by L B Anne
I babysat Dingy that evening and we watched his favorite movie while we sat on the floor with all of the superhero action figures that were in the movie so we could simultaneously act out the scenes.
He was so amazed at my ability to act out the parts, and I liked looking like this talented actor in his eyes. But the truth is, Dingy had made me watch the movie so many times that I knew the entire movie by heart.
My movie of a life seemed to be calming down for a bit, and after a couple of days, although I needed the break, I actually missed not talking gleamer business with Mr. Tobias.
Then, everything went left—I mean it flipped before my eyes. One minute I was leaving school and waiting at the corner to cross the street since my mom hadn’t arrived to pick me up, and I was going to end up being the last kid there. I was used to her running late, but this was later than usual. The next minute, an ambulance sped past with sirens blaring and lights flashing, heading down the road toward Mr. Tobias’s street.
The vision of the Murk flooded my mind. I ran to the next corner toward his house. The ambulance turned right and pulled into Mr. Tobias’s driveway.
“Oh, no!”
I waited, pacing back and forth.
A body was brought out on a stretcher.
Something is really wrong this time. I freaked out. Where is Teddy when I need him? I bolted in the direction of my house and didn’t stop until I arrived and ran up the front steps.
“Mom, I have to go to the hospital.”
My mom stood in the foyer, pulling the strap of her handbag over her shoulder. “Sheena, what are you doing home? You’re supposed to wait for me at the school.”
“Mom, can you take me?” I asked as I began to pull her.
“Wait, hold on. Calm down,” said my dad, grabbing me with one hand while the other rested on one of his crutches.
“Sheena, look at me. What’s going on? Are you hurt?”
I began to cry. "No. An ambulance—I have to see him—the hospital.”
“Him who? Who are you talking about? Is it Theodore?” asked my dad.
“Mr. Tobias.”
“Mr. Tobias?”
My parents looked at each other. “Do you know who that is?” My dad asked my mom.
“No. Sheena, how do you know him? Is he a teacher?”
“He’s an old man. He lives across from the school and I saw an ambulance take him away after school.”
“Okay, okay, calm down. We’ll go. Honey, call and see if there is a Mr. Tobias over at Hackley...”
My dad pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
I paced the kitchen, round and round the center island in a panic, waiting.
“Sheena, here, drink some water.”
I took a large swallow and held the next mouthful water in my mouth without swallowing.
“They’ve got him!” my dad exclaimed.
I gulped down the water.
My mom grabbed her keys, “Okay, let’s go.”
My mom kept glancing over at me in the car. I snuck a peek at the speedometer. Why did it seem like we were driving too slow? I wanted to slam my foot down on top of her foot on the gas pedal, so we’d go faster. And why was every traffic light we approached red at a time like this?
We finally pulled in front of the emergency room entrance and I jumped out of the car before it came to a stop.
“Sheena!” my mom screamed.
I ran inside to the emergency room counter. My mom must’ve left the car where it was, because I could hear her run in behind me. “We’re here to see Mr. Tobias. He was brought in by ambulance. His nurse was probably with him. Ummm… Nurse Paige.”
My mom looked over at me, surprised I knew so much.
“Yes, she’s right over there.”
I ran to her. “Nurse Paige, remember me?”
“Yes. You’ve come to see him? I wish he could’ve told you how much you brightened his days. I don’t know what happened. It’s bad this time.” Her eyes watered. “It’s not like one of those times when he was faking it just to get back here. I think he had a crush on the nurses or something. This time something came over him. He couldn’t breathe.”
Something?
A nurse called her over and whispered to her. She covered her mouth and looked around the room as the nurse spoke. She nodded, looked back at me, held up a finger, and followed her back.
“What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know,” my mom replied. “That didn’t look good.”
“Can I go back there? Will they allow it?”
My mom did something unexpected. She walked up to the counter, and I couldn’t be prouder that she was my mom. “Can we go back and see Mr. Tobias? This is his granddaughter.”
“Let me check.”
My mom sat down next to me. She watched the woman.
The receptionist spoke softly to someone. “She says she’s his granddaughter. I don’t know…”
A few minutes later, they waved us back.
We walked past several curtains that I didn’t purposely look through, but they were parted. A man sat with a huge gash in his leg, a woman looked as if she’d passed out, and another woman had some kind of breathing tube in her mouth.
Further down the hall, Nurse Paige stood outside a curtain pulled closed, blocking off my view. She cried, “He’s gone, sweetie. I’m sorry.”
“No, he can’t be.” I ran toward the curtain.
My mom tried to pull me back. “Sheena!”
I ducked under the curtain and froze in place, looking at his lifeless body. His coloring was gone. He looked like a shell, like the part of him that made him him was missing.
“Do you have something to tell me? You were supposed to help me through this.” I walked toward him and placed my hands on the bed rail. “You were the only person that understood—that could help me. You can’t be gone. Get up. We have to go. We’ll take you home.”
