Authors: Terri Reid
Eloise smiled and stood. “Come on, I’ll drive you home.”
Nancy shook her head. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll just sit
here at the beach for a little while.”
“Yeah, I understand.”
Eloise walked along the beach towards the SUV. The lonely crash of the
surf against the beach seemed especially appropriate just then. She wiped the
remaining tears from her face and once again clicked on the walkie-talkie.
“Subject sent forward. EP. Out.”
She really hated this part of her job. She knew that when she sent
someone forward they were going to a better place, surrounded by loved ones.
At least, that’s what most of her subjects told her. But on the other side,
she had just sent Andy’s mom into a journey of grief that might last a
lifetime.
Eloise hopped into her truck, grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. “She
had faith,” she thought to herself, “It’s so much easier when they have faith.”
She allowed herself to recall the time, six months ago, when she stood on
another beach – far away from the place she was standing now.
The sun was beginning to set and the beauty of it slipping into the
Pacific Ocean was almost too much to bear. She wiped the sweat from the back
of her neck and stretched her too tense and too tired body as she let herself
enjoy the view. Almost as soon as she relaxed, the audio monitor on her meter
started to beep urgently. She looked down at the meter – it was registering
over 1500 mG of electro-magnetic impulse. Then, out of the corner of her eye,
she saw him. He was standing less than a yard away, as different from her as
night from day. Unlike her six-foot slender frame, his body was short and
solid. Strands of her long auburn hair had escaped its severe bun and whipped
in the wind, but his short grey hair seemed unaffected by the weather. She wore
a military issue light blue shirt and tailored pants and his loose-woven
calf-length pants and tunic shirt were rough and poorly tailored. She wore
shiny black military issued oxfords, he was barefoot. But he was also looking
out to sea – looking out to the sunset on the horizon. She slowly turned,
amazed that he remained standing so near.
“You are English, yes?” he asked quietly, his eyes never leaving the
horizon.
Eloise nodded, “Yes, yes I am English. American.”
The eye that she could see seemed kindly, the dark brown depths
surrounded by well-earned wrinkles.
“You come to help us?”
“Yes, I hope to help,” she answered, “I hope to bring you peace.”
He shook his head sadly. “No peace, no peace for my home.”
“Where is your home?” Eloise insisted, “I could help…”
Then he turned to her and she gasped involuntarily. The side of his
face that had been hidden from her view was missing. Only a gaping hole
remained where it should have been.
“I have no home. I sleep in the waters,” he shook his head sadly once
again and faded from her sight.
The audio on her meter was silenced.
“If only he had faith,” she whispered as she started her engine, put the
SUV into reverse and drove away.
Strains of Sarah McLachlan’s “
I Will Remember You,”
poured out of
the mobile headquarters of the PRCD when Eloise opened the door. The
refurbished top-of-the-line motor home interior was dark, the only light coming
from the various instruments stacked on shelving on either side of the home.
Because they needed sleeping quarters for three and a bathroom area, the
office/lab space was condensed into a small 8 x 8 foot space. However, every
inch, from floor to ceiling had been utilized with the most high-tech equipment
available.
Sally Dawson, the agency research guru, sat crossed-legged in an office
chair leaning forward into the blue light emanating from her computer. Her
spiked black hair with fuchsia highlights almost glowed in the light. Her black
t-shirt and black jeans nearly made her body disappear into the confines of the
black leather chair. As Eloise watched, Sally blindly reached over to her
tissue box, pulled out a tissue, blotted her eyes and blew her nose.
Eloise hurried to the desk.
“Sal, what’s wrong?”
Sally looked up, a line of black mascara running down her cheek, and she
pointed wordlessly to the screen. Eloise turned her attention to the screen
where photos of dogs abandoned during the flooding flashed onto the screen in
time to Sarah’s melodic voice.
“Isn’t that the saddest thing you have ever seen?” Sally asked with a
sob.
Instantly Eloise’s mind went back to the picture of Andy’s mother
crumpling in sorrow at her doorway. She shook her head to clear it of the
memory.
“Yeah, Sal, it sure is.”
Sally blew her nose once more and then really looked at Eloise.
