Parallel Worlds- the Heroes Within
Page 6
Posted by lonelysurvivor7 at 08:35:00 AM 0 Comments
Labels: A Question, Annie Dillard, the meaning of life, The Empire Strikes Back, Bill and Grady
Wednesday, July 5th, 2023
It’s Been One Week
...since you looked at me!
Barenaked Ladies? Anyone?
Anyway. It’s been a week. There aren’t any comments. Guess I’ll see if someone is at the meeting place this afternoon, but I think I got all my hopes up about logging on and seeing a set of comments waiting for me. Not sure if I have any more hope left for this afternoon.
But this is weird, right? I mean, the internet is working... which means there have to be servers somewhere, and they must be powered and online. Which means that there must be people out there making sure they still work. Right? I mean, I’m no internet expert, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to log on and blog about “my so-called apocalyptic life” (oh, I am clever) if someone wasn’t out there making sure things ran correctly.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m finally going crazy. Maybe I’m imagining this whole thing. Some imagination! I can hallucinate anything, and I choose a blog? (Antiquated, I know, but believe me, I tried Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and Tumblr and Quantime and all the big social media outlets, but they aren’t even around anymore. All of their main pages are down. So, here I am, blogging, or whatever.)
The least my imagination could do is let me hallucinate a Chris Hemsworth fantasy. I wouldn’t mind being whisked away to Asgard right about now.
Anyway. I’ll be at the same place, at the same time as usual. Temple Square between noon and three.
Oh, and happy Fourth of July yesterday. Freedom and things. Yay.
Posted by lonelysurvivor7 on 11:01:00 AM 0 Comments
Labels: the apocalypse, middle school, Chris Hemsworth, Barenaked Ladies, July 4th
Wednesday, June 28th, 2023
I’ll Be Here
If you are reading this, or if you come across this at any time in the future, I’ll be in the northern Utah area. I’LL BE AT TEMPLE SQUARE IN SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH EVERY WEDNESDAY BETWEEN THE HOURS OF NOON and 3:00 PM, MOUNTAIN WEST TIME, UNLESS I SAY OTHERWISE ON THIS BLOG (I’ll keep my general location updated under the [Where Am I? (Find Me)] tab). I won’t tell you exactly where I am, for obvious reasons. But come to Temple Square in Salt Lake City, and I’ll find you. (The temple is the building that looks like a castle, by the way. There’s a golden guy with a trumpet at the top. I’ll be there today, watching and waiting.)
I’m hoping someone will read this and find me. Please comment if you read this.
Posted by lonelysurvivor7 at 10:52:00 AM 0 Comments
Labels: Utah, temple square, survivor
Tuesday, June 27th, 2023
Is anyone out there?
My name is Elizabeth Towner. Call me Lizzie, if you can call me anything. I’m in the northern Utah area. I’ll be at Temple Square in Salt Lake City today (27 June) between the hours of noon and 3:00 PM, Mountain West Time.
If there is anyone out there, please, let me know.
Also: this is not an automated message. I’m still here. Please, if you are reading this, contact me.
Posted by lonelysurvivor7 at 09:48:00 AM 0 Comments
Labels: none
Monday, June 26th, 2023
Is anyone out there?
My name is Elizabeth Towner. I’m in the northern Utah area. I’ll be at Temple Square in Salt Lake City today (26 June) between the hours of noon and 3:00 PM, Mountain West Time.
If there is anyone out there, please, let me know.
Posted by lonelysurvivor7 at 09:21:00 AM 0 Comments
Labels: none
Sunday, June 25th, 2023
Is anyone out there?
My name is Elizabeth Towner. I’m in the northern Utah area. I’ll be at Temple Square in Salt Lake City today (25 June) between the hours of noon and 3:00 PM, Mountain West Time.
If there is anyone out there, please, let me know.
Posted by lonelysurvivor7 at 10:19:00 AM 0 Comments
Labels: none
Saturday, June 24th, 2023
Is anyone out there?
