(11)
 While more police arrived, more lights—including armed and uniformed men and women on horseback—Nestor waved for us all to join him as we trotted up the stairs. The bright scenario of lights and noise went dead behind us. All we could see now was the bare floor again. A few stray leaves, which had escaped from that reality into this, still roiled in a dying wind.
Nestor told the others: "In this world, Louise, you weren't married yet, and Meat stabbed you to death in the cafe. In another world, you were married, a few years older, and about to graduate from San Diego State University with a B.A. in Art. You had two children—Henri Jr. and Louise Jr.—who came with their dad to attend your graduation. They never made it, and in that world you are a tragic young widow who lost everything, her husband and her children, on the eve of her first great success in life. Maybe there is someone like me over there, who can help her. I have no idea. Here, you will live together in the spirit world, enjoying each other for whatever time you have."
As they clung to each other, Nestor turned to me. "In another parallel world, Tamsin was not screwing around behind your back." I saw the moonlit paths of Balboa Park in the staging area or arena below. "Go down there," Nestor urged gently.
I walked down the steps until I could only hear his voice behind me. Looking back, I saw the tips of his shoes on a small portion of the lowest step. "Go on," he urged. "You have to hurry, or they'll take her away."
I saw the path ahead, saw the young man who had stabbed me to death, only he was stabbing someone else.
Tamsin.
The young murderer cut the strap of her purse and ran off into the darkness.
Tamsin say on her side in a pool of blood. She was either dead, or dying.
As I ran toward her, the air opened up, and a crew of dark shapes poured out wearing white gloves. The Handlers reached for her. She was gone.
"No!" I shouted. "Stop!"
They bundled her spirit—a form much like herself, and just as lifeless, same as they'd done decades earlier for Lolo in the coffee shop—and retreated with her into the opening from which they'd come. If they took her there, if I was a second too late, she would end up in some other spirit world, similar to but totally separate from the one Lolo and I experienced here. I had no idea if spirit worlds were linked or what was going on, but I realized I still loved her very much. She had come to meet me, so innocently, and met her untimely end here.
"Stop!" I yelled, "Stop!"
I threw myself over her soul, which was already halfway into another spirit world, far away, maybe in some other dimension, certainly in an alternate reality.
The figures looked at me, looked at each other. I wouldn't let go of Tamsin, and they finally thrust her at me and disappeared into their world. The air closed up. Tamsin's ghost stood beside me, holding her head. The body lay in a lake of glossy, moonlit blood nearby.
"What happened?" she said weakly. "I think I had a horrible dream."
I held her, knowing what I must do now, and not wanting to. "Honey, you have to see this so you'll understand and believe what happened to you." I had to imprint the reality on her, or risk her being a disoriented and shaky ghost. We would soon be friends with Lolo and Henri and their two children. Life, such as it was, would go on. Not wanting to, and feeling her go rigid and feeling the beginning of a scream that was about to tear from her terrified soul, I made her turn and look…
(end)
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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