The Voice I Couldn’t Ignore

If you don’t have a window,
would you know a storm is coming?

Descendant Hanna, Canada, 1982

“A heavy blade, it comes straight at me.”

I might as well have been naked. Afraid of judgment. All this explaining felt like a confession. But the air in my chest lightened up somewhat, so I urged myself to continue.

“Slices the air like it’s on some kind of mission. With some kind of wild purpose. Always a direct aim at my line of sight. The swoosh, I can’t hear it. The whole business… all silent and invisible.”

Imagined, all in my head? I could only wish.

“I duck and bury my face.” No reason to mention how badly my hands would shake or how my shoulders could jerk about to recover from the attack. “Then nothing. There’s like—nobody—just air.”

“And just how often does this ax-head attack you?” The counselor leaned his forehead my way.

Finally, someone believed me.

But when he arched bushy brows and hovered his pen atop a page full of doodles in the thick notebook balanced on his lap, I wasn’t so sure.

“Often enough. Sporadic,” I answered anyway. “Three or four times a week. Then a month will go by, nothing.” I shrugged and ogled the exit. This was a mistake.

“And just where do these plaguing manifestations happen?” He tucked his chin into his neck and fingered an ear.

Plaguing manifestations? Nope.

I gripped the armrests, squeezed their width as though they were stress balls. He thought I was making this up. He was getting paid, so shouldn’t he at least indulge me?

The counselor crossed his legs, displaying shoes only loser-like, middle-aged men should wear. “Er, occurrences,” he rectified.

All right, I’d play. But I had to think.

“Mostly when I’m just walking. Several times, I guess, when I’m on the bus coming home. And, once, when I was driving my mom’s car. Nearly went off the road.”

It was a good question, and the answer enlightened my curiosity. Kinda odd that I was always leaving one place and heading to another. The ghostly ax-head struck only when I was in transition. Did that mean anything? Why hadn’t I realized that before?

He nodded, his note scribbling and foot wiggling in sync. “In other words, might your mind have been free to wander when walking, busing it, driving, perhaps?”

“I suppose.” Good call. Point for him. Though the jury was still out. Was someone finally taking me seriously?

“Do you believe these are attacks to harm you?”

His gaze remained on his scrawling penmanship, ignorant of his probe’s unfitting casualness.

Of course, they are. Duh! Why else would someone swing an ax at my head?

I shifted, the oversized chair feeling more like a prison. Claustrophobia was setting in. And a burn spread from where I’d rubbed my palms on the armrests. I scooted back to compose with a deep breath. “Yes, I believe they are.” He’d catch on to my monotone voice. Still, he didn’t look up.

Ah, crap. He didn’t believe me. I could barely afford this appointment. If I called it quits now, would I get billed for less time?

“Are you disappointed in yourself, Hanna?” He paused and seemingly decided on a more direct line of inquiry. “Have you ever wanted to self-harm?”

Now he peered above his glasses? Self-harm! Nope again. He wasn’t getting it—at all. An invisible force of some kind, a someone I couldn’t see, was whacking me so hard I physically jolted. I was here because of these so-called occurrences—or whatever they were. My throat tightened and responded to a hard swallow. How to reply?

A deep stomach sigh. A few scratches at the back of my neck. Then I again eyed my coat hanging on the peg. My stocking feet planted themselves with an unmistakable firmness as I pushed away from ribbed corduroy material designed to relax its occupants.

“It’s not like that,” I snipped. Beads of sweat formed, thanks to the internal warmth now climbing clear to my forehead. Despite the man’s kind promptings to please sit down and stay until his billing hour was up, it was no use.

He didn’t get me. So much for this guy.

With it nearing 7:00 p.m., winter darkness had long fallen.

Rather than waiting, I’d save bus money and scurry the seven city blocks home. The final two, however, I’d have to be sure my wits were fully awake and on guard. My single-bedroom apartment on the edge of the city’s business district meant the cost of affordability was wedged against the shadowy figures lurking in surrounding alleyways. My pace quickened.

As routine would have it, I smoothly entered the low-rise complex with a keypad code and the resultant flat buzz. Then my guarded persona scurried down a metal staircase and, with the door key lodged as a weapon between my knuckles, beelined straight to my basement apartment.

Sitting on the couch in darkness for a solid twenty minutes assured another level of safety. The best way to avoid any skulking characters outside from associating the timing of my entrance to the building with which apartment I occupied, thanks to indoor lights flicking on. Particularly important as the basement apartment’s two windows had no bars, making it an easy break-in.

