Authors: EJ Valson,Michelle Read
C
HAPTER 74
It’s a rainy late June evening when John finally arrives. Astrid knew he would arrive at any moment, but I was so overwhelmed with anticipation that every minute felt like an hour.
“Do you need help carrying anything?” Astrid shouts to him through the rain as he gets out of his mini bus.
I hurry to the door to greet him. I can’t get him in this house fast enough. He has every answer I have been waiting for with him.
“Hi, John,” I say eagerly as he walks towards the house.
“Hi, Jennifer,” he says hustling in, trying to dodge the summer rainstorm.
“Here,” he says handing me a small box. “Go ahead and get started, the batteries are new and the tapes are set to the beginning.” I am shaking with excitement. I can FINALLY listen to our sessions. I have been waiting for months.
Astrid looks at me with a giant smile on her face, “Oh, Honey, this is wonderful!” she says, elated. We hurriedly make our way into the house. I find a comfortable spot on the floor amongst oversized floor pillows and yank the tape recorder from the box. I have my new journal next to me, so I’m ready to make comparisons. I take a deep breath as I hold the heavy, cold plastic machine in my hand. This is it.
“Be right there, Jennifer,” Astrid calls from the kitchen, where she is making tea for everyone.
John sits down in the old armchair across from me and leans forward with his arms on his knees and face in his palms, indicating he is ready to listen along with me.
Astrid enters the living room carrying three coffee mugs filled with tea on a tray and sets them down near John and me, then sits down on the couch. “OK, let’s do this!” she exclaims.
With a jump of my heart, I press
PLAY
. The tape gears begin to turn and the echo-like tape sounds begin to hum.
John: “Jennifer, can you please tell me what month it is?”
Me: “It’s spring, it’s warm. I think it is…it’s May.”
John: “Do you know what year it is?”
Me: “It’s...2006…yes, 2006.”
John: “Good, good. And where are you?”
Me: “Um, I am in a city…there are lights all around in tall buildings.”
John: “Do you know the name of the city?”
Me: “Seattle.”
John: “That’s good. And do you know who is with you.”
Me: “A guy…it’s….it’s…it’s Michael.”
We listen to hours of tape John recorded from our sessions. With each recollection from the tape recorder my body goes through a series of flashes, Deja vu’s and physical sensations that leave me feeling like I’ve run a marathon by the time we are finished.
I hear about my trips to Sweden. A trip to England. The moment we decided to get married. The day Michael came to live in the United States. Our wedding day. Telling him I was pregnant. A family photo shoot near a harbor when I was pregnant. The day Stella was born.
Every inkling of familiarity I have felt over the months is confirmed. Memories that I could recall enough to write about were revealed. Every glimpse of my future or what I remember living with Michael appears clearly and is restored to the depth of my core. I remember everything about us, everything about him, everything about what is to be.
When the last tape finishes, we sit in silence, staring at each other. John had already heard these things, but due to the nature of my situation at the time and inexperience with someone like me, he didn’t put too much effort into remembering each detail. And now that he knows Michael really exists, he is even more fascinated.
“These things really happened, Jennifer, and the things that you say are supposed to happen in the future
are
supposed to happen. I can see it clear as day now,” Astrid says, with tears in her eyes. I am relieved and appreciative and on the verge of tears after her affirmation. “And we need to get you back as soon as possible,” she says.
CHAPTER 75
I am still fascinated by what has just taken place. Hearing all of my memories on the tapes and Astrid confirming them has filled me with hope.
John sits quietly thinking in his chair.
“Time is of the essence, Jennifer. But we have to do this right,” John explains.
Astrid looks at him. “But, John, if we wait too long, it could throw everything off course,” she says.
He shakes his head in disagreement. “No. She has to go exactly one year to the day she arrived here. And not calendar year, the actual day. If she got here on a Sunday, she leaves on a Sunday. That means we need to do it on July 30th. If she goes any sooner, she could get lost in a paradox. If she goes past that date, she risks closing some…some gap. She MUST go on the right day between 11:59 and midnight,” he states firmly.
My heart starts to thump in my chest.
I’m frightened by the thought of missing my opportunity to go home.
“There are other people’s lives at stake too,” she says to him. I can tell she means Joe, Olivia and Stella.
“Astrid, I have all of the instructions and I know that if it is not done right she will end up like Jesus,” he says.
“Like Jesus?” I ask him.
“Not like Jesus, like HAY-ZEUS,” he pronounces emphatically
.
The comical irony is not lost on me that I could end up like the biblical figure Jesus. Sacrificing myself for the benefit others and possibly resulting in my life being cut short. My amusement is quickly squelched by concern.
“What happened to him?” I ask John.
He is quiet for a moment. “Let me show you,” he says, stepping over to his backpack and pulling out a small camcorder. He takes out a few cables and connects them to the side of Astrid’s television, then to the camcorder. He turns her TV on and changes some input function. Then he powers on the camcorder and video appears on the screen within seconds.
Astrid and I move to the couch and sit close together, holding hands. A small dark man appears on the screen. He is sitting on a tree stump. Behind him is a small house. I can see dirt and dust all around it. It is a desolate landscape. John begins to ask questions, which someone else off camera repeats in Spanish to this man, who then responds in Spanish. Then his words are translated back to John in English.
