Between Darkness and Dawn

by Margaret Duarte

  “That a girl,” Anne said clapping her hands.

  Veronica let out a between-the-teeth wolf whistle. “You look pretty good, Sis. Did you get a boob job?”

  In spite of the cold, my face grew hot. As I turned to refill my make-do weapon with liquid ammunition, I saw movement near the bank of the creek. I crossed my arms over my exposed ‘boobs’ and squinted into the darkness. Even with my flashlight’s beam aimed at the creek’s outer banks, all appeared a grainy black and gray.

  “Adam?” Anne said, her tone hopeful.

  So, she’d seen something, too. Double damn. Of all the rotten luck. Three naked, defenseless—stupid—women with someone, Dear God let it be Adam, lurking in the shadows. I eyed my flashlight. It would serve as a better weapon than the cotton and spandex one dangling from my hand.

  Someone started to cry.

  “Shit,” Veronica said.

  I turned toward the sound and gasped. A second figure wavered in the darkness. It was of average height, nebulous, and appeared to have a blanket over its head. Anne’s and Veronica’s flashlights were of no use. They illuminated us, the defenseless, in all our glory, while the unwelcome gawkers remained no more than shadows.

  The weeping pulled at me. It sounded like my mother. But how could that be? We hadn’t yet formed our circle. Or consecrated our space. Or channeled our collective wisdom and power. Already chilled, the cold now went deeper. My aura felt like the inside of a Popsicle. I longed for a towel, a cape. I longed for my mother. The hazy figure withdrew its blanket, and I gagged on my quick intake of air. Even in near darkness, I knew... “Ver-on-ica,” I sputtered. “Look.”

  Veronica thrashed through the water to my side, then grabbed my arm for support.

  “Oh my,” Anne said. “I was concentrating on Adam.”

  Without taking my eyes off the cloud of energy I knew to be our mother, I said, “Are you sure it’s Adam?”

  “Yeah. They’re both here, Adam and your mother.”

  I edged closer to the bank. Dr. Mendez had told me about an author named Michael Talbot, who speculated that the conscious is not contained in the brain, but is a plasmic holographic energy field that permeates and surrounds our physical bodies. The past, then, is not lost, but still exists, recorded in the cosmic airways, and can be converted into holograms by our minds. Was Antonia a three-dimensional recording from the past? Were her emotions—her hopes, her fears, her plans—recorded in the cosmic hologram? Was the spiritual part of her reaching out to us from a different realm that we could somehow connect to at the quantum level and where the past, present, and future existed all at once? Darn, if only I could reach my flashlight and aim it where it would do more good.

  “Looks like Adam’s in some kind of trance,” Veronica said, still clutching my arm.

  “Likely a self-induced one,” Anne said. “To close himself down.”

  “You think he’s giving up?” I asked, my teeth chattering.

  “More a matter connecting with a different kind of power, a higher power.”

  I jumped at the hoot of an owl. My throat hurt. Tears stung my eyes. Adam, please help Antonia accept the light, so it can pull her out of the darkness.

  Antonia appeared to embrace Adam. They faced each other for what seemed a long time. Adam pointed in our direction. Antonia shook her head. Adam motioned again. Our mother turned to face us. Veronica squeezed my arm. It hurt. But I didn’t mind. It reminded me that I wasn’t dreaming, that this was real. Adam guided our mother to the bank of the creek. Her face caught the full beam of my flashlight. I gasped. “God help us.” Where her eyes should have been, there were two black holes.

  Veronica’s icy hand went limp, and she leaned against me. “She can’t see us.”

  “Oh, she can see you all right,” Anne said, “just not through her eyes.”

  Veronica made a guttural sound as if clearing her throat.

  The creek’s flow gained force. My knees felt weak. “Mother. We love you.”

  Antonia brought up her hands. Then dropped them.

  “We heard you crying,” I said. “Is there anything we can do?”

  A nod. Or was it? Maybe my imagination was playing tricks on me.

