Answering Ascension

by Amy Proebstel

  “Hey, I do what I can!” he replied as he smiled down at his beautiful wife. “Have you talked to your parents lately?”

  “Sure. Was there something in particular in which you wanted me to talk to them about?” Amanda wondered what Riccan was thinking.

  “Your father had said he would be mulling over the new prophecy. I just wondered if he had come up with anything different than what we’ve been working on.”

  “Hmm, nothing new on that front. Riccan, it’s made me so happy to have my parents in-the-know about our lives.” She hugged him closer in her happiness.

  “I know. I’m glad for it, too. Now we don’t have to watch everything we say or do around them. Have the girls planned any trips to your parents’ house?”

  “Not yet, but they keep asking about getting their driver’s licenses. How did our girls grow up so fast?” Amanda started to laugh. Normally parents would say that of their children as they slowly watched them age, their children had been given to them already almost grown.

  Riccan laughed along with her. “I know exactly what you mean!”

  “I hope the girls enjoy their first movie theater experience,” Amanda said as they moved from the foyer to the living room. They had planned their own movie night in the privacy of their house.

  “I’m sure they’ll love it.”

  “I know Juila will. I’m more worried about Jena. She seems more sullen lately. Do you think it has anything to do with Willian? I’m surprised we haven’t heard anything from him.”

  Riccan looked at Amanda as though she had just said something remarkable. He shook his head at how stupid he had been the whole time the girls had been with them.

  “What is it, Riccan? What did I say?”

  “Willian may have tried to reach Jena, but I’ve never shown her my patil here at the house. She has no idea she can access her personal account and still converse with Willian. If he’s left her any messages, she would not have known about them.”

  “Why hasn’t Jena asked about how to get in touch with him then? Don’t you think it odd?” Amanda did not have a good feeling about her daughter’s betrothed. The more she heard about the relationship, the less she liked it.

  “I wonder if Rasa has access to the girls’ personal accounts,” Riccan mused softly to himself as he changed the direction of his steps from going to the living room to heading down the hall to his office. Riccan left Amanda behind in the living room and said, “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes. I want to check something out.”

  From another secret compartment in the wall, he opened the access to his own patil. He touched a couple of buttons on the touchscreen and dialed up Rasa’s code.

  In a few moments, Rasa’s face showed life-sized on the screen. “Hi, Riccan. How’s everything going? No trouble, I hope.”

  “I hope not, either,” Riccan replied. He went on to share his concerns about Willian and waited to see what Rasa had to say.

  She frowned before she said, “We just held another Elders’ children summit. Willian was asking after Jena, and I told him that she and her sister were visiting with their mom. He tried not to show it, but I could see he was furious. Apparently, Elder Debbon had not seen fit to tell his son that Jena has been living on Earth. I didn’t tell him that part, either. What would you like me to do?”

  “Do you have access to Jena’s personal patil account? If Willian has tried to contact her, then I’m afraid he could get quite upset at thinking he was being ignored all this time.”

  “I see,” Rasa said. All too clearly she saw how much trouble this could bring Jena. Willian was a hot-headed child who had no qualms about taking out his frustrations on the quiet and gentle Jena. “I’ll send you both of the girls’ account information. I’ll leave it up to your discretion to handle whatever information you find in their accounts. Good luck!”

  Rasa did not envy Riccan’s and Amanda’s positions in this whole matter. They appeared to have drawn the short stick as far as she was concerned. Everyone else had been given more time with the girls rather than their own parents. It was unfortunate. She would do whatever she could to make things easier for everyone involved.

  Rasa tapped out a few commands and accessed the information she was seeking. She copied the data and pasted it into another link on her patil. “Okay, I just messaged the links to you. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  “Thanks, Rasa. We really appreciate it,” Riccan replied and disconnected the call. He opened his messenger box and retrieved the links. He touched Jena’s link first. For the next few minutes he waited for all of the messages to load to her inbox.

  As each new message popped in it showed the sender’s name. One after another, after another, and another showed Willian as the sender. There were more than one hundred messages from Willian alone. Riccan scrolled down to the earliest message and opened it. The message seemed innocent enough. Willian was asking after Jena’s wellbeing since he had not seen her in a few days. The date confirmed it was right after the girls had gone with them to his parents’ house in Pantano.

  He clicked on the next message and could tell Willian was peeved at not being answered in the previous missive. Each subsequent message became more rude and blunt. This was not how a man talked with his betrothed, or anyone, for that matter. This was very unacceptable. By the time he opened the last message, he was fuming with anger.

  Someone was going to have to teach this kid some manners. Riccan no longer cared that Willian was the son of an Elder. As far as Riccan was concerned, Willian was a spoiled, incompetent brat who did not deserve his daughter. This was going to come to an end.

  He jumped in his seat as he felt a hand touch his shoulder. He looked up and behind him and saw his wife looking down on him with concern.

  “What have you found out, Riccan?”

  “Just that Willian is not going to be betrothed to our daughter much longer!” He stood up and shut the cupboard to hide his patil. He had to take a walk to control his raging thoughts. Riccan took Amanda’s hand in his and led her from the office.

