“The fallen ones? Oh, a few. No one chooses that way on purpose.”
“Except Liam,” I correct.
“That’s right. Except for Liam, but you’re golden, you won’t choose that path, I’m confident. Now, go on back to your case. I’ve held you up long enough. I mean no discord between us. You’ll find a way to do what’s right, Nathaniel.”
He gives me a nod of his massive head and I don’t stall. I move and think at the same time. I picture Juliana in my head and think her name. Cold dread rides down my back, leaving a frozen trail in its path. How much time has passed? It had to be too much. I was beyond exhaustion when I left her side. Jules, please be all right.
As the scene comes into focus the icy trail rips me apart and leaves pure unadulterated fear in place of my spine. I know there’s chaos going on around me, but I only see her. With her back to the door she slides down to the floor as if in slow motion. Her head hangs to the side and I see her green and gold eyes roll back into her head as she slumps over.
∞
Juliana
“Hi Pumpkin.”
It’s the voice I’ve longed to hear once more. It’s what I’d wished for on a thousand first stars, when I was younger, before I understood he was never coming back. “Dad.”
“Yes, it’s me Julie.”
I breathe in the sound, letting it wash through me. Emotion swells like a tide inside my chest. “Where are you, Dad?” I can hear him perfectly but I can’t see him.
“I’m right with you. You’re all right, Julie.”
“I know, Dad. I feel great. I’ve really missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too, Pumpkin.”
“Oh Dad, I need to talk to you about Jared. He’s having some problems.”
“I know, but he’s not your responsibility. He’s a man now.”
“But what he’s doing is really bad. Shouldn’t I try to help him?”
“The decisions you make are your own. It will be up to him in the end. Don’t waste your life trying to change someone, sweetheart.”
“Okay.” I accept his answer with complete faith. I can’t believe how easy everything feels.
“Someone’s calling for you.”
“I know. I’m ignoring it, Dad. I like it here.”
“You can stay here if you want. It’s another decision only you can make.”
“No. I’ll have to go back. You know, for Jared, and for Mom.”
“What about for you Julie?”
“For me too, I guess.” That part didn’t feel as strong, but I understood his point.
“I love you so much Juliana, your mother, and your brother too.”
“I love you too. Can we talk again sometime?”
There’s no answer though. Someone is urging me to open my eyes, to say something, or to move. At first dreary gray blurs my vision, then I recognize the face in front of me.
“Nathan,” I gargle.
“Sweet love, I thought I was too late.”
“Jared?”
I try to shake off the fog. I can hear a fight going on as bodies crash into walls and into one another. There’s a loud crack and then a cascade of shattering glass fills my ears. I try to push myself up to find Jared. The hallway is so dim. Where is he? Is he hurt? Then I see him and Mason. The window at the end of the hallway is smashed. A rush of bristling air flows over me. Jared rounds on Mason, throwing all six foot four inches of himself onto him. Mason sucker punches him in the kidney and Jared falls back. Mason launches his huge frame straight into Jared making him tip over backward. Jared throws his hand back to catch himself. He lands on the edge of the windowsill. Glass shards scatter and crunch under their feet.
I move without thinking. I have no sense of my body, but I know I’ll get to my brother anyway I can.
Nathan grabs at me. “What are you doing?”
“My bro…” I can’t speak. My throat doesn’t want to cooperate. I break free of his grasp. I see indescribable hurt in his eyes and I give him the same look back. Why isn’t he helping Jared? I throw myself down the hallway. I see the thing still inside Mason. It, he, seems to be fueling him. Four arms, four hands, it’s monstrous, a living nightmare! The ghost wants my brother to fall. I can feel his malice. I don’t care, I’ll fight them both. The ghost looks at me and smiles. Mason strikes Jared in the side of the head.
