14 ROWS part 2

Copyright (c) 2016 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

14 ROWS

Part 2

By R. Peterson

Hank stumbled in his sleep and was caught by a nightmare. Once again, he was six-years old and running through Motha Forest. Each path led to a thatched house hidden in a foggy hollow. It was where the witch lived. “That woman is evil, sure as the moon walks at night,” his Paris-born mother had warned. “Don’t you ever go near where that Fille-de-la-nuit stirs her vile concoctions!”

Hank’s feet refused to obey him and he staggered down the stone path to the dark dwelling.

Melania’s house looked like a black fairy tale. Thorn covered black rose bushes guarded each side of an intricately carved passageway sunken in mortised river-stone. Hank’s right hand was as disobedient as his feet as it lifted a heavy gargoyle knocker against his will and let the grinning cast-iron monster fall with a boom on the heavy oak door.

Melania wore the same flower-print dress and white canvas gloves Hank had seen her wear when she weeded her flower gardens. A cloud of greenish vapors escaped from a dark chamber as she took his hand and pulled him inside. “I thought you would never arrive!” She pointed. “Your protectors were too hungry to wait any longer.”

King and Fritz sat on chairs as though they were people, rather than dogs, and lapped liquid from dishes covering a banquet-sized table, although the two massive hounds wouldn’t be born for another seventy-eight years.

“I’m sure there will be plenty, although you must wait a little longer.”

Hank sat between the dogs and lifted a spoon just as something from above splashed into his bowl. His gently swinging mother hung by her feet from heavy beams crossing the ceiling. Blood dripped from a jagged tear in her throat. “I told you not to come,” she moaned.

Hank was out of bed and was half-way to the front door wearing only a pair of yellowed mail-order Long Johns from Sears and Roebuck Company before he realized it was just a dream.

-------2-------

Hank knew it was only a nightmare but he threw open the front door anyway. The farm house felt stifling like the inside of a tomb. Hank heard the frantic mooing of all three milk cows at the same time that he felt something wrap around his bare ankles. The plant material binding his feet was nothing more than long stems and leaves, probably blown by a gust of wind, although the plants looked new and not the dry and withered corn-stalks in last year’s garden spot.

He looked toward the barn in time to see one cow impossibly disappearing into the night sky and another being lifted off the ground by a beam of bluish green light. The bellowing Holstein ascended until it vanished into a lit-from-within cloud obscuring the stars above the north pasture. Hank kicked frantically at the plant material around his legs. He wasn’t about to let anyone or anything steal his livestock … he’d think about the how later. His legs came free a moment before he felt something wrap around his neck. The same long thin leaves and stems were cutting off his air supply. First one then another corn-stock walking upright on legs made of tangled roots stepped from the shadows of the barn. Suddenly the whole farm yard was covered with creeping plants and slithering vines.

Hank used both hands to tear the choking fibers from around his throat. On the roof of the farm house, another corn plant gripped the wooden shingles and hung off the edge as it lowered more stems and leaves. Hank turned and leaped into the house and slammed the door just as the plant behind him tried to force its way inside. The master entry-lock below the knob hadn’t been used for years. Hank hoped it would hold as he ran to the kitchen window and peered outside. The hellish garden crop was not ramming and pounding on the door trying to break it down. Instead, thin quickly growing bean tendrils seeped into every crack and began to tear boards loose from the house.

Hank remembered a new type of herbicide called 2-4-D he’d left on the back porch. The broken window he’d meant to fix was now an entryway for creeping bean stalks growing at a fantastic rate as he seized the three gallon metal sprayer and ran back into the kitchen. The can felt about half full. Charles Simmons the farm agent in Cloverdale had warned him the new chemical, issued to farmers on a trial basis, killed everything but grass. “I hope you’re right Charlie!” Hank yelled as he pumped air pressure into the tank.

The living room window shattered and green peas like ammunition fired from a scattergun struck the far wall and began to bounce across the wooden floor planks. Hank hadn’t cleaned the house for months. Each time a pea found its way into soil between the warped boards it began to grow.

Hank stomped barefoot on as many rolling pea seeds as he could find and then turned the sprayer on a seedling already more than a foot tall and sending exploratory vines through the kitchen cabinets. Spilled salt, pepper and Bob’s Red Mill baking soda littered the counter top. The dripping plant took forever to stop growing. Finally it twisted and spun making a sound like steam escaping from a tea kettle as it dropped a bag of Old Hill Side Pipe Tobacco and crumbled like a pile of cooked vegetables onto the floor. The spray can was almost empty. Rusty nails were sliding out of the hinges as expanding green stems pushed on the door from the outside.

Hank reached for a sixteen-gage Winchester 1910 double-barrel hanging on two pegs behind the woodstove. He searched but couldn’t find more than a handful of shells for the shotgun. It would not be enough.

The first blast sent two charging corn plants spraying off the porch like chunks from a corn silage chopper chute. The pigs had been worked into a hysterical fury, flying around the pen like wasps caught in a jar. An army of green plants marched steadily toward the farm house in rows, skirting wide around the outside of the enclosure and ignoring the screaming gourmands.

Light from a waning moon showed a huge knobby spud as big as a truck uprooted and pulsing on top of the blasted soil like an enormous garden slug. Long tentacle-like stolons stretched forth in all directions like spokes from an alien wagon-wheel. Corn, peas and beans marched in the directions the vines pointed. If there was a mind behind this vegetal madness and assault it was this potato.

Hank used the remaining shells to blast the giant potato twice and then again after re-loading. White dripping mash spread across the un-mowed lawn, but the giant tuber seemed only slightly damaged. Hank threw the empty gun at three charging bean plants right before he vaulted toward his car … of course the battery was dead. Grasping stems and leaves wrapped around his neck and hands like herbal fingers as he turned the crank on the front of the 1936 Oldsmobile. The engine roared to life just as he was about to lose consciousness and spun peas in all directions as the murderous vines caught in the crank shaft.

For a moment Hank thought he might actually get away. Spinning tires shot plumes of dust in the air as he made a wide circle in the farm yard and shot toward the highway. A rickety bridge crossed an irrigation canal just before the gravel road and vines had woven together like a giant spider web to block his escape. The speeding vehicle broke through the first strands of vegetable matter but slowed as vine upon vine slowly brought the car to a halt. Green leaves covered the windows and finally the air vents. He heard familiar voices … the last words spoken between him and Lewis before his son went to France.

“You take care of yourself in Europe … life is cheaper there than it is in the states.”

“I’ll be careful … you make sure you’re still plowing, cussing and planting when I return!”

