Seasons of Heaven (8 page)

The companions gave each other another searching look. They knew as much about the white figure as they did the dark one…practically nothing. The difference was, the white figure was offering them salvation and a reunion with Yann’s parents. They would follow her advice and pray that it led them out of the darkness and back home where they belonged.

CHAPTER SIX

“FALLING”

JFK AIRPORT, NEW YORK

James tolerated the chaos of the airport and endured the annoyances that going through security these days entailed…barely. He was at last rewarded for it all by the sound of the voice calling overhead that his flight was boarding. He picked up his carry-on bag and grudgingly got into another line as each passenger walked across the ramp that led into the open door of the plane and found their seats. James made his way to his own seat with his boarding pass in hand and stowed his carry on in the space above. He sat down, finally able to relax…if only he could turn off his thoughts….

Looking down at the boarding pass he was holding, a strange sensation began to creep throughout his body. For years now, since the day that his son had disappeared James had seriously considered suicide, more than once. Not a day went by when he didn’t picture sweet Thomas’ face. The only thing that kept him going was the thought…the chance…the hope they would find him and he would be reunited with his son.

James often thought that kidnapping was possibly worse than the death of a child. At least when a child dies…as horrible that was…the parent’s had some sort of closure. They didn’t sit and wait, and watch and pray constantly that the child was going to come home. His mind couldn’t stop thinking about it. How was he supposed to? He didn’t know who or what had his boy. He didn’t know if he were alive or dead. He didn’t know what Thomas may have to endure without his father there to help him…to protect him. There was nothing on this earth more unnatural than the loss of a child. The human spirit was strong, but no one should be expected to endure that kind of heart wrenching loss and come out the other side unscathed. It wasn’t humanly possible. Once you had fallen into that bottomless abyss of pain and suffering…there was no way out.

The question that James couldn’t escape and the one that he couldn’t stop asking…was how? How does a child just disappear? The police had no clues….no evidence ever uncovered or recorded that might give them any idea as to where Thomas went and who or what may have taken him. How does that happen? Someone had to have seen him; someone had to know where he was…

“Can I get you something to drink, sir?” James was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of the flight attendant’s voice.

“Yes, I’ll have bourbon on the rocks,” James told her. Another drink couldn’t hurt. Who knows? It might be the one that will finally dull the ache in his heart….Soothe the pain in his soul.  At the very least it would help ease him into a dreamless sleep.

              “Ladies and gentlemen,” the woman’s voice came across the intercom, “The Captain has turned off the Seat Belt sign, and you may now use the lavatories. However we always recommend keeping your seat belt fastened while you’re seated. You may now turn on your electronic devices. We wish you all an enjoyable flight…

              James tried to relax but the darkness of the night outside the window and the sounds of the airplane engines whirring only served to feed his mounting anxiety. After a few minutes he signaled the nearest Flight attendant and said,

              “Excuse me, I ordered a drink and it hasn’t come yet…”

              “It’s on its way, sir,” she told him.

              “I don’t really like to fly,” he told her, “So…if you could be nice enough to hurry it up…if you can? Thank you.”

After another few minutes, James received his drink. The flight attendant had brought him a bottle of bourbon and a glass full of ice.

“Thank you,” James told her. Still in a foul mood he said, “It was nice of you to hurry,” in a sarcastic tone.

A sudden flash of white consumed the plane and when James could focus his eyes again he was standing in the center of the aisle. Confused, he looked around at the other passengers but they were no longer human….they were mannequins, anthropomorphic mannequins, life like…but not alive.

There was another blinding flash of white light and one of the female mannequins yelled out,

“Run James!”

“Your son is dead, and he is ours!” The adult male mannequin who sat next to her said. Then the little boy mannequin who sat with them, said in a creepy little boy voice,

“Look for him at 10h23, maybe you’ll find him…Or maybe you will only find his corpse.”

It was all horrible and overwhelming, too much for James to bear. He grabbed his aching head in his hands and let out a gut-wrenching scream. James began wandering about the plane; stumbling…drunk, frightened, anguished…. The statues watched him, their eyes moving as he did. It was like truly being caught in a nightmare. James felt like time was standing still, as if he were a puppet himself. He screamed again, just to break the awful silence and this time as he did some of the mannequins began to rise to their feet. It was as if he’d awakened them. James looked at them in horror, wondering what they were up to. He found out soon enough as they began to run after him. They chased him through the humongous plane. They ran along the first floor of the two-story plane, where a game of hide and seek ensued. It was the most horrifying game that James had ever played and although he wanted no part of it he had no choice. He found a small place to hide and as he waited for them to find him and do…whatever…he could feel his heart pounding so furiously that he thought it might rip a hole in his chest. The sweat dripped slowly down the sides of his face and he tried with all of his might to control the rough and ragged sounds of his breathing so as not to give away his hiding place.

When James had at last calmed himself enough to see straight, he spotted the fire extinguisher in the seat in front of him. He lifted it out of its holder quietly and then in one grand motion he stood up and pulled the handle. A thick cloud of white began to spurt out, coloring the air so that he could suddenly see petrifying black shadows twirling all around him. They had their mouths held open as if in silent screams and some of them reached out and swiped the air around James as if trying to capture him. Still holding the extinguisher, he began to run again….Trying desperately to find a way out. He reached the door of the cockpit and pulled hard on the latch that held it closed. As it swung open James knew he had to be caught up in a horrendous nightmare. In the pilot seat sat his dear departed wife, Sarah and their boy Thomas sat next to her as her co-pilot.

