Harbinger in the Mist (Arms of Serendipity) (27 page)

“But what does it matter?” She’d asked. “Milton has followed me outside of the house before.  Remember the day that we met? I know that it was him that spooked Rosita. If he really wants to hurt me while I’m unprotected, he can do it here just as well as there.”

Eli said she would be safer out of the house, at least until the spirit had finally crossed over.  “The outside,” he reassured her, “is much, much safer. He garners his energy from the inside, from the opening to the portal. He is stronger inside the house than outside of it.”

She promised not to enter the house without him, so she walked slowly along the worn path between the Robbins’ and Retreat House. She kicked at a large, red mound of dirt at the opening to the path. Thousands of angry fire ants erupted out of it like molten lava from a mini volcano. They picked up their white larvae and looked for the source of the disruption. She stepped back before they could swarm her feet and legs.

Eli. What to do about Eli? He would allow himself to be intimately close to her, then turn and go about his “reflection,” still intent on his path to the priesthood. Was he as confused inside as she?  A movement down by the estuary caught her attention. It was as if her thoughts had summoned the man that would soon be wearing a collar. He was waiting for her, standing on the bank skipping stones over murky estuary waters. He looked up when she rounded the house and motioned for her to join him.  She approached him apprehensively.

“How was your walk?” She asked, trying to keep the mood light.

“Inspiring as always,” he held his hand out for her.

Against her better judgment, she took his hand let him pull her close. The warmth of his skin against hers was reassuring. The contact felt nice, if not electric. His proximity made her heart beat a little faster, made her face flush, and caused her mouth to turn up at the corners.

“So, what are we going to do for the next 48 hours?”

“Tell me why you want to be a priest,” Lindsey responded. “Tell me what draws you to such a profession. You could probably do just about anything you want, so why the priesthood? Why not medicine?” She wanted to ask why he was choosing the priesthood instead of a wife and kids, why he was opting for a life of celibacy instead of a life that allowed companionship. But this was safer.

“Look around you. God created all of this – everything from the sandy ground beneath your feet to the clouds in the sky above your head and everything in between. Even the most mundane of creatures has been touched by His divine hand.”

Eli walked over to a thicket of trees and pointed to a large web in the middle of which sat a bright banana spider that was bigger than her splayed hand. Its orange and black banded legs opened in pairs so that the arachnid was in the shape of an X. The bright yellow and black body sat on top of zigzag lines that ran through the middle of the web. 

“Take this spider. It may seem creepy to you, but try to view it objectively, see its beauty and usefulness. See it in this great work that He put into motion. With that in mind, how could I choose anything but something that glorifies Him? Medicine only helps the body. Working in His service helps both the body and the soul. I admit that I am torn, though.”

“Did you ever, you know, consider dating or even marriage?”

“Yes, I have,” he ran his hands nervously through his hair. “God knows that I have struggled with my allegiance to Him and my desire to succumb to simple human nature. He said to be fruitful. He did, after all, give marriage the status of a holy sacrament. Thus, it too glorifies him. But until now, I’ve never met anyone that has made me seriously double think my plans for the future.”  He touched Lindsey’s cheek as he spoke, sending shocks of electricity through her.

She cleared her throat, not wanting to lose control and grab him, hold him, kiss him like every cell in her body was yelling at her to do.

“So, do you think there is just the one path to God?”

“Absolutely not. Look at it this way, if you were to take 20 different people and put them in a room with the radio playing, say, country music. What’s the likelihood that all 20 of them would like the song?”

“Very little.”

“Exactly, God gave us all free will, something with which comes unique likes and dislikes. What speaks to one person might not speak to another in the same way. Take me for instance, I find the quiet of a Gothic church, the smell of incense, the sound of Gregorian chant to be holy. It makes me feel closer to Him. Someone else might find that tedious or boring, stiff even. But being in a setting with drums and a guitar and a pit full of rattlesnakes might speak to him in ways that draw him closer to his Creator. We are all unique and thus have a unique path to Him.  Mahatma Gandhi said it best: ‘Truth is one, paths are many.’”

“So, kind of like a road map?” Lindsey asked. “You have a city, but several routes you can take to get to it.”

“Exactly. And your route would depend on from where you are coming. Someone in Walterboro won’t take the same route to, say, Chicago as someone from Seattle. Likewise, someone from here in America will find God differently than someone who lived and died in Tibet.”

They spent the rest of the evening taking about the difference and similarities of the various world faiths, each affected by cultural norms and human free will.  When she listened to him talk about faith and God, it was obvious why he chose the priesthood as his path. Full of passion and excitement, he spoke of God and the church the way one might a lover. She knew he had a special calling, which was so very rare. Could she knowingly try to take him from that, from how much good he could do as priest, especially when the priesthood had been cast in such a bad light because of the wrongdoing of some? There was so much good he could do for the faithful! She felt very dirty for the thoughts she’d been having.

Lindsey and Eli went in at dusk to fix dinner and to get away from the pesky gnats and mosquitos that liked to overrun the backyard when the sun went down. As Lindsey sat on the sofa, she realized the spirit had left her alone since the investigation. She and Eli would hear footsteps upstairs and hear a soft sobbing, but there hadn’t been any physical altercations since. Maybe Milton was satisfied that she understood. Maybe he knew he would soon be freed from this place of torment. 

Despite the lack of physical threats, Lindsey was still not ready to face sleeping in her room. She took Raven’s advice to sleep elsewhere and was, once again, camping out in the living room. She and Eli ate vegetable soup with grilled cheese sandwiches and watched TV until she fell asleep against his chest with him playing with her hair, which was still damp from a shower.