I prayed to God for many things, but mostly for the physical safety of my child and myself. Next, I went to the apartment one over to retrieve my twenty-month-old daughter from the babysitter. After tucking my precious girl into bed, I settled for the night on my bed, the couch. Morning would come early and, along with it, another round of demanding routines.

But thoughts wouldn’t quiet.

Ugh. I tore the suffocating blankets off my chest. A rousing internal anger bolted me upright, and I sat still, blinking in the dark.

Self-harm? The nerve of that guy.

I had a reason to live, and that reason lay sleeping in the next room, the daughter I bore just after my nineteenth birthday.

I was not imagining things. Maybe I was a failure, but I was smart enough to know the difference between beating myself up and some phantom wanting a swing at the bridge of my nose.

Nope. That man didn’t have the capability to help me.

I closed my eyes to let my overloaded mind spill.

Parents. I blew out the tension at the mere thought. With my twenty-first birthday coming up, a visit was assumed. The train tickets alone will suck up my entire expendable income for the upcoming month. Although a smile lingered at the nicety. The warm and amazing aroma of Mom’s kitchen coming at me once I slipped into the back door, like greeting arms hugging the soul and tugging at stomach knots.

Sadly, current realities had a way of seeping into equations. They were still angry, Mom and Dad. Old-fashioned immigrants from someplace not even on the map. “The old country,” they called it. A divorced, single mother as a daughter had not been in their conservative plan book.

Mom’s voice resonated, “We worked too hard for this. You’ve gone and ruined your whole life.” I can’t even repeat what Dad had to say.

After that, a full-sized elephant sucked the breathing space out of that small but cozy kitchen. Family dinners had forever changed, even though their hearts had been captured by their little granddaughter.

My arms found their way across my chest, in part due to defense but also in part to hug myself. I was always the thing no one ever wanted to talk about.

Too bad Gramma Liesel had to die. She had a special, knowing kind of smile for me. It often lingered and, somehow, allowed me to feel childlike. And we never even spoke the same language.

How I despise these nights, too worked up to sleep. No matter how trite, demons slithered into the cracks. Dozens of them, black shadows hungrily swirling inside my head, mocking my unworthiness.

Grasping my head and rocking slowly, as mightily as I could, I willed the complex emotions inside to separate. Go to their respective corners. Then I could see them, the usual suspects, for what they were.

Unrelenting anger—No one protected me. They just buried it. And forgot.

An evil grief—My innocence ripped away before I even got to my first kindergarten class.

Embarrassment—My behaviors were hard to accept sometimes, no logical reasoning for the emotions driving them.

Confusion—I was smart, yet so foolish, my confidence a pretense.

Truth be known, I hated myself. That one bothered me the most, other than when rage claimed a front seat. Those moments of darkness were terrifying.

And I absolutely hated when unwelcomed fragments of that warm summer afternoon years ago seemed to want to clarify. Bit by bit, the intensity built as the picture became more complete. A homemade fort in a field behind my house, made of discarded building materials from a subdivision development, my little body pressed to a dirty plank face down. Instructions to stay still. “We’re not going to hurt you.” Three shadows. One tall, an adult. Two shorter, kids themselves. Tree branches cut with pocketknives to smoothen them out. Poking sticks.

An involuntary shudder discharged a familiar coldness, the fragment that froze my memories—my underwear had been pulled off.

Forget it!

One harsh kick sent the blanket pooled at my feet flying across the shallow room. I begrudged having to pick it up. Yanking it around my shoulders, I plopped back onto the couch.

What’s any of that got to do with invisible ax-heads attacking me out of thin air? “Nothing.”

I was sure of it. There was no connection between my supernatural enemy and the childhood trauma I was handling.

And if my parents, who ignored it all, could lump everything under their carpet, so could I. Good thing I wore spiked heels these days—I could stomp on them anytime I wanted.

At that, a confident pillow punch, and sleep arrived.

I awoke before the alarm. Rather, an optimal idea rang instead.

A psychic! That’s what I need.

Someone who not only believed in the invisible but also talked to them. That’d be my job today during my break at work: find a psychic in the Yellow Pages.

I dressed and whispered a thanks to God that I’d made it through another night.

Finding a psychic was easy. Plenty of coworkers were eager with recommendations. I kept mum, however, when eyebrows rose in anticipation as to why such urgency. I ignored the chatter about old wives’ tales of superstition and religious no-no’s. In a matter of days, I found myself sitting with rigid backbone and stretched arms across a stranger’s kitchen table, my hands clasped by a woman named Clair. Middle-aged with teenage children, Clair explained herself as having natural-born skills, likened to a cross between a seer and a diviner.

