Chapter 2: The Realm of Light
I ascended to the realms of light above the earth after gaining some control over the negative emotions clinging to my heart. Basically, I just stuffed them back down to their home deep within my soul. Always a temporary solution, I knew they'd be back, like trying to lock the door on a hoard of zombies, they’ll always break through. The experience left me drained, seeing Justin and Corbin, my family, my funeral. I needed to heal. I wasn't an advanced spirit, just a newborn taking it's first step into the light.
I approached Monika who stood alone in the courtyard, her custom bright glow reduced to dimness. "You're no longer a missing person." I said.
"I heard about that." She replied, not making eye contact.
"You going to the funeral? It's weird."
"I can't. It's too much. I can't look into their faces." Monika scanned the ground, trying to find beauty in the morning glories at her feet, but an aura of sadness told the truth.
"I understand. It's not easy." I reflected her feelings. “How’s your family doing?”
“My poor father, I’ve heard he hasn't gone to work since his baby girl went missing." Monika said.
“Sorry, I mean, that was a stupid question." I looked away.
"It's ok, Will. I know your heart. Your intentions are well meant. To be honest, I don't know. I can't bring myself to check on them.” Monika trembled while speaking, her eyes remained cast toward the ground.
"Would you like me to go, you know, look in on them?" I asked.
"Would you Will? It would mean a lot.”
"Of course." I said, seeing Monika’s face for the first time as I reached out to touch her shoulder. Her straight blonde hair fell forward before her blue eyes faded, gluing themselves back to the flowers as I stepped away.
It was too soon to go back but I owed it to Monika. I could never repay her for all she'd done. I left the courtyard and the city of light, willing myself to the home of Monika's earthly parent's. Always a difficult task to leave love and breathless beauty, trading it for the chaotic mess that is planet earth.
Two police officers walked up the steps to the front door of the Kingsbury's house. I stood next to a rose bush, reading one of the officer's thoughts. He was new to the job. A nervousness ran through both legs before stepping slightly behind his senior officer, using him as a human shield from the emotion soon to burst.
The senior officer knocked on the door. I could see through the walls of the house as if they were made of glass. Monika's mother sat up from her slumped over position at the kitchen table. Her quivering hand and delayed reaction told me she wasn't expecting company. The lump in her throat and deliberate swallow told me her heart was filled with the false hope that it might be Monika knocking.
"Mrs. Kingsbury, my name is officer Olson. This is officer Carter. May we come in?" Monika's mother's eyes filled with dread. She didn't need a fortune teller to know what was coming.
"My baby," she whispered. Officer Olson gave a heartbreaking nod, unable to choke the word, yes. Monika's father caught his falling wife before she hit the ground. He held her tight as she wailed and convulsed on the floor. Her body formless, all muscle control lost.
"We need you to come to the coroner's office and identify the body." Officer Olson said after great pause. Neither Monika's father or her mother spoke. "Take your time." Officer Olson motioned for officer Carter to wait in the squad car while he stood in the doorway as both parents sat catatonic on the hardwood floor.
A second squad car arrived. One male and one female officer entered the home. Forty minutes passed before Monika's father emerged. Officer Olson escorted him into his vehicle. I hopped in the backseat.
"We're sorry for your loss." Were the only words spoken the entire drive. I followed the three men into the coroner's building, feeling my stomach constrict like a wrung out dish cloth. I didn't want to see her, even though it wasn't really her, not anymore. There's something final about it, seeing the body, knowing you'll never return to it.
The room was icy and callous, cold stainless steel lined the shelves, void of anything that resembled love. Monika's body had been laid out on a metal table, pale blue, green algae strewn throughout her golden hair. Monika’s lips were white, the wound that claimed her life turned black with infection.
I bent at the waist, clenching my sour middle, trying to clear the image from my mind.
Monika's father didn't falter, he looked for two, maybe three seconds. "Yes," he said before turning to walk away.
***
I sat next to Justin in the rickety old fishing boat the night he dumped Monika's body into the Bear Creek river. He was a mess. It took him six hours to wrap her body in plastic garbage bags. He tied it with chain and two cinder blocks. His hands shook so vigorous he couldn't grip the rip cord to start the boat, that and he never bothered to check that the motor was out of gas. Justin used oars to row himself and Monika's body to a point of depth in the river. Bear Creek isn’t known for it's calm. Justin was tossed around like a toy. A section of chain wrapped itself around a log, pulling Monika's body to the bottom. It only took eight days for that same rough current to break her body free and send it floating to the campgrounds.
