Memory's Door (A Well Spring Novel) (30 page)

It wasn’t right. It seemed right, it should be right, but staying here even a second longer was wrong. The strong, calm voice of the Spirit was shouting at her to leave. And for some reason she couldn’t get the image of the hockey team she’d seen while at Well Spring out of her mind.

“No. Not a few more minutes. We have to get out now.” She turned to her right. “Brandon! Let’s go.”

The Song turned and trudged through the pure snow toward her. When he reached them he said, “Yeah, I’m thinking and feeling you’re right.”

“Professor!” she called out over the snow. “We have to go now.”

Marcus nodded and twisted toward them. He broke into a slow jog, but before he’d gone seven paces, a small crack appeared in the snow halfway between them and the snow under her feet shuddered.

“Hurry!”

“I see it.” The professor broke into a run, but before he’d taken three more strides it was already too late. The crack grew as wide as a footpath, then to half the size of a country road. Within ten seconds it was the size of a four-lane freeway.

Dana stuttered up as close to the edge as she dared and peered down. The crevasse was too deep to see the bottom. She whipped her head up and stared at Marcus’s horrified expression.

“It isn’t possible for me to leap across an expanse that wide.”

Reece shuffled up next to her on the right, Brandon did the same on her left.

“It’s okay,” Reece said. “We’ll find a bridge or a way over it where the crevasse isn’t as wide or where it ends.”

Even as Reece spoke the words, Dana knew the attempt would be futile. She glanced at the massive gash in the snow as far as she could see in both directions. The crevasse didn’t narrow, and she knew they would walk for miles and never find a way across.

“Ropes.” Reece clenched his fists together as if he held a rope in both hands. “We have to create ropes or a bridge to lie across the gap. Or heal the rift and bring the edges back together. This will be a good exercise for us.”

“Dana?” Brandon’s face had gone almost as white as the snow they stood on, and he looked ill. “I think we might have a bigger problem than the crevasse.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Think back to Well Spring. When we prayed together in the grove of aspen trees for Reece. That’s pinging so hot and heavy in my brain I can’t picture anything else.”

“Yes, I got it, get to the point.”

“You saw a hockey team, right? And had an overwhelming feeling of danger. And I saw white.”

“What does that have to do—?”

“What were the colors? What did the uniforms look like? Can you remember any symbols or markings on the jerseys?”

“Sure.” She frowned. “They were red with blue sleeves and they had the initial
A
on the front.”

“Oh boy.” The remaining color drained from Brandon’s face. “We should have figured it out. We should have stuck with it right then, pressed into it till we got the answer.”

“Figured what out?”

“The hockey team you saw was the Colorado Avalanche.”

“So?”

Brandon didn’t answer except to turn and look up the slope to her left.

“No,” Dana whispered. “You don’t really think—”

“Yeah, I do.”

She turned to Reece. “We need to get that bridge now and get Marcus over here so we can leave!”

Marcus stepped to the edge of the crevasse, his toes sticking over the edge. “Forget the bridge. Let’s just go. Try to get out.”

“Impossible,” Dana said. “You know the answer, Professor. We must go together. All four of us have to be physically connected.”

“But that one time . . .”

“Are you willing to take that chance this time? I’m not.”

Reece cupped his hands over his mouth. “There would be no way for you to control where you end up when you go back through the gate. And no way for us to know where you’ve gone.”

“Haven’t you ever run into this type of situation before?” Marcus said. “Where someone is separated from the group but you have to get out?” The crevasse rumbled and widened by another two feet. “You have to have encountered this scenario previously.”

“Yes. I have.”

“And what happened?”

Reece pressed his lips together till they turned white, started to answer, then stopped. “We have to get you across to us or us across to you. And you and Dana are right, we need that bridge now.”

As Reece finished speaking, a dull roar at the top of the mountain filled Dana’s ears. She slowly turned her head toward the sound knowing exactly what she would see and wanting to pretend it wasn’t happening.