My name is Elizabeth Towner. I’m in the northern Utah area. I’ll be at Temple Square in Salt Lake City today (24 June) between the hours of noon and 3:00 PM, Mountain West Time.
If there is anyone out there, please, let me know.
Posted by lonelysurvivor7 at 01:52:00 AM 0 Comments
Labels: none
does this work?
hello? does this work? testing, 1, 2, 3...
Posted by lonelysurvivor7 at 01:47:00 AM 0 Comments
Labels: none
BIO
Christopher Husberg grew up in Alaska and now lives in Utah, where he writes, reads, runs, hikes, games, builds Lego castles, and spends time with his wife, Rachel, and daughters, Buffy and Arya. He received an MFA in creative writing from BYU (where he studied under Brandon Sanderson), and an honorary PhD in Buffy the Vampire Slayer from himself.
He writes fantasy novels, of the epic and dark varieties, and has nearly finished his first series, the Chaos Queen Quintet, published by Titan Books. Duskfall (2016), Dark Immolation (2017), and Blood Requiem (2018) are available now, book four (Fear the Stars) will hit shelves in June 2019, and the final volume (Dawnrise) will be available in June 2020.
LINKS
Author Website: http://christopherhusberg.com
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Christopher-B.-Husberg/e/B01C7BW2EG
Twitter: https://twitter.com/usbergo
The Dead Who Care
D.J. Butler
Hiram saw the man standing beside the road from a long distance away, first as a smudge of gray, but then as a tall fellow, thin like Hiram himself, in a frock coat and a short top hat.
It was odd that the man stood beside the road out here, in the dark deserts of eastern Utah. The nearest town was an hour’s drive, and Hiram didn’t see a car or a horse. The Model T’s lights showed sagebrush, tall grass, and talus slopes, all chalked white by the spell of the electricity.
What the man wore was stranger still: he was dressed in a dark blue frock coat, such as would have looked old-fashioned, quaint, or overly formal before the war. Now it looked like an echo of a world long dead, as did his hat.
Hiram almost drove past, leaving the man to his fate; after his defeats in Cameron, he was in no mood to be company to anyone. But the stranger waved his arms to flag Hiram down and Hiram abruptly thought of the tale of the Good Samaritan.
Grandma Hettie hadn’t raised Hiram to be a Levite.
Taking a deep breath, he stopped the car.
In the pocket of his army coat, Hiram had his service pistol. Traveling these desert roads alone, it didn’t pay to be defenseless. The stranger didn’t look like a robber, anyway.
The man in the frock coat reached for the handle of the car door, then hesitated. His face was poorly illuminated standing beside the car, but he looked middle-aged, thin as Hiram himself. He was clean-shaven and pale, like a man who worked indoors, and had a long-bridged nose that ended in a bulb, like an onion. “Can you give me a ride?” the stranger asked.
“As long as you mean me no harm,” Hiram said. His response was no trivial word game; the Model T was protected by a lamen, a paper talisman that Hiram himself had made and tacked to the floorboards underneath the seat, and Hiram didn’t want to say anything that would lower his defenses.
“I mean no one any harm.” The stranger smiled. “My name is Asael Johnson. I need a ride to the meadows.”
“Asael. God’s healer. That’s an angel name.”
Johnson’s face brightened. “Do you know Hebrew, then? You don’t look like a rabbi.”
“I don’t know any Hebrew. I barely know English.” Hiram laughed. He wore denim overalls under his soldier’s greatcoat, and a fedora on his head. “I’m Hiram Woolley. I’m a beet farmer now, I guess, and I’ll take you to where you want to go.
”
Johnson stepped into the Model T. As Hiram put the motorcar into gear and lurched forward again over the gravel road, he had the uneasy sensation that he hadn’t seen Asael Johnson either open or close the car’s door.
“That’s quite the coat you’re wearing,” Johnson said.
“I fought in the war,” Hiram said.
“A lot of men died,” Johnson said. “You’re lucky you came home.”
