by Dale Mayer
She took a long shuddering breath, staring at her hands, then clenched them into fists.
“Tell me,” Samson said, his voice harsh.
“I did tell you. At least I tried to. I think that was all caught up with my nightmares. But it’s clearer now …” She closed her eyes against his tone. “Something talked to me,” she said. “I don’t know if it was the sea creature. I don’t know if it was something else. I wouldn’t have had any way to know because, as far as I understood, I was already dead.”
“Tell me,” Stefan said. “What were the words?”
She groaned. “You guys will think I’m crazy.”
“Really?” Samson asked. “Do you see who you’re talking to?”
She winced at that because, of course, there was Stefan, this bodiless spirit, commanding her to answer his questions. “I was told to breathe. To live. To breathe so I could live. And … to remember …”
“The same voice?” Stefan asked.
“Yes, but a watery voice. Not like a scuba diver beside me. Not like you and I talking right now. It was bigger. The voice came through the waves, through the water.”
“Coming from underneath you?”
She nodded. “Yes. But also from above me. From either side of me.”
Stefan let out a heavy sigh. “That’s very good to hear,” he said softly.
“How is that good to hear?” she cried out. “I wasn’t even there mentally. As far as I understood, I was already dead, time and time again. Every time I have a nightmare, I drown over and over and over.” The tears poured from her eyes. “Don’t you guys understand that every time I sleep I’m drowning? And then I hit this blackness, and my body just floats atop this endless darkness underneath. It’s so damn deep beneath me. I have no way of knowing what’s under there, and I’m terrified of it. I’m terrified of what’s there. And I’m terrified of what’s not there.”
“What do you mean, what’s not there?” Stefan pounced.
She looked at him. “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s the first time I’ve verbalized this. I don’t know what I mean.”
“Think,” he said. “Think. What does that mean?”
She stared at him, her heart opening wide to all she’d seen, to all she’d experienced—the feeling of loss, the feeling of gain. “When I was down there, when I was just floating meters and meters below the surface, there was a sense of betrayal. Loss. Anger even. I don’t know if it was because I was dead and gone, and I had wanted to live. The sense of betrayal that I should die so young. I don’t understand.” She shook her head. “But also this sense of how there should have been more. Something more but I don’t know what …”
“Did the voice say anything else?”
She glanced at Samson.
He narrowed his gaze. “You need to tell me.”
His tone wasn’t hard like before, not shocked, but as if she had no other choice but to be truthful and to say what she needed to say because he needed to hear it.
“It said how I was important,” she admitted. “And I remember in my mind, it shouting to breathe. To breathe so I could live. I asked why …”
“And its response?”
The tears still poured down her cheeks. She knew she had to get the words out, but it was hard. Finally she managed. “It said I had to die first. I had to die in order to be reborn, so I could see what I really needed to see. And to remember …”
And then she couldn’t help herself as she burst out in sobs.
*
Samson gave a loud exclamation and tucked her into his arms, holding her close. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”
But she shook her head tight against his chest as if to call him a liar. He smiled and just held her close. He looked at Stefan. But he said nothing. An odd muted tone replaced his normal golden color. “Stefan?”
“I’m thinking,” he said thoughtfully. “She’s brought up some interesting possibilities.”
“If you say so,” Samson said. “I don’t understand any of it.”
“You understand more than you think,” Stefan said. “And Jamie does as well.” He faced Samson again. “You need to get Jamie back.”
“I’m going to the mainland soon,” he said. “I’ll take Whimsy with me. I’ll pick up Jamie and bring him home again, if I can.”
Stefan shook his head. “Let me talk to Dr. Maddy.” And with that he disappeared.
Dr. Maddy was the medical intuitive healer who worked closely with Stefan. She had a phenomenal reputation in her field.
Jamie was living in a physical body, but he was barely connected to it any more. He lived in the body because it was his means of existence, but his connection was to every other soul and spirit thing in the world. And that was what got him into trouble. He’d been a normal child, a troubled teen, and somewhere along the line, he’d done some heavy drugs and went on a trip that had kept him out there in the ethers.
Stefan explained that Jamie had separated from his body, and, once he’d found such a beautiful spiritual world, he hadn’t wanted to go back. He lived in his body only to the extent that it kept him alive. Beyond that, Jamie lived out in the universe. Uncontained, unfettered by a physical existence and the woes of all that was there.
Sometimes Samson wondered if it was also a withdrawing from the responsibilities of living in a world that had expectations. It wasn’t like Jamie had enough money to just lie in a park all day long and study the blue sky. But, because of the way he now existed, Jamie didn’t have to deal with bills or relationships or responsibilities. Samson knew Stefan said the job Jamie did was incredibly important as well, but it was a job nobody understood, and nobody could believe he was capable of doing that job because of his medically unsound mental state.