  They walked outside on the garden paths, and Riccan told his wife about the messages. Riccan recounted the gist of the messages he had read to Amanda. By the time he told her about the final message, he was fuming all over again.

  “He had the audacity to tell Jena that if she did not answer him within the next twenty-four hours that he would request her to be sanctioned for abusing their relationship! Can you believe his audacity? If anyone should be sanctioned, it should be Willian. The amount of verbal abuse in those messages was inexcusable.”

  Amanda was not sure what the sanctioning would entail, but she could easily share in Riccan’s anger. She asked, “When was his last message sent?”

  “Only a couple of hours ago,” Riccan replied as he kicked a fallen palm frond from the path angrily.

  “What can we do about this, Riccan? We can’t let it continue, and I don’t want Jena to read any of those messages.”

  “I already took the first step by forwarding each of the messages to Elder Debbon, my father, and Rasa. I have aired my concerns and have asked for their advice on the matter.” Riccan felt as though he had not done nearly enough to defend his daughter’s honor from that bastard.

  “So I guess we just wait and see what comes of it then.” Amanda put her arm around Riccan’s waist to show her support of the steps he had taken thus far.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE NEXT MORNING, Amanda found herself alone in the house. The girls were at school, and Riccan had left for work. Taking Riccan’s advice about using her intuition in trying to locate the missing samaras, she decided to go into the office and do some research of her own.

  After much thought, she decided to look into a part of her dream which did not seem to fit with the rest of the story. Why had she dreamed about Cannon Memorial Asylum? She typed the name of the asylum into the search engine and waited to see what the results would tell her about the facility.

&n
bsp; As she scanned the articles, she learned it was located in North Carolina, built in 1962. Then she came across an article which showed the medical group which ran the asylum had been bought out by another company. With the merger of the two sections, Cannon Memorial was slated to be shut down in the beginning of 1999.

  She clicked on the article and read the details of the merger. More importantly, she wanted to know where Dr. Gascon was going after the facility was shut down. She wanted to make sure she stayed clear of any place where he was actively doing business. Further review of the article showed Dr. Gascon had retired from institutional practice to go into private practice and consultation for coma patients. Apparently, he had not let go of his fascination with his multi-dimensional theory.

  Now that Dr. Gascon was no longer an issue, Amanda felt the overwhelming urge to visit the place of her dream. She could not say what had led her to the idea, but she was willing to take the leap of faith that she should follow her intuition. She scrolled through the several articles until she located the phone number for Cannon Memorial. She wrote down the number and turned off the computer.

  She had left her cell phone in the living room, so she left the office to make the call. Amanda dialed the number and expected to get an answering machine. To her surprise, someone picked up the call.

  “Cannon Memorial, may I help you?” a woman’s bored voice asked.

  “I was wondering if the facility were open for a walk-through,” Amanda asked.

  “There isn’t much here anymore, lady. The facility’s going to be closed in several weeks. The patients and their records have already been moved to their new facility.”

  “That’s fine. Perfect, actually,” Amanda spoke. She rapidly wracked her brain for what to say to the person for why she wanted to tour the empty facility. “I’m working on a documentary,and I need to see how a mental facility is set up.”

  “Whatever makes you happy, lady. Our building is open from eight to five during the week. We close for lunch from noon to one for the few staff who are still closing things up. Feel free to come over and walk the empty halls.”

  “Great! I’ll plan on coming up tomorrow then. Thank you!” Amanda hung up the phone and could not control the thrill of excitement she felt coursing through her body. She knew she was onto something important. Maybe she would even find the next clue to lead them to a samara. She chuckled at her last idea, but remained hopeful, nonetheless.

  After a moment’s thought, Amanda had another idea. She opened her phone and dialed her mother’s number. After two rings the call connected.

  “Hello?” Diane answered the phone.

  “Mom, it’s me, Amanda. Hey, are you busy today?”

  “Not really. What’s going on?” Diane could tell her daughter was excited by the tone of her voice.

  Amanda had begun to walk back into the office to look up flight information even as she was formulating her plan. “Do you want to go on a trip with me?”

  “A trip? Where are you thinking of going and when?”

  “I’d like to check out Cannon Memorial Asylum today. The only way we could do it would be to catch a flight to Charlotte. We can rent a car and be there before they close. What do you think? Are you in or should I go alone?” Amanda had pulled up flight records and saw the next scheduled flight left Miami at 9:55. If they hurried, they’d be just in time.

  “You can’t go alone! I’m going with you. How much time do I have to get ready?” Diane could not imagine letting her daughter step foot in that nuthouse after what she had read in Amanda’s journal. For that matter, she could not imagine Amanda even wanting to go there herself.

  “I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes. We’re going to have to hurry to make the 9:55 flight. We’ll come back tonight, so we won’t need to pack anything. See you in a couple of minutes.” Amanda hung up on her mom and then dialed the number for American Airlines. Even as she raced through the house, grabbed her purse, and ran to the garage, she talked with the ticket agent and arranged the flights.