Normally James would have been thrilled to see them both, but although the things in the cockpit were dead ringers for his family their robotic movements and frozen on smiles were anything but warm and inviting. James had no idea what they were, but he knew what they weren’t and that was his beautiful wife and son. He was about to close the door and the thing that was Sarah sang out,

“Bye, honey!” as if James was only leaving for work. It was Sarah’s voice, only it wasn’t. It was a dark, sinister version of it that sent a chill running rampant down James’s spine.

“See you soon, Dad!” Thomas said, in a voice completely void of emotion.

James was deadly frightened now. He slammed the door, unable to look at the visions of his wife and son. He knew they weren’t real, they couldn’t be. It was the dark things…the things of his nightmares, trying to trick him. It wasn’t what they looked like; it was what they
felt
like. They felt wrong…evil, something neither Sarah nor Thomas could ever be.

His head was pounding like a drum and he felt as if he would explode from the build-up of anxiety in his chest. He began screaming again if for no other reason than that he was hoping to release some of what was tearing him up inside. As he stood there screaming, he realized that the dark entities had found him once more. He didn’t see them this time…he felt them. Like the other monsters, the ones from his childhood and in the hospital, he could feel their dark ministrations.

He ran up the stairs looking desperately once again for an exit. He didn’t think about how high they were in the air, or that he couldn’t possibly survive if he jumped. He just wanted…no, he needed out.

There was suddenly a deafening sound as an explosion ripped through the plane. James was thrown against a wall as the plane surged to the right and from where he lay in the floor, he could see the glare of bright orange and yellow flames out of one of the windows. Smoke rolled out of the plane and filled the sky with an enormous black cloud. The engine was on fire, it must have been what exploded. He didn’t know what to be more frightened of the shadowy creatures or the now surely doomed flight.

He was still sliding along the windowed wall as the plane continued to tip further sideways. He reached out and tried to grab onto something, anything. He was still clutching the fire extinguisher so hard that his knuckles were white and sore. When he turned loose with one hand to try and grab something to hold onto the fire extinguisher slipped from his other hand and slamming forcefully into his head, sent him into a sea of blackness as the alarm began to screech wildly in the background.

When James came to, it was obvious that the plane was plummeting wildly towards the ground. James groped around, dazed and disoriented, only knowing that he desperately needed to find something to hold onto. He had to get to his feet…he had to get out of the plane. That made no sense, either way he was dead. Something told him that he’d rather face a free fall from thirty thousand feet or so than the eternal damnation the creatures seemed to be offering.

He was finally able to get a grip onto the back of one of the seats in front of him. With a great deal of effort because of the injury to his head and because of the sharp, downward angle of the plane he at last struggled to his feet.

The sight of the abysmal black shapes still hovering around him spurred him back into action once he was finally upright again. He began to head for the clearly marked “exit” door, but before he got there he was once again assaulted by an earsplitting sound and before he could even react to that, his body was sucked out the door that had been ripped off its hinges and he found himself suspended in the dark sky. Although relieved to have escaped the clutches of the dark, dreadful things, he knew without a doubt now that he was going to die and he began crying for a wasted life. He cried for having to leave before he knew where Thomas was and what had happened to him. That was the worst part, knowing that he’d never be able to discover what had happened to his boy. He couldn’t imagine that his soul could ever rest without that knowledge, no matter how sinister the answer might be.

He watched in abject horror as the plane was ripped into two huge pieces by the violence of the storm that surrounded him. James’ body was being twirled around, he couldn’t stop spinning and the force of the motion caused him to become nauseated, sick…he began to vomit violently as his body continued its motion. He was hurtled through the clouds which didn’t feel light and puffy at all, but as if they were coated with sharp edges that tore at his body as he passed through them. The bolts of lightning passed close, so closely that he could feel their heat and jolts of electrical currents ripping through his flesh.

His body finally stopped twisting and twirling and James began to fall now with his face turned towards the earth. His fingers and his face gathered ice as they froze and his eyes began to glaze over. He could no longer see well, but as he turned his head to the left he thought he saw a vast landmass with immense waterfalls only a hundred or so meters away, emptying out into the sky. He watched the sight, enraptured by it for several seconds and then suddenly what he’d been gazing upon just vanished as if it had never been there in the first place.

James turned his head back into the direction of the earth, the direction that he was falling. He could see colors first and then trees. The drops of water he’d seen began to turn into lakes and the tiny little houses into huge, tall buildings. The changes were too fast for his brain to process. He closed his eyes, hoping not to see what would come last.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“CONFRONTATIONS WITH A GHOST”

QUEEN’S NEW YORK

Friday, March 3, 1990

Tim Northman had been a criminal squad inspector, with the New York Police Department, since 1962. He’d earned several promotions and the undeniable respect of his peers after eighteen years on the force and the arrest of a serial killer who had been working in the New York area.

That arrest hadn’t come quickly, or easily. Tim and his peers had worked tirelessly chasing what sometimes felt like a ghost across a city so populated that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Tim had ultimately been the one to solve the case and arrest the perpetrator however and because of that he had become known as the “pioneer” of modern profiling. Criminal profiling could be dated all the way back to the year 1486 when the first publication mentioned profiling in a professional manual for witch hunters, but the methods that Tim had been using were much more sophisticated than your run of the mill witch hunt.

Unfortunately, Tim’s efforts had not been lauded by all. The first American profilers including Tim were virulently criticized by the press and much of the New York City police department as well. They were in fact often seen as “witch hunters” mainly because of the way they conducted interviews and examinations were so different from the way the average police officer conducted his business. It often left the profiler working the case alone and leaving his colleagues out of the loop. That method didn’t go along well with the code of teamwork that officers were trained to live by. For many reasons, criminal profiling was looked upon as a “flawed science” but regardless of all of that, it had produced some amazing results. Tim had been amongst one of the first in NYPD to use the methods and succeed.