  “Is it about our father?”

  Another nod? Hard to tell.

  “We know you were a good mother,” I said. “You did everything you could to protect us.”

  She reached out her hands and wailed as I’d heard her wail in the cave near Tassajara during my guided tour through the Los Padres Forest. The sound had been high, weird, and powerful, like that of a hurricane-force wind, and it had saved my life.

  I took a step forward. Anne pulled me back. “Don’t go near her.”

  “Our father loves you, Mother,” Veronica said.

  For a moment, Antonia seemed to solidify.

  “He hopes to see you on the other side. Will you wait for him there?”

  She nodded as before.

  “Will you wait for us, too?” I asked.

  She said, Yes. I was sure of it.

  Veronica swayed against me, as if sapped of all strength. I supported her with my arm, afraid she might fall.

  “Then go there now, Mother,” I said, “and be happy.”

  As Antonia’s image began to fade, her words—Your father. Your father—coursed through the air like ripples on water.

  “What about our father?” Veronica asked. “What does he know?”

  I tried stepping forward, wanting one last look into her hollow eyes. This time Veronica held me back. My eyes felt hot and scratchy, my nose wet. I sank into the creek making heavy, noisy sounds. The freezing water felt oddly warm.

  “What about our father?” Veronica repeated. “What’s he got to do with this? With us?”

  No answer. Our mother was gone.

  Veronica sank to my side and pressed her cold body against mine.

  “You two stay here,” Anne said. “I’ll get the towels.”

  The water flowed on as if attempting to carry Veronica and me from the security of the creek bank to the Big Sur River, and from there to the vast Pacific Ocean, connected only by the golden thread of love. I rested my head on my sister’s bare shoulder and clung to her wet, icy hands. “It’s okay, Sis.”

  Anne returned, speaking in a low murmur. She urged us to stand and draped us with towels. Still clinging to each other, Veronica and I sloshed to the creek bank.

  “She can’t break through,” Veronica said.

  To which I answered, “Or we’re blocking her.”

  “How,” Veronica asked.

  “For one thing, I think we’re trying too hard. Antonia isn’t our own private genie, who we can summon at will, simply by rubbing a magic lamp or performing a ritual, no matter how focused and powerful. For another, we can’t understand a language we haven’t yet learned.”

  Anne gave my sister’s back a vigorous rub, then began massaging her arms. “Are you saying you’re not ready for what she wants you to know?”

  “I can’t speak for Veronica, but there’s more for me to learn. I have to become more like our mother, I mean, really empathize with her and make space for her in my heart, before I can understand her message. I’ve been making this all about me, missing out on a message that’s carried by vibrations that can’t be caught through the eyes and ears.”

  I felt a moment of sudden joy as though a shaft of light had shot past my mind straight to my soul. My muscles stopped shaking. “Her message will become clear,” I said with conviction that could only have come from an outside source. “Not as we expect, but as the need arises, in a form that at first will confuse us. Antonia wants us to look into our hearts where real life happens, where the secrets of life are hidden in plain sight. She wants us to open our spiritual eyes and ears.”

  “Hey,” Veronica said. “Where’d that come from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I closed my eyes as Anne’s strong, capable
fingers began working the circulation back into my arms. “Will Adam be okay?”

  “I think his little talk with Antonia has done him a world of good,” Anne said.

  The vision of Adam and the spirit of our mother embracing would forever stay projected on my mind like a three-dimensional holographic memory that could be relived in vivid detail over and over. “I wonder what they said to each other.”

  Anne made the sign of the cross. “I doubt we’ll ever know.”

  Chapter Thirty

  I WOKE TO A DEEP CHILL in the air. The steady drip, drip on the roof of my tent indicated that fog had condensed on the flat needles of the redwoods overnight and was now oozing onto the ground below. I lingered in my sleeping bag. I wanted to go home—to Morgan and Joshua. I wanted to be coddled, spoiled, pampered, and loved. Why was I making it so hard on myself? Morgan would take care of me. My only mission would be to make him and Joshua happy. Which would be easy—because I loved them.