“No, Sheena. What are you saying?”
I fought to get out of my mom’s grasp. “Where are you?” I yelled up at the ceiling. “I know you’re here. Help him! Bring him back!”
“Sheena, stop it. Come on, we’re leaving.”
“But I didn’t find out what he wanted to tell me. He said there would be time to discuss everything, but there wasn’t.” I turned to Nurse Paige. “I don’t even know what that last thing was he yelled out to me when you were running to catch the bus.”
“Ask your friend.”
“What?” I asked. “My friend doesn’t know what he said. We couldn’t hear him.”
“No, that’s what he yelled out to you. I only heard part of the question. You asked something like can they take, and he replied, ‘Ask you friend.’” He laughed about it after we were on the bus. He said something like, ‘I can’t believe she doesn’t know.’”
“Ask...my...friend? Which...friend?” It was hard to get the words out. My chest felt tight, and I was breathing too fast.
“Sheena…”
I was now at the foot of Mr. Tobias’s bed, and looking just over his head. My eyes widened as I looked up to the ceiling. My mouth dropped open.
My mom looked back and forth from me to the ceiling.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Nurse Paige stepped closer to me. “She may be having an absence seizure.”
I continued looking up at the being that fully formed and dipped his head toward me. His arms opened out to the sides, and as he did so, slight translucent wings appeared behind him. He brought his hands together, palms up, and dipped them down at Mr. Tobias’s head. Something glowed there, within his forehead, as if the sun had been planted there, and its rays were releasing or escaping from a dark prison for all to see.
The being scooped it up as if gently lifting a bubble from water. With his palms together, he held his arms out toward me.
“What? No.” Did he want me to take it? I stumbled back a couple of steps.
Nurse Paige rushed toward me with her arms outstretc
hed.
“Don’t touch me,” I whispered. I don’t know how I knew, but at that moment, no one could touch me.
Nurse Paige stopped. My mom slowly stepped closer, as if not to alarm me.
I don’t think I had a choice in what was about to happen. The angel moved forward without walking. Standing ten feet tall, he brought his arms down over me, and the glowing thing—swirling light in the form of a tiny dove that under different circumstances I would’ve been intrigued about—lowered onto my head.
I saw a flash of light, but I didn’t feel anything.
“Sheena,” my mom said.
I touched my lip, feeling something wet there, and looked down at the drops of blood on my fingers.
“Her nose,” said Nurse Paige as she reached for tissues.
I stared at my fingers. Why am I bleeding? Am I dying? I looked up at my mom. Her eyes were filled with concern and fear. My bloodied fingers reached for her, and she reached for me. I didn’t get to feel the comfort of her embrace.
Darkness closed in around me as I slipped away.
BUT THERE’S MORE…
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The adventure continues.
Turn the page to start reading book two,
The Girl Who Spoke to the Wind.
The Sheena Meyer Series:
Book Two
THE GIRL
WHO SPOKE
TO
THE WIND
T o save the people she loves, Sheena must dare to look where she’s most afraid and put her trust in angels.
The mystery continues in this second installment of the Sheena Meyers series. Sheena learns her family has been hiding something from her. Something BIG.
Ever since the day she first saw the being in the hospital, another world now exists for Sheena. A world where the Murk is carried with the wind, angels send text messages, and she is almost killed while witnessing a kidnapping.
Now Sheena and her two best friends, Chana and Theodore, begin a dangerous investigation to answer Sheena’s three big questions: Who am I? What do I believe? Are we danger?
The truth is unsettling and remarkable and will turn their world upside down. Sheena must call on her courage and fight for her classmates. Can one thirteen-year-old save missing children and stop an evil that plagues the city?
Y ou must reflect the light of the sun, Gleamer.
That’s what I heard as I opened my eyes and looked around the hospital room.
Speak to the wind…speak to the wind…speak to the wind…The voice echoed. Mr. Tobias’s voice.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered as my eyes slowly blinked open. Where am I? I tried to sit up.
“Wait, Sheena,” my mom said, gently pushing me back.
I looked down at the hospital bed, around the room, and at the closed curtain.
“Are you okay?” my mom asked. She looked worried and exhausted, like she had when my dad was in the hospital—the same tension in her face.
I tried to sit up again.
“Hold on, Sheena,” she said. “You fainted.”
“I did?” I’d never fainted before. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? You don’t have to apologize. How do you feel? Do you remember why we came to the hospital?”
I thought for a moment, my eyes searching the white tiles of the ceiling. I closed my eyes. Sorrowful, I replied, “Mr. Tobias. He’s gone.”
The curtain pulled back with a hard screech and someone entered. A male voice spoke to my mom. He sounded especially chipper as he came around the bed where I could see him and touched my arm.
“Are we okay now? I hear you lost consciousness.”