Hank was losing consciousness as darkness descended upon him, so he didn’t know if the voices came from inside … or from without.

-------3-------

A hand rested on his shoulder and shook him gently. Hank opened his eyes hoping without hope that the events of the day before had been just another nightmare. The witch Melania stared down at him from the open car door. “You!” Hank lurched backward against the passenger door. “I knew you had to be behind this!”

Melania’s eyes swept across the deteriorating farm yard where mutated plants hung on fence-posts and against sheds in an unearthly stillness. “This is not my bag of tricks,” she said. “I was awakened from a delightful dream to travel here to help you.”

            “I didn’t ask you to come here,” Hank stammered. “Go away! Leave me alone and stop your bewitching”

            “I was summoned by your extraordinary son, Lewis,” Melania said and then added with a slight degree of indignation, “… such a sweet sprout to come from such a vile and twisted stump.”

Hank stared across the farm yard at the now idle plant monsters. A black carriage with two horses was parked in his apple orchard. “Either you’ve had a change of heart or your horrible bottle of black magic has leaked itself out of poison!”

“There is nothing horrible or black about what I do,” Melania said. “Magic is only knowledge that others don’t have.”

“Then why are these enchanted plants that were ready to kill me only an hour ago, now frozen on a fifty-degree night?”

“Enchanted is not the correct term,” Melania said gazing up at the stars in the sky. “Otherworldly life forms would be a more appropriate description.”

“Go away and leave me alone!” Hank opened the passenger door and began to climb out.

“Stay where you are!” Melania insisted. “These alien tainted offshoots are only sleeping. Any movement on your part might awaken one … and then the entire crop will become hungry.”

“Sleep?” Hank was angry. “Plants don’t sleep!”

“All living things sleep,” Melania said glancing at a watch hanging from a tiny chain around her neck. “Without a pair of tired eyes to slowly close or a tattered snore … people don’t notice.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“Wait!” Melania said. “Your two best friends are at this moment bringing help!”

“I don’t have any best friends … not for over twenty years,’ Hank grumbled.

“King and Fritz would disagree with that statement.” Melania pointed toward the gravel road where a cloud of dust could be seen in the early morning light followed by the noisy grunts and squeals as two dogs herded a mass of running swine. “Your best friends were scratching at my door the same time that Lewis appeared. I sent them to round up a herd of hungry pigs from the outlying farms.”

“You can talk to animals?” Hank put his head in his hands. “I knew it … you have to be a witch.”

“Most people talk to their pets!” Melania was walking toward the pig pen as the squealing herd approached. “What they don’t do is listen. All animals have their own language and different ways of communicating.”

Melania opened the gate on the pen just as over three-hundred pigs thundered into the farm yard. Hank’s eight remaining swine quickly joined the others. The plants began to awaken and the barnyard was filled with the sounds of bloody battle. “Pigs are omnivores,” Melania said as she climbed into the Oldsmobile and closed the door. “These are very hungry and they can eat just about anything including wood, glass, tin cans and the tires on your car.”

They watched as the squealing and grunting herd finished off all the plants and then moved in on the large potato in the middle of the garden. In less than twenty minutes it was all over. King and Fritz once more drove the herd down the road.

            “Where are they going?” Hank jumped from the car calling the dogs.

            “They’ll be back,” Melania said. “They have to return the pigs to the people who own them.” She looked over the yard where not even a stem or leaf remained. “Each of those animals must have eaten at least twenty pounds of greens. That should save the farmers money on feed.”

The sun was just rising over the eastern horizon. “I’m sorry I tried to run you off,’ Hank hung his head and stammered. “I grew up being told you were evil and I never believed otherwise.”

            “I’ve done many things that I’ll never confess to,” Melania laughed as she walked toward the wagon. “The world and everything in it is always in balance.”

            “I don’t suppose I’ll ever see my cows again,” Hank wiped his head with one Long John shirt sleeve.

            “They were not stolen,” Melania gazed at the fading stars and seemed to be listening to sounds only she could hear. “Keeper and his intergalactic crew, although reckless at times, are not thieves. I’m sure your garden-grown monsters were only an accident of radiation. Your cows were only borrowed for a while … like I did your neighbors’ pigs. For what reason is not part of this story. They should be back in the barn where they belong … by lunch time.”

            “You said you spoke to Lewis!” Hank’s eyes lit up for the first time in months. “Where is he? I’d like to see him.”

            “He’s close enough that you can hear his heart beating if you listen,” Melania called over her shoulder as she quickened her pace. “To see him … you have to look for what isn’t there.”

            “It’s more than six miles back to town and you drove out here in a wagon!” Hank looked at the aged woman with new respect. “I thank you for what you did.”

            “I’ve been thinking of trading these old plugs in for something faster and with more spark,” Melania said as she took the reins, “perhaps one of those new Buicks that can cut through these cold winter nights like skates on ice.”

-------4-------

Hank watched the witch rumble down the road and then did his morning chores. After lunch, he checked on the cows. All three Holsteins were back in the barn just like Melania said. The afternoon sun was hot for mid-June. Hank sat on the porch with a glass of lemonade and thought about buying more seed and about what the witch had told him. The woman talked in riddles for sure.

            The glass was almost empty when a cloud of dust rose in the distance from the gravel road. At first Hank thought perhaps Melania was returning, but the vehicle was moving too fast to be a wagon. He recognized the dark blue Ford sedan from Cloverdale as Sheriff Walker and a deputy exited the vehicle. They both took off their hats as they reluctantly approached the porch.

There could be only one reason for the visit … Lewis!

Hank tried to look for things that were not there as he climbed from the porch, swallowed hard and walked out to meet them.  

THE END?

14 ROWS

Copyright (c) 2016 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

14 ROWS

By R. Peterson

Hank Malcome held tight to his stained Fedora as he closed the pig-pen gate. Two mud encrusted sows pushed against seven others and screamed like first time mothers giving birth. “You gots a damn crawl-under … get in there!” An ugly darkness called a black roller approached from the southwest, bringing night two hours early.  Tangled clouds covered the sky like diseased blankets boiling in a kettle. With the sows finally secured in their pen, Hank gave a cursory glance to last year’s hams hanging from a rafter in the barn’s far corner, and double checked to make certain the all-important sacks of seed for this year was safely stored, along with Hank’s motley collection of shovels and rakes. Satisfied that he’d done all he could to guard against the approaching storm. It was a good thing he’d put-off planting. The air was already lifting dust. In fifty-seven years of farming, Hank had seen stolen top soil and seed from western Montana scattered as far as Nebraska. An eighty-four year old widower, he was too old to plow the four hundred and nineteen weeded acres he still paid taxes on. Two dozen animals and fourteen rows of vegetables got him through most winters.