Avalanche. A half mile above them. At least three hundred yards wide and picking up speed. A churning giant wall of snow and ice and granite shot out tendrils of smaller chunks that it consumed seconds later as it fed upon itself and grew larger. How long did they have? Forty-five seconds? A minute at most? Maybe. Maybe less. Unless they could build an instant way across, they would either die together or be separated and Marcus would end up in a place probably not even Reece could predict. What had they been thinking?

Stick together. Pretend you’re a scuba diver. Make sure you’re within one breath of your partner at all times.
Reece had taught them that as rule number three or four—it didn’t matter because they’d broken whichever rule it was and right now, unless the miraculous leaped up in front of them, they were going to lose the professor.

Reece had his head down, hands clenched in front of him. A moment later he threw his arms wide and a bundle of wood and rope appeared in his arms. “Yes!” he shouted and stepped up to the edge of the crevasse, half his boot over the side, teetering over the expanse.

“Here!” Reece called to Marcus across the chasm as he shook the rope and wood slats in his hands. The big man somehow had conjured a rope bridge, and he spun twice like a discus thrower, then flung it toward the professor. It streaked out from Reece’s hands like a rifle shot and lay against the bright blue sky. It seemed to float in slow motion toward the professor while the river of snow thundering down on them to their left moved faster.

“Come on!” Brandon shouted.

But the bridge wasn’t enough. Not even close to close. The edge of the ropes only reached halfway across the chasm where they fluttered down and bounced against the side of the crevasse they stood on.

“Longer, we have to make it longer.” Reece staggered up to the edge of the crevasse, his boots sending tiny bunches of snow over the edge, and dragged the bridge up from the depths. “Concentrate with me. Believe! We have to believe.”

What was Reece thinking? Even if a bridge appeared long enough to reach the other side it would take anyone but a world-class tightrope walker at least thirty seconds to cross a chasm that wide.

“If
any
of us are going to survive, we have to go now, Reece!” She grabbed Brandon’s hand and stretched out her other for Reece. “Now!”

Reece’s head heaved up and down like a buoy in an ocean storm
and his breaths came in gasps. “We can’t leave him! If we go, he goes too, but we’ll have no way of knowing where.”

“We have no choice!” She grabbed Brandon’s hand and reached out for Reece’s. “Grab my hand, Reece!”

“What about Marcus?”

The pain in Reece’s eyes said he didn’t know and never would. He turned to Marcus and shouted, but how could the professor hear over the thunder of the avalanche from that far away? “Stay in prayer, trust no one, we will find you!”

The professor shouted a response that sounded like a question, but Dana couldn’t make it out. Reece whipped his head toward her with a questioning look in his eyes. He hadn’t heard it either. She shook her head violently and pointed at the wall of snow and ice and granite pounding toward them like a giant white wave. They had seconds.

“Marcus will go at the same time we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“What! I thought—”

An instant before the moving wall of jagged snow slammed into them, the rush of soul travel buried Dana, and the avalanche and the roar in her ears vanished. Brilliant light and myriad colors and the rush of warm wind and a sensation of spinning filled her senses. They’d made it out. In seconds they’d be back at the fire pit in Reece’s backyard.

But the seconds stretched out like a blade and Dana felt a tearing in her soul and in her spirit. Why was it taking longer to get out? Because Marcus wasn’t with them? Because the Spirit was joining the professor to them even though he hadn’t been physically connected when they left?
Please, Lord, let it be so.

Her spirit slid back into her body with a jerk, as if all of her bones had been given a sharp yank in opposite directions. “Ow!” Her eyes fluttered open and she glanced at Reece and Brandon. “Where’d that electric jolt come from?”

Reece sighed but didn’t answer. Brandon pointed at Marcus’s
prone body lying on the couch. “I’m guessing since one of us didn’t get out, it made our reentry a little bumpier than normal. Reece?”

Again the big man didn’t answer but gave a slight nod of his head.

Dana gave a tiny shake of hers. “So Marcus’s body is here, but his spirit is somewhere else? And we don’t know where that somewhere else is?”

“That’s right.” Another deep breath from the Temple and again, silence.

Brandon stood and paced, his gaze flitting back and forth between her and Reece. He shrugged and his eyes opened wider as if asking why Reece had gone comatose and what they should do about it.

