Dark Rain: 15 Short Tales (4 page)

The Earth receded, far below.

Up here, there was only darkness. Up here, there wasn’t much separating me from the stars. No, that wasn’t true. There was something very significant: the Earth’s atmosphere. That, which held the Earth together; that which kept us bound together. Earthbound.

We are sitting together on a ledge?
I asked after a moment.

In a way, Sam. An aspect of you is with me. A soul fragment.

That makes no sense.

Then let me try again. We are all souls, Sam. Some older than others. Some further along on our journeys. We each come from the mind of God. I believe you understand this.

I do.
I think.

You do,
he thought.
I see you have more than sufficient understanding of the One concept.

We are all One,
I thought.
Because we are all from the same source.

Yes,
he nodded mentally.
Good. As souls, as children of the one source, the Creator, we can do many wondrous things. Your world is only now beginning to discover such things, but mostly, you will deny yourselves your birthright. Or, as we call it, your soulright.

You’re talking about miracles,
I said.

Much more than miracles, Sam. But, yes.

And your world is further along than our world?

In a nutshell, yes. We acknowledge that we are much more than our physical bodies. We also understand that we can be in two different places at once. Or more.

More?

Yes, Sam. The soul is limitless, as is the Creator.

And if we are part of the Creator…

Then we, too, are limitless
.

But why do we limit ourselves?
I thought.
Why do we accept our current state?

That is for your world to figure out, Sam.

And your world has figured this out?

We did. Many millennia ago.

And what did you do with this information?
I asked.

We flew, Sam. We grew wings and built cities in the sky. We removed poverty and disease and war and hate. We removed death.

You are immortal?

Yes, Sam. If we choose to be.

I want to see this world,
I thought.

Then open your eyes, Sam.

I don’t know how!

So be it, then.

No, wait. I want to know how. I want to see your cities.

Before me, hovering brilliantly in the sky, was the full moon. It seemed bigger than I had ever seen it before. It should be bigger. I was, after all, closer to it than I had ever been before.

As I flew, a sudden truth spread through me, and as it did, I felt myself nodding. The great head of the beast I had become nodded, too.

I have to first believe I can fly to the moon,
I thought,
before I can believe I can see your world.

They are, as your world calls it, baby steps.

It’s a helluva baby step,
I thought.

Not as big as you think, Sam.

I would have to break through our atmosphere. We would have to break through it, flying faster than any creature has ever flown before, or could ever fly. Defy gravity. That is the truth, Sam.

But you just said that, as sons and daughters of the Creator, we can do anything.

I did.

But how? How do we do that?

How indeed, Sam.

Then once in space, how do we survive reentry? I mean, iron-ore comets burn to dust while entering our atmosphere.

Indeed,
he thought.
And I see that you’ve been doing your research.

I Googled it,
I thought, wondering briefly if the creature I had become knew about Google.

I do, Sam. We are more connected than you know.

Of that, I had no doubt, and as I studied the glowing moon before me, I began to see the absurdity of all of this. I had kids far below. I had a parent/teacher conference in two days. I had a client meeting tomorrow with a man who, of all things, claimed his wife had disappeared off the face of the Earth.

We’ll see about that,
I thought.

I had no business being here. I had no business dreaming of the moon. What was the point?

There wasn’t a point. I had no reason to want to fly to the moon, to soar over its bleak craters and crags and valleys and steppes.

And yet…

Yet, I did. I very much wanted to. It made no sense.

It makes more sense than you give it credit, Sam.

I considered his words as I flew now just below the outer limits of the atmosphere. I knew this because the oxygen was scarce and ice had long ago formed on my wings. In fact, great chunks of it broke loose and cascaded down into the night as I flapped.

Yes, I wanted to do it. Simple as that.

But it was, of course, impossible.

Oh?
thought a voice inside my head, a voice that was either myself or the beast I presently inhabited. Or maybe a little of both.
And you know this how?

Truth was, I
didn’t
.

I was certainly going faster than I had ever gone before. Still, not fast enough to break from the Earth’s gravitational pull.

Probably not, Sam
.

Then what’s my answer?

But he didn’t respond, and I knew it wasn’t his job to provide me with the answer.

Can you maybe give me a hint?
I thought.

What makes you think I have the answer, Sam? I am but a simple giant bat.

I nearly laughed. I doubted the creature I had become could actually produce the sound of laughter. More than likely, it would have come out as a high-pitched screech.

The answer. I thought about that as I flapped faster and faster. I suspected my job wasn’t to
know
. My job was simply… to believe. And the answers would come. They would come soon.

They had to.

Far, far below, through the cloud cover and smog, the city lights twinkled. No, I didn’t know where I was, exactly. Or the names of cities below. But an inner guidance system told me exactly how far I was from home, and just how to get back there.