An eight-foot piece of corrugated metal tore loose from a rusted granary and almost made a gift out of Hank’s head before it wrapped a sagging fencepost. “Christ! Send the Devil my name!” He gazed across last year’s withered corn toward a pasture as he straddled the broken porch-steps on the 1920’s homestead. Three milk-cows clomped with heads down into the wind. The open barn doors were weeded in place, but faced away from most rain. “King! Fritz! Where the hell are you?” Hank couldn’t see either dog. If they was too dumb to come home, they’d have to find a hill and howl their way through. He went inside the house and waited. An hour later the storm came … and it brought with it a monster.

-------2-------

Hank stirred a large pot of El Rancho stew on the ancient Home comfort stove. What he didn’t eat of the World War 1 recipe right-off he’d store in an ice box. Drops of wind-blown water pelted the cedar-shake roof like grain-seed pouring into a metal silo and then nickels and dimes filling a cookie jar as the rain turned into hail. Thunder shook the house. The lone light bulb swinging on a cord over the kitchen table flickered twice as lightning lit up the outside barnyard like a scene from the talking motion picture Frankenstein.

It had been over ten years since Hank had been to the Royal Theatre in Cloverdale. His wife had been alive then, hiding her face in Hank’s arm when a bolt of lightning on the silver screen made the stitched-together movie monster move its hand. Hank remembered the popcorn box tumbling between the seats and his own racing heart. Death in the movies is always quick and spectacular, not the slow twenty-eight months of heartbreak and pain that he and Emma endured.

A wet face against the window glass made Hank lose the grip on his spoon. “Damn you Fly Boy!” Hank cursed the yellow tom yowling on the back of the porch rocker as he fished the spoon from the boiling pot with a fork and still shaking hands. Lightning flashed and thunder shook the house again. This time the power went out for good. Hank felt his way into a kitchen cabinet and found a half-dozen candles tied with string. A minute later he located a box of Diamond safety matches.

He lit a candle and let the wax drip onto a saucer before standing it upright. A girly calendar hung crookedly on the wall showing a scantily clad girl wearing black nylons, proclaimed “In June there’s magic in the air and being on our toes this Varga guy made me supply "Black Magic” in my pose!” It was a birthday gift from his overseas son. Hank had circled every day up to June 10^th. The month and the year 1944 were both almost half over.

Hank didn’t get many visitors and with the children both grown-up and gone it often felt lonely. Lewis was working in France at a village called Oradour-sur-Glane helping the French with agriculture problems and Bertha lived in California with her husband and two almost-grown kids. Hank hoped Lewis would meet up with some of his old army buddies soon … the small village in central France sounded like a lonely place to be.  The roar of the wind outside grew louder … thumps, crashes and bangs as the farm was steadily blown apart.

Hank placed the candle and saucer on the table and ladled himself a bowl of the stew. He sat in a rickety chair and read last week’s the Vanishing River Tribune: ALLIES INVADE NORTHERN FRANCE. The dogs still weren’t back yet. The wood-box was half-full. “It ain’t winter and I ain’t likely to freeze,” Hank mumbled as he adjusted the spectacles on his nose.

The bowl was only half finished when Hank began to nod; he pushed the bowl away, and rested his head on his arms. He’d just close his eyes for a minute and then he’d finish his food. The roar of the wind and rain outside suddenly stopped. The only sound was Hank’s gentle snoring. In the distance the scream of a feline fighting an unseen fore sounded briefly and then was stilled. The light-bulb dangling from the cord flickered twice and then popped. There was a smell of ozone. A shaft of green and silver light slipped through the windows, then through a crack under the door and searched the room like a hungry snake looking for mice and a place to nest. The electric clock hanging on the wall and half covered by Hank’s coat and chore overalls sprang to life, spun to exactly 4:19 AM and then stopped with a solitary click.

Outside a beam of light lit the yard like noon and then flickered like a torch as it moved to the barn. Hank could hear men’s screams mixed with those of women and children; his son among them. Hank snorted, moaned softly and swallowed as he whispered “Lewis!” But he did not awaken.

The bowl with the half eaten stew lifted from the table and turned slowly in the air followed by a salt and pepper shaker orbiting like moons around a celestial body. The sound of hail on the wood shingles returned but this time slower and louder like footsteps as it crossed the roof and stopped next to the chimney. There was a swooshing sound, the rattle and thud of things falling from shelves, and then a low plunk and the house began to fill with smoke.

The strange light in the barn moved outward and settled inside the shed where Hank kept his tools and seed. The latch that Hank had so carefully closed grew hot and then fell sizzling to the wet ground. A large bag containing smaller sacks of corn, beans, carrots, radishes and pumpkin seeds lifted into the air, spun for a moment as the door creaked open and then disappeared outward and upward into the night.

High above the farm ground in North Western Comanche County, a very large, oblong, some would say cigar-shaped, metal object floating in the sky, almost hidden in pulsing green and yellow vapors, caught the seed bag and pulled it inside.

Hank saw Lewis’ eyes, felt the silent screams and knew his son was burning. He woke with a start just as the bowl and both shakers fell to the table. His reading glasses lay twisted and the metal frames half melted on the floor. The room was filled with smoke. The house was on fire!

Hank fought his way to the front door and stumbled outside coughing. It was minutes later, splashing water on his face from a hand pump near the pig pen that he realized there were no flames. Smoke continued to pour from the house that smelled faintly like a bloated cow carcass Hank had burned two seasons before.

The sun was a glow in the eastern sky when Hank got the house sufficiently aired-out enough to investigate. The smoke had to have come from the Home Comfort stove. The stove itself was fine. The smoldering blockage Hank discovered in the chimney pipe dropped him to his knees. Fly Boy could be a pest sometimes … but who the hell could do something like that to an animal?

-------3-------

The yard around the house and barn was littered with broken tree limbs, muddy puddles and a torn canvas tarp that didn’t belong on the farm. His first job was to check on the farm animals. The three Holsteins huddled in one corner of the barn. Hank had never seen such malevolence in the cows’ eyes. When he reached out to rub one of the animal’s neck to sooth it like he often did before he started milking, the terrified creature bit him. “I’ve been bit by dogs, snakes, thousands of insects and that fortune telling woman at the County fair,” Hank said shaking his wounded hand in the air. “But this has to be a first!”