Justin couldn't row back against the current. His boat was pushed three miles down river. He had no choice but to call Corbin, who picked him up and hauled the boat home. Justin almost joined us as a spirit that night after Corbin learned of his botched attempt to cover up the murder.
I couldn't stay in the coroner's office any longer. The memory of that horrid night left a pit in my stomach and an unease I needed to get rid of. I escaped through the walls of the building as spirits do. Standing outside in the parking lot, rain had pooled next to a rusty pickup truck where the pavement started to crack, reminding me how broken and fragile the physical world can be.
It's odd, standing in the rain and not getting wet. I didn't miss it at all. I was glad to be free from the world and all it's cruelty. Seeing Monika's body didn't bring searing anger like it did that night in the boat, it left me dumbfounded, man's inhumanity to mankind.
***
"You saw them?" Monika asked after I returned to her. "Tell me, Will. Were they ok? Please tell me they were ok." I shook my head, unable to lie. Monika shook as I reached a hand to her. Words are useless in a moment like this, they get in the way. Time ceases, you stay with the person as long as it takes, for however long the emotion needs expression.
When people on earth lose someone close, the pain they feel, like they are alone, stuck, is also felt by the person who has passed on. Maybe even more so. Bonds are strong in the spirit realms. Glue becomes cement. So strong that many who have passed on remain attached to their loved ones on earth. Some don't even know they're dead, haunting the places they once dwelled.
John taught me a comfort prayer which I recited mentally while placing my index and middle fingers on Monika's forehead. Monika's soul felt tears cleared a blockage in her aura, allowing the healing process to begin.
"Thank you, Will. Thank you for staying." Monika said, wiping her moist cheeks.
"I felt a blockage around your heart. Healing's slow, it takes time and requires great care. Prayer helps. I know it's hard but you'll see them again. It will be a glorious reunion. Take some comfort in knowing that." I said.
"You're strong, Will." Monika said.
"I wish I was as strong as you, Monika.”
“You're strength is that you care, Will.”
“How high up are you now? How far along the spiritual path?” I asked.
“I'm progressing well, they even gave me my first charge.”
“You're own charge. Wow, that's great, Monika. That makes you a guardian angel!”
“Thanks Will. To be honest it's a little scary. I feel overwhelmed. The kid is troubled. He needs a lot of help.”
“Sounds like someone I know.”
“You wouldn't believe me if I told you.” Monika's mood lightened.
“Well, he’s lucky to have you watching over him. He's in the right hands. Take comfort in knowing that.”
“Thank you, Will.”
“Come see me when you're up to it." I told Monika before returning to my temporary abode in the city of light.
***
My home was simple, a room actually. I had a desk for study and a bed for rest. When you first become a spirit you still need to lie down from time to time, not to sleep, but to pray and meditate to restore your spiritual energy.
After I rested, John came to my room to guide me to the feast that was prepared. A banquet is held to honor newly arrived souls to the realm as a way to make them feel comfortable and welcome. I was happy to leave my room, but afraid to go. Not much changed after my death. I still experienced angst in social situations. I was told that in time it would leave me. How much time, I do not know. There is no time in the afterlife ... only eternity. If it took that long, I was ok with it. I was learning acceptance.
The Great Hall was more beautiful than any magnificent architecture on earth. I once saw the Sagrada Familia on video from the library for a homework assignment. I was fourteen. It stole my breath, but the Great Hall stole my soul.
When John opened the doors to the Great Hall I was surprised, and relieved. I never liked being the center of attention. Even in death the thought of it sent my chest into shallow convulsions and a redness to my face. The feast was for me, and about five hundred just like me, newly arrived souls to the realms of light. There's safety in numbers. No speeches needed to be given, only a celebration of us.
The meal was light but filling. Since our arrival most of us hadn't shed our need for sustenance and food. Actually, food is not required at all by the spirit body, but it helped to ease our transition and provided familiarity.
We ate the sweetest fruits, most colorful vegetables, and softest breads. Wine was served but nobody was drunk. Self-control existed here, nothing like I'd seen in the hells where debauchery and excess ruled.
The efforts that the loving spirits of the realm went through to make the new arrivals feel comfortable was a saving grace. All beings in the realms of love were true angels.
I was seated with a group of young spirits my age, late teenagers. There were tables of older spirits but oddly, no one appeared over thirty. I turned to a man sitting at the table behind me. It felt safe and allowed me to turn my face away from the people at my table. A habit I still hadn't broken.
"How long have you been a spirit?" I asked.
"We’re all born spirits, young man." I blushed, feeling that I had offended the man with my ignorance. "About 600 or 700 earth years I suppose."
