A Symphony of Cicadas (20 page)

But what caught my eye
the most
was the trail of
faded
stars that led further than I could see, winding toward the edges of the galaxy and beyond
.
My curiosity was working overtime, and I turned
to
move toward the Milky Way
.
I picked
up speed as I went along
, traveling faster and faster
until I was
plummeting through space
at full throttle
.
If I were more than just a spirit, I
was sure I’d
have a tail of fire as I moved forward with increasing velocity.

I came close enough to view the st
ars that made up the Milky Way,
still millions of miles away, and
moved parallel with it
.
I passed planet after planet, the space around me feeling colder as I moved further away from the sun
.
I saw the glow
ahead of me, still
thousands of miles away
.
It was like a sheet that wrapped around space, invisible above and behind me as I traveled onward
.
But as I
got
closer,
the glow
got brighter
.
I picked up speed and flew forward with all my
strength
.
It could on
ly
be the edge of the galaxy
.
Even closer, I could see space rock moving toward the
glow
.
But with shock, I saw each rock
sucked through, an invisible wind grabbing hold and propelling it in
to
a
storm that swirled
around the galaxy.

I was going too fast to stop, or so I thought
.
Had I
controlled my fears long enough to think with
clarity, I would
have
remember
ed
that I had no limits, that I could think myself away from this place in just a moment
.
But as I streamed towards the edge, all I could think of was being swept into a vortex I wouldn’t be able to get out of
.
This is my hell,
I thought
.
I’m going to be stuck here forever in a blender because I chose to leave Earth behind.

It was no use
.
I closed my eyes and waited for the end
.
And then I hit it
.
Literal
ly
.
I bounced off the glowing edge of the galaxy as if it were a solid wall, propell
ed
backward
through
the weightlessness of space with as much force as
when
I was mov
ing
forward
.
As I flew back, I remembered the power I had
.
Within a thought, I was back at the edge, examining the glowing wall without touching it
.
I could see the velocity of movement that existed just beyond it, pulling at anything that managed to pass through the wall I
had
hit with great force
.
Trembling,
I brought my hand up towards the glow, reaching forward with
some
hesitation
.
Even as space particles passed through the barrier without effort, my hand pressed firm against it
.
There was no give, regardless of the amount of force I used against it.

That’s as far as you go.

I turned my head around, startled at the voice that spoke when I had been alone for so long
.
No one was there
.
Once again I raised my hand towards the glow.

Rachel, you will go no further.

This time it was unmistakable
.
And rather than being a voice near me, it was inside my head.

“Who are you?” I yelled out.
Even as I listened for an answer, I admired how t
he glowing barrier
in front of me
vibrated with my voice, carrying my sound over it
with
a ripple
of light
.
I waited for a rep
ly
, but received none
.
What I did hear was the sounds of the Heavens, or what I perceived to be the Heavens
.
They were closer this time, but muffled
.
It sounded like they were just on the other side of the barrier, but I couldn’t be sure
.
I wondered how long I’d been tuning them out
that I was
on
ly
aware of them now
.
I
strained my ears
, trying to make out the words
.
But it was like listening to sound above water while holding your breath below.

The barrier
began to
glow brighter, the wind on the other side
forming a churning tornado
as I both heard
its thundering roar
and saw
all that
it carried moving faster
against the invisible wall
. It started to pulse, and I backed up in fear of what was about to occur
.
Just as I was thinking of turning around and heading back to where I came from, I was engulfed in a flash of light, shocked by an explosion that went straight through me like a bolt of electricity.

And then I started to fall.

Thirteen

I
n one instant I was hurtling through space with nothing to grab onto
.
In the next, I was back in the forest I found myself in when I first came to this new reality
.
I wasn’t sure how I got there -
if I had flown or just imagined myself here
.
But I was glad to be back, safe in my dark and moist forest instead of being
engulfed
by an explosion at the outer edges of the galaxy
.
I tasted the air around me, breathing in the mossy textures that comforted my nose. It was a far cry from the metallic
cosmos
that smelled like rust and tasted like biting on a penny.

I
had landed
in the same spot I was
in
when Aunt Rose found me, where the lightening had come down, catching the woods on fire
.
The proof of that fire was long covered over, both by Aunt Rose and by time
.
But from where I sat, I could still see the exact spot where the lightening had hit, the scars of the broken tree just visible under a blanket of green.