Whatever. I didn’t know what either meant, nor did I care. My goal was to learn more about these plaguing ax attacks. This woman could call herself whatever she wanted, as long as she produced some answers. Preferably inside an hour of billing time. After all, my rent payment was already short.

If she told me someone special was about to enter my life or to be careful with my money over the next few months, then she was fake. A young woman with moderate clothing and no wedding ring? It would be effortless to offer lines that suited. But I wouldn’t bite and had already positioned my mind to be on guard.

So when Clair jerked back and pulled her hands away from the table, my defenses curled in.

“What?”

The woman’s gaze bored into my face. Was her O-shaped mouth and dropped jaw suggesting our session was over?

“What?” I pleaded when the footings of her chair scratched the floor, enabling her space to get out of it. “That’s it?”

“Those eyes. I don’t like how he’s watching you.” She turned and fiddled with a dirty coffee cup on her countertop.

I was seeking a testament of reality, and I got it. I wasn’t imagining these attacks. No way this woman could have known. There was, in fact, an enemy lurking.

Crud. “Who is he?!” Dare him to show his face.

Clair’s ribs expanded with a deep suck of air. Her controlled, lean fingers nudged the pile of five-dollar bills aside, in the direction of the screen door. “You’d been warned,” she uttered her final words.

I’d been warned? When? How?

Rooted to the chair, stunned, I likely appeared as a hostage. Though it was quite the opposite. Clair wanted me to leave, and I was free to take my cash payment with me.

A voice in my head interrupted. With subtlety, it took a charging lead, shooing away the fear and confusion. Calm and natural-like, it said, “Marry me.”

The words soaked with an undemanding gentleness, reminiscent of a wave rolling onto a picturesque shore and melting into the countless grains of sand. This voice belonged to someone other than whoever was swinging that ax. A warm stream ran through my veins, inspiring me to absorb a renewed self-assured confidence.

I gave a hesitant glance at the pile of cash. Then I scooped it up and scampered out. No more psychics for me.

Seasons came and went. Most days normal, certainly not all. I did my best to walk through unexplainable chasms. I accepted the cruel and eager destroyer in my life, not with understanding, nor with peace, but rather with survival. I’d grown to stand firm through blade swings, not allowing my body to flinch on impact. Even so, shutting my eyes tight was unavoidable. Still, I was conquering whatever this was, whoever he was. And the more I stood my ground, the less he attacked. Though Clair’s circling words—“You’d been warned”—still searched for a safe place to land.

A heads-up that an enemy wanted to strike me dead would be something I’d remember. And just who would be responsible for notifying of such an adversary?

On public transit, heading to the day care center after work, I clawed through echoes of yesterdays. Eager to have ten minutes of focus time for pensive analysis.

I pulled into memory my time as a child when, upon waking, there’d be faces, people staring down at me. Crowds of them. But, seemingly, as soon as they realized I was awake, they’d disappear. Then how about that crystal-clear scene of myself, barefoot and lost in a wheat field? It didn’t seem likely that any of this had any relation to those invisible ax-head attacks. Did it?

I was amazed by how I recalled many dreams, not the regular ones. Regular ones were more like whispers that disintegrated upon rousing. For me, it was those other dreams, ones that came with a pounding illumination, begging me to look. Study. As if these other ones were from a different source, not a simple subconscious process. They stained my thoughts. Like a painting on my living room wall, reminding me each nightfall of a meaning I hadn’t yet grasped.

And now, new evidence to behold. Reference books I’d checked out at the library said premonitions of loved ones who passed unexpectedly were often in the form of a fleeting image… or some kind of sensory detachment, an intuition. I could relate, but mine seemed more than the textbook version.

My most recent had been far more than a mere glimpse. It was an apparition. A vision of a brown coffin with a baby girl curled up at one end, a teddy on the other. Floating, literally for hours, in the middle of my living room.

At the time, I paced. Knowing intrinsically, it was not my child. Though it didn’t stop me from repeatedly checking my sleeping daughter’s breathing chest, ensuring its gentle rise and fall.

In that coffin, sure was sure, was someone I knew. Related. A young person. A female.

All of it, details still surreal and haunting. Smooth wood, brass handles, and only silence. The young occupant curled as in a womb. I would have had to tiptoe to see more of the box’s insides. I didn’t. The intrinsic notion that it wasn’t my child, nor me myself, was at least something, if not selfish.