His response startled me. "You don't look a day over 30." I said.
The man laughed. "The ageless secret. Everyone here is thirty, kid. I was told it’s the prime age of a man. If a child dies, that child will continue to grow and mature in the spirit realms until he reaches thirty. When an old man dies he works backward. The more his soul progresses the more beautiful his appearance becomes."
"I've experienced that, first hand." I said.
"You must have been old when you passed. How old?" The man asked.
"Seventeen."
The man looked at me with a wrinkle in his brow. "I'm sorry, when I called you kid I didn't mean it literally, just thought you may have came up from below." I returned the confused look. "An immature looking soul often means that soul is lacking in spiritual development and understanding. Those souls come from realms lower than this one. The lower the realm the darker it becomes. You're young so you wouldn't have seen them. I tell you, I once travelled to first realm of hell. It was horrible, the arguing and fighting, the slavery to drink and material things. I tell you, you've never seen anything like it. I was once like those poor souls there now."
"Why did you go back there?" I asked.
"I was on a mission."
"Mission?"
"A missionary, ministering to the thousands of lost souls trying to find their way out of darkness and into the realms of light."
"Were you successful?" I asked.
"No. Not one soul benefited from my presence." I sensed angst in the man's tone.
"Maybe in time they will come to find their way." I said.
"You sound like my guide. That's why I'm here. She said I did a wonderful thing for the spirits in hell. I don't know, I don't see it."
"I'm guessing the spirits in darkness have nothing, no hope to cling to. Small acts of kindness contain the full glory of heaven." I said, borrowing the words because I couldn't find any of my own.
"You seem wise beyond your years, kid. You'll go far here." The man said. I shyly looked away. "You'll learn about your mission from your guide. We all have one. They send you back, back to where your life on earth failed, where you can make amends and heal your soul."
"Hell is no picnic, that's for sure." I said, reflecting the man's feelings back to him.
"You have no idea, kid. Be careful. A nice kid like you, things could go south in a hurry. If they do, they'll eat you alive down there."
"Believe me, you're preaching to the choir." I said.
"What do you know about it. You ain't never been to no hell." Again, I blushed, feeling as if I offended the man.
"I meant on earth. I was in hell there."
"You don't know nothing about it, kid."
I nodded my acknowledgement towards the man, feeling it best to turn from the conversation, in case he asked me for the truth. The truth of how deep in hell I once was. The truth of how I afraid I was to go back.
***
After the banquet I left the Great Hall, happy to be alone and free from the stress of forced conversation. I stopped to rest at a marble bench along the path home, filling my spirit lungs with the hygienic air of the pristine realm calmed my core.
"Will!" The voice sent a lump crawling up my stomach to my throat, my peace fading. I don't know why I still felt butterflies around her, after all we’d been through. Some people, special people, make you feel like that. They own a mystique you can never wrap your head around.
"Allison."
"It's good to see you too, Will." Allison paused for a second before bursting into laughter. "You don't know how great it is to see you!" Allison couldn't contain her excitement and lunged to embrace me.
"What's wrong, Will? Aren't you glad to see me too?" Allison could feel my hesitation.
"Sorry, You just caught me off guard." I said. "How did you find me? I can't believe how vast these spirit realms are."
"So like you, Will. So serious and down to business. John told me about the banquet. I had to come as fast as I could.
"I'm sorry." I smiled. "It's really great to see you."
"Isn't it amazing." Allison did a twirl, her voice bubbling with the same enthusiasm I had known since she first came to me in Mrs. Hanson's third grade class. "The energy, the colors, they're so vibrant. So alive!"
"It is beautiful." I said.
"Show me your home, Will. I'd love to see." Allison said.
"It isn't much. Far from the mansion worlds of the Father's house.”
Allison took me by the hand and lead me down the marble path. "It doesn't matter, not anymore. We've both done things we aren't proud of. We have to live with that now. The important part is that we're together."
Allison had a way of calming my despair. I was happy to be in a realm of light and out of the darkness. I wasn't advanced, like a kindergartner taking his first steps toward graduation, my road was long.
"Like I said, not much to look at." I opened the door and ushered Allison into my room. "There's the desk where I study things of the spirit. Kindness, patience, tolerance, love for all."
"I've studied this book too." Allison said, grabbing for the book on my desk.
"It's fitting, I mean, for people like us." I said.
"Wouldn't it be great to meet the author someday. I bet he's in a spiritual realm high above the highest heavens. So famous!" Allison spun on her toes and handed me the book.