“No! Please no!” I launch myself at Jared’s feet trying with the all the strength in the world to catch him before he falls out the window, but before I can even get close to him, I get pushed to the side and fall to the floor. I see everything happen but can’t begin to explain how it’s possible. Nathaniel moves like electric current, too fast for the human eye to see. He’s behind me and then he’s between Jared and Mason. Jared’s body flings away from the window as if he’s a paper doll in the wind. Nathan grabs the front of Mason’s shirt and hauls him upright to face him. He punches his nose with the force of a bulldozer and sends Mason staggering backward. Somehow the thing inside Mason, the ghost, reaches forward and gets a grip on Nathaniel. They all stumble, as if the ground were giving way underneath them, and as a group they fall over the window ledge and out the broken window.
I roll onto my hands and knees and crawl to Jared. He’s stunned and breathing hard. He looks at me. The corner of his eye is bleeding, his nose is dripping blood. He cradles his hand in his lap. “Jules, what’re you doing here?”
I can’t speak. Not only because I feel as if I’m still being strangled, but because the answer is so ridiculous. “I came to rescue you” will never pass my lips concerning this day. I blink my eyes a few times and crawl over to the window. Nathaniel.
At first, lightning blinds me. Then a crack that sounds as if the world just split in two shatters my eardrums. Neither intrusion even makes me jump. The sky breaks loose and ice showers down, stinging the back of my scalp and neck. A million tiny ping pong balls of hail bounce across the lawn and over the body. Mason lays broken and all alone on the ground below.
Running footsteps approach from behind. Strong arms lift me up off of the broken glass and I continue to stare in disbelief at the ground. Where is he? Where’s Nathaniel? Where had he come from in the first place? How did he move so fast?
“Juliana, are you injured? Please answer me,” Chris Abeyta asks. He’s direct but gentle and sounds a little too loud.
I shake my head no. No, don’t move me. Yes, I’m injured but I can’t tell you because my throat is broken, is what I want to say, but can’t. At least not until I figure out an answer to too many questions. Where is Nathan? Is he hurt? Why isn’t he on the ground next to Mason? Where did he go? In vain I look around the hallway, as if he might magically appear again. Jared is still on the floor, looking traumatized. Chris pulls me away from the window and I notice Lance’s assistant, Yvette, is with him. She has a phone to her ear, but I can’t comprehend anything she’s saying.
Chris’s body stiffens and I look to see what caught his attention. The hollow-eyed, thin lipped ghost walks down the hall toward us, wearing his evil smirk.
“Outside,” I croak.
I lean heavily into Chris, close my eyes, and let him lead me away.
Chapter Twenty-five: Mistaken
Nathaniel
“Marcus, what’s going on?” I scrub at my scalp with tense fingers, frustration overflowing as I watch Marcus appraise me with two cool brown eyes.
“I have a new assignment for you. I thought you might have some questions about it.”
“Her! This kid is my new case? I’m not done with my last case.”
“You are.”
“No. I know I screwed up, but put me back.”
“I’m sorry, Nathaniel, but this girl needs you now.”
Marcus sounds so definite about my change of situation that I look at my new client. She looks so young, a baby. Could she even be in high school yet? Her pale blue eyes are red rimmed and there’s snot running out of her nose. Her tiny frame looks as if it’s about to crumble un
der the weight of misery and despair.
She walks away from us, stepping out of a meager bedroom.
“Stay with her,” Marcus says.
We follow her into the hall where she turns into another room, a pink tiled bathroom. I give Marcus a quizzical look, but he stares at the girl. With a shaky hand she opens a medicine cabinet and grabs a prescription bottle off the shelf. She wipes her runny nose with the back of her other hand and then she fills a plastic cup with tap water. She brings the water and the pill bottle back to the room where we had just come from.
“What’s she doing?” I ask Marcus.
“You get all new assignments now. We feel you’re ready for something new. So we’re willing to let you try this out for a while.”
“What’re you talking about, Marcus?”
“After the way you handled Mr. Crowson, we, that’s myself and my friends, think you can spend some time helping the misguided. You’re able to relate to them.”
