Chapter 24
“He saw me, Lindy! I swear,
he looked right at me! Only I don’t
think he saw me me. He saw… like…
a light, I guess. That’s what he said
anyway. But he was looking at me!”
AJ cried excitedly.
Lindy’s eyes widened. “He’s
a Believer,” she whispered in awe.
“A Believer? A Believer of
what? Angels?”
“Yeah… I guess so. I don’t
know much about them; I’ve never met a true Believer before, only heard about
them from other angels…”
“Other angels? Wait, you
know other angels? Like who?” AJ asked
with interest. He knew there were others
of his kind; Lindy had mentioned others before.
But he didn’t realize there were other angels around that she actually
knew. She spent most of the time hanging
around him, it seemed.
Lindy shrugged. “Just other
people,” she said, “But they’re all gone
now.”
“Well, where did they go??”
Another shrug. “Wherever
we go when we finish our missions.
Heaven, I’ve always assumed, but then again, I’m not positive of that.”
Missions. AJ had not
thought about that in a long time, but now he remembered his first conversation
with Lindy in the bookstore.
“Missions?”
“Yeah, missions. That’s the
point of being an angel,” she said, talking to him as if she were teaching a
class of first-graders. “You have to
complete your mission on Earth before you can get to Heaven.”
“Hey, speaking of missions…” AJ said, “… I still don’t know what
mine is.”
“Well, don’t look at me.
It’s not like I know,”
Lindy replied unhelpfully. “But don’t
worry, I don’t know what my mission is yet either. And I’ve been dead for over a year.”
AJ was jolted by her words.
Dead for over a year. He
suddenly felt like a character in a horror movie, talking to a ghost, a dead
person. The only thing was, he was dead
himself. It was hard to think of himself
as dead, not when he could still move and speak… to Lindy anyway. But he was dead and had been for almost two
months now. Morbidly, he thought back to
his own funeral and realized that his body was now buried six feet below ground
in a cemetery in West Palm Beach, rotting away.
He was nothing but a spirit now.
He shuddered at the thought.
“Hey, you okay?” Lindy asked, startling AJ out of his gruesome
thoughts.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” he
mumbled. Then, suddenly, he thought of
something. He opened his mouth, but
Lindy interrupted him before he could get a word out.
“So, back to Believers,” she said, returning to their earlier
topic. “They’re the only mortals that
can see us. Not really us in our ‘human’
form though, just a light in sort of a vague, human-ish shape.”
AJ nodded. “Brian must be
that then,” he said. “Cause he saw me,
but no one else could. Why only him
though? Why is he the only
Believer? He’s really religious, I know,
so maybe that’s it, but so is Kevin. And
Howie goes to church. And Leighanne,
she’s pretty religious too. And-”
“I’m not really sure,” said Lindy.
“Religion may play a part in it, but I think there’s more to it than
that. There’s got to be. I just don’t know what, what it is that
separates Believers from everyone else.”
“Well, do you think if I wrote Brian a note like I’ve been writing
Bianca, he’d believe me?” AJ asked, growing excited again.
Lindy shrugged. “Maybe,”
she said. “I guess it’s worth a shot.”
“Okay!” AJ exclaimed, jumping up.
He ran from his living room into the kitchen, solidified his right hand
(which was becoming easier and easier to do), and rummaged through one of the
drawers, hunting for a tablet of paper and a pen. He found both and carried them to the kitchen
table, where he sat down to compose a message to Brian.
Dear Brian, he wrote, in his light, shaky cursive (for his
solidified hand was weak, and it was hard to write). Then he set the pen down for a moment to
think what to say, how to word this.
Bianca had not believed either of his two notes, but Brian had to
believe this one. He just had
to. It seemed Brian might be AJ’s last
chance to communicate with any of them.
He had to do this right.
He picked up the pen again, but he did not write anything
down. He pondered over what to say,
tossing words and phrases around in his head, debating over what sounded
best. It was a lot like writing song
lyrics, except his lines did not have to rhyme this time.
AJ thought so long and hard, the pen cupped in his hand, that he
did not realize how much energy he was expending. Not until he began to feel weak and
light-headed, much more so than he usually did when he solidified part of
himself. And then… there was the
mist. A twinkling gold haze suddenly
began to close in on him from all sides.
“Lindy!” he cried out, feeling as though he were about to pass
out. “Lindy… what’s happening to
me?” In his ears, his voice sounded
muffled and far away.
“… The gold mist,” he heard her say, her voice fading in and out,
skipping as if it were a recording on a bad record. “Let… take you… must rest… get back… energy…”
But AJ did not want to let the gold mist take him. As it swirled around him, smothering him, he
felt terrified. He could feel himself
slipping away, but he did not want to go away, not when he might be so close to
reaching Brian. But inevitably, the gold
mist surrounded him, and then the twinkling gold fog faded to black, and he
knew no more.
***
“Brian?”
Leighanne’s soft voice cut through the quietness in the bedroom of
the hotel suite. Brian rolled over in
bed to face her. “Yeah?”
Leighanne was silent for a moment, as if she were reluctant to say
whatever it was she wanted to say to him.
