The Ancestors

by Brandon Massey

  “That’s where I’m supposed to take her, The One, to be safe. Mother Bethel’s looks like it has the brightest spirals in the city. Why?”

  Chapter Four

  Abe scratched his chin and smiled, deciding to drop the Southern accent and appearance of being a mere simple man. It was perhaps time to allow the young man before him to see a little bit more of who he really was. One of them had to trust, if there was to ever be an accord. They both needed each other, of that he was now convinced. So, he’d answer Rashid’s question about why the lights were so bright at a place like Mother Bethel. He’d allow the young man to lead the dance, ask the questions, which would tell him everything he needed to know about the proficiency of Rashid’s gifts.

  “Because a warrior ancestor is buried in the vault of the church. I take it you’ve heard of Richard Allen?” Abe said flatly after allowing himself a moment to survey Rashid again. Too excited to address the young man’s comment about The One, Abe prayed inwardly for patience and for more clarity.

  But his reply about Mother Bethel AME Church did appear to give his guest momentary pause. Abe’s comment was acknowledged by a nod in the affirmative. A silent understanding seemed to pass between the two men. Trust was in the offing.

  “Down at the Masonic Grand Lodge, theirs is real bright too.”

  “The beacon will be bright in any place that is devoted to spiritual truths, an understanding of spiritual principles, or where many gather in the same spirit. The Masonic orders incorporate principles based on early Egypt, Kemet . . . creators of the pyramids, and then evolved to incorporate Biblical precepts of giving. Their basic mission is to help the less fortunate through philanthropy . . . in various forms or another. Lodge lights are bright.”

  “Then why do some places of worship, or even some buildings, have brighter lights than others? Isn’t hallowed ground, hallowed ground?”

  Abe smiled. “To answer the first part of your question, the light is as bright as the spirit. The light of spirit emanates from the energy of the congregation, or gathering of living souls within the material structure . . . a church, a cathedral, a mosque, temple, a house, et cetera, and their combined spirits are met by, and reinforced by, the Divine in equal measure. Light draws light, darkness draws darkness.”

  “True,” Rashid said quietly, and then nodded, accepting Abe’s explanation. “Some places I go into, I don’t feel anything. Either I feel real good, or I feel rotten. That’s why I like to stay outside with my own vibe and the Creator’s vibe.”

  “Correct,” Abe added with growing satisfaction. “And the shape, size, or color of the congregation, or the building structure, or the language used to issue up prayers doesn’t matter to the Almighty. It’s the vibrations of the people who come together. So, to address the second question you asked, hallowed ground is not necessarily hallowed ground. Where the spiritual barrier is weak, the fortress can be penetrated. Your eyes just so happen to see it in the form of light . . . there are some that call it vibes, others feel it through their skins—just like a dog’s hair will bristle when it senses something not quite jakey.”

  Rashid’s expression was one of awe, which quickly became animated. Gesturing wildly with his hands, he leaned forward and spoke in a rapid-fire tempo. “You can see it, too, can’t you? Tell the truth!”

  He didn’t wait for a response from Abe Morgan, and took the elderly man’s return smile as a yes. It was the first time in his life that another living soul had even halfway admitted that they could see the lights. Relief and excitement drove his words forward.

  “I’ve gone to temples, churches, mosques, synagogues, prayer mounds—you name it, all over the world, and I’ve seen just about every religion, and they all had bright light, the kind that not everyone can see. Even on Hopi lands out west, there’s that same light. But, I didn’t get them to it in time. The women all died. Then again, I’ve seen the shades too. So, which are you?”

  “Use your gift of discernment, boy. What do you think?”

  Slowly bringing a paring knife into his palm, Abe began cutting the tops off of the beets and carrots that rested on the drainboard near the sink. Adding those vegetables in with the others, he watched the young man watch him use the knife, and rolled the question over and over in his brain. He’d gotten so close, then poof. Back to square one. And before the last question was hurled at him, it seemed that they had both been searching for so long. The silence that now hung in the air between him and his guest was deafening.