The girl sits down on the bed and opens the bottle. She pours not one pill but all of them onto her palm.
“She’s not going to take all of those, is she?” I ask, horrified.
“I can’t answer that, man.”
“Listen Marcus, I can’t explain how I didn’t see it until the last minute. Other than I made a mistake. I thought she was my assignment, not the brother. You weren’t there. It all fits now, but at the time I would’ve sworn I was there for her.”
“I believe you, brother, but it doesn’t change what you did for the boy.”
He’s right, of course. It hit me like being thrown into a wall of mirrors. Shattered images of every moment with Juliana and Jared Crowson reflected inside my mind as I stared into Juliana’s accusing glare in the hallway. Jared was there from the very first moment, in her bedroom. He was there every other time, too. Then Juliana was witnessing her brother’s murder and she couldn’t understand why I wasn’t doing anything to help him. The anguish on her face was more than I could bear, and I couldn’t help it. I reacted to her being broken on the floor, with her brother fighting for her, and I saw I could give that scumbag Mason what he deserved. Everything in the moment propelled me to do what I did. I changed the course of Jared Crowson’s life, and Mason’s death, forever and now my “superiors” have taken Jared away from me.
“What’s going to happen?” I say under my breath.
“No one knows one hundred percent of the future, one hundred percent of the time.”
“Did someone else get his case?” I have to know. Juliana, God, what will happen to her if she loses her brother? How can I get back to her?
“You need to focus on what is before you. These cases are different.”
The blonde haired girl sits frozen on the bed. Unblinking with her hand held up, staring at the pills. She holds the cup in her other hand making no move to swallow anything.
“Different how? It’s obvious what she’s about to do.” I cut my eyes to the girl on the bed and let some of the piss and vinegar out of my system. Why would this girl want to die? How bad can it be?
“How does it make you feel?” Marcus asks.
“It’s freaking awful! Look at her. She’s just a kid, for crying out loud.”
“And what would you do to help her?”
“What, help her have less pain as she offs herself?” I spit out sarcastically. This is terrible! My first assignment after making the biggest mistake of my afterlife is watching a young girl commit suicide. “So, is this my punishment?” I ask, letting all the bitterness shine.
“No, my friend, there is no punishment. Really, if you want to make a change, to help people, like this girl,” he holds his hand out toward her, “What would you do for her?”
“I don’t know. Are you messing with me, Marcus? Are you telling me I’m supposed to do something before she dies?”
“Yep. Help her. She’s crying out. But here’s what you need to know. These cases are challenging. Some of them will ignore you totally, some will cling, and some will be somewhere in the middle. You get to choose what you think will make the most difference. Sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t. Good luck.”
I check out his sincere face and swallow his instructions. I can’t believe what he’s saying. I’m not babysitting the dead anymore. “Am I allowed to show myself?” I ask the first question which comes to mind even though I probably have at least fifty more.
“Of course you can.” The corners of his mouth lift as he watches my expression. “But keep in mind how people respond to someone suddenly appearing in their bedroom.”
“Right.” This girl looks as if she might need CPR if I were to “poof” out of thin air. “Marcus, before you go,”
“You’re off the case man, let it go.”
He squeezes my shoulder with a muscular hand.
“Is it possible to see Juliana again?”
“Not recommended, brother. No good will come of it. And if she’s not directly involved with a case, it’s against protocol,” he says as he continues to watch me.
I look down at the floor, letting it sink in. It’s over then. She’s alive. That’s what I wanted, isn’t it? Then why does it feel like she died anyway?
“These cases will keep you plenty busy. And it’ll get better with time,” he assures me.
I nod once to indicate I heard him. I seem to have lost my voice. I have nothing left to say to him. The sad girl in front of me now doesn’t seem so unreasonable. Life sucks sometimes. I can relate.