Pretty cool,
I thought.

Yes, I am,
came the voice.

I smiled as I flew—and considered everything I’d been told tonight. As I did so, one thing became abundantly clear: I was in two places at once. And perhaps, even three.

Very good, Sam.

I had been told before—by entities far greater than I—that the majority of my soul resided in the spirit world, wherever that was. That our physical bodies were a living, breathing extension of our bigger souls; in fact, our physical bodies were but a temporary vessel to be used for personal growth. Now, I was being told that a part of me was with this creature, in another world. But how much of me was with him?

An essence of you, Sam.
But it can become much more, if you choose it to be.

A picture appeared in my thoughts. It was of myself and the creature… and we were indeed together on a rocky ledge, although the creature wasn’t exactly sitting.
Perched
was more like it. Myself, I was squatting near the ledge, naked as the day I was born, looking down at a mist-covered landscape.

Why am I next to you?
I asked.
I mean, I thought our bodies were sort of, you know, melded?

It doesn’t have to be that way, Sam.

Then why isn’t it this way now? Here in my world?

Would you prefer we part ways now?
chuckled the creature.
It would be a mighty long drop for you, although, I suspect, you would survive it well enough.

I shook my head at the absurdity of it all, and then asked:
Why do you come here? I mean, you obviously have free will. Surely, you aren’t being compelled?

More ice broke free from my wings. Stronger winds than I’d ever experienced before rocked me. Rocked us. Reaching, if I had to guess, well over 300 miles per hour.

I see it as an opportunity, Sam,
came the reply.

To be with you. To, perhaps, help you.

But I thought the dark masters forced you into this role?
The ‘dark masters’, of course, being the entities who fueled vampires such as myself, who gave us our powers and our immortality. And all they asked for in return was total possession of our bodies. Something I had been fighting, so far, successfully.

Not forced, Sam. As I said, we saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.

An opportunity for what?

To give balance to the darkness.

You work with the Librarian?
I asked.

We do,
said the creature.
He and others like him.

So, there really is a war going on out there?
I thought.
A war for mankind?

We do not see it as a war. We see it as an ebb and flow of energy. Presently, your world is ebbing away from negativity and toward something beautiful. The dark masters, as you refer to them, fear this natural progression and seek to stop it, or slow it down.

We continued flying, and I was curious to note my new use of the pronoun “we.” Yes, I now thought of the creature and myself as a sort of weird hybrid team. As we fought through a maelstrom that was surely strong enough to collapse the sturdiest of skyscrapers, I thought,
We can’t fly fast enough to escape the Earth’s atmosphere, can we?

No, Sam.

So, there’s no way for us to fly to the moon?

I didn’t say that.

The answer was close. I could feel it. I just had to figure it out. No, I just had to believe.

And so I flew, high above my home world. I quieted my mind and flew in peace, easily enduring the screaming winds, the freezing cold, and the lack of oxygen.

I was no longer a mom, no longer a sister, or even a private investigator. I was something huge and forgotten, something at peace and… happy.

And as I flew, a single image popped up in my thoughts.

The flame.

It was, of course, the same flame I saw each and every time I summoned Talos… or when I summoned my own human body. I suspect he and I were forever linked by that flame. A flame that connected worlds.

I gasped suddenly.

There was something to this. The flame. Yes, the flame. It was the key to it all.

Now, with the creature frustratingly silent and the high winds somehow increasing, I suddenly knew the answer.

The flame is a portal,
I thought, excited.
A doorway to anywhere.

An interesting concept, Sam.

Don’t give me that concept crap. Am I right?

There’s only one way to find out, Sam.

Indeed,
I thought, and summoned the flame.

Within it, I saw myself.

My human self. Normally, I would move toward her, and she toward me, and we would rejoin. But not now, of course. Unless I wished to fall for eternity, which I didn’t.

Now, with a nod toward that spunky gal I loved so much—that gal who had put up with so much and handled life and death as best as she could—I dismissed her.

She returned my nod and stepped out of the flickering flame in the center of my thoughts, vacating it.

Okay, that’s a first.
But, now what the devil do I do?
The creature, of course, remained mum on the subject.
Fat lot of good you are,
I thought grumpily.

Small laughter just inside my ears.
You’re doing good, Sam.

I grumbled some more and continued focusing on the empty flame. So what was next?

Easy,
I suddenly thought. Something had to fill the flame. Something had to appear within the flame. I knew just what that something had to be.

Now, as I flew high above the West Coast of the United States, a streaking, hellish beast from another world that cut through the high winds faster than most fighter jets, I saw the surface of the moon.