  Abe allowed the deep melancholy only brief residence in his soul before he steadied his countenance. His seeing the lights and also seeing the shades had made his beloved Ethel finally leave him . . . especially when he’d predicted the death of his daughter at the hands of her husband, and had tried to break up the marriage. His wife hadn’t understood.

  “You’ll eat my food, and drink from my cup, but you don’t trust me. That’s a dangerous habit, young man.” Abe’s voice was just above a whisper, but his underlying message was clear.

  “If you aren’t who you say, just an old antique shop owner,” Rashid retorted as he glanced around, “I’ll still be protected.”

  “I never said who I was. Just told you my name.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Rashid murmured. “I’ll still do what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Which is?” Abe asked without looking up, slowly adding the vegetables and a pinch of red curry to his concoction, now working with his back turned to his guest.

  “You’re an old man, and don’t look that strong. Taking in strangers, in this neighborhood, could be a dangerous habit, too.”

  “And if you ain’t who I think you are, I’ll be protected until I do what I have to do. Always have been. It’s also dangerous to judge a book by its cover. I’ve survived a lot longer than you have. Think about it.”

  Abe Morgan turned around slowly and brought the pot of richly spiced food to the table and sat down. He reached in a side drawer, and added several soft rounds of spongy bread to their meal. “You gonna wash your hands, before you give me something that even the light can’t cure?”

  Rashid looked at the newsprint that had inked his hands and stained his clothing. “Eating out of the same pot is definitely Ethiopian,” Rashid remarked sullenly, but obliged his host as he made his way toward the kitchen sink. “You’re the first civilian that hasn’t been afraid of me since I started living on the streets.”

  He decided that he’d go with the ruse until it was safe to leave the lights. He hadn’t made up his mind yet about how far he would go with his explanations. If this was just an average person, then he could let the old man think he was just a delusional street vagrant. But if his host was from the dark side, then he’d deal with him in time.

  The old man behind him kept his head bowed and didn’t turn around or reply. Okay, then, that much was safe. He could share a meal with a man who also prayed over his food. Immediately Rashid bowed his head and allowed a prayer to move his lips. The smell of the food was nearly intoxicating, and he returned to his seat so fast once done praying that he almost knocked over his chair.

  Offering Rashid a spoon, Abe tore off a section of the bread, and used it like a large scoop to bring a portion of the mixture to his mouth. Without looking at Abe, Rashid began gobbling down large hunks of bread, rice, and vegetables, almost inhaling the entire pot while his host slowly consumed the one morsel he still held in his hand.

  “Let’s begin with your name, son—since we are eating from the same bowl.”

  “Rashid. Like I told you when we first got together. I didn’t lie. Don’t have cause to.”

  “No last name?”

  “Not one that I’m ready to share.”

  “You were brought up in the Midwest?”

  “I said I traveled through there,” Rashid replied with a wave of his hand, still engrossed in the aromatic dish. But he was growing wary again. No one needed to know his point of origin.

  “You were in the military, Gu
lf War?”

  “Special Forces. Do not ask me what I had to do over there. Some of the people I had to ice also had the light around them. That’s when I first started seeing it more clearly. That’s when I heard her voice.” Rashid looked up for the first time since he’d begun decimating the contents of the pot, and stopped chewing. The conversation was not supposed to be going in this direction. Either the fatigue and hunger had weakened him, or this old man had some sort of power source other than the ordinary. He’d given up too much information for no reason.

  “Tell me that part,” Abe said quietly, “the part when you heard her voice.”

  Rashid stared at him, and then looked toward the mirror in the back of the room. His gaze felt vacant, distant, and his voice took on a hollow quality even to his own ears. Why was he talking to this old man, and why did he feel like he had to? The burden of the information he’d held for so long now felt like this was the place to lay it down. But why? Rashid prayed silently before speaking, then looked at the mirror.