I looked up at the gentle expression and bright eyes of Nurse Javan. His sparkled just like Mr. Tobias’s, like…Ariel’s. If my assumption was right…
I sat up totally alert, shocked he was there. “Do you remember me?”
“Let’s see…You were here late one night. I think you were going to your dad’s room,” he replied with a warm grin.
“Yes.” I was so glad he didn’t mention I was talking to myself.
“I’m usually pretty good with faces.”
“How are you with answers?”
“I will give you whatever information I can. Knowledge is important. It is only what you know that can save you.”
“Save me from what?”
“Anything.” He read over a chart and looked up at me with a grin. “Everything.”
“Does that mean what you don’t know can kill you?”
"“Maybe.” He looked into my eyes as if he wanted me to really understand what he was saying. “But I know you don’t have to worry about that because you’re going to study hard and learn as much as you can. You’re special, I can tell,” he said with a wink. “You’ve been given everything you need to become very successful and conquer whatever comes against you.”
Given? That’s when I remembered everything that happened before I fainted. What was the glowing thing the angel took from Mr. Tobias and gave to me? Was it something to help me?
“Is that why I’m supposed to speak to the wind?” I asked with a brow raised. “What does that mean?”
Nurse Javan smiled. “The wind? Uh, okay.”
Oh no! He had no idea what I’d been talking about. I thought he was— “Wait. Rewind. That didn’t come out right. That was, uh, something crazy I heard someone say. Ha! Like someone would actually talk to the wind. That’s crazy, right?”
I slumped back against the pillow and stared at my hands in my lap, avoiding my mom’s frown. She had looked back and forth at us, confused. I’m sure she thought I might have hit my head when I collapsed and awoke talking crazy, or in riddles or something.
Nurse Javan turned to my mom. “I know Doctor Davies has already spoken to you. Since her electrocardiogram results are fine, no hospitalization is necessary.”
“That means I can go?”
“You sure can.”
A half-hour later, my mom and I stood outside the hospital emergency room entrance. Our car sat at the end of the sidewalk, but my mom didn’t walk toward it.
“Sheena, I’m kind of dumbfounded right now. Maybe we’ve been too lax with you because of how responsible you usually are. It’s like you have a whole other life going on that I know nothing about. How is that possible? You’re just a child.”
“I’m not a child.” I knew as soon as I said it that I shouldn’t have.
“Trust, now is not a good time for you to test me. And your dad…” She threw her hand up. “I don’t even know how to begin to explain this to him.” She looked down at her phone. “That’s him now. I’m letting it go to voicemail. I’m not ready to have that conversation yet.”
“What are you doing? I thought you weren’t ready to tell him anything?”
“A little something is better than nothing at all. I’m texting him that everything is fine and that I’ll explain later. Hopefully that will pacify him for now.” She placed her phone in her purse. “Now tell me what in the world all of that was about? Start with Mr. Tobias. I know you care—”
“I don’t care! I don’t care anymore! I mean, I care about Mr. Tobias, but I didn’t ask for any of this. And I’m so confused.”
“Didn’t ask for any of what?”
I looked into my mom’s brown eyes. Should I tell her? Would it put her in danger? Would she think I was crazy and send me off to an asylum or something like they did with Mr. Tobias when he was young?
“Sheena, what is it? You can talk to me. You can tell me anything.” Her eyes pleaded with me.
“Mom, sit down.”
We sat on the silver benches that were meant for th
ose waiting for their rides to pull up after being discharged from the hospital.
“What’s going on?”
There was no easy way to tell her, so I just blurted it out. “Mom, I-I see things.”
She had been facing me. Holding my hands and looking into my eyes. She turned away, looking out at the parking lot across from the hospital.
She didn’t ask any questions, laugh, or freak out. Maybe she hadn’t heard me or misunderstood, so I repeated it. “I see things.”
She grabbed my hand again. “I heard you the first time. Let’s go for a ride.”
I didn’t say anything further. I just wanted to know what she was thinking—whether she believed me or not. And why didn’t she ask for details? I know my statement had major shock factor, but she showed no signs of its impact.
Neither of us spoke on the drive. I watched her, thinking I could read her expression and know what she was thinking, but I couldn’t.
Maybe the angel granted me some type of mindreading power, I thought as I stared at her, pushing with my brain. Nothing happened. No superpowers. I was still just a teenager that had no idea where she fit in the scheme of the world.
Mentally exhausted, I fell asleep after a while. When I awoke, we were pulling in front of a yellow house surrounded by open fields.
Nothing ever changes here, I thought as I got out of the car and looked around.
The screened front door of the house opened. “My babies!”
My mom walked into her open arms. Then I stepped forward for her embrace, pressing the side of my face into the shoulder of her light blue house dress and inhaling the familiar gardenia scent of her favorite lotion.
“Hi Nana.”
“It’s so good to see my baby. My, you look more and more like my mother, your great grandmother, every time I see you. Get on in this house. Don’t you feel that chill?”
