Monday, December 5, 2011

Excerpt "Not Forgotten" Chapter Eight

I like to think of this as the point where Kyle begins to truly understand that there is more to this world than meets the eye:

The truck rolled slowly on to the black top path that led through the cemetery gates. Lilly bowed her head. She hadn’t been here since the funeral and was suddenly feeling a bit guilty. The cemetery started out as a small roadside graveyard almost two hundred years ago and expanded inward through the years so the dates on the headstones became more current the further they drove. The older section always made Lilly uncomfortable. She could feel the eyes of the dead looking at her as they passed the monuments and tilted stones. The hairs on her arms stood up and she felt a shiver on the back of her neck.

Kyle slowed to an awkward halt at a fork in the road. He hadn’t been back since the funeral either and was not sure which way to go. Lilly looked up and pointed to the left. Embarrassed, Kyle turned and proceeded up the hill. As they approached Tony’s grave site, they saw a figure seated on the stone bench on the other side of the road. The small, frail woman was sitting alone, waiting.

As the truck stopped Kyle asked, “How did she know what time we would be here?”

Lilly shook her head, “I don’t know. How did I know she was going to be here at all?”

Her question left unanswered, they both exited the truck. “Hello?” Lilly said as she approached the elderly woman. The woman nodded her head and slid from the middle of the bench to one side, inviting them to sit.

Lilly took a seat on the bench. Kyle, freaked out by the air of prophecy and supernatural wisdom which seemed to shroud everyone in the situation except him, elected to stand. In the event that a fight or flight response should be deemed necessary, he wanted to be certain of a swift retreat.

The old woman spoke to him first. “Hello boy. You can sit. I don’t intend to bite you. Not today anyway.” She smiled a broad grin and chuckled at her own pun.

Kyle stuttered, “No. I am ok. I sat in the car.” Then scratched his head befuddled by his own ridiculousness.

“Oh well, then, plenty of time to rest when you are dead.” She seemed to drift away from them momentarily as she spoke these words. Her unseeing gaze focused toward the front of the cemetery.

Lilly was the next to speak. “Obviously, my dream last night was not really a dream or you wouldn’t be here. Why did you ask us here?”

The old woman drifted back to the task at hand. “I brought you here because the situation with your brother is getting, dare I say, desperate. I am sure you have noticed this yourself given what happened to you yesterday. You are not getting him what he needs quickly enough. I fear that there may be consequences if you two can’t hurry things along.”

Kyle, frustrated by the cryptic nature of her words, chimed in, “Now hold on. I need some answers from you before this goes any further. First, I need to know who you are and how you are involved in all this. Then maybe you can tell us how you managed to get inside Lilly’s head while she was sleeping and what gave you the right to invade her privacy like that in the first place. This is 2010; you couldn’t use the phone, email, text, fax, or a pigeon for hell’s sake?”

The woman’s face seemed to gray and wither a bit as she listened to his rant. She repositioned herself on the bench as though she were readying herself for a spotlighted soliloquy. Lilly felt an odd tremble run down her spine and as it ended at the base, she became a bit light headed.

“You listen to me, boy!” She said in a low, less frail voice that resonated on the word boy. “You should be counting your blessings because I am here and have made contact. You need me and you do not decide the method by which I make my presence known. Not even if I decide to slither out of the tub drain while you are taking your morning shower. You see, there are rules. In life and in death there is always a rule to abide by and consequences when you don’t. Oh, sure, you can break a rule once in a while. But just once in a while, like speeding to school when you woke up late or fibbing to Lilly’s father to keep him from worrying. Tony has broken a rule by contacting you. It would be ok if that was all he did, because in the grand design, no one really cares about a little contact between the dead and the living. It’s when you get away with breaking the law that you decide that maybe you can get away with a little more like he did by jumping a spirit yesterday. That type of thing starts drawing the wrong kind of attention.”

Lilly jumped in, “That’s what you call what happened to me? Jumping a spirit? So, my brother did possess me and use me to pummel David Johnson and that can somehow get him in trouble with someone? With who?”

The old woman shook her head, “No child, let me finish. He won’t get in trouble with anyone. That’s not how this works. The dead don’t follow the laws of men or gods. They follow the laws of nature. There is a natural order of things. In that order, the spirit plane and the living plane are meant to exist side by side, but separately. When you meddle too much with the natural order, things have a way of fixing themselves in natures favor. He is dead and therefore, no further harm can come to him. It would be you who would pay for his meddling by joining him on the other side and restoring the line that divides the living from the dead.”

Kyle couldn’t believe his ears, “Wait, so you are saying that if Tony keeps messing with Lilly, she will die? That sounds a little crazy to me, I mean, what about mediums? I assume that is about what you are. Why wouldn’t mediums be dropping dead all the time if contact with spirits caused this wrath of nature?”

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