After checking on those left behind, he scoped out the people who had left him behind, trying to recognize them. The woman stopped, and then stared straight ahead of her, giving Carter a moment to take in more of his surroundings. He glanced downward to see the Jaws of Life fervently work at freeing his parents. Perhaps they had already been freed, but their physical beings still needed help. It seemed probable to Carter that his parents would be joining him soon, but he knew for a fact that he did not just meet his mother. Love flourished everywhere and at all times, so Carter just assumed the woman meant what she said as an endearment. Besides, everyone belonged to each other here. They are all related in that they are all children of the Lord.
The woman led Carter through groups of people. Each small group of three or four people smiled and waved to him, welcoming him to this joyous place. Then he saw his Aunt Beth. She had passed over 15 years ago after a heart attack at the age of forty-two. Carter took her parting hard because they had been close. It was his mother’s older sister, and she was like a mother to Carter, having taken care of him while both his parents worked.
His Aunt Beth strode up to him and thanked him for all of his tears after her departure. She went up to him and hugged him. It was a warm feeling, but not a physical feeling like he had been used to with hugs. She then assured him that he will soon realize that all the tears that fell from his eyes were unnecessary. Carter knew exactly what she meant.
He swept along the heavens with his escort, looking back to see his Aunt Beth’s loving smile one more time, but aware that they’d see each other again. He thought about how awkward it would have been had he not liked his Aunt Beth. Fortunately, that was not the case. Once she stopped waving, he saw her rejoin her group, but she continued looking over her shoulder in his direction until finally being swallowed by distance.
Carter bent down to pet the Wire-Haired Terrier puppy he’d lost when he was but a child of eight years. He’ll never forget how hard he cried, especially since he was first to arrive at the scene that tormented him to this day. Sparks was less than a year when she ran in front of a pickup truck outside of their apartment in the city.
The Boston traffic did not stop coming, so by the time Carter had found out the whereabouts of his puppy, Sparks was road kill to the nth degree. Cars continued to roll over this bump in the road, which became less of a bump with each subsequent car. However, Sparks looked rejuvenated now, exactly how Carter remembered his little friend moments before she ran off.
As warm as this paradise felt to Carter, it warmed some more when he began receiving messages from below. These messages came in the form of rerouted prayers to God. Whenever Carter prayed, he had always wondered if his prayers made much of a difference, and now he understood. He could feel the difference prayers made.
He received messages from people that he did not even know. Maybe they had been friends with his parents, he thought, or maybe they came from people who had witnessed the accident. He accepted them graciously, nonetheless.
Word of the accident spread like wildfire. Then Carter received a message from the Gormans, who had been getting worried when their guests never arrived. Mr. Gorman kept his police scanner going constantly, and found out that there had been a horrendous accident.
However, he did not have proof that his dear friends had been involved. Although the totaled vehicle had matched the description of the vehicle they expected to pull into their driveway, the Gormans began praying that there would be no match. They still had no positive identification, but they were very concerned. They hoped the delay was because they were only stuck in the traffic the accident had created.
Mr. Gorman panicked as he apologized for their accident en route to his house. He knew the truth even before he knew the truth. He then transferred the blame to the IRS. Messages flew about the heavens, and Carter received them all from the epitome of switchboard operators.
Carter believed he would get along just fine. The bright white light in front of him should have burned his retinas, but that did not happen. Instead, Carter paid attention only to the warmth, love and compassion of this being of light. Then, before he could tell what the next stage of his journey would entail, Carter began watching what he thought could be his home movies, which he began to evaluate.
He assumed that’s what the movies were there for. He saw a small, white house with a porch running along the front. Aspen trees surrounded the house in circular fashion. The large front yard extended to the street. The larger back yard extended to a forest. The background to this entire picture included mountains. A sharp ridge jutted out from one of the peaks. Clouds continuously wafted past, obstructing his sight.
Carter shuddered when he saw this because he didn’t exactly know of this place, and he knew of no mountains in the Boston area. Perhaps they were in New Hampshire, but he couldn’t even remember taking a trip to the mountains. He had never even attached a ski to his foot. Even though he battled a strange familiarity, he still wondered if the wrong film had been shown to him, or if he had set foot in the wrong theater.
He saw a train storming down the tracks, getting closer and closer to him. He assumed this was just a takeoff on one of his biggest fears. They were such large, powerful vehicles that could not stop for anyone or anything. He finally watched his life pass before his eyes, and for the first time this expression made perfect sense to him. As a small child, he stood far back and watched his little friends playing around on the train tracks, but would never even think about joining them. Then when he was five years old, he had wandered away from his mother at a mall, and it took them over two hours to find him, but not without the help of mall security and police.
They finally found him sitting Indian style on the floor of a drug store sketching advanced pictures of railroad stations and trains, and some were gruesome, at the very least. He had been drawing these sorts of pictures ever since he could hold a pencil in his hand, and his parents always thought their son would be an artist, although the content was a little bizarre for their liking.
