Greshmere

by Scott Wittenburg

  “Thanks for the offer, Samden, but I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. I have some business in Columbus that I need to take care of and it can’t wait.”

  “May I ask you something, Greshmere?”

  “Sure.”

  “You aren’t by any chance trying to rediscover yourself are you?”

  The question threw him off guard. How could he tell?

  Greshmere replied, “Uh, yes. I am as a matter of fact. Why do you ask?”

  “Just a hunch. It doesn’t take a genius to see that you are on a mission of some kind, and it’s a solo mission that’s very important to you. Take into account the rather lost demeanor that you emanate and there you have it: a soul in search of himself. I commend you, Greshmere. For you are among the very few who choose that fork in the road.”

  “That’s what I’ve been told. I’m not sure how commendable it is, though. So far, it hasn’t gotten me anywhere that makes any sense. My better judgment tells me I should give it up, but there’s this inner voice that won’t let me. It’s frustrating.”

  “May I ask what you hope to find at the end of your journey?”

  “I wish I knew the answer to that, but I don’t. All I have are a few snippets of fleeting images to guide me—nothing even remotely concrete. I know that there is a woman involved. A woman who had been my wife. I know that once I find her, I will have accomplished something. The only problem is, I’m not sure what that something is. It really doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

  “A rational person who knows no better would probably scoff at it, no doubt. But I once knew somebody who had in fact succeeded in rediscovering himself and hearing his story totally changed the way I perceived rediscovery. First of all, it is clearly a practice that isn’t for everybody. It seems to be only for a chosen few from what I’ve seen. And whoever pursues it does so because of a driving inner force that nobody seems to fully understand.

  “But having heard this soul’s story, I formed a theory about something that those in your position appear to have in common. I’ll call it unfinished business, for lack of a better term. Perhaps rediscovery involves a sort of restitution for some injustice in your former life. Whatever it is, it must be something so strong, so profound that God deems it worthy of pursuit.”

  “That’s an interesting theory. So what did this soul discover about his former life?”

  The bird squawked. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. Not only might it affect your mission in some way, I am sworn to secrecy. One thing I’ve learned about heaven is that you must tread lightly with regard to matters of this sort. Sorry.”

  “No problem, I understand. I guess I’m just going to have to find out for myself what this is all about.”

  Samden nodded knowingly.

  For the next few hours, Greshmere listened intently to stories of the birds’ excursions. He was amazed at how much geographical area they had covered in the last couple of centuries and the rich experiences that resulted. He noted that all of the birds seemed upbeat and content with their heavenly existences.

  When he realized that it was getting late and time to move on, Greshmere felt more isolated than ever. Part of him wanted to stay—to forsake his quest for rediscovery and join the Travelers to circle the globe.

  But he knew it was not to be.

  He took Samden aside and said, “I really should get moving. It’s been wonderful getting to know all of you and I appreciate your hospitality.”

  “And we have enjoyed your company as well, Greshmere. I wish you luck with your mission and success in your endeavors.”

  “Thank-you.”

  He stared out at the group of birds and flapped his wings a couple of times to loosen them up. “I have to leave you all now. Thanks for sharing your stories—it’s been wonderful. Have a good trip—all of you!”

  “You, too!” was the collective reply.

  Greshmere took flight.

  Chapter 21

  -Now-

  His first order of business when he arrived in the south end of Columbus was to locate I-71. Although his eyesight was sharp as a tack, he was too high up to clearly read the highway signs. He lowered his altitude for a closer look and realized that the exit for I-71 was directly ahead of him. He followed the interstate north, remaining low enough to read the signs.

  He recalled that he was looking for the Weber Road exit. When he found it, he flew a short while until he reached Indianola Avenue, crossed it and began looking for Megan Kendall’s street. He located it a few moments later and soon arrived at the house.

  There were no cars in the driveway, so he flew over to the detached two-car garage and peered through a window. Seeing that there were no cars inside, he flew over to a window on the north end of the house and perched himself on the sill. Inside, he saw what appeared to be the living room of the two-story house.