The pigs trotted in a frantic counter-clockwise circle inside the pen, making low squeals and agitated grunts. Hank counted eight before he noticed the sow down in the center. She lay in a tangled pile on the only patch of dry. Her head and bristled snout were cocked at an impossible angle. Obviously her neck was broken from a fall, but Hank didn’t know how. The highest thing in the pen was a crude wooden hut barely over two feet off the ground that the pigs were too fat to climb on.

Hank could see no trace of the dogs. He whistled and called as he checked the farm machinery and the chicken coop. Hank removed a broken willow branch from around the throttle lever and an empty milk-can rolled and lodged under one back wheel but the Ford tractor seemed intact. The chickens had not been so fortunate. Most lay in a tangle of legs, beaks and feathers. Several hung upside down, the muscle stiffening of rigamortis causing their icy talons to clutch the horizontal pole that crossed the back of the coop as a roost.

Hank had heard wild stories about flocks of fowl being thunder struck, sometimes falling right out of the sky, killed by the sheer magnitude of a storm’s violent rumble, but had never seen it happen until now. “Ned Winchester is going to get both ears full the next time I go in for a shave and haircut,” Hank mumbled as he rubbed two days stubble on his chin.

By afternoon the sun was peeking from behind a few clouds and the puddles that littered the farm were now but damp smudges on the quickly drying soil. “Best get them taters in the ground before the rain comes back.”

Hank cranked-up the Ford tractor, pulled out the dead sow and then plowed and rowed the garden area one more time before he went for the seed. The large sack, that Hank was sure he’d left on a shelf, sat on the floor by the door but looked unharmed. The bag felt heavier than he remembered. “Must be age,” Hank muttered, “like them bib-overall legs that grows a quarter-inch every year after fifty.”

The sun was shining brightly as Hank used a rake handle to make a furrow for the seed to drop into; corn, beans, peas and taters slipped under a half-turned shovel… fourteen rows in all.  He was tired and without his glasses, Hank didn’t notice the light coming from the seed, a diseased fire from within each plant cell making the future vegetables glow with bizarre life and radiant energy.

Hank poured some of last night’s stew into two bowls and set them on the porch. He called and whistled for the fifth time that day. The two dogs were nowhere to be found and night was coming on again. He shucked off his overalls and crawled into bed this time. Moments later he drifted off to sleep with the steady clicking of the clock behind the coat rack. Time was still unexplainably stuck on 4:19 AM.

-------4-------

The next morning Hank dug the 1936 Oldsmobile out of the potato cellar where he’d stored it for the winter and went looking for the dogs. None of the neighbors had seen anything of King or Fritz. Mrs. Adams was hanging laundry on a line when Hank stopped next to her mail box. “Ain’t you too old to be driving a car?”

“I’m only sixty-eight. I’m not in the grave yet!”

“You will be if you don’t slow the hell down … and stop lying about your age!”

“I haven’t taken the Olds over forty for ten years!”

“Speed don’t make a fool, the years grow ‘em. Are you the one who ran over Felix?”

Mrs. Adams pointed to a platter sized circle of fur lying next to the road, flattened like a pancake.

            “You know if I’d done that I would have stopped and confessed my crime!”

Hank didn’t tell her what had happened to his own yellow cat. Rose Adams was a suspicious woman by nature; she might think that Hank was making up stories to cover his own tracks. Hank shook his head as he drove to the next farm. Rose had been a real beauty at sixteen; he’d thought seriously about courting her. Age brought out all the wrinkles in a person. It became harder and harder to hide who you were.

            The bowls filled with stew were still uneaten when Hank returned home. Most of the animals had settled down with the evening coming, all except the pigs. When Hank walked out to the pen they was all still running circles. He threw buckets of water to cool them off, but it made them run faster.

            Hank had a hard time falling asleep. The clock on the wall next to the coat hook was ticking louder than ever but the hands were still frozen on 4:19AM and refused to move. He brought the bowls of stew inside and emptied them into the slop bucket for the pigs. The radio was updating reports of the Allied Invasion of France interspersed with commercials for Old Dutch cleanser. Hank finally fell asleep during the broadcast of a radio drama called Helpmate.

Outside in the garden area under the light of a waning moon the earth began to tremble. Corn sprouts broke through the soil at the top of the garden rows. The vegetables grew at an alarming rate, faster than any plant on Earth. In less than an hour the corn plants were more than three foot tall, twisted and malformed with jagged barbs running up and down the stalks like spider legs. At six foot the plants began to uproot themselves. Swollen ears appeared bursting through the husks with the kernels enlarged and misshapen. Hank snored softly, ignoring the screams of the pigs and the cows as they kicked the sides of the barn stalls. At 4:19 AM the hands on the clock behind the overalls began to move again, and over twenty corn plants began a deadly march toward the house.

To be continued …

THE SPIRIT WORLD part 2

Copyright (c) 2016 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

THE SPIRIT WORLD

Part 2

By R. Peterson

I floated next to Renhet as we watched hundreds of Gims follow the crowds into Madison Square Garden. I was amazed that the two opposing spirits interacted so closely with people and yet went completely unnoticed by the living. “Don’t people realize that they have the influence of the Lan and the Gim almost constantly in everything they do?”

            “Most people do, I think,” Renhet said. “I know when I was living I always struggled with what I called nagging doubts whenever something important that I had to do came up. It seemed to be there a lot more, and speak much louder than the small voice that said you can do it.”

            “Why was that?”

Renhet laughed, and made the glowing sphere floating above her white triangle appear to jiggle. “Either the Gim vastly outnumbered the forces for good or else the Lan assigned to me was exceptionally lazy,” she said.

I thought about this for a moment. “Or perhaps you didn’t listen closely enough.”

Renhet’s large blue eyes took on a purplish tint for just a moment and then cleared. “You are probably right,” she sighed. “People are always so busy they seldom listen to what they call intuition.”

Along with the large multitude of Gims moving into the event center we also noticed a large number of Lan. Renhet pulled one of the Lan away from a group as it was about to go inside.

            “You look very busy, İzci,” Renhet told her. “Any idea about what’s going to happen?”

            “Most of the fans are wrestling with the same challenges,” İzci said. “Drugs, financial problems, and matters of heart and desire.”

            “Then why the invasion of Gim?” Renhet averted her eyes to where a large bus had just stopped in front of the main doors. A large group of over excited Japanese tourists moved toward the garden followed by twice as many Gims, a seemingly endless throng of them streamed from  the bus like storm clouds of tiny flying insects.