Throughout the interview, it is revealed that this man’s brother, named Jesus, lost his way in time too. He claimed to be thrown back into a time that was not his life, just as I had. He was separated from his children and his pregnant wife to live in another life. He woke up one morning after a night of heavy drinking and went home to find it empty. No sign of his wife or children. Nothing that resembled his life at all. And when he went to the bathroom, he saw his face at the age of eighteen.
At first his brother, the man on the camera, thought Jesus was crazy, as he was also a young man and had been living his life as normal. When his brother came to him with this tale he believed he either drank too much or had lost his mind. But when they went to see a village doctor, a spiritual doctor, there were details of his story that started to make them question whether his tale was a lie, a hallucination -- or real.
After convincing his brother and the doctor that he was telling the truth about his future, the doctor found a special serum to take Jesus back to his life with his wife and children. Though I couldn’t understand that words the man on the camera was saying as he told his brother’s story, I could see emotions of sadness and helplessness cross his face.
His brother wasn’t the first of his people to have this journey. There is an ancient belief in their culture that a soul who is indecisive may find itself in limbo, in between two places and thrown through some type of a wormhole, if not careful. Jesus was not the first.
I’m not the first, and we may not be the last.
My jaw drops as he tells how Jesus prepared to travel through the two worlds, back to his life. How they planned it so carefully, and how Jesus went limp after drinking the potion the doctor had made. They thought he had died.
If it worked, they had expected time to freeze where they were and for him to continue in his future. No one would be harmed. No one would be able to recall any of the events, except for Jesus, as that was what had happened to others.
But Jesus woke up. And when he woke up he was confused and scared and told them how he mistakenly made the wrong choice and he fell right back into the time when he was eighteen again. He spoke of a strange dream-like place, where he was presented with options and if he made the wrong choice, he risked not going back to his life with his wife. Somewhere along the way, he chose poorly and therefore woke up again in the same place.
Jesus was devastated and depressed, and the more time that passed, the less he engaged in living. He stopped talking about his wife and children. He became quiet and wouldn't speak to anyone. He is now practically mute, with the exception of occasionally saying only one word --
“agua.”
Water. He later became known as 'the insane man of the village'.
Jesus’ brother felt responsible for believing his brother and wanted to take care of him. He felt that he had taken his brother’s life away by allowing him to see the doctor. He was saddened that he didn’t convince him it was a dream -- the life with his wife and children -- and that he should start his life over.
I watch as the man on the camera sighs in contemplation. I can see that he is recalling those memories and the guilt he feels. A few minutes later the camera follows the man into his dilapidated house. The house is dark and it is hard to see the rooms, as they make their way to a doorway that has a curtain in place of a door.
The man slowly moves the curtain back and motions for the camera to come closer and look. As the camera makes its way through the small slit in the curtains, the room becomes light enough to see a figure. There is a mattress on the floor. On the mattress is a small-framed man, sitting with his back to the camera. He looks weak. He is staring out the window and unaware that anyone has entered his room.
Jesus’s brother comes into view from the side of the camera and kneels down to place his hand on Jesus’ shoulder. Jesus doesn’t acknowledge his presence as his brother tells the camera that this is how he sits all day. Jesus’ brother has to feed and bathe him. And at night, Jesus’ brother has to lay him down and close his eyes so he will sleep. He has been wasting away for almost thirty years -- each year getting worse. He knows eventually Jesus will simply die.
John stops the tape and sits down across from Astrid and me, who are in shock. I can tell that Astrid is worried. “I see it all. As it was being described, I got flashes of this poor man fighting his way back,” she says empathetically.
I’m scared. This is too much information all at once. This is not what I anticipated. A “magic potion”, a test of some sort, the risk of coming back to the same place and then slowly fading away – living neither life. What would happen to Olivia? What would happen to me? Is it worth it?
I look to Astrid. “Will I make it if I try?” I ask her.
Her face turns pale as she absorbs my question. “I can’t see anything,” she states. “I can envision us attempting it, but then the vision goes black. I will have to meditate and try to focus on it more,” she says.
“Astrid, you can’t see the outcome because her fate hasn’t been determined yet. It’s up to Jennifer once she goes through the process,” John explains.
“And what if I just do it all over, our whole life? I have Michael back in my life again. I
can
do it if I need to,” I say.
Astrid shakes her head.
“Jennifer, that is too dangerous. If anything goes off course before this deadline, if you don’t try to go back, you risk Stella never being born,” she says. She looks down for a minute to think before speaking. “Stella is the child I saw in my dream. She is the baby you were pregnant with. And SHE is meant to be on this earth,” she says emphatically. I feel blood rush to my head and my heart sinks when she says this. I can’t sacrifice my child. I can’t risk her not being here….her not being mine.
I sit down on the couch, overwhelmed by the decision I have to make. There are only two options and the outcomes aren’t guaranteed. I could try to proceed in my life with Michael and pray that we end up in the same place, make the same choices and get lucky enough to have the same child. But we have already taken different steps from what we did the first time. That fact creates doubt in me that we will actually end up together -- thus possibly sacrificing Stella’s existence. Or, I take the “potion” and pray to God that I cross over and get back to my life where Stella exists and we are all back where we should be.
“What will happen to everyone else if I do this?” I ask, as fear begins to consume me.
“Apparently….nothing. If you don’t make it over,
our
lives continue here. If you do, then according to belief, none of this life ever existed. If you’re not supposed to be here, then maybe we aren’t either,” John calmly states.
“If you stay here Jennifer, and don’t get back to continue that life, you risk too much,” Astrid says.
“Taking a risk
is
my only option,” I respond.