  As he flew around to the rear of the residence, Greshmere realized that even though he hadn’t expected to recognize anything about this place, he was still disappointed. He had hoped that he would notice something that seemed familiar or feel some sort of connection with the house, the neighborhood—something—that might give him a clue that he was on the right track. But so far, the entire city of Columbus was like some foreign land.

  If he had indeed lived here in his former life, it sure didn’t feel like it. Nothing at all was jibing.

  He began fearing that nothing would spark his memory as he cased out the backyard and the rear of the house. Was it even possible? He recalled Shnarker insisting that he had no memory—only the knowledge he had acquired in his former life. Anything he had ever personally known and experienced had in essence been eradicated from his memory.

  Megan. She had to be the key. His wife was his only hope.

  He needed to get inside somehow. He circled the entire house, looking for any possible way to access the place. But the house was secure. All of the windows were shut tight and he had found no holes or cracks that he might be able to squeeze through.

  Greshmere flew up to the eave of the roof and began checking along the gutters and downspouts, hoping to find a structural flaw that might allow him access. Nothing. He glanced up at the chimney and realized that this would be his best shot. If the house had no working fireplace however, the chimney would dead-end into a furnace duct. That would get him nowhere.

  He winged his way to the chimney, slipped in under the chimney cap, cocked his head and peered down, recalling the last time he had done this very same thing. It had been within his first hour since awakening in Babylon, New York. As had been the case then, the chimney was pitch dark with nothing to indicate whether it terminated into a fireplace or a furnace. He had no choice but to find out.

  Bracing himself for another freefall into darkness, Greshmere suddenly changed his mind and decided to approach his descent differently. Instead of simply plunging into an abyss with nothing but his wings flapping furiously to keep him from sinking like a rock, he cautiously backed down into the opening while grasping the coarse textured surface of the bricks with his toes. Moving slowly along, taking one precarious step at a time, alternating between back-steps and side-steps, he discovered that he could successfully navigate the chimney in this fashion. In another few minutes, he reached the bottom. With a sigh of relief, he saw a shaft of light and knew that he had landed at a fireplace.

  The damper was open and he could feel warmth coming out from the other side. He looked down and saw that the fireplace had unlit gas logs. He hopped through the damper, over the logs and onto the hearth.

  He was in what looked to be a den. He flew over and landed on the back of the sofa to case the place out. The room was fairly large and comfortable with a strong lived-in feel to it.

  Did he feel at home here?

  Nope, not at all.

  He gazed around the room, hoping to spot some photos of the house’s occupant. There was nothing but a couple of paintings on the walls. The mantle was bare, which seemed odd. He flew over and not
iced a couple of faint impressions in the thin layer of dust that may have been made by photo frames. Perhaps Megan was going to do some dusting but got interrupted.

  So where were the frames, then?

  He flew from the den and found himself in a hallway that ran between the living room and the kitchen. He chose the living room first and looked around but saw little more than furniture and a few knick-knacks adorning the place.

  The kitchen was large, recently rebuilt and spotless with nothing in it to reveal any clues to his former life. He examined the laundry room and dining room before heading upstairs to the second floor. He checked out both of the spare bedrooms, found nothing of consequence and then went into the master bedroom.

  The moment he entered, Greshmere heard a strange ringing in his ears that persisted. At first he thought the sound was coming from an appliance of some kind until he realized that it was originating from deep inside his head. He also felt himself growing more anxious the longer he remained there.

  There were several framed photos around the room—all portraits of who he assumed to be Megan Kendall and her husband Daniel. The photos were taken outdoors in various locations. What seemed so odd was that there were no photos of Megan or Daniel by themselves. They were all of the two of them either sitting or standing close together, always holding hands, always smiling, clearly in love with each other.

  He flew over to the nearest photo on the nightstand and stared at it. Megan Kendall was incredibly beautiful with dark brown hair, large chestnut eyes and full, pouty lips. Her husband was about as unattractive as Megan was beautiful. Big nose, squinty-eyes, disheveled hair, and thick black-rimmed eyeglasses.