“You look beat,” she said, as she clicked her mouse to close the site
with the dog photos, “You okay?”
Eloise shrugged. “Yeah, rough day at the office,” she smirked.
She dropped her shoulder harness and backpack on the empty desk next to
Sally and then laid a manila envelope on a stack of more envelopes.
Sally looked at the envelope and then at Eloise.
“Did he resist?”
Eloise sighed, fought for the sadness to remain below the surface and
then said calmly, “No, he was fine. He was good. He had family waiting.”
Sally grinned.
“Then it’s okay.”
Eloise nodded, thinking back to the poor woman whose life would never be
the same.
“Yeah, it was okay. So, any messages for me?” she asked, changing the
subject.
Sally nodded and reached for a pile of printouts in an inbox next to the
computer.
“Mostly it’s the usual stuff – memos from headquarters,” Sally said,
reading the titles of the memos. “Expenditures, reimbursements, increases,
health insurance information, annual reviews. Do you want any of this stuff?”
Eloise grimaced. “Can you file it for now?” she asked.
Sally smiled, nodded and dumped the pile in the garbage.
Eloise was startled. “Really, I wanted you to file it,” she said.
“Not to worry, this is the government we work for; we’ll be getting
several copies of these.”
Eloise smiled. She had a point. “So anything else?”
“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot,” Sally said, “Local enforcement agencies have
us on their fax list; we’ve been getting some missing persons bulletins.”
“I’m amazed they have faxing ability,” Eloise said, knowing that most
local law enforcement agencies were working out of makeshift headquarters with
little or no communication capacity.
“Check the fax addresses,” Sally responded, “Some are from hotels and
other businesses, some are from home faxes – these guys are really doing the best
they can under pretty extreme circumstances.”
She handed Eloise a half-dozen pages. Eloise scanned them.
“They’ve all been missing since the hurricane?” she asked.
Sally nodded. “In a couple of cases the person had taken the family car
back to retrieve some of their belongings. They find the car – but can’t find
the person.”
“They look to be all about the same age,” Eloise said.
“Yeah, all young, pretty and missing,” Sally said, “Doesn’t sound good to
me.”
“There are all kinds of scary things roaming around out there,” Eloise
said.
“Yeah, and most of them have nothing to do with the supernatural,” Sally
agreed, “Speaking of which, you are scheduled for a rendezvous with Bert and
Ernie this evening. There’s a small coastal town that was completely lost and
they need you to put things in order.”
“I don’t think those two Marines would appreciate you calling them Bert
and Ernie,” Eloise said.
Sally chuckled. “Well, as long as you don’t tell and I won’t tell –
they’ll never have to know.”
Eloise nodded and then yawned. She looked at the clock, it was nearly
six p.m.. “Okay – then I’m going to catch a nap before I have to go out. When
are they coming?”
“Something hundred hours - I think in real language it was 8 p.m.,” Sally
said, turning back to the computer screen, “You nap; I’ll wake you up in plenty
of time.”
Eloise moved back through the narrow hallway to her 6 x 8 foot sleeping
space. She had a twin sized bed, a small dresser, a tiny closet and a small
folding table for her personal effects. She unclipped her cell phone from her
belt, slipped off her shoes and stretched out on the bed.
She purposely did not allow herself to dwell on this afternoon’s encounter
with Andy. Past experience had taught her that sleep would evade her if she
thought about it all. Instead, she pictured herself driving through the
countryside of her hometown, Platteville, Wisconsin. It was September and she
knew that the leaves would have started to turn. She could almost feel the
cool breezes and smell the apples ripening on the trees. As her mind drifted
and her body relaxed, she moved into a dream.
She was driving down the country roads, north, towards her favorite
spot in the Kickapoo Valley. The road was black and smooth. The small towns
seemed to blur into each other as she drove by. Occasionally she would see a
favorite restaurant or shop – but she noted that the doors were closed and the
windows boarded over.
She came to the bridge that marked the entry to the Kickapoo Valley.
The sand-bottomed river below the bridge was usually wide and shallow, and so clear
that you could see the white sand floor. However, this time as Eloise drove
over the bridge, the river was swollen and dirty.