            “We think it has something to do with Sir Paul McCartney’s backing orchestra,” İzci turned her eyes toward where a dozen hefty men were carefully unloading musical instruments and stage equipment from two large semi-trucks. “The thirty-member symphony orchestra arrived in six separate limousines, but there was one group we could not get close to.”

I followed Renhet’s gaze as she watched  a small group of humans taking possession of what looked like violins, cellos and other musical instruments carefully packed for travel. At least a hundred Gim and a storm cloud of insects surrounded the musicians.

            “It’s the string section,” İzci said. “We’ve had a dozen Lam pop when they tried to get close.

            “Pop? What is she talking about,’ I asked Renhet.

            “When too many Gim cluster on one Lan they can bring up the past and cause an overload of bad feelings, anger, regret and mostly fear,” Renhet explained. “All Lan have experienced a previous life, of course, and everyone especially humans make mistakes.” Renhet’s eyes grew large as she looked at me. “When that happens many Lan implode back into what they were before and become useless to us.”

            “What were you before?” I knew I’d made a mistake as soon as the words left my mouth.

            “Alive,” Renhet looked at me with amusement in her eyes. “We were all alive.”

            “Becoming alive again?” I was intrigued. “It doesn’t sound too bad.”

            “You haven’t been here long enough to enjoy the sugar of this dimension,” Renhet said. “Going back to a mortal existence is definitely a lower rung on the ladder.”

We followed the orchestra as they made their way through a side entrance, a safe distance behind the throngs of Gim. “Are we going to need to buy tickets?” I asked.

            “Don’t be silly!” Renhet laughed as we floated through a wall and past the entrance booths. At $85 to $300 a seat I was beginning to understand some of the sweetness in this world.

-------2-------

McCartney’s tour manager had pulled out all stops for this concert hiring some of the world’s best musicians so that old Beatles classics like Hey Jude and All You Need is Love could be played with full orchestral accompaniment. We were backstage, and watched as thirty members of the orchestra carefully placed their instruments into the pit area below the stage and began the meticulous tuning that would ensure every note was brilliantly executed.

A Lan whispered to Renhet, she listened, nodded and then turned her attention to me: “Pirouline wants every available Lan to meet inside Chase Square.”

“Who is Pirouline?” I asked as we moved toward the garden’s newly renovated lobby.

“She is what we all hope to become and also our leader,” Renhet said as we moved effortlessly through the crowd.

I tried to stay close, not because I thought I’d get lost, but because being close to Renhet gave me a strange tingling sensation, like falling in love for the first time. And those eyes, those large blue eyes … they took my breath away.

Chase Square was packed with concertgoers but we had plenty of room as we floated above the crowd.

            “We all know something is going on here tonight,” Pirouline told us all without speaking. “The size of the Gim’s presence indicates massive death and destruction. We have already lost a dozen Lan because of the Gim’s extra tight security.” She was looking directly at Renhet when she continued. “We need someone to turn and get close enough to obtain details. It is the only way we will know what they plan and how to stop it.”

            “I’ll do it.” Renhet didn’t hesitate. I could feel a sigh of relief sweep through the Lan.

            “The Gim have monopolized access to the orchestra musicians. You know the risks and the consequences if you are caught?”

            “I know, you do not pass go and do not collect two hundred dollars.” Renhet smirked.

Pirouline made a popping sound with her mouth, blinked and Renhet nodded that she understood.

The Lan were taking assignments from Pirouline when I forced Renhet to look at me. Those eyes left me almost speechless. “What does it mean to turn?” I stammered.

            “You become dark, a Gim for hopefully only a short time,” Renhet turned away.

            “But why you?” I followed her as she moved toward the back stage area.

            “You have to have an abundance of darkness inside you,” she said. “I did some reputable things while I was alive that makes me the logical choice.”

            “What could you possibly have done that would make you bad?” I was astonished.

            “We all have a past,” Renhet said turning away. “Things we wish we could do over.”

-------3-------

            McCartney opened the concert with the old Beatles classic A Hard Day’s Night while  images from the early sixties film and other material were projected on a giant screen behind the band. “I don’t want you too close to me but close enough to come if I need you,” Renhet insisted. I watched from a distance as my favorite Lan became darker and darker. I wondered what memories she was bringing from the past to make the change. Still those gorgeous eyes kept me spellbound and I found myself singing along with the band as the song ended. “… you make me feel all right.”

The band was doing their fourth number Twist and Shout when Renhet became as black as the bottom of a well and joined the Gim the guarding the string section of the orchestra. I kept my distance but moved to where I could watch her eyes as she slowly moved through the throng.

The show had been going on for over an hour. McCartney had just played Something as a tribute to George Harrison and was telling a story about the early Hamburg days in Germany. The Gim were crowded closely around a swarthy man playing a bass violin. Renhet was having trouble getting close. I could see several of the Gim flash red eyes at her as she pushed her way closer.

Renhet kept sinking out of sight, it was as if every Gim in the pit area was now surrounding her. I floated in the air like a chunk of wood on a storm tossed sea as the band played With a Little Luck, Coming Up, Silly Love Songs, and a duet featuring Stevie Wonder on Ebony and Ivory.

McCartney had just pulled a female audience member onstage and was singing an acoustic version of If I fell in Love with You to the star struck sixty-year old fan when Renhet made eye contact. The Gim surrounded her, packed so tightly that  she couldn’t move. The eyes I’d fallen in love with signaled Help Me!

I was fighting my way toward Renhet along with at least a hundred Lan. The Gim were resisting ferociously. When I pushed against one of the dark funnel shaped beings , I first felt an icy cold then seething anger. The fury quickly became fear. I was a child again lost in a nightmare, descending a stairway into a dark cellar where an ugly dwarf waited.  I wanted to scream but I had no voice. I was thrown back again and again but I forced myself to forget my past and pushed forward.

McCartney was introducing the last song of the concert when I fought my way close enough to have Renhet reach out and touch me with a tiny thread-like arm. The Gim were all chanting Allah … Eid al-Fitr … Allah.

A library of information flowed to me from her at the speed of light and I was stunned. Qamar Ancona was born in Turkey the son of the ambassador to Britain. He grew up in a wealthy oil-rich family and began playing the floor-bass violin at age six. The twenty-million dollar 1711 Stradivari Cello he played to acclaimed audiences world-wide was a gift from the Saudi Royal Family. The one-of-a kind musical instrument delivered a tone and resonance like no other. It was also the delivery system for death and destruction on a scale never seen since Hiroshima. A radicalized Muslim; Ancona joined the Levant (ISIS) when he was fourteen. This was to be his last concert. Hidden inside the base of the priceless instrument was four kilograms of enriched plutonium encased in lead shielding and connected to an elaborate fusion device made entirely of plastic materials. The nuclear bomb was set to detonate on A E A (Allah Eid Allah) and the final three orchestral bass-notes of Live and Let Die.

