There are several years that I do not remember. When I try to review them, the scenes skip past like a high speed train. There is color. There is sound. There is movement. And not a damn detail. Terrible things happened to me in those blocks of years. I believe I chose to forget the good so I can’t remember the bad.
…
It’s cool and the air is slightly humid. The stone is cold under my hand as my fingers trace the tool marks in rhythm. We are gathered at a stone ring on the top of a hill near to the military base we are all assigned to and living at, arguing with each other if the stones are new creations meant to substitute for old stones long gone, or if they are old creations given a new surface.
Well, they are arguing.
I’m watching the weather, far, far in the distance.
I know enough about meteorology to recognize the two weather fronts crashing into each other. Textbook diagrams and green screen animations were happening in real life, in real time. I watched the warmer air and its cavalry of clouds rising up and over the colder air and its denser infantry of darker clouds. I had a high enough position to mark how the slope of the ground under the clouds was affecting the compression of the colder air.
“War is about to break out.”
A collective “huh?” behind me marked the end to the arguing. I pointed to the cloud structures. “If I didn’t know better, that colder bank of air is going to push up against the warmer air sliding above it because it’s moving over the trough of the valley and it won’t have any place else to go. The warm air is blocking the downward slope of the valley. If I were a witchy, spirit-seeing person, I’d say war is about to break out over which bank of clouds has dominion over that valley. But that’s seeing things that aren’t there. It’s just the weather, but it’s magnificent to watch.”
But I’m not witchy at the time. I’m Christian. Demon-denouncing, witch-refuting- spiritual-warrior, Hound of the Angels, hard-to-the-core, dag-nab-it Christian. I was skirting heresy really close today. I’m supposed to be denouncing any spiritual sight, not indulging in it.
My choice of companions is also suspect. [Tami] claims to be a Christian Sorceress, using Christianity as the bases for her angelic workings. Totes not magic. Nope. All angelic. See the names of the angels? Looking back on what I know now, she was intentionally full of shit on one account, and possibly fooling herself on the other. However, she had also pegged me to rights the very first time she laid eyes on me before she even said hello. “You see. But you do not act. Shame. Wasted potential. I can help.” She curated her circle of friends so that she was always the most powerful and most knowledgeable of the group. Any who disagreed would be casually and irrevocably shunned. She liked me because I was ignorant about esoteric matters and easy to lead if you say the right Christian indoctrination buzzwords. Well, that’s what hindsight reveals.
Tami’s husband [can’t remember his name] claims to be 1/8th Cherokee and is a shaman of his tribe, except his tribe doesn’t know it yet, but when he gets back from military duty, they’ll see. He has a leather pouch that he keeps stuff in. My instinct is to deck him in the jaw and kick him in the balls every time I see him. Don’t think I ever found out why.
[Scott] is an occultist. Looking back, I can see that he was a member of a ceremonial group on the down low, covering his interests, tattoos, and talismans with a love of hard core metal music. I piqued his interest when I wrote a poem during one of my (then) many fugues and gave it to him. He said it was spirit written and that I should be very careful who or what I let into my head, human or otherwise. He doesn’t like Tami nor her husband, and had came along to keep me company.
[Jack] don’t know jacque shitte, doesn’t care about shit, don’t wanna know shit. The idea of being at a historical site that the locals don’t want us to be was all he needed to know to add himself to our company. He doesn’t care about the possible significances of the circle of low stones, center stone, and big table stone. He wants to find artifacts he can sell elsewhere. (He didn’t find any that day.)
I know they’re standing behind me, but my sight has kicked in and the spectacle is so awesome I forget to denounce it and rebuke whatever spirit is trying to plug in. I see the weather. I see what is in the weather. War has indeed broken out and the clouds are moving in ways that the computer model would not have predicted. My hands have stopped moving along the grooves on the stone as I’ve forced my palms flat against the surface to steady myself.
Tami whispers in my ear as softly as possible. “Do you see?”
“I do.” I mouth my answer, as my voice has been silenced by the winds I can feel but not experience.
She moves out of my peripheral vision, and scratches something on the back of my neck. It feels like a heated needle is searing my skin. I hear Scott shouting at her but the words make no sense. My vision is flooded with light and my fingernails catch and break in the grooves of the stone as the fit begins.
Tami catches my falling body but my spirit goes elsewhere that I do not remember.
I wake up two hours later with a terrible headache and a sunburn on my face from being laid out on the stone for that time.
…
~furrows brow~
~looks at the reader, looks at the words, ponders the implications, then leaves without saying anything more~