Breathe

by Tracey E. Chambers

  “You know I’m here,” he sighed in my ear, “We don’t have to talk about it tonight, but I just can’t stay away when you are hurting this much. I’m sorry.”

  I was not brave enough to turn around or reply, but his whispered apology sent me into fresh bout of tears. I was so tired of crying. I knew part of it was my hormones being out of whack from just having a baby, but I still hated feeling so weak. Logan was back, but as a phantom, offering me comfort, but no promises. I cried silently for hours, while he held me tighter, just letting me cry. His hand tugged at the hem of my shirt after a while. He gradually drew it up just enough to splay his hand over the place my son had occupied. He pressed his hand firmly against me, acknowledging the source of my pain.

  Then he kissed my ear and whispered, “Beth, try to sleep. Please baby, you’re breaking my heart. Just sleep, everything will still be here tomorrow, and so will I.”

  His voice quivered like he was fighting tears himself. He kept his arms tightly around me and his hand against my stomach as if he were trying to staunch the flow of pain. We didn’t speak anymore that night. At dawn, he was gone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  LOGAN

  By the time I was five, I told my parents about fanciful dreams where I visited Disney World and explored Cinderella’s castle. Instead of being interested or pleased, my mother looked at me with sad eyes.

  “Sweetie, you must be very, very careful. If someone sees or hears you during your dreams, bad men will come and take you away from us. Do you understand Logan? You must never utter a sound, nor do anything that might let people know that you are there. This is very important son. If you make a sound, the bad men will find us.”

  I still remember her softly crying in her room after our conversation.

  “What are we going to do Zane?” She asked my father. “How can we protect him now?”

  “I don’t know Sarah. I prayed this day would never come. He’s so young.”

  The rest of the conversation was muffled as my father tried to comfort my mother. I felt like I had done something wrong and never mentioned my “dreams” to my parents again.

  Over the next two years, my mom prepared me to control my gift. I learned how to focus on a place as I was drifting off to sleep, and when I lost consciousness I would be there. Mom could travel at will; she would go into a trance like state when she was awake. She assured me that as I grew, so would my abilities, then she would teach me how to project whenever I chose. She disappeared before I was ever able to master that ability. I was only able to travel when I was asleep. I had learned over the years how to move light objects when I was in astral form. It was tremendously draining. In the beginning, when I exerted myself physically during spirit walks, it would take days for me to recover my strength. Most of the time, I stuck to traveling and made sure I wasn’t seen or heard.

  As I got older, my dad explained who the bad men were. When my mother was in her teens, she was recruited by the government to assist in “remote viewing” on the enemy. Usually, this group consisted of psychics who used their abilities to help spy on our enemy’s top secret military installations. Their reliability was hit or miss. When my mother joined the team, the coordinator was astonished. My mother’s accuracy was infallible. She could actually travel to the site in spirit form and gather information. Soon, my mother was no longer allowed to live at home. She became a ward of the state and was a virtual prisoner within the walls of the CIA installation in Colorado Springs.

  My mother was given a top notch education with private tutors and later professors, but she was kept under close supervision at all times. She was never free to make friends or have a social life. If she wasn’t in school or resting, she was projecting all over the world.

  By her early twenties she was drained, exhausted, and suicidal. That’s when my father met her. He was a physics professor at the University of Colorado. He was brought in to teach my mother advanced physics, so she could make sense of some of the military blueprints she was reading in Russia. He couldn’t help but be curious about his sad, silent pupil. She rarely said more than two words to him during their sessions, but her exams reflected a brilliant mind that quickly grasped the concepts he was teaching her.

  One day, under the watchful eye of her bodyguard, dad finally had the courage to ask her about her strange circumstances. Initially, he scoffed at her claims, but that night she visited him and he became a believer. After that, my mom visited my father often when she was free from her remote viewing responsibilities. They soon fell in love. When he learned that she was being kept against her will, the two began to plan her escape.

  My dad never told me the details about how they escaped. After he freed my mom, they spent the rest of their lives on the run, moving from place to place and living off of money my father’s wealthy family sent to him in various anonymous bank accounts around the world. By the time I came along, they had begun to relax. They had spent over five years on the run. It had been over three since they’d had any inkling they were being followed. They hoped perhaps the CIA had finally given up and quit searching. When my mother learned she was pregnant, my dad found a great house on a quiet street, and they decided it was safe enough to settle down, for my sake.

  I lived a charmed life for my first seven years. My parents were deeply in love and shared that love with me. Until the day three men in black suits knocked on our front door. My mother looked through the peep hole and quickly hustled me into the basement. She hid me in a closet under the stairs and begged me to stay hidden no matter what I heard. She told me the bad men were here.

  “Mommy will always love you, Logan. Tell Daddy…” Her voice choked on a sob, “Tell Daddy I am sorry, and I love him too.”

  She gave me a quick kiss then raced up the stairs. That was the last time I saw my mother.