He helped her take care of the horses the next morning. He saddled up Horus and they rode for a while, Eli sitting behind Lindsey, his arms around her, steering the massive stallion who was remarkably docile. They explored the water line and reed banks and even discovered a mountainous dam a little ways downstream from the Robbins’ house. Several fat, brown, furry beavers were on the bank but scurried back into the water as the horse approached. The trunks of several trees near the water’s edge were gnawed and leaning askew.  Further down, Eli pointed out a large alligator basking in the sun on a mound of dirt in the middle of a swampy section of the estuary.

Lindsey tried to make chit chat with Eli, but he shushed her. “Why can’t we talk? What are we doing?”

“Shhh. We’re just being. Enjoy it.”

He was right. In the silence so much was being said. Every so often Eli would lean down and put his forehead against her temple or wrap one arm around her in a kind of hug. She could feel his inner turmoil.

Lindsey leaned into Eli, praying the afternoon would never end, that God would give her guidance. But it was hard to concentrate on divine messages when the heat of his hard chest made its way through her thin shirt, or his muscular thighs would flex against her own.

Her stomach eventually betrayed her, growling loudly as they trotted through a barren field. Eli kissed her on the side of the neck and turned Horus back toward home. He kicked the stallion, and they ran back to the barn at a full gallop. The feel of the horse under her, Eli’s strong arms around her, his body behind her, and the wind in her face was, in her opinion, heaven. It was an experience she’d never, ever forget.

For that moment in time, the priesthood didn’t exist, Retreat House didn’t exist, and the ghost of Milton Walker didn’t exist.

Twenty

Eve of cleansing

Lindsey and Eli spent the late afternoon trying not to think about what might happen tomorrow when the group came back to cleanse the house. They tried not to think about the stuff they'd heard and seen at the reveal earlier in the week. Eli was visibly agitated, but he didn’t say anything. He just kept walking from her bedroom to the great room and back, mumbling incoherently to himself.

Lindsey made some tea and went out to check the mail. Her mom got a couple of bills and several thick magazines. There was a fat Priority Mail envelope for Lindsey. Intrigued, she sat down in one of the rocking chairs on the porch and opened the flap on the back. Inside was a letter from Michelle. She was having a blast registering for classes and doing orientation stuff at Clemson. She said she would miss her family over the next three months, but at least she was close enough to drive home in a few hours if she really needed to do so before fall break.

There were also a ton photos: Michelle’s new school, the entire family at Howard’s rock (Maddie pretending to vomit on it while the others smiled), the twins at their grandparents’ home in the mountains, and the going away party. There was one photo of Eli and Lindsey standing in the light of a tiki torch. She was leaning into him, gazing into his face and he into hers. She removed the photo and slipped it in one of the magazines. She would put that away for later. When Eli left, she’d have this for a memory.

The pictures of her and Brent dancing made her heart skip a little. He really was a good guy. Maybe when Eli left … No, she couldn’t think about that right now, so she skipped to the next set of pictures. They were from their fated trip to the waterpark.

“Hey, Eli!” Lindsey yelled as she walked back into the house. “I got a letter from ‘Chelle. Want to see the photos from our trip to the water park last month?”

Eli met her at the kitchen table and sat down.

Lindsey flipped through photo after photo, telling him about the water slides and the wave pool. She recounted her having to be fished out of the back of the wave pool by a life guard after she had fallen out of on her blue inner tube and nearly drowned. She laughed and made fun of her klutziness in an attempt to lighten his mood.

When she’d reached the end of the stack of photos, she stood up and went to the refrigerator to get ingredients for a sandwich. She was in the middle of opening a slice of cheese when she heard Eli gasp. She looked up to see him sitting stone-still at the table and looking wide-eyed at one of the photos. She thought quickly, wondering if she’d missed something in the stack. Was her swimsuit askew in one of them?

“What’s wrong, padre?” She asked lightly, putting her plate on the table and sitting down next to him.

“Look at this Lindsey!” he said, frantic.

Lindsey took the photo from him and looked at it carefully. She couldn’t understand why Eli reacted the way he had. All she saw were people having fun – teenagers laughing in the pool, a rotund woman in a black one-piece swim suit splashing with a toddler as one of the fountains nearby spewed water straight into the air, a group of ‘tweens spraying each other with water guns, and various others in the background playing in the water. The fronds of the palm trees were at an odd angle as they had been swaying in the breeze at the time. There was nothing spectacular about the photo, nothing to garner the response he’d just had. It could have been an ad for the water park that you’d see in a magazine or on a post card.

Eli paced behind her, running his hands through his chestnut hair. She turned and looked up at him with one eyebrow raised in confusion.

“Lindsey. Look again. Lower right corner.”

She looked down and saw herself sitting on a pool chair, smiling at the camera. Eli sighed, leaned over her shoulder, and pulled her thumb from the corner of the photo. She looked down, gasped, and dropped the photo on the table. There, looking right at her was a man with dark hair, bushy eyebrows, a thick beard, and piercing eyes. He was transparent, almost as if the one picture had been double exposed.

“But he wasn’t there, Eli! I swear. I would have remembered seeing a man like that there at the park. Especially if he was that close to me. Look at the way he’s dressed. I swear, that man was not there!”

“He
was
there, Lindsey! Think about the story you just told me about feeling as if you’d been towed to the back of the wave pool and pushed through the hole in the inner tube. You blamed it on your lack of coordination. It was him. He is not just haunting this house, the spirits of the slave woman and her children, and the grounds of the property. He’s haunting
you
. He means you harm, Lindsey! Entities are generally confined to one or two areas. And I've never seen one follow a human being around like this. I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it. This is bad.”