  Maybe I would never be able to unblock the energy field that existed between Antonia and me. Maybe now that she’d done her best to relay her message, she would find contentment in the afterlife, where consciousness resides. And Veronica? She hadn’t been able to get away fast enough after last night’s ordeal. Neither she nor Antonia needed me. Not anymore. If they ever had.

  I checked my watch. It was nine o’clock. By now, Morgan, the love of my life, would be in for breakfast. His mother would be frying bacon and eggs for her husband, son, and grandson, while they discussed the chores still to be tackled that day. Equipment would need to be serviced, calves to be fed, corn to be irrigated one last time before harvest.

  I grabbed my for-emergency-use-only cell phone and punched in the ranch number. Joshua answered on the second ring.

  “Joshua?”

  “Marjorie! Hey Morgan, it’s Marjorie! Are you coming home?”

  I wanted to say yes, but something nagged at the back of my mind. Not so fast. You still have things to do. “Soon, honey.”

  “We miss you.”

  My throat. It hurt. “Miss you, too. And sweetie... I love you.”

  “I know.”

  Silence.

  “How’s our stray?” I asked.

  Joshua laughed. “He’s getting fat.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Morgan says he hasn’t seen a mouse or rat lurking around the place since Gabriel came to live with us.”

  “Well that’s good anyway.” Joshua, my precious Joshua, with his straight black hair, his deep brown eyes, and Gabriel, the scrawny tabby, my backyard stray. What a picture they made. Once orphaned and voiceless, now best friends.

  “Morgan gave me a baseball cap to keep the hair out of my eyes,” Joshua said. “And a pair of rubber boots for when we feed the calves and irrigate the corn, and...and...cowboy boots for when we go to the feed store...and to the part store for repairs.”

  I laughed, absorbing the joyful music of his voice.

  “Uh... Morgan says it’s his turn to talk.” A pause. “I love you.”

  “Love you, too, sweetie.”

  “Marjorie?” It was Morgan.

  The timbre of his voice sparked a toe-curling jolt of pleasure. Good thing I was still bundled in my sleeping bag.

  “Marjorie?”

  I started to cry

  “Honey, are you okay?”

  “I don’t think I can take this anymore.”

  Silence.

  “Tell me to come home, and I’ll head out today.”

  Morgan’s long inhale and exhale sounded close, rather than two hundred miles away. “If it was just about me, I would,” he said. “Nothing would make me happier.”

  “Tell me you can’t go on without me, that no one’s holding me back but myself.”

  “You can’t give up now,” he said.

  Tell me to come home. That we need to get married right away.

  “I want you here,” he said. “Joshua wants you here. We all do. But you have to finish what you’ve started.”

  I closed my eyes, tightened my grip the phone. “I don’t know if I can.”

  A sigh, so close, so far away. “I’d love to pull you into my arms and make it all better, but...”

  “We’d regret it in the morning.”

  “Afraid so.”

  I sat and pulled up my knees, the sleeping bag still wrapped around me to keep out the chill. “I’ve been in contact with Antonia twice since coming to Big Sur. Yesterday, she spoke to us, and I think... I hope…she’ll be okay.”

  “Us?”

  “Adam, Anne, Veronica, and me—”

  “Adam and Anne?”

  “New friends. Oh, Morgan, a lot has happened since we last talked.”

  His chuckle spanned the distance, its energy reaching inside of me, where it most mattered. “No surprise, with Veronica around.”

  A flashback to our ritual bath in the creek caused me to shudder. “We saw her. We saw Antonia.”

  Over the phone, across the miles, Morgan’s quick intake of breath and its slow release relayed that he cared. “I can’t honestly say I understand,” he said. “I’ve never experienced the kind of things you’re experiencing. But I’m glad, Marjorie. I’m glad.”

  “And that got me thinking that...that...I could...” Damn, I was stuttering.