The scars continue to be there, even after death
.

Here I was, months, maybe years, after
I had crossed over
, and I still held onto a life I couldn’t get back to
.
But the love remained, on my side and on John’s
.
It was what kept us connected, what linked us despite existing in two different dimensions and separated by an invisible barrier
.
And I was tired of the barrier being there
.
Never had I felt more alone than I had in the days, weeks, months
since
my death
.
The existence of that barrier tore at me, made me feel like nothing was ever enough. I couldn’t go on just seeing a glimpse of a smile, or knowing that John was thinking of me
.
How could I be satisfied when he didn’t even know I was there?  How wou
ld it ever be enough when I’
d never see my reflection in his eyes, or the way he smiled when he l
ooked down on my face?

This time when the cicadas began
buzzing
, I relaxed into the song and was carried into it as if I were one of the notes echoing through the trees
.
I thought of John, envisioning myself wrapped up in his arms again, feeling the sandy texture of his cheek against mine and the warmth of his body
wrapped around me
.
I nestled against him, falling deeper into his embrace so that it no longer felt like an imagined scene
.
Everything else felt like a dream as I submitted to the feeling of being held so close
.
And in the moment, I no longer felt the weightlessness of being dead, feeling instead the sweet tether of living within a human body with skin and sweat and heat and life.

But the sound of the cicadas
that surrounded
me kept me grounded, let
ting
me know that
they
were
the reality, not
John
.
And I managed to tear myself from John’s arms and set myself back on the forest floor, sinking in tears as I cried for all I had left behind.

“Oh Rachel, what have you done?” a voice
asked
next to me
.
I looked up to see Aunt Rose looking down upon me with compassion, mixed with a slight shiver of fear.

“What do you mean?” I asked
, forgetting my anger in my confusion
. I wasn’t sure if she was referring to the voyage through space, my resolve to stay near John, or just plain failing at this existence in death
.
But then I remembered that she was the cause of all of this, and I set my jaw in stubborn defiance
.
“I’m not speaking to you,” I told her, turning back to the ground and willing her to go away.

“Take my hand, d
arling,” she said, forgetting that I had forbidden her from
using the endearment
.
I wanted to lash out at her for even daring to come near me again after all the trouble she had caused
.
But something inside me urged me to trust her. And so I did
.
I reached up and took her hand, pulling myself to my feet
.
And with a tug, we were both transported from the forest to the inside of a building
.
I
t
felt familiar
.
I took in the hardwood floors and the painted walls, the photos that hung from the walls and the light fixtures that glowed above our heads
.
I realized with a lurch that this was the house in
San Anselmo
.
How much time had passed since that day?

Aunt Rose urged me forward
.
I walked through the house
, sighing
with admiration
over everything
John had been working on in his spare time
.
The kitchen was
just
as I had hoped, the checkered floors greeting me like they were part of a diner out of the 1950s, the red from the towels and kitchen gadgets on the sink smiling at me and beckoning me forward
.
Sunlight streamed through the window where I would have been washing our dishes, and I ran my hand over the smooth marble that encased a large sink below the curve of a sturdy faucet.

I moved to the next room, and
exclaimed over
each detail that John had placed into it with care
.
The
brilliant white
wainscoting in the bedroom
complemented
a light shade of blue on the walls
.
Large wooden blinds sat within the windows, opened to reveal the garden outside that was blooming with life
.
Separating this particular bedroom from the master bedroom was a
tiled
bathroom, the same black and white
pattern
on the floor below a wide claw footed tub
.
I climbed into the tub and lay down, the size of it large enough to allow me to stretch out my legs and soak in the imaginary bubbles
.
In the corner was a large glass shower encased in blonde stone with
a
large rainfall
shower head
above
.
A pedestal sink
was
in the other corner, and a large vanity
lay between
the sink and shower where I would have been able to do my makeup and hair.