  “Front line, we were getting a lot of heat—catching pure liquid hell. I was praying for protection and mercy and forgiveness the whole time I was shooting. Choppers couldn’t get in to get us out. Guys were burning up where they stood. We were hemmed in on one side from machine gun fire, on the other side was nothin’ but fire dropping from the sky all around us. Pure chaos. Could smell flesh burning. I don’t eat meat. Can’t. Not after that. Can’t even stand to smell it cooking. Learned it was bad for the body and soul anyway. Can’t stand the smell of gasoline neither, too much like napalm.”

  “When did her voice come?” Abe waited and his breathing became shallow.

  “She called my name, which was Gerald, then. But she called me Rashid. By this name I have now. That’s the name I heard, and I knew she was calling me—even though it was by another name. All she said was, ‘Trust the light.’ Then this thin beam of light came from where the machine guns had been mowing my platoon down. I was mesmerized, and followed it. Bullets hit the other guys that ran with me, but never touched me. It was like this weird light covered me, and her voice kept calling my name telling me which way to go. When it was all over, they were all dead, and I was the sole survivor. I kept seeing it for days as I made it back, praying the whole time . . . until I caught up with another unit. That’s how I got back stateside. A whole freakin’ squad blown away and I get to follow the lights and a voice? Enemy search parties walked right past me like I was invisible. Didn’t even go out as a POW.” Rashid shrugged his shoulders and let his head drop forward. He shut his eyes tight, then opened them to stare at the table.

  “It wasn’t your fault. It says in the first epistle of John, chapter one, verse nine, that ‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just.’”

  “Tell that to those guys who burned alive. Did you know that guys on both sides had light swirling around them too, and were good people? But they still bought it. Were toast. Did you know that some of the enemies pointing their guns in our direction had the same thing? Could never figure that part out. That day was insane. Used to think I was dreamin’ when I was a kid, but that day I saw it, felt it. Still can’t tell anybody why my sorry ass didn’t die.”

  “Maybe destiny had something to do with it? A Master’s Plan, larger than your own.”

  Rashid leaned back in his chair and cast a disparaging glance at Abe. “Destiny, or I was just a lucky mother—”

  “If you’re going to guard the light, the first thing you need to learn is that words carry manifest energy. Change your adjectives and metaphors, immediately.”

  Both men stared at each other. Abe repeated himself. “Immediately. Do not question who I am, the question is, who are you?”

  “A poor street urchin trying to scam you out of a meal.”

  “So, you’ve eaten. But you have not scammed me.” Abe held him with his gaze. “What happened to the women?”

  “Six of them died.”

  “How?” Abe forced the tension from of his temples by kneading his knuckles into the offending flesh. “What were they to you?”

  “Lovers and fiancées are who they were. They died accidentally.” Rashid swallowed hard and looked back at the mirror again. “Found a would-be wife in every country. Wanted to settle down and have a family. First one, Jain-Mei, got a fever. Was gone two days after we were together, even though I’d known her for six months. Understand? After I touched her. As long as I hadn’t slept with them . . . do you hear what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, unfortunately I do.” Abe stood, and cleared the food away from the table and turned on the kettle of water again. His mind whirred although his pace remained slow and fluid. As he prepared another tea ball, he allowed the loose leaves to filter through his fingers. The tragedies became a vision of each woman-child who’d died on his watch while Rashid spoke to his back.

  “Second one, I met in Ghana. Wonderful people, family . . . woman. Choked to death at our engagement celebration. With the wedding imminent, we’d just spent the previous night together. The third one, a brilliant Native American woman, engineer, brought me home to meet her parents. We were working on the pipeline together. I was just a blue-collar hack. Her grandfather flipped out, said I brought evil to their door. At the time, I just thought that the old dude was prejudiced and superstitious. The next day she’d slit her own wrists. They found her in a clearing in the woods where we used to meditate together . . . where we’d been together. Do I need to go on?”