  Morgan chuckled, but otherwise remained silent, giving me a chance to get a grip, and blurt, “That I could call it quits and marry you right away.”

  “When you come home and we marry, I won’t be able to let you go again.” Morgan’s voice caught. “That’s why you have to be sure.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Think about it for a few days. Make sure you’re not leaving something undone.”

  “Do you miss me?” I asked. Stupid question.

  “More than you know. I’d give just about anything to hold you in my arms right now and make all your troubles go away.”

  “Thank you, Morgan. It helps to hear that.”

  “When you come back, it will be forever. Okay?”

  “Forever,” I said before ending the call.

  The weather hadn’t changed during my talk with Morgan. A quick peek through the vestibule of my tent revealed air still heavy with moisture and clouds still hanging low, endless gray clouds that obscured the sun. But the lack of sun and blue skies no longer darkened my mood. I dressed, recharged with a cup of coffee and an energy bar, and headed for a destination unknown, confident that the answer to the nagging question of why I must stay would make itself clear.

  My insulated jacket, plus the vigorous walk, turned my shivering body into a sweaty one. The walk turned into a jog, my shoes hitting the earth in a plat, plat, plat. The wind chilled my cheeks. My breath became puffs of steam. A stitch in my side caused me to slow to a walk, then halt and inhale rushes of air. I dropped onto a grassy clearing, rolled onto my back, and closed my eyes. Tell me what to do.

  You already know, a voice answered, though this time the voice didn’t belong to an ancestor or to my birth mother.

  This time, it belonged to me.

  Until I cleared a channel for my intuition to grow sharper and for me to become braver; until I gained enough confidence in my own life story to make room for love; I would be of use to no one. I needed to take some risks and do things I’d never dared do before, things that risked being wrong, but needed doing anyway. I needed to access the holographic field where Antonia’s consciousness resided. No more trying to direct her life story or, for that matter, emulate Veronica’s. Antonia’s message had something to do with my father, and, for some inexplicable reason, my relationship with Adam held the key.

  I stood, invigorated by the new direction my thoughts had taken me.

  Antonia would contact me when I was ready.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I FOUND ANNE, no problem. Her brown and yellow skirt billowed and fluttered against the background of green forest like a butterfly. Sh
e looked up at the sound of my approach. “Thought you’d be packed up and hotfooting it home by now.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled into the shaded stillness. “Morgan stopped me.”

  She handed me a mug of hot water with a tea bag steeping inside. “He must be a far-sighted man.”

  “I’m very lucky.”

  Anne nodded, but made no comment.

  As I eased into a camp chair next to her, I caught the scent of turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, and honey rising with the steam from my mug. Anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anti-everything that ails you. Just what I needed.

  Silence, except for the ambient nature sounds that never grew silent.

  “Marriage isn’t for the weak-hearted,” Anne said. “You’ve got to be strong. Hell, you’ve got to have guts. I mean you really stand naked when you marry someone. There’s not much you can hide.” She stared off into the distance, yet appeared to be looking inside. “You have to stand up for yourself, and at the same time be willing to compromise.”

  Her words filtered through my mind, but I didn’t try to capture them. She leaned forward in her chair and set her mug on the fire pit ring. “With the right person, marriage can be heaven. It’s like a rebirth. You help each other develop in areas where you’re weak. But God help you if you marry the wrong person.” She shuddered. “It’s how I envision hell.”

  A glimmer of pain in her eyes had me offering, “Love means letting go of fear.”

  Anne blinked, but said nothing.

  “Anyway, I can’t leave now,” I said. “I care about you and Adam. You’ve helped me mend some gaps in my worldview, making me feel better about myself and making me realize that my passage on this Earth isn’t an individual one, but a team effort. Observing Adam’s treatment of his son, and vice versa, has helped me understand Truus better, that her strict, even restrictive, parenting is done out of love and that I’ve been judging her too harshly. Plus, you’ve helped me open up to Antonia. How can I ever thank you enough for that?”