Hiram nodded. His best friend, Yas Yazzie, hadn’t been so lucky. Hiram blinked away sudden tears and tried not to remember Yas’s last moments, kicking his life out in a frozen ditch as the wolf-men on their trail howled for blood.
He tried not to remember his own failure, too. Yas had had a child on the way, and he had made Hiram promise that if he didn’t make it home, Hiram would see to it the child was taken care of. That was what Hiram was doing down in Arizona—for two years, he’d kept on eye on Betty Yazzie, making sure she had work and enough money. With her death, Hiram and his wife Elmina were trying to adopt the boy.
Michael, a big-eyed, staring toddler.
Hiram had come down to talk to tribal elders as well as the judge. He’d thought he’d be able to bring the boy back with him, but the foster parents in Cameron were objecting, and trying to adopt the boy themselves. Goodman, that was their name. The Goodmans wanted to keep Michael. Hiram had appealed to the elders to intervene with the judge on his behalf, but they had been reluctant. What made one set of white Mormon adoptive parents better than another?
The elders hadn’t intervened, the judge had sided with the Goodmans, and Hiram had driven north, empty-handed. He had tried. He had failed, but he had tried to keep his promise to Yas.
Wasn’t that good enough?
“The best men died,” was all he said. He cleared his throat, suddenly thick with phlegm.
“Good men died,” Johnson agreed. “Good men lived, too.”
“What town did you say you needed to go to?” Hiram asked. “Meadow?”
“It’s not a town. Mountain Meadows.”
Hiram’s breath stuck in his chest. “The massacre site?” He hadn’t realized this road passed the location of the 1857 mass murder. “Someone lives there?”
“One man.”
Hiram’s sense of unease grew. Keeping his right hand on the wheel, he sneaked his left under the loose collar of his shirt and gripped the iron of his chi-rho medallion. “You have to be careful at a place like that. There are dead who linger.”
“The dead who care.” Johnson smiled faintly.
“Unfinished business.” Hiram wasn’t sure why he was still talking. “Vengeance. Justice.”
“Mercy.”
Hiram took a deep breath and drove a few minutes in silence. “You’re wearing quite the coat, yourself.”
“I was a doctor,” Johnson told him. “This was my coat for formal occasions. It was a common enough sort of coat at the time.”
Asael Johnson was a ghost.
Hiram was giving a ghost a ride in his car. He took a deep breath.
“And is tonight a formal occasion?” Or had Asael Johnson died at a dinner party? If the man had been killed at Mountain Meadows, surely he wouldn’t have died in evening wear.
“I suppose it is. I will need your help, of course.”
Hiram nodded slowly. What help could the dead man need from him? “Because I was a soldier?”
“No, I don’t need help for that.”
The words didn’t put Hiram’s mind at ease. Could he say no to whatever the ghost wanted? Of course he could, and then he’d have to be prepared for the ghost’s reaction. Some ghosts threw things. Others caused people to die of heart attacks, and pure fear. Could Asael Johnson grab the steering wheel and drive Hiram off the road?
Hiram slowed down, just a bit.
But ghosts lingered on earth because they had unfinished business. Business of a passionate nature, business important enough to stick around for, which often meant they were murder victims themselves, intent on avenging their deaths. Ghosts were the dead who still cared about what happened on earth, and needed to set something right.
Something the living couldn’t fix or hadn’t fixed.
Maybe Hiram could help Asael Johnson resolve his unfinished business in a way that would minimize the mischief.
“It’s horrifying what was done to those people.” Hiram offered. “They were innocent.”
“There was a lot of fear in the air at the time.” Johnson nodded. “The Mormons were polygamists who had tried to flee the country because they didn’t quite fit in and talked about building their own kingdom in the Rocky Mountains. The federal government thought the Mormons were in revolt and the Mormons thought the federal government was out to get them. Then the Baker-Fancher wagon train came through, announcing that any Mormons who were sick of Brigham Young’s rule could take refuge with them and be escorted safely out of the state. There were rumors that members of the Baker-Fancher party had poisoned Mormon wells, and that they had killed Mormons in Missouri, back in the 1830s.”