            “Destroy the cello before it destroys the world!” Renhet’s words entered my mind like the last gasp from a drowning victim and then she was engulfed by the enraged Gim.

Pirouline was pushing beside me and when she brushed against me I felt the shocking information transfer to her. “How do we destroy the cello?” I was frantic. “Should we try to alert a human guard?”

            “Even if we were to convince a human that the musical instrument contained a nuclear device,” Pirouline said.  “Nobody is going to pry the back off an irreplaceable musical treasure. This is how the bomb was smuggled into the United States.”

            “There must be something we can do!”

            “We can do nothing!” Pirouline said. “It takes an angel to interact with humans.”

The only angel I knew was the one Renhet had spoken to earlier, a gum chewing prostitute named Compacta hanging around the doorway of a seedy nightclub.

Pirouline knew my thoughts. “Go,” she urged.  “It’s our only chance!”

            “What will you do?”

            “Try to save Renhet!”

Paul McCartney was singing “When you were young and your heart was an open book …” when I shot like a bullet from the rapturous sports arena.

-------4-------

            The angel Compacta, dressed like a bag lady this time, was yelling after a young man carrying a 1950 Fender Broadcaster wrapped in a duct-taped cardboard guitar case; in his other arm the musician lugged a Gretsch Red Wheeles amplifier and a handful of power cords when I found her.

            “Renhet is in trouble,” I told her. “The Gim are helping terrorists to blow up New York City with a nuclear device and only you can stop them.”

            “Is Renhet still in our world … or did she …”  Compacta shoved a grasping woman that looked like a prostitute away and stuffed a ten dollar bill down her blouse. She stopped chewing and slowly expanded a large iridescent sphere made of grape bubble-gum and let it pop.

            “Pirouline and about a hundred Lan are trying to save her!”

            “What exactly do you want me to do?”

            “The nuclear device is hidden inside a very expensive cello. You have to destroy it!”

            “How expensive?”

            “Renhet said it was made by someone named Stradivarius.”

Compacta laughed. She was suddenly on good terms with the prostitute, putting her arms around her like they were old friends. Can you believe this almost-Lam Flachen? He wants me to totally destroy a priceless musical instrument at a packed New York City concert.”

            “I’m sure you’ve done worse,” the prostitute said. “Although I can’t think of anything right off.”

I heard a low thump and an agonized cry. The musician had just set his equipment in the street beside a rusted van with back-off painted on the back.  A speeding truck’s tire had just crushed the guitar case. The smiling driver craned his head looking backward, but didn’t stop.

Compacta ignored me and approached the crying musician handing him a card as he sat on a curb. I tried to think about how long the song Live and Let Die was, about three and a half minutes I figured. I hoped the concert version was longer … a lot longer.

            “Please,” I begged the angel. “You’re the only person Renhet trusted to help us.”

Compacta watched the musician drive away in a rusted van and then turned to me. She was chewing her gum like a cow gone mad. “Did I say I wouldn’t help?”

I followed her down the street, not knowing what else to do. Suddenly she turned and stepped into the street right in the path of a speeding taxi. The screeching tires reminded me of the end of my own life which now seemed like a long time ago. This time though the speeding vehicle stopped in time … maybe angels are charmed.

            The turban wearing driver looked Eastern European. His eyes grew wide as Compacta yanked him from the cab and flung him into the street. “Don’t worry, I’ll start the meter running,” she told him, “and we’ll leave this hurda yığını outside the front entrance of Madison Square Garden. “You drive,” she said as we piled into the taxi.

            “Me?” I was astonished. “What are you going to be doing?”

Compacta reached under the seat and pulled out a double barrel shotgun that looked as if it had been illegally sawed off. “Hopefully creating a new opening in the string section of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra,” she said.

--------5-------

            We left the taxi in the street. I moved through the crowd with ease, but Compacta had to discharge one of the barrels into the ceiling to get the crowd to part before her. We approached the stage surrounded by screams and mayhem. All the band members stopped playing and stared wide-eyed … all except Qamar Ancona. He was determined to finish the song … and the Big Apple.

I’d heard the song enough times to know how it ended. There were only four notes left when Compacta stuck the gun barrel into the cello and pulled the trigger. Qamar was on his feet running when the floor base exploded spraying the stage and pit area with centuries old hard-wood and glowing radioactive material.

I was vaguely aware of the police sirens and running feet as I searched for Renhet. I finally found Pirouline. She wouldn’t look directly at me, and I had to get her in a corner to get answers.

            “Renhet had a past that she couldn’t leave behind,” Pirouline said sadly. “Sometimes going back is the only way to fix things.”

The Lan were clustered together spinning as one. I finally understood what Renhet meant when she said the sugar of this dimension. It was a feeling of euphoria like nothing on Earth … but not for me.

I left Madison Square Garden and floated for what seemed like an eternity. The Atlantic Ocean kept me company as I moved down the east coast.

It was more than a month before the first tears came and then they wouldn’t stop. I was in a marshy area just outside of Homerville, Florida. I wanted to die … but was already dead. I was still grey and becoming greyer … if that is possible. Two shooting stars crossed the night sky together … and the swamp grew quiet.

I heard Pirouline’s voice like soft wind brushing through tree branches. “Some souls are just not ready for the spirit world,” she said.

            “I agree,” a voice like thunder answered.

-------6-------

            I woke in my bed. My head was strangely foggy. I couldn’t remember drinking. In fact I had a hard time remembering anything. Dreams can be very strange things. I was showering when I remembered the portfolio I was putting together for General Dynamics’ eight point five billion dollar pension fund, an inspired mixture of blue-chip stocks and long term municipal bonds and the friend I had to meet for lunch. I believed I had exactly what they were looking for.

A half hour later I glanced both ways before I crossed Vesey Street. I had to talk to my  broker friend before he went to lunch. The bus-driver laid on his horn the same time as he stomped on his brakes. I heard the huge tires on the 45-foot long transit coach screech as they slid on the hot asphalt. The two sounds seemed to play to each other like stoned jazz musicians tossing the same off-key note back and forth … an octave apart. Suddenly a girl grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

            “Wow! I almost got ran over by that bus!” I gasped.

            “It’s okay.” She smiled. “Now all things in the universe are in balance.”