"He definitely was enlightened. I think we both can relate to it." I placed my copy of The Divine Comedy back in its place on my bookshelf. I don't think Allison grasped the true meaning of the work. Dante was a name people of the high realms spoke with fondness, but Allison's intention was different. She was attracted to the fame, not the spiritual meaning of his work. Her road was long, as was mine.
"Will, I see concern in your Spirit. What's wrong?" Allison asked.
“It’s nothing.” I shook my head.
“You can talk to me, Will,” was all Allison said. It never seemed hard for Allison to get me to open up, she had a gift for it that other people didn't.
"The work, it's so hard. I feel so conflicted. You'd think that doing good or least trying to do good would be easy, like God would have just designed it that way. I feel like he asks the impossible sometimes." I said.
"I know what you mean, Will. I always felt that way when I was on earth. I didn't have the best teacher as you know, my perspective was skewed but that didn't mean I wasn't responsible for the choices I made. I did a lot of good for people, but I also failed. I wish every day that I could undo my suicide. I wish every day I wouldn't have let my father's oppression consume me and drive me to that terrible act." Allison buried her face in her hands.
"It's ok, Alison." I reached for her hand.
"I wish I had the guts to do something different and not always do what I was told or follow what my father thought was right for me. I'm learning to forgive him, but pieces of anger still cling to my soul. I'm trying to do the spiritual thing and forgive, but it's so hard. It's so hard to follow the spiritual path when you've been so wronged."
"Why'd you take your life?" The words left my mouth before I knew they were spoken and could take them back. "I'm so sorry Allison, you don't have to answer that."
"It's ok Will, um, I really thought I was getting back at him, teaching him a lesson, you know. A way of saying, you can't control me anymore. I tried in vain to tell him how I felt but no words could make him understand the emotional pain I felt. The act I committed was the only way to make him understand. I don't know. I always felt out of sorts, like someone else was calling the shots, certainly not me. It's almost as if it just happened, like it was all a dream. Sorry, probably not the most satisfying answer."
"It's ok, thank you for sharing with me." I said. "I've felt like that before. It's like something dark lives inside. It has this power over us, I don't know. It just feels that way sometimes."
I never told Allison the truth of her father's death, that it wasn't an accident, that I was there. I learned later on that John and the angels of light kept the truth hidden from Allison too, feeling that when the time was right I should be the one to tell her and doing so was an important step in my healing process.
"You get me, Will. More than anyone else." Allison hugged me tight. "Can I tell you a secret?"
"Sure."
"Promise not to tell John or anyone else. I don't want them to know."
"What is it, Allison? You can feel safe with me."
"Sometimes I feel the darkness is still inside me."
"Well, that's nothing to be ashamed about. We're all on the spiritual journey, but none of us have reached the destination. Even Monika is still learning. Maybe talking to John would help."
"No, Will, please don't mention anything to him. Not just yet. I want to work some of this out on my own first. You know, for my growth. When the time is right, I'll talk. Plus you know how John can be.”
I understood Allison completely. Her reluctance to talk and share her innermost struggles can be felt by everyone. It's never easy to be truly vulnerable.
"Don't worry, Allison. I'd never break your trust. I get what you're saying. John is John, I guess, by far the most intense person I’ve ever met. Sometimes I want to say, 'dude relax, take a vacation, go to a beach, pet a dog … I don't know, something. Like I said, John is John. For being the beloved disciple, he’s not soft, but he does care deeply for us. I think that's why he pushes so hard sometimes.”
"Thank you, Will."
"You're strong Allison, I don't know how you do it. How you keep going, having been so wronged, so betrayed." I said.
"Sacrifice." Allison said.
"Sacrifice?"
"My mom, I learned it from her. The way she cared and would do anything for my father. You saw it. We both did. My father and I had our differences but I truly admired how much my mom loved him. How she dropped her guard, let those hideous creatures consume and drag her deep into the bowels of that evil city. She did it out of love. She gave herself for someone else, took on my father's pain so that he could gain hope. I could never be as strong as her."
"I think you're strong." I said.
"Look! You have a window!" Allison ran her finger along the wooden sill, acting delighted, but it felt like she was changing the subject.
"I do!" I said, matching her enthusiasm. "It's funny you know, when we spend so much time without something so common you learn to appreciate the small things. Sometimes it's hard to make sense of it all."
"You always make sense to me, Will." Allison leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.
"Oh Will. It really is great to see you." Allison sighed. "I have to get back. Group prayer and mediation will be starting soon. Until we meet again."
"Until we meet again." I said, nodding as she left my room.
"Sometimes I wish you made sense to me." I whispered soft enough for Allison not to hear me.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone