’s real,” Henry assures, and Eugenia nods in solemn agreement.
Within seconds Alex’s senses are assailed with all kinds of images, all coming at him at once, overwhelming his mind with information. Alex feels as if he were watching several 3-D movies at once, each screen showing a different show. For a while he struggles to focus on just one of the screens, and the moment he does, he regrets choosing this particular show. Rejecting the images altogether, he tries to find other images. He repeats the process and sees another, equally distasteful turn of events. He sifts through several different options until he finds one that he likes better, but then another, and yet another set of events unfold—all running along the same theme—possible consequences to his actions. As if stung by a wasp, he rips the apparatus off his head, and tosses it back in its display case carelessly.
“Crazy, huh?” Henry remarks with a smirk.
Alex stares back, stunned, and still reeling.
“Was it bad?” Eugenia inquires with a frown.
Alex narrows his eyes, and looks uncertainly back at Eugenia, still haunted by the visions that those stones gave him. “I’m done with this,” Alex states, then storms away, leaving in his wake distress and torment.
Chapter 17
We run into a snag when Russell fails to get the despondent Pete to leave the shelter, and Samantha cannot be moved from the attic due to her cut. She’s lost a lot of blood and she’s shaking uncontrollably. Currently she’s either asleep, or passed out, looking very pale and in great need of medical treatment. Valerie keeps moving around in a tight circle right in the middle of the attic, the only spot high enough to allow her to stand up straight without having her matter pass through the supporting beams of the roof. “She needs food and she needs
that cut cleaned and sewn up.” She shakes her head with exasperation. “But anywhere we take her, she’s bound to get interrogated.”
“Maybe if we take her to a place far enough away,” I suggest.
“But how? How do we move her? Without Pete’s help, we’re sitting ducks.”
“So, he’s just sitting there?”
“Pretty much,” Valerie says, her eyebrows raised high in complete disbelief. “Russell says he’s been catatonic since they took Sam.” She turns a few more times in her spot then looks up at me. “I can’t believe that we’re going to lose her like this.”
“No.” I shake my head. “We’re not losing her,” I say with renewed determination. Sam trusts me implicitly; she still carries around that picture she ripped from that yearbook as if I were her patron saint. I don’t want to be worshipped, but I do want to live up to her expectations of me. I’ve let so many people down lately. Sam will not be one of them.
I don’t notice it, but I’m now pacing too, crowding Valerie on the small spot. She’s looking at me with expectant eyes, like she knows that I’m brewing up a plan of sorts.
“We need another mortal,” I say as I turn, and start tapping my forehead with my index finger.
“I could go to the underground and see if one of the mortals there…” Valerie volunteers, yet even as she says it, she knows that it would be next to impossible. It’s hard enough to get a mortal to follow simple instructions from their guardian angel. It would be ten times that difficult to get someone to deliver a whole message with enough time to actually help Sam. “At the very least we can get some rubbing alcohol and sterile bandages.”
“I might be able to get those things with the sword, but how do I manage to move it all undetected? I mean, the minute someone spots a jar of alcohol floating in mid-air, they’re bound to get suspicious.”
Sam’s jaw is now chattering, not just with cold, but uncontrollably, like it would with a fever. Suddenly, a crazy idea pops into my head. “John!”