Hiram’s own father was a polygamist who had never quite fit in, taking additional wives even after the Church had publicly disavowed the practice. Hiram had only learned about his father’s other families when Abner Woolley had abandoned him and his mother and gone to live in Mexico. “There were provocations, all right. Those don’t justify murder.”
Johnson smiled. “I was not killed at Mountain Meadows, if that’s what you’re guessing.”
Hiram felt cold. “Am I guessing?”
“If this were an old riddle game,” Johnson said, “or part of a fairy-story, you’d get three guesses. If you guessed the answer in three, you’d get a prize of some sort. A magical power, a wish granted, a secret treasure. And if you didn’t get the answer in three guesses, something terrible would happen.”
“I would lose the princess.”
“Or you would die.”
The Model T struck an unseen stone or root, leaping into the air and landing with a hard rattle. They rode in silence for a minute. Hiram’s heart clubbed his lungs and he tried to control his breathing.
Hiram forced himself to think. The ghost of a dead man—a man not recently dead—was coming to Mountain Meadows, to meet another man. A living man, it seemed. The dead man hadn’t been murdered in 1857, but had unfinished business with the living man.
Who could the ghost be?
The current year was 1921; sixty-four years had passed since the massacre. That meant that the living man could have been an adult at the time, now in his eighties or nineties. A perpetrator?
But Asael Johnson had said he hadn’t died at the Meadows. Could Johnson be a relative of one of the victims, come to avenge the death of a loved one on an old murderer?
What consequences would Hiram suffer if he guessed wrong?
“I died of a heart attack,” Johnson said.
“Unexpected?” Hiram asked.
Johnson nodded. “I was visiting a patient. My patient suffered from gout, and after giving the man his bottle of Haycock’s Celebrated Gout and Rheumatic Pills, I stepped into St. George Boulevard and dropped dead without a word.”
“There are worse ways to die.”
“You have seen many, I expect.”
Hiram nodded.
“I have seen quite a few, myself.” Johnson paused for a moment. “William McKinley had just been elected president.”
Hiram thought. “Nineteen hundred, then.”
Johnson nodded. Jackrabbits hurled themselves across the street in the glare of the headlights. It occurred to Hiram that he couldn’t smell the dead man at all—he smelled his own sweat, and the oil and exhaust odors of the Model T, but not another human being.
“You were forty years old?” Hiram wasn’t sure that a ghost retained the last appearance it had had in life, but that seemed reasonable, especially in light of the fact that Asael Johnson was apparently wearing the clothes he had died in.
“Forty-four.”
; Forty-four. That would make the year of his birth 1856. That very nearly ruled out revenge for the murders as Asael Johnson’s reason for continuing; he would have been an infant at the time of the massacre, so he would only have known any dead kin as stories told to him later.
Hiram doubted anyone could work up enough passion to continue as a ghost over the murder of someone they didn’t personally know.
On the other hand, there had been small children in the wagon train.
“You know,” he said, “Brother Brigham taught that a child under the age of eight isn’t accountable yet for sin.”
Asael Johnson laughed. There was wind in the sound, and a faint echo followed after it. “Yes. So did Joseph. But they got it from Mormon, you know. ‘Behold, I came into the world not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance; the whole need no physician, but they that are sick; wherefore, little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin.’”
“You were raised Mormon,” Hiram said.
“I feel a second guess coming on.”
“Maybe.” Hiram shrugged. “There were children in the wagon train. The Mormons and their Indian . . . allies . . . ?”
“Accomplices?”
“That’s fair. The Mormons and Indians killed all the adults, but they let children live. Because Brigham taught that children weren’t responsible, weren’t guilty. And whatever the wagon train had done—if they had poisoned wells, if they had killed Mormons in Missouri, whatever—the children didn’t deserve death.”
“What are you saying, Mr. Woolley?”
Hiram was still formulating his thoughts. “The Mormons took those children home and adopted them. Or they tried to, anyway, but when the Army came through and heard that there were surviving children, they forced the Mormons to give them up.”