  When my dad got back from the store, he found me still huddled in the closet. Before he asked me where my mother was, he already knew the answer to his question. He just prayed he would get a different answer. The only words I could utter were, “bad men”. My dad picked me up and sat with me on the stairs while we both cried. When the tears had finally dried up, he put his hands on my tiny shoulders.

  “Son, you owe it to your mother to keep your abilities secret. Don’t make her sacrifice for you be in vain.”

  I looked up at him with tear filled eyes and solemnly nodded my head. I didn’t understand what he meant until much, much, later. All I knew then was my mother was gone.

  At first, I constantly sought her out in my dream walks, but I never was able to reach her and she never came to us. Later, my father told me that he knew she was dead because she would have sought us out if she had the opportunity. It had been over twelve years now, and I finally had to accept that my mother was dead. If she had a single second, she would have reached out to my father or me by now. The fact that she hadn’t proved to us she was never coming back.

  The first few years after my mom disappeared, we were constantly on the move. My father was determined to keep me safe. He had no way of knowing if the people who took my mother knew about my existence or not. If they did, it was possible they knew I inherited my mother’s unique abilities. My dad always reminded me of my mother’s sacrifice and the importance of keeping my inheritance from her a secret. My life was a series of new homes, new schools, and new names every few months.

  After sixth grade, my father deemed it safe enough for me to start and finish the school year in the same place. It was hard being the new kid every year, but I learned to adjust. I was grateful just to stay in one place for a while. It was always hard leaving, but it was normal for me. I just expected at the end of every school year to say goodbye to my friends and head out to a new town.

  Everything changed when I met Beth, at the end of junior year, when my father announced it was time to go, I refused. I was not leaving her under any circumstances. Since she was underage, I could not bring her with me, so staying was my only option. My dad w
as furious. He threatened, cajoled, and begged, but I refused to leave. I was willing to risk everything to stay with her.

  So for the first time in a decade, I lived in the same house, went to the same school, and had the same friends for two years in a row. It felt great to belong somewhere. Most of all it felt right to stay with my girl. As long as we were together, nothing would ever come between us. Beth was wounded, but somehow, she healed me.

  ******************************************************************************

  I was relieved when Beth finally knew at least part of my secret. At least she acknowledged I was with her without being able to see me. I wasn’t sure how she would take the rest, or if she could even believe it. I didn’t go see her the next morning. Instead, I decided to wait a few days to let her rest and recover. Yeah, I was procrastinating, but I knew she needed a few days to process what had happened between us and to grieve the loss of her son. I passed my time playing a hundred different scenarios in my head. Most of them ended with her walking away from me. She didn’t freak out when I spoke to her last night. That was encouraging. I still remembered how her scumbag step-father reacted to me, but that wasn’t a fair comparison. I had purposefully intended to terrorize him.

  The first time I dropped Bethany off in front of her house, I was worried after I witnessed her step-dad’s vicious tirade in the front yard. If he was willing to be that cruel in front of a total stranger, what was waiting for her once they were behind closed doors?

  I went to bed early that night. As soon as I felt myself drifting off to sleep, I went to check on her. I focused on her face for a few seconds and in the blink of an eye, I was standing at the foot of her bed. She drew me like a magnet. I’d never been able to project so quickly. I had a unique connection with her from the first moment I saw her. I should have known my soul would find hers effortlessly.

  Bethany was laying on her stomach, facing the wall. My first reaction was to look away immediately because even in the darkness, I could see she didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. Just as I started to turn away, my brain registered what I had just seen. She was facing away from me. I drew closer so I could get a better look at her back. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to bellow in rage. I slowly brushed the hair out of her face. At the touch of my hand, her eyes popped open, and she looked behind her. I froze, even though I knew she couldn’t see me. After a couple of seconds, she closed her eyes again and seemed to drift off to sleep.

  Her back was a mass of whelps and congealed blood. The shock almost sent me snapping back into my body. I fell to my knees, wishing I could take her pain away in that moment. Anything would be better than witnessing the cruelty that was inflicted on her. It was criminal to treat an animal this way. I couldn’t take it anymore. I went outside her door and slid to the floor. I wasn’t as brave as she was. I hadn’t cried since the day they took my mom away. I was not prepared for the sobs that wracked my body. My girl was savagely beaten, and I wasn’t there to protect her.

  After all my tears were spent, it was time Jack and I had a little talk. He was in front of the TV drinking a beer. I walked up to him and knocked the bottle out of his hand with so much force, it flew a few feet before it hit the wall. Jack looked down at his hand then where the beer had spilled on the floor. He stood up, searching the room for what could have possibly caused his beer to fly out of his hand. I shoved him back down on the couch with all the force I had left.

  If he was scared before, he was completely terrified when he heard a disembodied voice threaten him.

  “You will never touch Bethany again. You will never threaten her again. You will stay away from her and out of her room. I’m always watching, there will be no next time. I will be there, and you will die. Do we understand each other, Jack?”