  By the time she had reached the highway, everything had been arranged. She reached her mother’s house in record time and was thankful her mom was waiting on the sidewalk. They were on their way again within a matter of seconds.

  Diane could not help but smile at Amanda’s infectious mood.

  They were just in time for the flight and boarded the plane only twenty minutes after arriving and checking into the flight. Diane was surprised to find they had been booked in First Class. She had only flown a few times in her life, and it had always been in Coach.

  The flight was just over two hours long and had been very pleasant. Amanda rushed them off of the plane and through the airport to the car rental area. It was only twelve-thirty, but they were going to have to drive an additional two hours to get to the asylum.

  She was glad they had been fed on the airplane so they would not have to stop for food until dinner. She had booked their return flight for eight-fifteen that evening. They were going to be crunched for time, but she believed they could accomplish all they needed to get done.

  They made good time on the interstate in their economy rental car. Amanda imagined Riccan would have picked a luxury car for the trip, but she thought this car would be just fine, plus her mom would probably have been uncomfortable in anything nicer.

  “What do you hope to find at the asylum,” Diane asked Amanda now that they were alone. She had been dying to ask questions while they were flying, but it just had not seemed private enough on the airplane. It seemed as though the flight attendants were always lurking nearby to cater to their every whim. It had been quite annoying, really.

  “I’m not sure. Jehoban had told me to go with my intuition. My gut is telling me that Cannon Memorial holds more to this story than just making it so I would wake up from the coma.”

  “What about Dr. Gascon? Doesn’t he work there?” Diane recalled her reaction to Dr. Gascon once she had read what the man had done to Amanda from the writings in her journal. When she had met the man at Amanda’s last appointment with Dr. Medin, she had wondered at Amanda’s response to the doctor. Now she knew how truly evil the doctor was and she did not want her daughter anywhere near the crazy man.

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? The asylum is closing down. Dr. Gascon has retired to private practice. There won’t be any doctors or patients at the hospital. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to get in there before they won’t allow visitors into the facility.” Amanda kept her eyes focused on the road as she spoke. She did not want to miss any signs indicating turns for their route.

  “Well, that’s a relief!” Diane said as she looked out the side window and enjoyed the passing scenery for a while. The silence continued until Diane repeated her initial question. “What do you hope to find there?”

  “I hope there’s a clue to finding another samara,” she answered simply.

  “How will you know?”

  “I’m hoping I’ll feel it like I did with the one we bought in New Orleans.”

  “Oh.” Diane could not understand what her daughter meant by feeling it. The whole thing about the necklaces and the elemy was a mystery to her.

  Once Amanda turned off of highway NC-181N she pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and handed it to her mother.

  “What’s this?” Diane asked as she unfolded the paper.

  “Directions to the asylum. I don’t want to get lost now that we’re this close. Tell me what my next turn will be, please.” Amanda kept watching for signs.

  For another hour, her mother made sure they were driving on the correct roads. Finally, they pulled into the parking lot of the asylum. The imposing red brick building was straight ahead of them, and Amanda suppressed a shiver of fear. She was more thankful than ever to know there were no doctors or patients remaining in the building.

  They got out of the car and went to the entrance. Amanda could not help but feel the door would be locked and this trip would have been a waste of time. She put her hand on t
he handle and pulled the door open. She waited for her mother to enter first while she held the door open.

  A reception desk was the first thing they encountered. A woman, probably the same one Amanda had spoken to earlier, sat at the desk. They walked up to her and Amanda leaned on the credenza type desk to say, “I called earlier about taking a tour of the facility.”

  “Yes, I remember. I thought you said you were coming tomorrow?” she asked with a slightly annoyed tone.

  “Change of plans,” Amanda said brightly.

  “Suit yourself. Put on these badges. Be sure to return them to my desk before five o’clock, or you will be locked in the building all night,” she answered sharply.

  “Okay,” Amanda said as she picked up the two badges and handed one to her mother. She turned and addressed her mother, “Are you ready for this?”

  “As ready as you are!” Diane answered. She could tell her daughter was nervous and possibly afraid. She clipped the badge on her shirt and followed her daughter down the long corridor.

  They stopped at an elevator and waited for it to open. Amanda was trying to decide if she wanted to investigate the basement or the fourth floor first. She was more afraid of the basement so she thought she would rather get that out of the way first. Besides, she only had one room in which to look in the basement. There were several places on the fourth floor which held her interest.

  The doors opened, and they stepped into the large enclosure. The doors closed and Amanda picked the button marked with a B. They waited for several seconds as they felt the elevator drop down the shaft and come to an abrupt stop at the bottom. The doors opened to the dark hallway, exactly as Amanda remembered it being.

  Amanda took a deep breath and stepped out of the elevator. The sooner she got this done, the sooner she could go back up to the daylight. She marched down the hall until she reached the last room she remembered from this dreadful facility. When she reached the room in question, she pushed the door open and peered inside before committing herself to entering the space.