Carter always remembered stories about drawing more than any other of his early memories. He loved to draw anything that moved, but what he always was fascinated with were trains. These train flashbacks he seemed to remember vividly. He loved to draw them and he could do so in such great detail. He could remember his parents praising this achievement.
Whenever an old train story was related by himself or someone else, he would come alive and give his full focus. It wasn’t his love of drawing any more than it was his fascination with trains. His attention to detail, even as a young child, was second to none. Every sensory detail would be evoked and spewed out like a lava flow as the story unfolded. Whenever he was overcome with images of trains, then he would do whatever it took to draw what was on his mind. At the mall, the drugstore was robbed of a sketch pad and pen. That is how obsessed Carter was when it came to trains. It was almost as if it could be treated as an illness. His reactions became physiological. However, his punishment was just a slap on the wrist by police.
Carter felt that scared and helpless feeling as he watched the replay. Everyone hustled along past him at the mall, not stopping to offer assistance, and all he could do was get bumped along with the crowd. This was when he saw the drug store and decided to tuck himself into it for safe keeping.
“Oh no,” he said aloud as a Cape Cod wave slammed him into the ocean floor. He never again wanted to see the National Seashore after this teenage incident. He straightened out again after ducking into the wave, until the next wave came at him in the form of abuse at the hands of his schoolmates. Carter pitied himself, and wondered if that was all there was to his life. Would that be all that he’d be remembered for? Was this his life in a nutshell?
Carter’s memories started in chronological order, moving backwards in time. Each time h
e moved into a memory, he became completely immersed in it. He relived each memory and believed he was in the present. Then he would become immersed into yet another memory. The memories whipped by quickly, but in real time. While moving backwards in his life, he saw himself as a 13 year-old boy. He arrived at his most awkward moment of life at this stage. Although he started out being one with each memory, the older the memory the hazier it became. He began to disengage from each memory to the point where he became more of a spectator, but he was still immobilized. This awkward stage brought with it a scene with him being bullied. His least favorite age was one he would have opted out of had he been given the choice. To his misfortune, he was not given the choice.
Bobby Benson again hip-checked him into a locker, and he watched as his books scattered about the floor. He was once again embarrassed. He saw kids circled around him, pointing and laughing. He was humiliated, and his parents had to force him to go to school for a week until he got the guts to go on his own. He said that he was sick, but his parents knew that it was exams week and he didn’t appear to be sick. Carter was fairly certain that he was not fooling anybody. He was terrible at lying and even worse at acting. He was terrified and could not bring himself to go to school, having so much egg on his face following the hallway incident. He had a reputation to save, and a quick reminder to other students who had witnessed this bullying would do nothing to quell the “wimp” label.
Now he was nine years old and just rounding third base after cracking a three-run homer, which skipped over the center fielder’s glove. He was not much of a hitter, so this game winning hit brought his entire team together at home plate, awaiting his arrival. He smiled while reviewing this footage because it felt so real. He was actually reliving it and feeling the rush again as if this was the first time.
Friends and relatives alike gathered around to see the new footage. Carter seemed to think that this was like a night out at the movies for them. If they could see their relatives below, he wondered if they could watch television together. He could not find this out now because he was in the middle of his own movie.
The channel switched again and Carter was a baby. There was a flash of years, but it stopped when he was in a crib. His mother picked him up and burped him. He let out three successive burps…loud ones, and his mother chuckled. Carter next saw footage of ocean waves crashing to the beach. He saw lizards running through a desert. He saw leaves falling from trees, snowmen in front yards, and then a sweeping panorama of a mountain range, which seemed to last for miles. He then saw canyons and gorges, waterfalls and clouds. He was inundated with strange, random pictures that came at him in rapid fire.
Carter hung in there, and then zipped ahead in time and was celebrating his 16th birthday. He smiled at either the fondness of the memory or the fact that nothing went wrong in this clip. He wanted more of this occasion, but he knew that the flashes did not last long, and the next cloudy scene would begin.
He was meeting Charlie for the first time. His tryout at open gym one night brought the two together for what would turn into a lasting friendship. Before they knew it, they were increasing their sessions by lifting weights in Carter’s basement. Carter had purchased the barbells as a form of self-defense, and now that he had befriended Charlie, the two changes together lifted Carter into a higher bracket as far as his schoolmates were concerned.
Charlie had a reputation as a bad ass at school, and Carter’s life changed the moment they began their weight-lifting sessions together. Now nobody could touch Carter, unless they knew what was good for them, and in due time Charlie’s presence made not a bit of difference.