Three of my fingers covered my mouth, a warm blow of air passed through them, my exhale. I sank into the softness of the couch. It didn’t do much to stop the wash of emotion. Neither did closing my eyes.

Scrambling to my knees, I asked God for answers. “Who is this? Why are you showing me this?”

As I stood, I surrendered to the urge and prayed for the wee child inside the casket. That, whoever she was, God had her safely in his arms.

The next morning, I learned of my young cousin meeting her death, because of a drunk driver. Coincidentally, the timing of the terrible accident lined up with the vision in my living room.

Weeks later, a lingering flash had appeared. An elderly man’s face hung in the air. Death was at this man’s doorstep, though he didn’t die straightaway. A second flash of his face happened moments later. I knew the second flash suggested he had, in fact, passed through the door of death. Though I hadn’t recognized his face, I knew whoever the man was, he, too, was related.

“God, allow him a safe journey home,” I prayed. Whoever he is.

I shuddered at an image that flooded my mind: a hanging rope belonging to that so-called angel of death people talk about. The dark shadow that comes with the job to separate souls from their bodies and take them home.

Did that really happen?

Hours later, Mom called to announce that my dearly loved grandfather choked on his dinner at his long-term care home. “He didn’t die right away,” she continued to explain. “But several moments later, he choked a second time. It’s possible too that he was stroking.”

Well, they’d be together now, I reflected on the bus later. He and Gramma Liesel.

Nearly forgetting where I was, I pulled the cord. My bus stop was yards away.

With my little one in the stroller, I stopped at a play park to soak in the spring day’s unusual warmth before it ended.

God must think I was special to have trusted me with this gift of a child. My daughter’s little face lifted with each gentle push of the swing. And, too, by sending premonitions like that? He must be proving to me he was not only real but also in my life.

Curious. All good, but yet, curious.

Having been turned off wedding ceremonies, given my short-lived commitment in front of God at eighteen—one forced by my parents—I was hesitant to walk up to that altar and face the Divine again. Promises to the invisible were scary, especially since the invisible still had a hold on my life. So, I wholeheartedly agreed to the suggestion of City Hall’s convenient legal services.

The tax-collector sort must be safer than the invisible kind, I joshed inwardly.

And family life did in fact bloom. A new son arrived, and in no time at all, I stood in front of our cul-de-sac home, waving goodbye to him as he climbed into a school bus for junior kindergarteners, my eldest already at school.

A crisp September morning, a clear blue sky, all was good. The baby I carried, my third child, stirred for its first time.

I warmed my belly with a gentle circular rub. “Well, hello,” I whispered in return.

Perhaps it was pregnancy hormones, but tears gushed unexpectedly. Accompanying emotional waves of sobs followed. An uninvited dream from the night before lingered, still vivid and fresh in my mind. That shattered blur of the past, reminding me that I deeply mourned the child within myself. Not the one I was carrying, rather my own person. That sense of being I never got to know and grew up without. The child destroyed in that fort so many years ago.

I staved off the emotions and cursed that dream. A terror, really, was what it was. A night terror. I knew it well. I’d had it countless times, each time followed by attempts to dissect it, though it brought back too many memories. The lumps under that carpet I’d shoved them all beneath churned and thumped louder than before. Fibers were tearing, my grounding wearing thin.

Nausea swirled.

Determined not to be swayed by intruding thoughts, I stuck with my plan to plant the tulip bulbs I’d purchased on the weekend. I pounded a garden fork into the hard dirt strip along the front walkway. A recent magazine article suggested tulips shouldn’t be planted as single bulbs one aside the other. Rather, the new trend was in bunches. So, the hole needed to be a good size for the half dozen bulbs I had in mind.

I bludgeoned at the ground like some mechanical automation that couldn’t be stopped, driven by a deep inner rage, pleased with its escape. Rapid breathing caused a dizziness I ignored. Jaw clenched, I couldn’t stop hammering the earth even if I wanted to. Long-suppressed memories set my body into overload.

Am I not worthy? No!

Not according to that cursed dream. I was still an outsider to myself. A soul locked out from my rightful home, a protective tent that only God provides.

I can’t stand this deep isolation anymore.

That dream allowed a supervised look through an unopened basement window, where I watched countless enemies swirling about, waving high their swords. Each fully charged and ready to slice at me should I attempt to get inside. They had taken over. Pushed me out. My own spirit not welcomed inside my own body. They stole my childhood, and now, they wanted my adulthood too.