“Listen, there’s one other thing about your change of duties that’s different from before. If things become difficult and you see no other way but to present yourself as a human, then you can give them your full name. They can call you back to them if they need you, or if they backslide into a bad place again in the future. But use this knowledge with discernment. You don’t necessarily want every past client calling for help every second of every day, if you know what I mean.”
He winks at me and leaves.
I think I know exactly what he means. And Marcus, man, I owe you one.
Chapter Twenty-six: Diagnosis Unknown
Juliana
They made me go to the emergency room. They also made me file a police report, for all the good that did. The cops nodded their heads and made notes. They kept asking about Mason and drugs. I couldn’t tell them anything about drugs because I didn’t know anything other than what I heard, which is hearsay. And I wasn’t going to tell them the only thing I did know, which is what I saw my brother and Caleb doing with him the night before. I couldn’t rationally explain how Mason ended up falling out of the window, so I said nothing about that part either.
I pause as I scribble all of this down in my notebook. The journaling is helping. It’s like to talking to someone who listens well and doesn’t interject with their own opinions. I don’t think I can talk about what happened at Castle Hill yet, but on paper it feels good to get it out. I flip back a few pages to read once again Nathaniel’s short message. He was real, I tell myself for the millionth time.
I start to write again as the uncertainties flood my brain.
He came to save me from the maniac, or save Jared, but he was there. Maybe he got up and walked away before I looked out of the window. Why does that possibility seem impossible?
My shoulder still hurts, from my arm being wrenched, and the bruise on my shin will probably be there for the rest of my life — thankfully it wasn’t broken. I’ve been avoiding all mirrors, but I know the bruises on my neck are the worst. Even my family members avoid looking at them. It must be bad. I think I’m healing fast though, at least physically, but mentally I’m not so sure. I have no idea how many days or nights have passed, but I haven’t left the house in a while. Grandma Charlotte is on a mission to heal me as soon as possible. I’m covered in a greasy salve that smells of lavender and comfrey. It smells just like her, which is familiar and comforting so I use it faithfully. She has me drinking cup after cup of medicinal tea that she says is
healing me from the inside out. She told me the tea isn’t just for my body, but for my mind, my heart, and for helping me sleep too. It’s not helping me sleep. But I’ll get to that part in a minute. First I have to write about Jared.
He’s barely speaking to me. Overall, his injuries are a lot worse than mine. Multiple cuts and bruises, a sore kidney, and a fractured nose, but the worst thing is that his hand is broken, his left hand, and he had to have surgery on it. He hasn’t said anything but I know this is the worst injury a guitar player can have.
After he came home from the hospital he came to me to clear some things up. He had to know why I was at Castle Hill, and I told him. So now, he blames himself for everything. Jared told me what he told the cops in his report, and oddly enough he didn’t say anything about the guy who appeared out of nowhere and saved his butt. He said he was fighting for his life when Mason punched him, he — Jared — fell back and Mason tripped and fell out of the broken window and that’s how it happened. This story adds to my confusion. Nathan was fast, but how did Jared not even see him? Am I crazy? I’m really starting to think so. Jared also explained to me what Mason was so freaked out about. Chris Abeyta told Jared he discovered Mason’s meth lab in the pump house. Chris said he was on his way to the police station in town when he ran into me. He decided to turn around and make sure Jared and I were all right before contacting the cops about what he’d found.
Jared told me he was with Lance in the park to sign paperwork for the record deal and Lance was taking off for France that day. Apparently Lance was really spooked by what had happened to Ashley and decided a break from the castle would be a good idea. Lance had forgotten some of the papers so he called Mason to see if he could give Jared a ride to Castle Hill to finish things up with his assistant. That’s where he was when I arrived. He said he heard me scream and tried to find me and it was the worst thing he’s ever heard in his life. I asked him again if he was selling drugs that day in the park and he sort of confessed, sort of, meaning he didn’t totally deny it.
Death Lies Between Us (An Angel Falls Book 1) Page 26