  He sat on the couch with his mouth hanging open in disbelief. Still searching for the source of the voice.

  “UNDERSTAND?” I roared.

  A nod of his head was all he could muster.

  “She will be going out and having a life. STAY AWAY from her if you want to keep sitting on your lazy butt and drinking beer. You even look at her the wrong way and I will break your legs. Never forget, I am always watching.”

  He disgusted me. I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him a minute longer. I went back to Bethany’s room. She was awake again, staring at the wall with tears trickling down her face. She had to be in agony. I moved beside her to get another look at her injuries. Her back resembled raw meat. I could not even begin to count the number of lashes across her back. They crisscrossed each other and overlapped. She had some kind of white salve on it at least. I could only assume I had her mother to thank for that. Where was she when Bethany was savagely beaten?

  After a while she closed her eyes, but the tears still fell. I knelt down beside her bed and touched one of the few spots I could without hurting her. As I ran my fingers through her hair, her breathing evened out. I hoped she was asleep. I stayed beside her bed as long as I could that night. I couldn’t bear to leave.

  I made sure to pay a visit to old Jack each night to make sure he knew my threats weren’t drunk hallucinations. He got the message, and I hoped that was enough to keep her safe when I couldn’t be with her. Jack wasn’t scared enough to give up complete control of her. I was willing to get her home by ten if it was enough to salve his wounded ego. I keep her with me every second until her curfew. Then, I stayed with her every night, usually in my astral form, sometimes in my physical form, until just before dawn. It drained me, but it was worth it to make sure she was safe.

  Many nights, she was asleep before I got there. Often in the beginning, I would find her thrashing around and crying out. Her nightmares tore me apart. I brushed the hair out of her face and told her over and over that she was safe. When she heard my voice, she would settle down and sleep. After we had been dating for about a month, her nightmares lessened. She would still have them occasionally, but they became less and less frequent.

  My threats were successful in keeping Jack away from her. After I moved to Australia, I’d still pay Jack a visit about once a week to remind him that I was still watching. It was a lie, but he didn’t have to know that. The first few weeks after I left, it mitigated the pain when I was still able to dream walk to Beth while she slept. The rest of the time, I was a complete mess. Because of the time difference, my life in Australia consisted of sleeping all day so I could see her again. My nights were unbearable.

  My dad begged me to at least take a few classes at the local community college, but I had no desire to think of the future. I had no future without her in it. There were times when just planning the next day was too much.

  I’d hurt her. The first few days after I left, she was almost catatonic. I would find her in the same place I left her the night before, wearing the same clothes and staring at the same spot on the wall. Gradually she went through the motions of living, but she was just a shell. Then, after that it was worse. So much worse.

  There were a thousand times I decided to go back to her and beg her to forgive me. Then, my dad would remind me the danger I put her in, just by being important to me. My mother gave her life to protect me, was I willing to risk the life of the girl I loved? So, I was reduced to sneaking back to her while she slept…until it hurt too much to see her. She went on with her life and I had to pick up the pieces of my shattered heart.

  I relented to my father’s constant nagging and took a couple of basic college classes. It was ironic, but I had become more like Bethany was when I first met her. I attended my classes and kept to myself. The new kid who had always made friends so easily was content to be a loner. Occasionally, I would be invited to a study group, but I always politely declined. When a pretty girl would send a shy smile my way, I pretended not to notice. It only reminded me that the love of my life was lost to me. Forever.

  So I existed. If you could call it that.

  It was a little better when my dad was gone, which was a l
ot, per usual. When he was around, he just made it worse. He would try to get me out of the house constantly. I didn’t want to go out to dinner or go to a soccer game. When he came home from his last trip, he decided to bribe me to get out. He knocked on my bedroom door, the place I spent most of my time, if I wasn’t at school or the beach. I ignored it. He was the only one who could be knocking and I wasn’t interested in talking.

  When it became obvious I wasn’t going to answer, he poked his head in the door.

  “I’m sorry we had to leave the Mustang in storage in the states. I’ve got the whole day free, why don’t we spend the day car shopping?”

  “No thanks, the bus is fine.

  This was just another variation on our normal script every time he came home. It was getting old. Not that I cared. My dad took a deep breath and came to sit on the end of my bed. I knew he was worried about me, but I really just wanted him to go away. He was my dad, the only person I had left in the world, but I still partially blamed him for losing Bethany. It was easier to blame him than it was to admit it was my own fault. He put his hand on my shoulder to get my attention.

  “Logan, it’s been a year. It’s time to let go son.”

  I shrugged his hand off my shoulder. Now I was furious and it felt good to feel something, beyond despair.

  “Like you let go of Mom? Why do we still have all of her stuff? Why did it make the move with us all the way out here Dad? You are a hypocrite,” I accused angrily.

  That seemed to bring him up short. Pain flickered across his face for a minute before he was able to get it under control.