Curse you all. I despise this rotten, mixed-up world.

My shoulders shook and gave way. My forehead collapsed and met the edge of the hole, now more of a pit, that I’d dug.

“God,” I begged. “Please… I’m so empty. Why do I feel like this? It’s like I don’t know who I am. I never have.”

I searched the skies for something. Anything.

“Show me, I beg you. Not by changing this child I carry—let them be exactly as you’ve willed—but through them, could you give me a glimpse? Just a hint, here and there. Something to help me see who I might’ve been, the child I never got to be.” I pushed myself to my feet.

Feeling silly, I sulked my way back into the house and left my planting job unfinished. I muttered beneath my breath. “Because I don’t know where I belong, and I’m too tired of trying to understand. It’s like my soul’s been lopped at, severed with chunks removed. I give up.”

I was adamant. If God had something in mind for me, a way to go, I’d keep going. “But please don’t abandon me.”

He was the only one I could lean on. Yet, he seemed so distant. But why? I attended church, even taught some Sunday school classes, and most of the time, did my best to live with good intentions. Perhaps best wasn’t good enough. After all, well-meaning efforts didn’t win out all the time.

I had to move on. Yet another foundation was needed, something to rebuild my life upon. At least this time, I wasn’t in a basement apartment. Rather, I managed to find a semi with a fenced yard. My two youngest would have to share a room. My eldest, now a teenager, would be happy to hear she had the basement for herself. Nothing like our family home, but we’d make do just fine. A good place in a decent neighborhood, though its distance from the city meant grueling extra hours to my daily commute. And that was after morning drop-offs at high school for my eldest daughter, a before-school sitter for my son, and little Sadie, the baby of the family, at a preschool, a place she thoroughly enjoyed, given her outgoing social persona.

Weekends were precious.

One particular Saturday morning was quite out of the ordinary, even for someone who believed in the paranormal. All three children had been picked up the evening before for a sleepover and weekend outing. Relishing the pleasant sleep-in, I clutched a pillow for comfort. Then my senses picked up on a shift in the air.

Electric vibes wallowed, and the air thickened.

I resisted sucking in another breath. Silence. It was too quiet—not because the children were away, but because all other noise was absent. No birds chirping through the open window, no cars passing, no leaves rustling, no neighbors’ dogs barking, no clock ticking, no refrigerator humming, not even the house dared its usual creaking. The dead quiet set my nerves on edge. Something was off.

Someone was here.

Behind me.

Impossible!

There was just a headboard against a wall behind my head.

Yet, I felt his presence before I could lay eyes on him.

I held a breath hostage, releasing it with controlled slowness when I could hold it no longer. Nothing I’d ever experienced prepared me for this uninvited, ghostly character in my bedroom. Still—

I could do this.

I unraveled my comforter and sidled each foot to the carpet, inching my way up to a stand. A much better position in case I need to run.

A stealthy turn to face my sponged-pink wall. A scene enveloped, swallowing up the logic of space. It wasn’t faint, nor ripply. It didn’t shift, nor even was it foggy. Without distortion, sharp, and unmistakable—a man, middle-aged, shabbily dressed. Some muck on dark-green and black rubber boots, worn leather suspenders, bare muscular forearms emerging from rolled-up sleeves, and a tucked-in collared shirt that had surely seen many years of wear. A wild halo of brown hair, yet his face I cannot describe. A working man of the land. His left arm hung heavily, a fist clasped around the shaft of an ax. The blade, attached with crisscross stitching, unmoving, inches from the ground.

His shoulders hunched. His right arm extended an open palm, wanting to what—clasp mine?

I coaxed my lungs to breathe, my brain to take a back seat. What did he want?

Could this be my personal enemy? That unseen stranger hoisting the ax blade. The coward, never showing his face, yet taunting me ceaselessly with the threat of death. Striking with brutal swings.

At the very least, the lack of blood on the man’s blade was a good sign. But—I could be wrong. What did I know about him, or what did one expect when a ghostly stranger dropped by to visit?

A glint of light bounced from the metal edge, as if to communicate the sharp power the blade held.

I remained cautious, for his beseeching appeared raw and humble. Could this genuine pleading be nothing more than deception—a cloak-and-dagger play?

What might that man see of me, other than a tight jaw, wide eyes, mutterings beneath shallow breath, my fingers clasping and wringing knots in my sleep shirt? Could he read my mind, feed off my emotion? Wasn’t that what ghosts did?