Fenway Park came next and “oh…no…not again,” he mumbled. “Oh shit!” Carter’s father put out good money to see that World Series game six. Carter nearly relived his tears on that one. He wished that he could just have his life review without any sports footage. Boston was a tough place for sports fans, but Carter knew that there were also many great times over the years. Why couldn’t they have chosen the time when…
The next clip chopped into his wishful thinking. Carter looked on as he celebrated his parent’s 23rd anniversary. The clips came and went fast and furious, and with no particular pattern. He smiled, and then he groaned. He smiled, and then he groaned again. Again, his reactions made him think he was actually sitting in on a live game, and each of his emotions replayed as if they were the originals.
The bright light permitted a steady flow of people through majestic pearly gates, but each time Carter attempted to move forward, some unexplainable force held him in place. It felt to Carter that he was doing the Moonwalk on air, as if someone had lifted him completely off the ground by his overalls in mid-stride.
Having completed his review, he knew that he wanted to follow the crowd into this accepting home, but he could not make it physically happen and he didn’t know why. He remembered how his life-review continued beyond his first memory on earth, and it continued for some time. However, the strange footage soon faded as the images turned snowy. Something definitely played, but for some reason it was not meant for his eyes.
The singing suddenly stopped, and Carter turned to the woman. Clouds continued to waft past through the silence. She advised him of his expulsion because of his youth and his incomplete work on earth. Carter debated this decision in order to get past, but he could only feel a vacuum-like suction pulling him back very slowly. He thought it quite ironic that he was getting bounced because of his age. He equated it to all the times his underage friends used to get into bars, but bouncers always turned Carter away because of his age. Heaven proved no different for Carter Spence.
The woman began getting further away from Carter, but she was standing still. She continued communicating with him, explaining the very good reason for his return to life. She instilled this mental image into Carter about his need to finish something before he returned. He wanted so badly to hear this message, but the distance between them increased as she spoke, and the form of communication he had been used to up here began breaking down as well.
As the woman began revealing details for Carter, he felt his stint above the clouds about to end. This low-pressure system continued to suck him back into the very tunnel in which he had emerged. The woman remained calm as she continued to instruct Carter, but his panic prevented him from getting the full message.
“You can’t stay,” she said.
Carter tried to be calm, knowing that nothing would change where he was heading.
The woman continued to communicate, but Carter only heard choppy messages. “You haven’t finished…go back…find yourself. You might think you know.” The ending sounded like a cell phone dying, like when you’re going through a tunnel, which seemed to be the case.
The vacuum was too much to bear now, and Carter could hardly hear a thing, but he did hear pieces of her last communication.
“Follow the signs…and you shall know. You …my…son…mountains…west….”
He fought hard, but all his weight lifting didn’t amount to a hill of Boston beans now. His high-speed descent tossed him back through the tunnel, where he slowed to a stop, then passed completely through it.
Back in-between, Carter now found himself facing the grim prospect of life. He wasn’t completely out of the woods, he thought, because he still could reunite with his body. Traffic snarled on the Mass Pike, so the flashy emergency vehicles that raced paramedics, policemen and firemen to the scene easily caught his eye.
Carter refocused on the events below. He saw a tow truck hooked up to the car, having just completing the turnaround and easing the car back onto its tires. At earshot, Carter heard the crew director shouting for “Jaws.” This particular tool was the only chance for his parent’s freedom from their now compact car. The Jaws of Life opened the car as if it was made from fresh clay, while
numerous black-lettered yellow jackets moved in on the victims.
Carter could only surmise that his parents were dead. By observing their condition, Carter wished they had passed on, because he’d rather they be pain-free in heaven than suffer. If his parents knew what heaven was like, then they’d understand his wishes.
Carter attempted to get involved, but nobody paid him any mind. Being down on the ground, he would stand in the way of the paramedics, but they passed through him. He felt invisible. He thought he’d be better off from the bird’s-eye viewpoint, and before he knew it, he returned there, moving his transparency at the speed of thought.
After extracting the lifeless remains of his parents from the remains of their car, paramedics rushed them into the waiting ambulances. The two ambulances cautiously blared their way through the congestion.
Carter detected the flapping rumbles of a faraway helicopter. The faint chopper thundered Boston within seconds, drowning out the chaos of screaming alarms, which saturated the air. Then something strange happened. As the chopper prepared to land, hovering above the shoulder of the highway ahead of the accident, Carter noticed apparitions of both his parents drift up from the back doors of the two ambulances while they were whisking them to the hospital. Together, their spirits rose through the idling helicopter and kept heading for space, bound by matrimony beyond death do them part. They noticed Carter on their way up, and furtively reached for him, but gravity elevated them far too quickly for their touch.
With their spirits swallowed up by the vast sky, Carter returned a glance to the scene to discover paramedics rushing his gurney into the chopper. Wind circulated dust and grass, and tubes covered his entire body in seconds. The helicopter door shut, and the helicopter lifted up and away.
Desert Son Trilogy: Desert Son, Wayward Soul, Spiritual Intervention (Books 1-3) Page 3