Finally, she spoke again. “What
happened tonight, at Howie’s house?”
“What do you mean?” Brian asked, knowing full well what she
meant. She was talking about the light.
“I mean… what happened when we were drinking coffee. In the kitchen.” She waited a moment, then elaborated, “When
you saw… whatever it was you saw… behind Bianca. What was that? What was going on?”
Brian swallowed. “I don’t
know,” he said quietly. “It was nothing,
I guess. I just thought I saw
something.”
“No, it was not ‘ nothing’,” Leighanne argued. “You had to have seen something, Brian, or
you wouldn’t have acted like that. You
kept saying it was a light.”
“Yeah. But it must have
been only a reflection or a glare like Nick said… or something.”
“Something like what? I
looked too, Bri, and I didn’t see a reflection or a glare. I feel like you’re hiding something from me,
and I want to know what it is.”
Brian shifted guiltily in the darkness. He did not keep things from his wife very
often, but he felt like he had to keep this from her. She would think he was crazy if he told her
what he really thought it was. She
wouldn’t believe him. He wasn’t even
sure he believed it. No, that was a
lie. He did believe it. And that was the problem. She and everyone else would think he was
insane if they knew.
“Leigh, I don’t know,” he said desperately. “I don’t know what it was. I just thought I saw a weird light, but then
it went away. It was probably just my
eyes playing tricks on me. I dunno,
maybe I need to get them looked at.”
“Maybe,” Leighanne said doubtfully.
“Look, honey, I’m tired, and I want to just get to sleep,
okay? We can talk in the morning.” Just not about this, Brian added
internally.
“Okay,” Leighanne sighed.
“Goodnight, babe.
“Night, sweetheart,” Brian replied, leaning over and managing to
find Leighanne’s face in the darkness for a kiss. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” came Leighanne’s echo, and with a reassured
smile on his face, Brian rolled back over so that his back was again facing
Leighanne. He lay still and pretended to
go to sleep, but really, it took at least an hour or more for sleep to find
him. And when it did, he dreamed. He dreamed of the very thing that had been
plaguing his thoughts ever since he had seen the light…
***
There were people, people everywhere… they swarmed around my bed,
their faces hovering over me, blending together so that they were
undistinguishable…
“Oh, Brian… oh please, he’s so hot….”
“We need to lower his fever, stat.”
“He’s burning up…”
“Let’s put him back in the ice bath.”
“Please…”
There were several voices speaking all at once, confusing
him. One was his mother’s, that much he
knew. She sounded scared, and that
alarmed him. He felt fear… but more than
anything, he felt pain. It closed in on
him, settling in his chest, in his very heart…
“Mommy, it hurts… it hurts…”
“Do something! Please!”
He could hear his heartbeat in his ears, loud and very fast… the
pain grew…
“Mommy…”
“Help him! Help him!”
“Hang on, Brian! Hang on…”
But he could not hang on.
The pain grew more and more intense… his heartbeat grew louder and
quicker… and then, all of a sudden, the pain began to fade… but so did the
faces… and the voices… and then the entire room… until everything was dark…
And then, suddenly, there was a light… a very bright, very white
light… but not a blinding light… a comforting light… it seemed to beckon to
him…
Brian… Brian…
The light grew nearer and nearer, until he was enveloped in it…
his pain was gone now… he felt at peace…
And then there was another light… a silver one… it floated towards
him, small at first, then bigger and bigger… and it began to take form…
elongating until it was an indistinct shape… the shape of a woman… and it spoke
to him… not orally… but he heard the words loud and clear just the same…
Brian… don’t be afraid, Brian…
I am afraid, thought Brian. There’s so much pain…
I know there is… but you have to be strong.
The pain will go away soon… but you cannot. It is not your time yet, Brian. You must go back now… you must go back… you
are needed there.
I don’t want to go back, thought Brian. I don’t want to leave this place, this
bright, wonderful place.
But you must. It’s not your
time. Go on, now, Brian. Go on back.
It’s not time to come Home yet.
Okay… I’ll go back now…
Good… go on, Brian… be strong…
I will be strong. I will
be…
And then the Silver Light retracted and faded away… as did the
bright white that enclosed him… it began to fade… and closing his eyes, he let
it take him back…
***
Brian opened his eyes with a start and found himself lying in the
hotel bed next to Leighanne, bathed in sweat.
Just a dream, he told himself hazily. It wasn’t just any dream though. It was a recurring dream, one about his
near-death experience when he was just five years old. He had had the same dream many times as a
child and even a young adult, but he had not had it in years. He knew why he had dreamt it tonight though.
The Light. It was the
Light. The light he had seen behind
Bianca in Howie’s kitchen that night… it was similar to the Light, the Silver
Light, in his dream… the Light he had seen when as a five-year-old, when his
heart had stopped beating. It was not
just a light though, Brian knew. Though
he had never spoken of it to anyone, not even his mother, he knew that that
light he had seen then was something more than just a light, and it was not
something imagined or dreamed. He had
really seen it, while he was in some state between life and death. And it had saved him. It had sent him back to Earth, brought him
back to life.
It wasn’t just a light, Brian thought again. It was an angel.
***