It was hard to hear all this because so much of this concept was foreign to Samson. It wasn’t like he could talk to the rest of his family about Jamie. His father and other brother basically couldn’t deal with Jamie, so they had stepped away, happy that Samson was content to be there for his brother. Samson didn’t blame them. They didn’t have the proper temperaments, neither did they have a belief system that would allow Samson to explain what Jamie was really doing.
How would that be possible? Don’t worry, Dad and John. Jamie is off in the ethers, connecting his energy to every other living thing, hoping to help heal the world, to help raise the consciousness of humanity.
He brushed the long hair off Whimsy’s face as she continued to cry. “Easy,” he urged.
But she now shook, her sobs slowing, and she trembled in his arms so badly he was afraid she’d collapse. He bent, scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the fireplace. He sat down on the recliner with her still in his arms and turned toward the flames, waiting for her to feel the warmth.
When she could, she settled back into his arms and looked up at him. “Did that really happen?”
He raised one eyebrow. “Which part?”
She sighed and sagged against him. “The Stefan part.”
He chuckled. “Oh, that part. Yes, it definitely did. You have to understand that Stefan is a very unique individual.”
“But is he for real? It wasn’t just … a group vision experience or something worse?” she asked. “I really want to believe what he did is possible, but I don’t know how it could be. It’s so far away from anything I’ve ever seen or experienced before.”
“I felt the same way the first time it happened,” he said with a chuckle. “But Stefan visits on a regular basis.”
“How many people does he visit like that?”
“He has a lot of friends and knows a lot of people like him,” Samson said. “So I imagine he keeps in close contact with most of them. But it can be just a brush of his hand across your energy for you to know he came by.”
She stared at Samson in wonder. “You’re really blessed. You know that, right? To have friends who can do things like this.”
“Why?” he asked bluntly. “I can’t do any
of it, so what difference does it make?”
“He thinks you should be able to.”
“Sure he does,” Samson said in a dry tone. “Stefan says we all have the ability to do what he did, and most of us are just too scared to do so.”
“What do you think about what I said?” she asked abruptly.
He looked at her, seeing the insecurity and the fear in her eyes. “I believe you believe it,” he said casually. “And I’m certain whatever happened affected you in an incredibly difficult way. I’ve never known anybody who heard words like that. But then I’m sure others have. Stefan certainly has.”
“Do you believe me?”
His gaze searched hers, seeing her need for validity, her need for him to not think she was crazy. He tightened his arms around her into a closer hug. “Absolutely.”
He could feel her sighs working up through her lungs, coming out shaky and heavy, but afterward her shoulders just dropped, and the tension eased away.
She said simply, “Thank you.”
He smiled down at her. “You’re welcome. The more you deal with this craziness, the more you realize what you’ve learned so far is wrong. That the world is so much bigger, so much cooler than you’ve seen yet in your life. You must be open to seeing what’s there.”
“It has crossed my mind more than a few times,” she said. “What I didn’t tell you was that sometimes my father, when I’m talking to him, he talks back.”
He quirked his lips at her. “So then you should know what I’m talking about. If you were to tell others that your father speaks to you from the other side, you know what they would think of you.”
“I made that mistake once. I shared it with my fiancé,” she said, staring off in the distance. “But he made such fun of me that I knew I could never mention it again to anyone.”
“Obviously he didn’t understand or have an open mind to what you needed at the time.”
“I know,” she said softly, shifting her position. She cried out as her shoulder twinged.
He looked at her. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just moved wrong,” she said.
“I keep forgetting you are injured,” he admitted. “You’re healing so beautifully.”
She shook her head. “Not that beautifully. I’m barely using my left arm as it is.”
“To be expected. You were shot. You’re holding it and protecting it from all other possible injury.” He reached up to her head. “Let me check your scalp.”
“Shot?” her voice was faint, barely above a whisper.
He nodded, looked at the rawness of her scalp and the hair he’d been forced to trim back. He’d put in a couple stitches to close the wound. If they’d been at the hospital, they’d have done a prettier job, but he didn’t think he’d done too bad. As it was, the wound was healing very well.
“Yes, shot. Now if only we knew when and by whom? But that will likely come back to you. At least I hope …” He looked at her and said, “I don’t know about you, but I could use a cup of coffee.”
“Yes, please,” she said in a small voice.
He carried her to the kitchen and gently placed her in one of the seats at the kitchen table.
“I feel like my entire world has been tossed up and dropped into the bottom of the ocean. I knew exactly where I was back then. I was on top of the world when I went out kayaking that day, and then we met these men out there in kayaks. One worked in security at the university. They were hardened and, … I don’t know, … very alpha kinds of men. I was friendly enough to them, but it seemed very strange to see them in that environment. I expected them to be out doing target practice or something, not being out in nature. We headed out into deeper waters, left them behind. It was such a gorgeous day. And then this squall came up out of nowhere. Just a forerunner to that massive storm. And I lost everything that day,” she whispered. “I don’t even know how, but it feels like that was my old life. And now I’m in a completely new life.”
“You are. You can reminisce about the old life,” he said gently, “but you’ve changed. And your life going forward will not resemble the life you had prior to this.”