It didn’t appear I had any impact on him. If he saw I was vulnerable and afraid, wouldn’t he just go for it, attack while he could? Yet, he continued with a muted and pressing appeal.

I self-declared a suggestion—leave the room. Thankfully, my legs took me up on it.

The hall washroom presented the closest escape. I locked myself inside. Splashing handfuls of cold water on my face did much to kick-start a rationalization. Just tricks. Shadows. Maybe born of past fears.

I toweled up and studied my face in the mirror. Pale. Weary. The stress of a relationship gone south, the long commute five days a week, raising three children, settling into a new normal. The wear and tear was invading my mind.

I nodded and smiled. “Get a grip, Hanna,” I whispered to my image. “Of course, it’s all taking a toll. You are hallucinating.”

He’d be gone once I stepped back into the bedroom because he was never there in the first place.

But gone, he was not.

Not only was he still there and still pleading, but the scene had also expanded. I walked into a whole other place. Whitewashed siding hinted that a house was on his right. The ground he stood upon was flat and hard, dirt that could grow only patches of grass. The sky was a clear blue, and the day was numerous decades in the past. Why was I able to place his surroundings so easily? This plot of land he stood upon was where my ancestors once lived. The old country. Strange and well before my time. The sideboards of this old house were desperately in need of a good wash, including the single fragile glass window on the front porch. So much junk piled on the inside, surely no one lived there.

I shut my eyes, relishing a sharp exhale.

Remember, you got this.

I sucked in a deep breath and allowed my lungs to feel the fullness. I squared my shoulders. “What do you want?”

He carried on with his arm pulsing toward me, like I should know what he was implying. A heat rose to my cheeks because I didn’t.

His eyes were so intense. I refused to look straight at them for fear I’d get fooled and drawn in, sucked into the past through some strange tunnel. Or worse, whacked by that ax-head lumbering at his side.

A buzzing sensation pulsed through my body. This time, my legs needed no instruction. I backed out, my gaze never leaving his come-hither palm. Once safely in the hall, I counted, an exit plan. Thirteen steps to the main floor, then three to the front door.

Then what? Call the police?

Huh! What would I even say? Just imagining a conversation with 9-1-1 allowed a wash of comforting humor.

Nah. Take a breath. Just wait. He’ll be gone soon.

He had to be, right? Besides, I didn’t feel that he wanted to hurt me.

I pushed my chest up and held my head high. Go back in.

After all, that was my room.

Nope. Still there. His arm still aching for me.

Get a grip. No biggie. Just don’t be fooled. Don’t reach back.

Oddly enough, a natural feeling overcame me. Like this visit was meant to be, as though he were sent to me. He looked like he was sorry for something. Perhaps he was asking for forgiveness? Something he’d done in the past to an ancestor? A stretch, but hey, got anything better?

“It’s okay. I forgive you,” I blurted out.

But this needing, wanting pursuit of his continued. Did he not believe me?

Well, why should he? How could I mean it? I hadn’t a clue what he was begging forgiveness for. Instinct hinted at a confirmation. It was something from generations ago, something before my time.

My shoulders slumped in conjunction with an exasperated depletion from my lungs.

“Well, I can’t change the past,” I announced.

Whatever it was, it must have been bad for you to be here now!

“But you’ve come to me for a reason.”

I had a job to do, to help this man. Chin pushed up, I regained my height as an answer came calling.

“Ask God,” I advised. “He is the one who knows what you did. He can forgive you.”

My genuine suggestion fell on deaf ears. In fact, the arch on his back stretched forward even greater than before.

I burrowed a set of nervous toes into the carpet. My lips screwed tight, unsure if they should release my next offering. “Okay, then. If for some reason, you seek forgiveness from my family—if that is why you are here—I’ll give you that. On behalf of my family… I forgive you.”

Now disappear.

At that, he vanished. In the blink of an eye, the entire scene gone. No man, no aching arm reaching for me, no old farmhouse. The sky, the ground, all of it. Gone. There had been no satisfaction on his face. Nor could I sense he’d been released from any prison he may have been trapped within.

But my room was back to normal. I stepped out, took three long breaths, then stepped back in.

Nothing.

Was all that just in my head? If it weren’t for the dreaded achy hollowness in the pit of my stomach, I might have just given the whole business its own special corner beneath that magical rug of denial. I wasn’t ready yet—to bury it, that is. Simply too bizarre. So real. So impossible.