 I looked into her eyes. They were the most gorgeous blue I’d ever seen.

THE END?

           

THE SPIRIT WORLD

Copyright (c) 2016 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

THE SPIRIT WORLD

By R. Peterson

            I always believed I’d lived a good life, what there was of it. It was early April of 2016. I’d just left the Samson Brothers building in New York City. The sun was shining somewhere up above the skyscrapers and the sky was blue, but I barely noticed. The traffic was unusually heavy on Vesey Street, but I didn’t notice that either. My mind was on the portfolio I was putting together for General Dynamics’ eight point five billion dollar pension fund, an inspired mixture of blue-chip stocks and long term municipal bonds. I believed I had exactly what they were looking for. I glanced both ways before I crossed the street. I had to talk to a broker friend before he went to lunch. The bus-driver laid on his horn the same time as he stomped on his brakes. I could hear the huge tires on the 45-foot long transit coach screeching as they slid on the hot asphalt. The two sounds seemed to play to each other like stoned jazz musicians tossing the same off-key note back and forth … an octave apart. There was a loud thump, but no pain … and I was flying through the air.

For some reason I thought about the branches of a sprawling apple tree me and a neighbor kid used to sit in when I was a child. My friend was telling an off-color joke about a hobo who did a number-two on the sidewalk as I sprinkled salt on a green apple and took a bite. When a cop came walking past, the homeless man covered the excrement with his cap. “What yah got under that hat?” the cop asked the nervous vagrant.

            “It’s the fastest bird in the world,” the hobo told him.

            “Is that so? Well I want to see it!” the cop was thinking about what a bird like that might be worth.

            “If I lift up the hat, the bird will fly away,” the hobo explained.

            “You lift up the hat, and I’ll grab it,” the cop insisted … rolling up his sleeves.

The hobo shrugged his shoulders and then told the cop to get ready. He lifted up the hat and the cop grabbed the fresh pile of excrement.

            “Too late … he crapped and flew,” the hobo moaned.

I was laughing so hard I dropped the salt- shaker. I watched it fall for hours, days, years and centuries turning over and over in the darkening sky spreading white specks of light that looked remarkably like our enormous galaxy. At the same time it struck the ground … the Milky Way began to spin at high speed. It receded and became ten galaxies, then a hundred, a thousand and then millions. Everything in my universe began to dim … and finally it went totally black.

-------2-------

I was lying on my bed almost too relaxed, thinking about the strange dream, when Mrs. Baster my building superintendent marched into my bedroom. What’s that old crone doing in my apartment without knocking? She’d been in here once about two years before to assess damage from a broken water pipe for insurance purposes, but I hardly knew her. She walked straight to my 18^th century Cherry Grove dresser and began to go through my underwear drawers. I looked down to see if I was decent and could see nothing. My anger must have made me blind. I yelled as loud as I could, but no sound waves went rushing toward her at 768 miles per hour. It was as if I was in another dimension where air did not exist. I tried to get my legs to move, but what legs? I’m still dreaming I thought and tried to go back to sleep. It was only when I relaxed that I felt myself began to float.

I caught sight of my reflection in the very expensive antique mirror as I lifted off the bed, a grey sphere of swirling light? The size of a soccer ball. Turning like a small planet, I noticed the Building Super and I were not alone in the room. A glowing sphere with the brilliance of sunlight on snow floated above a white triangle as it moved through the closed door into the bedroom. A large pair of eyes inside the sphere were as blue as the sky. Another circle, black as nothing, came through the closed closet door and hovered above a funnel made of shadows. Eyes like glowing embers burned from within.

Mrs. Baster had found the carved wooden box in the third drawer down that I kept my valuables in. She held my expensive Ressence Type 3BB V3 light-refracting watch up to the light from a window. “This is probably worth more than a new-car … possibly even a small house in upstate,” Mrs. Baster mumbled as she rotated the timepiece.

“Sister Francis raised you better than to become a thief …” the soft words came from the white sphere. I had an idea only I could hear them, but Mrs. Baster must have felt something; she slowly dropped her hand back toward the box.

“You were raised in an overcrowded Catholic orphanage where you had to steal food to survive!” the voice from the dark circle was guttural and filled with rage. “You leave this here and some overfed cop will have it in his pocket in less than an hour!”

“It is your faith in a higher power, and a belief in doing good, that has kept you safe all these years and brought you to you present circumstances!” The white sphere hovered near the woman’s ear.

“Safe!” The words struck like a snake spitting venom. “From Father O’Connor when he stuck his hands up under your dress during the Christmas pageant … you were only twelve … and the next year when he raped you in the kitchen …. Remember the blood in the bathroom … is that what you call safe?”

“There will always be evil in the world,” the white sphere whispered in her ear. “You must rise above it.”

“Why should I?” Mrs. Baster mumbled to herself. “What has being good ever done for me?” She turned and started for the door. “Besides, Ryan Reynolds was unmarried and had no next-of-kin. Nobody will notice a missing watch. The probate judge and a flock of pecking lawyers will most likely divvy up his estate.”

Next-of-kin? Estate? I watched in horror as my building superintendent dropped the $42,000 piece of jewelry into her jacket-pocket.

“The Gims score again!” the black circle was laughing as Mrs. Baster left the room.

“Her life isn’t over,” the white sphere sighed. “There is always hope.”

“Hope is for losers.” The shadowy shape noticed my presence in the room. “Ah the reason for our little competition. Here to watch how the winning team operates are you?”

I was surprised that I was now able to form words. Maybe these beings were the only thing that could hear me. “I don’t know where I am,” My voice was a child’s whine. “I seem unable to wake up.”

“Wake up?” the dark circle laughed and moved closer to me. The thing’s breath was like an open sewer grate on an August afternoon. “You’ll never wake-up again … you’re dead, diseased, belly-up, kaput … your slimy pension-fund manager’s brains are squished like a can of worms all over Vesey Street.”

The white sphere thankfully pushed him away. I felt a pleasant tingling sensation as she drew near. I was aware for the first time that the strange glowing presence was female. “Don’t listen to the darkness,” she said. “Vardasso’s only purpose as a Gim is to spread disunity and mayhem.”

            “And to watch you lose soul after soul!” Vardasso sneered. He was spinning in circles in the center of the room. Hundreds of tiny insects appeared to flow from widening cracks in the walls toward his beckoning arms.

            “My name is Renhet and I am of course a Lan,” she said. “It’s true. We don’t win-over a great abundance of souls, but as they say it is the quality of the crème, not quantity, that matters in the end of all things.”