Looking further upstream, Eloise saw a large wave heading toward the
bridge. As the muddy wave churned closer, she could see large tree limbs and
debris caught within the powerful surge.
Panicked, Eloise turned the car around and punched the gas pedal for
speed. At first the car did not respond. Eloise glanced back to the wave. Now,
in the midst of the dark waters she could see faces, angry faces calling out to
her.
Mesmerized, she watched as the wave came closer. Finally, almost too
late, she realized the danger. Determined, she punched the accelerator once
again and the car responded. As the front tires reached the shore, she could
feel the moorings of the bridge shake. All four tires reached safety moments
before the bridge was swept downstream with the force of the wave.
Eloise continued down the road – her formerly pleasant surroundings
now taking on a nightmarish quality. She found herself driving through the
canyon-like base of the valley. Tall pines and oaks, once resplendent in red,
orange and gold leaves were now charred and black, their skeletal limbs
reaching out towards the road.
Blue skies were now grey and churning, and the sun couldn’t penetrate
the insidious darkness. Rolling hills and sparkling limestone bluffs were shadowed
and dark, silhouetted against the grey of the sky.
She sensed danger all around, but knew that she could not turn back.
The road twisted and Eloise drove further into the hills. Trees on
either side of the road entwined, creating a tunnel of sharp branches and thick
brush. She could hear them scraping against the sides of her car.
She looked to the side and saw shadowed shapes of men and women in the
bark and branches of the trees. Then the branches transformed into hundreds of
arms, reaching out, grabbing for her.
She held firmly to the steering wheel, pushing forward, trying to get
out of this hell. She glanced at the faces and saw death, but not the natural
death that she was used to dealing with. These were the faces of those trapped
in eternal torment, caught between this world and the next. And though they
reached out, she knew that she couldn’t help them.
Suddenly, the roots of the trees were no longer earth-bound. The
trees moved forward, onto the road. The branches, now arms of rotted flesh,
grabbed for her. With a powerful swing, one arm broke the side window. Eloise
screamed as she swerved the car away from the searching arm. The glass crashed
behind her as the back windows were destroyed and more arms reached in. Eloise
swerved back and forth on the road, increasing her speed, trying to keep the
hands from touching her. Ahead she saw a glimmer of light – focused on the
light and pressed the accelerator to the floor.
Bursting from the darkness, the car dove over the edge of a tall
bluff. Eloise screamed as she plummeted downwards. She could see the dark
waters of the raging river waiting for her. She screamed again, burying her
head in her arms as her car spun down towards the river. As she waited for
impact, the sounds of the rushing river changed to a deep-throated laugh, at
once triumphant and evil. She knew that she was lost.
Eloise awoke with a start. She sat up in her bed, her cotton blouse
sticking to her sweat-covered body, her breath coming in gasps. She pushed her
hair out of her face and quickly glanced around the room, taking a few moments
to get her bearings. She looked at the clock, she had only been sleeping for
an hour, but it had felt like an eternity.
She could still hear the tremor of the laugh echoing in her mind. She
slipped her legs over the bed, resting her head in her hands for a few moments,
willing her mind to clear, to focus. Knowing if she wasn’t focused when she
went out that evening, she was not only endangering herself, but also the
others who accompanied her.
The knock on her door jarred her.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Sally taunted, through the door, “It’s almost dark, you
gonna sleep through the night?”
Eloise shook her head. “I’m going to take a quick shower – I’ll be ready
in 20 minutes.”
“Great. I’ll put together some chow.”
Eloise grimaced, glad that Sally was on the other side of the door and
couldn’t see her face. Sally’s idea of chow was granola, nuts and dried
fruit. Her only other choice was an MRE and she was getting tired of a
constant diet of pre-packaged, dehydrated food. Wisconsin-raised Eloise saw
nothing wrong with a thick steak, a baked potato and a hearty salad.
Unfortunately, in the flood-destroyed towns along the Gulf Coast, she wasn’t
going to be enjoying a steak for some time. Shrugging her shoulders, she stood
and headed for the shower. Oh well, she could always drink a protein shake, at
least those were chocolate.