At that, she looked up, startled. “Seriously?”
“Yes,” he said. “Think about your fiancé. How do you feel about him now?”
Her frown was instantaneous.
He nodded. “See?”
“But that makes no sense,” she said. “I loved him before this accident. Why would that stop me from loving him now?”
“Did you love him?” Samson asked. He stopped in the act of pouring coffee beans into the grinder, turned and looked at her. “If you loved him before, then you should, of course, still love him. But do you?” He watched as she shrank into herself.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I can barely even remember the man.”
“How sad is that?” he said to her gently. “But give yourself time. Some of these memories will come back.”
“Sure, they’ll come back,” she said quietly. “But why does my heart not feel it? Why is my heart not thinking of him? Instead, I’m all caught up in everything that’s happened since.”
“Maybe it’s the new location,” he said. “You know when you’re away on a vacation, and it seems like a completely different life? And afterward, when you return home and spend time with the same people, it’s all different? They aren’t the same people because you’re not the same person either.”
She reached up a hand and touched her injured head. “But I’ve only been gone a few days,” she whispered. “My heart shouldn’t have changed in five days. The friends I have shouldn’t be looking at me differently after five days.”
“When you come back alive and well, it will be interesting to see their reactions.”
She frowned up at him. “What do you mean?”
He finished setting up the coffeemaker and hit Brew, then walked over and sat down beside her. “You keep forgetting one part of all this. Your injuries.”
She looked at him, her frown pulling her eyebrows together on her forehead in confusion.
He shook his head. “Do you know how you got injured? Don’t you understand? You were shot in the shoulder, and you’ve got a bullet burn across the side of your head. Who was out there shooting you?”
She stared at him, her jaw slowly dropping. “Do you think I was shot at?” Her voice rose.
His own shock surfaced. “What else would have happened?”
She shook her head, then winced as her injury hurt from her action. “I expected it to be from the fight on a boat beside me,” she said. “They were shooting, but I thought they were fighting each other. That it was a stray bullet hitting me.”
“What can you tell me about them?” he asked.
“Not much. Some kind of a struggle was going on in the bow of one of the yachts. But I don’t know what its name was, what it looked like. I only glanced at it because I was fighting the waves. I was struggling to stay upright. I didn’t know I’d been shot until you told me. Then I figured it had to have been from their fight.”
He wondered at her frame of mind that would allow her to see this as accidental. A bullet through her shoulder was one thing. But a second bullet just barely missing her brains by a millimeter was an entirely different thing.
“Unless you’re thinking that, because they saw me, they assumed I saw them,” she said slowly, working her way through the problem. “And then I guess it’s possible they tried to shoot me.” She straightened, feeling indignant. “And how fair is that? I was already having a really shitty day,” she snapped. “I did everything I could to stay alive, and here they were shooting at me too?”
He reached out a hand. “Sorry.” To him it looked like she’d been targeted. The shooter had missed anything vital but must have assumed the sea had finished the job.
What would happen when the shooter found out she was alive?
Chapter 9
“I can barely remember,” she said softly. She walked over
to the recliner just steps away, curled up into the chair and pulled the afghan around her. “Now I don’t want to. And it’s hard to stay warm thinking about it.”
“You will remember … eventually,” he promised. “And hot coffee is coming soon too.”
She smiled at that, then frowned. “Do you really think somebody targeted me?”
“You mean, other than the guys in the yacht? Yes, I do,” he said. “Where was the yacht when you saw them?”
She tried to think about it.
“I mean, if the way you’re sitting right now is your kayak, and the hearth in front of you is the front of your kayak, where was the yacht?”
She reached out her right arm. “I was heading in the opposite direction than the yacht,” she said. “So if the fireplace is the front of my kayak, and the ship was on the other side of me. The right side of me.”
“So, if that’s the case,” he said, “how could you possibly have been shot by them? The bullet went directly into your left shoulder, from the back, not from the front, not from the side. And the bullet burn also came from the back of your head forward.”
“Somebody shot me in the back?” she cried out. Sitting upright, she looked at her left shoulder and realized he was correct. “I didn’t even put that together,” she said in amazement. “That means I was shot from behind while I was out in the sound.”
He nodded. “That’s what I’m saying. Those bullets couldn’t have come from the yacht because it was beside you.”
“What if the shooter came up behind me?” she theorized. “He could have followed me after I saw them.”
“He might have,” Samson said. “How long after seeing the yacht did you get into trouble?”
“Almost immediately,” she said. “It was heading toward the marina, and I lost track at that point. I got flipped, couldn’t get up again, and I had to come out of my kayak in order to stay above the water. And things just went downhill from there.”
“You didn’t have a life jacket on when I found you,” he said.
“I started with one,” she said. “But I remember how one of the buckles broke. I had it in my arms, holding it close. I don’t remember when I lost it.” She shook her head. “Without a life jacket, the ocean is deadly.”