  “No,” Abe murmured, bringing over a steaming pot of tea and two clean cups for them to use. It was difficult to control the urge to hug the young man before him. Tears glistened in Rashid’s eyes, and he watched how quickly he forced them to recede and disappear. So many wounds . . .

  “Funny thing is, see,” Rashid said with a hollow chuckle, “the last one, my Southern church girl, I didn’t even have to sleep with for her to die young. Had learned my lesson, kept my hands to myself, and was gonna wait till we tied the knot. Thought that would break the curse, or whatever it was that was following me. But, her old, senile grandma kept talking about haints coming out from under the bed . . . dark shadows that slipped up under the covers and held the girl down and raped her. So, her momma took her to see a doctor, and when they put her in the stirrups, and did a pelvic exam, that girl was riddled with tumors. Biopsy told everybody there was nothing they could do. She died ninety days later. Lost two in Europe. Irish girl drowned, my West Indian princess from London went insane and ran out into the street and got herself hit by a car.” Rashid dropped his head back and chuckled. “I don’t have much luck with women. So, what’s your point?”

  The pain within Rashid’s laughter resonated through Abe’s bones. It was tinged with the higher-pitched, dissonant chord of hysteria. Waiting until the outburst ebbed, Abe chose his words as though selecting diamonds. He inhaled slowly through his nose, and let the air seep out through his barely parted lips before he spoke.

  “They were tragic casualties of an unholy war. That which has hunted you, has sought to break you through them. Anyone that you love dearly is always at risk, for that loss is what drives us away from the light in such pain that the void must be filled . . . often darkness fills that vacant space. But to love is a requirement of the light. And so, thus is our mortal Achilles’ heel. Do you understand ?”

  Rashid wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand and stood. “I understand what it’s like to be a monk, and to have every basic pleasure and any crumb of joy stripped from you. That’s why I don’t do friends, I don’t do close, I don’t do chitchat about who I am. That’s given on a need-to-know basis.”

  It was definitely time to go. The old man had tapped an artery of pain, and he needed personal space to cauterize the reopened wound. Rashid cast his gaze toward the door, but remembered the gathering shadows outside, just beyond the light.

  Abe shook his head, sending an unspoken message to Rashid that to exit the sanctuary now would not be a wise idea. When he watched the
muscles in Rashid’s shoulders finally relax, he pressed on.

  “Yes, in many cultures sentinels are cloistered because that which they are to love with their whole hearts, or to derive a sense of fulfillment from, cannot be killed, altered, or destroyed. At their level, they are seriously challenged by the dark, and must not have an emotional or material possession that would open them to compromise.”

  “Sentinel?” Rashid raked his locks with his fingers. Sure, he’d thought of himself as that before, even had said the word in his own mind. But to hear someone else call him that—rather than just a soldier—seemed too freaky. Eerie enough to raise the hair on the back of his neck.

  “Yes, whether you realize it or not, you’ve been honed and obviously groomed to serve as a sentinel.” His young charge stood speechless, but seemed to comprehend. Shaking off the dangerous emotion of attachment, Abe Morgan moved to stand before his guest. “Are you ready to begin to learn how to fight them, and to protect yourself and the one you guard?”

  “Yeah . . . I guess.” Rashid cast a nervous glance around the shop and appraised his newfound mentor. He’d been on his own for so long that this new partnership that seemed to be forming made him nervous. “But, how do I know you’re the one to teach me, and how do you know when it’s time, anyway? What’s all of this about? Been tryin’ to figure that out for years! When’s it gonna end? And why am I the one that’s supposed to guard this voice . . . who in the hell is she—am I, for that matter? I’m just some has-been vet. Maybe I heard what I wanted to hear, maybe none of it was real and the doctors were right—could be that I’m just nuts, and stalking some chick because I haven’t been laid in years, towing survivor guilt along with the baggage of old childhood displacement trauma.”

  “When the student is ready, the instructor appears.”

  “Then why didn’t my teacher appear when I was in the Catholic Charities orphanage, or in foster care?”