            “But where am I?” I stammered.

            “You are where you’ve always been … in a place you’ve never been before!” Renhet’s smile made the entire room brilliant.

            “Bah! Too much sugar in the milk! I’ll search for another tit.” Vardasso vaulted upward surrounded by a cloud of insects and then flew effortlessly through the closed window.

            “You are in the next-world beyond the one you just left,” Renhet explained. “Everything remains the same as it was …only your interaction with others is drastically limited.”

            “What was that thing that just flew out my window and why was he surrounded by bugs?”

            “Everything has a purpose,” Renhet said. “Hot and cold, light and dark, Lan and Gim, all things in the universe are in balance. It is the mission of the Lan to keep them that way.”

            “And this Vardasso … this Gim … what is his purpose?”

            “To spread dissent and gather discord,” Renhet said. “Those so-called bugs that flew with him were tiny mistakes you’d made during your lifetime. The Gim consume your bad deeds as food and it makes them stronger.

I could see my reflection in the mirror again, a gray ball of swirling substance neither dark or light. “And what about me?” I asked. “Will I become a Lam or a Gim?”

Renhet moved closer to me and I loved the feeling of ecstasy that swept over me. “You are on the edge,” she whispered. “You can go in either direction. It is why you are here … to find out.”

-------3-------

 I followed Renhet to an elevator. We moved inside with the door closed. Three Gim surrounded a balding man, who was hunched-over and trembling in the corner, clutching a brief case. “You were right to evict that slut and her brat kids from the apartment!” A Gim whispered as he moved in circles around the man’s head. “Who cares if she has medical bills?”

            “She should have kept her damn legs closed if she couldn’t feed that many little bastards,” another reasoned.

            “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” the third Gim sang, “and only fools give to those on bended knees.”

I could sense the man was in great emotional distress. “Do something!” I urged Renhet.

            “This man’s conflict is with himself,” Renhet said. “His good heart fights against an infection of greed. Anything I say or do at this point will only make matters worse.”

            “She said she understood and she wasn’t angry,” the man mumbled as he reached for the descending elevator stop-button. “I watched her and the children pack everything they owned into three battered suitcases!”

The elevator stopped on the thirteenth floor and the door opened. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” The first Gim growled as the man pushed past him.

Renhet and I followed behind.

            “Her youngest, a boy no more than three, offered me a big smile and a plastic Giraffe that was probably purchased from a Salvation Army toy bin,” the man was sobbing as he dropped the brief case and sprinted toward a floor to ceiling window at the end of a long hallway. “He saw his mother crying and thought he could make me his friend … and I own sixty-three rental units, a home in the Hamptons and have a net worth of sixteen-point-eight million dollars.”

            “What a waste of wickedness,” one of the Gims yelled after him.

Renhet shook her head sadly as we heard the breaking glass and watched the man plummet one-hundred thirty feet to his death. “Your greatest foe is always yourself,” she said. “It knows your dreams as well as your secrets.”

-------4-------

            When we reached the street level the Lans and Gims were everywhere. A woman wearing dark glasses and with bruises on her face, hurried past on the sidewalk with three Gims flanking her. “He’ll never give you a divorce; you’re his prized possession,” one whispered. “Just a few grains of Arsenic in his morning coffee and you’ll be a widow in two months!” another added. The third dark figure fought with a Lan trying to catch up to the fleeing woman.

            “When crazy people claim to hear voices I guess it’s true,” I said.

            “It depends on who you listen to,” Renhet looked indignant. “Some voices are there to help!”

We passed by an obviously homeless man with dark glasses playing a guitar on a street corner. The tin cup next to him was full of bills and change. A teen wearing a Snoop Dog tee-shirt bent down and plunked his ring against the side of the cup. When he stood-up he had a fistful of cash. “Sounds good!’ he told the blind musician. “Keep up the good work!”

Renhet flew after the punk; I had to hurry to catch up. Just as I reached them, the teen turned, walked back and dropped the stolen money into the musician’s cup. “Sorry,’ he muttered.

            “What did you say to make him give it back?” I asked.

            “I planted an impression that stealing from others can make you lose your sight.” Renhet was glowing.

            “And that street hood believed you?” I was astonished.

            “I also flicked a bit of grit into his eye,” Renhet grinned.

            “So you Lans and Gims can touch others with more than your thoughts?”

            “Not always,” Renhet said, “but sometimes.” She seemed to float a little higher as we made our way down the street. “I once blew away a newspaper that was covering a set of car keys for a distraught man who had had a very ugly argument with his wife. She was flying to another country on an airplane and was due to depart in less than an hour. I knew the plane would crash and this was his only chance. He was sorry for the things he’d said and wanted to go after her, but couldn’t find his keys.”

I was impressed. “So this guy caught up with her, brought her home and they lived happily ever after?”

            “Not exactly,” Renhet seemed to shrink. “They were happy when they both boarded the plane … and they died together in each other’s arms.”

            “That’s terrible,” I gasped.

            “You can try to steer fate,” Renhet sighed. “But sometimes it goes where it will.”

            “The world is still a better place because of angels like you,” I told her.

Renhet turned and looked at me with those large blue eyes. “I’m no angel,” she said. We were walking past a bar where loud rock and roll music was playing. “That’s an angel,” she said turning toward the sound. A young girl dressed as a hooker danced away from the building where she had been leaning, swaying her hips to the dull throbbing of the music that seeped through the brick wall. She walked right up to Renhet talking through a mouth full of  bubble gum and barely glanced at me. “It’s been so long since I’ve talked to a human, let alone a musician. I hope I can pull this off.”

            “You’ll do fine, Compacta,” my companion told her. “Let the magic flow.”

Compacta blew and popped a large grape bubble. “I hope so Renhet … I was never a good Lan.”

            “What was that all about?” I asked as Compacta returned to the outside of the nightclub.

            “Lans work with thoughts and emotions,” Renhet said. “It takes angels to do most of the physical interactions.”

Ten minutes later, we were passing by Madison Square Garden. Hundreds of taxis were stopping and pulling away from the massive sports complex. Most were filled with Gims riding on the hood the top and the trunk. Storm clouds of insects followed the dark funnels and the crowds inside. “It has to be a concert,” I said. “The Nicks never drew this big of a crowd.”

            “You’re right about the venue,” Renhet turned causing me to look at an illuminated billboard advertising Paul McCartney. “But only one event draws this many Gims.”

            “What’s that?” I was almost afraid to ask.

            “Death,” Renhet said, “and a massive amount of destruction.”

To be continued …