“Are you sure he didn’t get out?” She turned to Marcus, rubbed his shoulder, and bent down to his ear. “Professor, we’re back.” She turned to Reece. “Is there a chance he’s here?”

Reece shook his head and his voice was soft. “Only his body.”

“How can you be so calm? I told you we needed to get out. Why didn’t you listen to me!”

Reece stared at her with his dark, unmoving scarred eyes.

“Didn’t you learn anything twenty-five years ago?” The moment the words escaped she regretted them. His delay wasn’t about arrogance. It was about being able to see again. Being able to soak in the desire that had been the driving passion for most of his life. The desire that had been ripped from him by the demons and the gift God had not stopped from being stolen. And she had not walked in those shoes.

“I’m so wrong for saying that, Reece. I’m so sorry.”

“We’ll find Marcus. I promise you we will.”

Brandon folded his arms. “You said this happened before. And the outcome wasn’t good. I could see it in your eyes when we were inside just now. Tell us.”

“A long time ago I went into a soul with a number of others. We were separated and we didn’t know about staying physically
connected. We came out, but two of our party did not. We weren’t able to find their spirits and bring them back out.”

Reece slipped his fingers around the sunglasses hanging around his neck and slid them over his eyes. “But this time we won’t fail. I promise, we will find the professor. We have to.”

“More than just because he’s one of the Warriors?”

“Yes.” Reece took a long breath. “The Spirit told me Marcus is critical to our success in the coming battle with the Wolf. Without him, we are lost.”

FORTY-THREE

J
UST BEFORE THE AVALANCHE SLAMMED INTO THE
others, they vanished, or had Marcus vanished from them? The air swirled and the sound of crashing waves surrounded him as often transpired when they went in or out of spiritual worlds. For a moment he thought the similarity meant he would return to his body with the others. But when silence came and his eyes fluttered open, he wasn’t back at Reece’s home.

He stood on the ledge of a cliff, maybe twenty-five feet long and five feet wide. A breeze pushed through his hair and brought the smell of giant sequoia trees. The screech of a red-tailed hawk ripped through the air to his right.

Far below him—a rough estimate said five hundred feet down—three tree-soaked valleys wound away from him for miles till they ended at the base of a mountain range at least five thousand feet high. Strange. Not a hint of snow covered their tops. The feeling of an early fall afternoon was on the wind.

He should be at least apprehensive, but with each breath he seemed to be inhaling peace. He studied the cliff wall above him, then turned and stared over the edge. Getting off would be a challenge. Marcus looked at the sun. He had two, maybe three hours before the sun disappeared behind the peaks to the west and then? It could get cold. A night up on this ledge would not be pleasant.

A voice from above floated down on him. “Ho there!”

Marcus whipped his head up to find a man dressed in red-and-black climbing gear hanging from a rope at least two hundred feet above him. The man waved and smiled. For the next few minutes Marcus watched the man rappel down the mountain till he stood on the ledge and stepped out of his climbing gear.

“I hope I didn’t startle you from above.”

The man was short, not much over five four, and his brown eyes were intense but kind. Brown hair was parted on the side and a three-day-old beard was thick on his face. Not handsome, but not unattractive either.

“Not at all.” Marcus glanced around the ledge. “Although I can’t say I was expecting you.”

“You probably had no idea what to expect.” The man stepped to the edge of the cliff, sat, and took long, slow breaths.

“True.” Marcus joined him.

“And”—he smiled at Marcus—“I imagine you’re wondering where you are.”

“I would say earth, based on the geology and plant life, but there’s too much peace here.”

“Aye, rightly you’ve called that one.” The man grinned and wrapped his arms around his legs and gazed out over the valleys. “There’s few places I’d rather be than right here.”

“Am I inside someone’s soul?”

“No, you know that feeling by now, and I think you realize you’re in a place entirely different. Where were you before you came here?”

“I was inside a spiritual realm with three friends of mine. We were on the slope of a mountain together, but a crevasse opened up between us and prevented me from leaving with them.”

“Why didn’t you find a way across?”

“An avalanche was bearing down on all of us. We couldn’t wait any longer.”