We Are the Light(14)

An awful noise woke me up in the middle of the night.

I sat up in my bed and looked around, but I was still half asleep. It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust and my brain to come back online, but when it did, I stood and walked over to the window, which Jill must have opened for me, because neither she nor I like to sleep in air-conditioning. (It gives us sore throats.) I could see the tent glowing like a jack-o’-lantern again. It looked extra bright because there was no moonlight whatsoever. I heard this bloodcurdling moaning that reminded me of what I heard after the shooting was over, back at the Majestic Theater. It almost sounded like a psychic operation without anesthesia. Like someone was trying to extract Eli’s soul out there in the tent.

The next thing I remember is walking down the stairs in my home with Jill following close behind, saying, “We need to call the police. That boy needs help.”

I couldn’t, of course, tell her what winged Darce had said about Eli being the way forward, so instead I kept saying, “No police.”

“Your neighbors are going to call the police if they haven’t already,” Jill answered, but I just ignored her. When I reached the back door, she turned me around so that I was facing her and then said, “I don’t think you’re ready for this.”

I could tell she was afraid, but I wasn’t quite sure of what. I wanted to get to the bottom of Jill’s fear, but I thought it best to triage, and Eli’s moaning was concerning enough to pull rank, so I exited and made my way toward the orange glow.

Eli must have heard my back door open, because he immediately tried to quiet his suffering, but managed only to turn down the volume, as I could still hear him whimpering softly. I wondered if he had buried his face in his sleeping bag, but when I unzipped his tent and stuck my head inside, I saw that Eli had his face in his hands, which were literally dripping with tears. When I touched his shoulder—just like Isaiah had done for me many times—Eli flinched, so I pulled my hand back, and then I remembered my plan.

I entered the tent, pulling the zipper closed behind me, and then sat cross-legged across from him and softened my gaze before I tried to find him on the astral plane. After five or so minutes, he dropped his hands and began to stare back at me. I could feel his breathing slowing and I could sense that he was relaxing a bit.

Finally he said, “I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“It’s okay,” I said, and then continued attempting to do what you had done for me many times in your consulting room, when you psychically entered me, when the best part of your soul wrapped itself around the best part of my soul.

“What are you doing?” he asked, but in a calm way, so I told him that I was trying to calm him down and that it was working, so maybe he should just go along with it, which he thankfully did.

We sat in silence for a long time, quietly looking at each other. I could feel Jill outside worrying and wondering what was happening inside the tent, but, somehow, she knew better than to break our man spell with words or by entering, which I appreciated greatly. And I could also hear the steady beating of Darcy’s wings high above; I could feel her looking down on me with angelic approval, since angels can easily see through thin tent fabric. I wondered if Jill might decide to tilt her head back and search for the origin of that beating-wings sound, but she never let out a cry of joy or astonishment, so I don’t believe she ever looked up, which was both a pity and a relief.

As I sat in the tent with young Eli, I could feel his pain and frustration and loneliness leaving his body. I could literally feel his muscles relaxing and his psyche regaining a stronghold.

And then I was laying him down on my living room couch and covering him with a sheet and telling him he was okay and that he had come to the right place and that I was going to help him get better no matter how long it took. I could feel Jill watching with approval from the dark corner of the room and I began to wonder where the necessary strength had come from, because I could feel the power of what the best of my soul was doing for Eli, which was awesome in the true sense of the word—filling me with a sense of awe.

Just before the boy drifted off to sleep, with eyes closed, he whispered, “Mr. Goodgame, I don’t hold you responsible.”

Before I had a chance to reply, he had lost consciousness.

Jill followed me up the stairs and then whispered, “Are you okay?”

“I just need to be alone,” I said in the kindest way possible, and then slipped into my bedroom, locking the door behind me.

Darce had already flown in through the window and was smiling proudly at me.

“The boy is the way forward,” she said once more, but with renewed vigor.

I was too exhausted to reply. Instead, I collapsed into her celestial body, at which point she wrapped me in her warm, massive wings and I passed out.

When I woke up the next morning, I was in my bed and Darcy was gone, but I collected fourteen small feathers from the bedding, proving that I had not imagined the previous night’s numinous encounter.

Jill was, of course, already downtown—just like every other morning—serving breakfast to the good citizens of Majestic, PA.

I found Eli asleep on the couch, so I put on coffee and made scrambled eggs and toast. As if by magic, he shuffled into the kitchen just as I was putting his hot plate of food down on the table. Turns out he takes his coffee black, like me. We ate, listening to the sound of forks and knives tapping and scraping the plates and the loud gulps of men swallowing, after which Eli loaded the dishwasher and I scrubbed the egg pan.