Lamp Black: Second Edition, Disaster, Preparedness, Survival, Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 2) (25 page)

John also saw the disembodied spirits of children, which surprised him until he realized all ages were present. It made sense to him because people died at all ages, but he didn’t see many children under the age of eight. The lost spirits were also dressed in the clothing of their period, which seemed to cover the last four or five hundred years.

A group of seven lost spirits caught John’s attention and he studied them closely. The group was composed of men and women, and it seemed to interact like any typical living group of people. Suddenly, the group scattered and hid themselves in an adjacent car. Curious about what would make lost spirits run and hide, John watched them carefully. He wanted to see what could scare a spirit that was already dead. Within a few short minutes, John saw three male spirits walking down the street. When the three spirits passed, the lost-spirits emerged from their hiding spot and resumed their conversation as if nothing had happened.

It was obvious to John that the three male spirits were a threat to the lost spirits, which meant they had to be evil. But they didn’t look evil, at least not like the evil spirits John encountered in hell. He noticed evil spirits looked a lot like lost spirits, but after closer examination he saw that the evil spirits had a few subtle differences; their facial proportions were off. For John, the most revealing difference was with their eyes. They were all wrong. They were either too big, too small, too close together, or too far apart. John reasoned that evil spirits could assume any shape they wanted, but because they never had a physical body, they couldn’t duplicate the finer details of one.
Or maybe they weren’t allowed to
, thought John. He understood why so many mortal people were confused about spirits. It was much more complex and complicated than he ever imagined.

John had learned enough from Sarrif to understand the general differences between what he decided to term LS’, for Lost
Spirits, and ES’, or Evil Spirits. He was now ready to return to his body, so he gently lowered himself into his sleeping form. When he made initial contact he recoiled, finding his physical body feeling cold and heavy. To John, feeling his body as a spirit felt a little like wrapping himself in a heavy wool blanket soaked in cold water. It didn’t help that his alignment was off, so he adjusted himself for a second attempt. When he was properly aligned, John dropped into his body. He heard a sort of odd clicking sound when the connection was complete. The rejoining of his spirit to his physical body sounded something like the joining together of two Lego blocks.

John slowly opened his eyes and sat up. He looked at his hands as he held them close to his face, and then wiggled his fingers. The room was too dark to see them clearly, so he reached over and turned on his battery powered LED lamp. It was a little after three in the morning. John guessed he had fallen asleep sometime around one-thirty, which meant he was “gone” for less than two hours. How he could have done so much - seen so much - in such a short amount of time, added another layer of wonderment to his mind.

John kicked his feet over the side of the bed and sat up. He felt exhausted, and debated on whether or not to stay in bed and get more sleep, or get up and record his experience. He decided he had had enough sleep. Besides, his mind was too busy for sleep. He stood up, but then he quickly sat back down when his head felt light. Jenna stirred as John lowered his face into the palms of his hands and tried to regain some composure. Jenna’s voice filled his ears like so much sweet, heavenly music, “Are you OK, baby?”

“Can’t sleep,” said John, barely able to suppress the emotion that surged through him at the sound of her voice.

“Here, lay down and let me rub your back,” she said, as she pulled the bedspread aside and patted the mattress with her hand. “I know you have a lot on your mind, but you really need to get some sleep.” With his pillow in hand, John situated himself close to Jenna, and
willed himself to relax as she began to work out the tension in his shoulders, neck and back. “Wow, you are tense,” she said softly.

John wanted to tell her about everything that had just happened, but he knew she wasn’t ready to hear it. For that matter, he wasn’t sure he was ready to explain it. He knew it would be a good idea to collect his thoughts before he tried to explain his experience to her, or at least think about it for a while and try to formulate a reasonable explanation for her, one that didn’t make him sound like he had lost his mind.

As he lay still under her firm and expertly probing fingers, John wasn’t sure what was real for him. His trip to the spirit world, coupled with the disaster, was almost too much for him to bear, let alone try to explain. It was as if his mental circuitry was very close to reaching its maximum capacity.

Jenna slowly and tenderly worked the knots out of John’s tense body, and he began to see how all the events fit together like pieces of some complex puzzle. Without the first dream, long ago, he would not have been prepared, or been alert enough to notice the news of the coming disaster. If he hadn’t reacted to the news the way he did, he wouldn’t have made the critical additional preparations. He might have survived with just his original preparations, but he saw how his recent actions put many new things into motion. More visions came, and then finally the trip to the other side.

John moaned as Jenna pressed hard against a knot in his upper back. “Thanks babe, that’s the spot,” he whispered softly to Jenna. He was absolutely certain his recent trip to the spirit world would not have happened if he didn’t have that first dream long ago. John knew that first dream put everything into motion for him. Without that dream, he would have been just another guy trying to live his life in complete and utter ignorance of how things actually worked, or what life really meant.
What did life really mean?
John wondered.
It was definitely more than flesh and blood
.

His recent spiritual experiences played a huge role in shaping his life over the past few days. To the point that the disaster itself seemed
little more than a mild inconvenience by comparison. He knew his awareness was due, in large part, to the grandness of his spiritual experiences, of being shown the destruction that occurred closer to the eruption, but that wasn’t all. He also followed his gut. As for the local effects of the disaster, it was nothing when compared to what happened to cities closer to Yellowstone. They were leveled, buried under a mountain of ash. No, he knew he was exactly where he was supposed to be, and it boggled his mind to consider the complexity of it all.

John lifted his head from the pillow and said, “I just had another . . . I don’t know what to call it really, a dream . . . a vision . . . a spiritual experience.” He waited patiently for Jenna to comment, but after a minute of silence John asked, “Are you OK?”

“I’m OK,” she said, “but I’m worried about you. I think you’ve been under a lot of stress lately and it’s taking a toll on you.”

It was John’s turn to be silent. He immediately realized that he wouldn’t be able to talk to Jenna about his trip to the spirit world. As much as he wanted to, as much as he really needed to talk to her about it, he knew it wasn’t the right time to share that news with her. It saddened him to have such knowledge and not be able to share it with her, but he understood her limitations. John knew the back-to-back visions were hard enough for her to bear, but to share his account of hell with her, or that he talked to God - that was way too much for her to handle right now. If he told her all about his trip, it would only serve to convince her that she was right; that he was under too much stress, and that he was losing his mind.

John knew most people wouldn’t accept the possibility that there was more to life than a physical existence. In fact, anything that shattered their perceptions of reality would be considered impossible, crazy, or evil. The last perspective always surprised John, how some Christians found fault with spirituality whenever it didn’t fit within the confines of their specific doctrinal parameters. It was as if their doctrine was the only, absolute truth, and anything beyond it was evil, or of the devil.

He knew he had attained a new level of awareness. He knew God was a living person, and the testimony of it was impressed upon him so completely, imprinted so firmly into his mind, that he couldn’t deny it, even upon pain of death. His testimony of God was engraved upon his soul like so much fine script carved into granite. John slipped briefly into sleep and roused himself, “I think all of us have been under a lot of stress lately,” he said. “But you don’t have to worry about me. I’ve never felt more alive, more aware and ready for what lies ahead than I am right now. What just happened was more different than anything else that ever happened before. But I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it anyway.”

“You know I’m OK with you talking about anything,” said Jenna.

John considered her words carefully. He knew a minefield when he saw, or heard one, and he wasn’t about to offend Jenna with his concerns about her inability to cope with his strange report. But he also knew he had to tell her something, that he couldn’t just drop it after what he already said. He thought, perhaps intuitively, that maybe she could handle news about the gates. “It was different from the other dreams. In this one I traveled through eight gates,” he replied.

“Gates?” asked Jenna.

“Yeah, gates. It was like, I don’t know, a cleansing process. I had to pass through eight gates to purify myself.”

Jenna paused to rest her hands on John’s back and asked, “How do you purify yourself by passing through gates?”

“It was interesting,” replied John. “It started at the bottom of a mountain. I saw a path and followed it into a clearing. The first clearing was earth, I think, or maybe stone. Anyway, there was this stone column in the middle of the clearing, and when I touched it I felt the strength of the earth. It was really powerful. At the end of the clearing was this big metal gate. It was taller than me, so the only way up the mountain was to pass through the gate, except the gate didn’t have any handles or hinges on it.”

“It sounds to me like it was more of a barrier than a gate,” interjected Jenna, between John’s contemplative pauses.

“Yes, it was . . . the gates were barriers. But that’s what was strange about them. Anyway, at the first gate I wondered how to open it, so I leaned against it with my hands and felt . . . fear.”

“Fear? Do you mean you were afraid of the gate?” asked Jenna.

“No. I wasn’t afraid of the gate, but the gate was . . . fear.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jenna. “How could the gate be fear?”

“I don’t know,” said John, “But when I put my hands on it, a feeling of fear filled me so completely that I had to step back. I looked around thinking someone was about to attack me.” He paused to give Jenna a chance to respond. He liked that Jenna was curious about the gates, but he didn’t want to push her into a challenging or stressful discussion about them. When she was silent for a sufficient amount of time to know she wasn’t going to comment, John added, “And when I put my hands back on the gate, I was filled with a fear of everything in my life . . . and I mean everything . . . from my childhood, up to today. It was really strange.” He paused and turned to look at her. “As I was about to surrender to the gate, to fear itself, I remembered touching the stone column and how it made me feel . . . that it gave me strength. As soon as I drew from that strength the fear broke, and the gate opened.”

“It opened? Just like that?” she asked.

“Just like that,” said John. “I pushed the gate open, passed through the archway, and closed it behind me. Closing the gate was weird too, it was like I knew that if I didn’t close it . . . my fear would somehow follow me.”

John gave Jenna another chance to inquire about the gates, but after more silence he thanked her for helping his back and gave her a hug. As she nuzzled against his neck, John ran his fingers through her thick brown hair and said, “I love you, Jenna. I know things have been really crazy lately, and I wish I could tell you things will improve, but I suspect crazy will be the new normal for the time being. I do believe things will get better, but I fear they’ll get worse before they do.”

Jenna gripped John in a fierce hug, and he tenderly stroked her back. “I’ll see us through this mess, Jenna. I promise you. I just need you to trust me,” he said.

She nodded her head against his neck and said, “I trust you, John. I know you can get us through this mess, but I don’t like it. I don’t like how everything changed. I can tell Adam is having fun, but I hope you’ll be there for him when the reality of it sinks in. He’s still just a kid, even if he’s almost your size. And Abby, well, I’m really scared for her because, even if we survive the disaster, we’ll have to address her insulin dependency again, down the road. And you, with all your dreams and stuff, I’m worried you’re going off the deep end.”

John felt the wetness of her tears on his shoulder. He didn’t know how to reassure her that he was fine, more than fine, really. “Jenna, baby, look, I’m fine. I really am. Don’t let my dreams scare you. There is so much more to them than I can put into words. If anything, I believe they’ll help us along the way. Remember, it was my dream long ago that put us on the road to preparedness in the first place. Without that first dream we would be in a very desperate situation right now. I know you see that? And Abby, well, I’m not worried about her either. I know things will work out for her as well.”

“I hear you, John, but that doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with it. I don’t understand how or why you have your dreams, or why you’re so confident about the future, but I trust you. I trust you will do everything in your power to take care of us.”

“Of course I will. You know I’ve done everything I can, and that I will continue to do everything I can, to take care of you and the kids. I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said John. Jenna laid back and pulled the covers up to her chin. John did the same, but slid close to her. He liked having contact with her while he slept, there was something defining about it. John closed his eyes, and in minutes he was asleep.