“Darling, I need you to keep going,” Aunt Rose said, interrupting my mental escape inside the home I was supposed to be living in
.
She took my hand once again, but this time did not lurch me away
.
Instead, she led me to the master bedroom
.
I gasped when I saw what she had been trying to show me all along, feeling stupid for
being
distract
ed by a
building
.
Th
ere on the floor was John, crump
led in a fetal position beside
the makings of a bed frame
.
The screwdriver had fallen from his hand and rested a few inches away
.
As I rushed to his side, I was afraid he was dead
.
Rather, I was
half
afraid
.
Part of me, the part that I hid from my watchful Aunt Rose in the corner, hoped that this meant he would be joining me soon, that I would be able to hold onto him once again and feel his breath on my face
.
But
I also wanted him to live, knowing how he needed to be there for his son, knowing that it wasn’t his time to leave earth.

I reached out and touched his face, or at least moved my hand against the barrier that separated us so that my hand hovered just above his ashen skin
.
In an instant,
I was flooded with images of the two of us together, his mind working overtime as he flitted from consciousness and a dreamlike state, fighting to stay on his side of life.

“Rachel,” he whispered, and I realized he was aware of me in this half-conscious state.

“I’m here, sweetheart
.
I’ve always been here,” I whispered
.
I could tell he couldn’t hear me, that he was just aware of my presence even if I felt on
ly
like a dream
.
But I lay down next to him
, my back against his chest as I
curled up into his body, the invisible barrier the on
ly
thing between us
.
And I stayed like that with him for a few moments, holding the same position I had imagined
just
moments earlier in a forest
ed
symphony of cicadas
.
The song of the winged insects was replaced this time by the sound of John’s heart against my back, my ears filled with its irregular beat, the sound so engulfing I was afraid it would beat right out of his chest.

“Now do you understand?” Aunt Rose
murmured
from
where she stood on the other side of the room
.

“Understand what?” I asked her, keeping my eyes closed and wishing she’d just go away.

“How fragile life is, and how it can be broken by
just
one of our mere whims,” she told me with quiet seriousness
.
I
opened my eyes from the protective shell of John’s body and looked at her.

“What do you mean?”  I
scrutinized her
, a ball of fear
manifesting inside me
.

“If you don’t stop wishing him with you, he’s going to die, Rachel
.”
Her eyes flashed with determination as she tried to get me to see what I was refusing to see.

I had caused this.

I jumped from where I was and stood over John
.
His breath was slow and he
winc
ed
in pain
.
When he could speak, he said my name with each breath
.
I longed to stop his pain, to bring him away from all that hurt him and comfort him in his fear
.
I remembered what it was like to die alone, to be cast into a confusing world where nothing made sense and no one was there to show me the way
.
With silent vows,
I promised him I wouldn’t let that happen to him, that I would be there when he reached the other side, and together we could figure out what happened next.

“Do you real
ly
want to be the cause of this?” Aunt Rose asked me, beside me with her hand on my shoulder
.
I was
reminded of
the moment I realized that her wishes had ended the lives of me and Joey, and how angry I had been with this woman I had once loved like a second mother
.
I looked with alarm at John, realizing that I was
in danger of
killing him
,
and that he might hate me for it
.
I tried to reason within myself that he would have wanted this
.
But I knew that by bringing him to me, I was also tearing him away from everyone he loved in life,
including
his son.

“Is it too late?” I asked Aunt Rose with a sudden fear
.
I remembered the momentum that had continued even after she
had changed the course of her thinking
, how we had careened off the cliff even as she willed us to continue on in the land of the living.

“I don’t think so
.
But you need to change your thoughts from wishing he were with you to wishing
with all your heart that his life will continue
,” she told me
.
She moved her hand from my shoulder and took my hand in hers
.
I squeezed it with determination, glad she was here to guide me in something I still didn’t quite understand
.
How would I have known what to do, or even what was happening, if she hadn’t found me and led me here?  I closed my eyes and thought about John, this time in a reality that didn’t include me
.
I thought about him with his son, imagining the two of them together in this house, sharing a life of happiness that was filled with the living instead of being haunted by the dead
.
I created in my mind scenarios that involved him working at his job, taking
Sam
to baseball games, and even, with hesitation, thoughts of him falling in love again and discovering life beyond me
.
But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to see a face upon the girl he looked at with such care in the confines of my imagination
.
Instead, I saw the back of her head and his face looking down on hers
.
And I pushed against the feelings of jealousy that threatened to overwhelm, discovering the sweet sensation of comfort that rose up under the thoughts of him happy once again.