  Yet in a strange way, the couple looked like they belonged to each other.

  Greshmere stared directly into Megan’s eyes in the photo, hoping to glean something of significance or remembrance. Nothing at all registered. He did the same with Daniel, but to no avail. Here were two people, in love and happy, that seemed like total strangers.

  This lack of revelation left Greshmere so put-off that for a moment he wanted to just give up and fly away. Away from this house and away from this city.

  And he almost did just that, but something inside told him not to—that his journey wasn’t over yet.

  He bounded across the bed to take a closer look at a photo on the other nightstand. This one showed Megan’s head resting on Daniel’s shoulder. They were sitting on a railroad tie with the muted greens and browns of trees slightly blurred out in the background. Greshmere looked closer when he saw something that caught his eye. It was a silver structure with a pair of arches on either side, its bright metal finish popping out from the mottled earth tones of the forest.

  The General Grant Bridge.

  This photo had been taken at the Point.

  The place that he had seen so often in his dreams; and only yesterday in reality.

  There was something to all of this. There had to be.

  He flew over to the vanity to examine another photo. The ringing in his head increased twofold and he felt like his head might split wide open the moment he landed. It was as if something on the vanity was causing the ringing sound. He looked around and noticed a jewelry box with its lid propped open. He peered inside and saw a thin gold chain attached to a pendant. The pendant was facing down but looked oddly familiar. He took the pendant in his beak and flipped it over to reveal its face—

  The action made him flinch.

  He stared intently at the coin pendant that was now clearly visible. It was the 14K gold Mizpah he had given Megan Sands their sophomore year of high school. He clearly recalled where he had bought it and even how much he had paid for it. He had worn the other half of the two-hearted coin, a symbol of their emotional bond. The inscription read: “The Lord watch between me and thee while we are absent one from another.”

  Although he had never been a very religious person, the pendants were popular at the time and he had figured that Megan might like the concept. She had in fact loved the necklace so much that he could never recall her ever taking it off in all the time they had been together.

  So why wasn’t she wearing it now?

  He had no idea. But what he did know without any doubt was that he had in fact been Daniel Kendall in his former life and he was now inside his former home. As he glanced around the room, everything suddenly looked familiar. In fact, it looked just as it had the last time he’d been in it. The only thing that had changed was the addition of the two photos on the nightstands that had once occupied the mantle in the den.

  The ringing in his head had gone away. His mind was now filled with so many thoughts and sensations that he felt dizzy. He was in a state of shock, wonderment and anxiety all at the same time. He needed to get out of this room and clear his head at once.

  He sped back downstairs to the den and touched down on the sofa. The memories poured into his head as if a dam had just broken. He recalled how he and Megan used to sit here and stare at the fireplace in the winter, often for the entire evening until it was time to go to bed. On those cold winter nights, they rarely watched the flat screen television. It was during those nights that it fully sank in how much he loved this girl and how happy she had made him. How lucky he was to have won her heart in the first place, and how different yet alike they were in so many ways. He tried to imagine life without her but couldn’t. For without Megan in his life, he would not be living.

  He wondered where she was now. He looked over at the DVD player and saw that it was 4:47 p.m. She was most likely at work since it was Monday. She had never missed a single day of work in all the time she had been at Manco Corp, he recalled. The girl had a work ethic that never quit.

  He wanted nothing more than to see her right this moment. To fly downtown and surprise her. “Look what the cat dragged in!” he could almost hear her say. That had been one of her favorite expressions.

  The irony hit him full force.

  For Daniel Kendall was quite dead. His soul now lived in this tiny body of a bird. He was in heaven and his wife was on earth. The same place, yet not the same place.

  This reality numbed him. He felt a pang of sorrow for himself and for his human wife. It was at that moment he asked himself the very same question he had asked himself so many times before: why had he felt so compelled to rediscover himself? Shnarker had indeed been right. He would have been better off simply enjoying the calm and serenity of heaven than doing this.

  But it was too late now. He recalled how he had felt sorry for Kloob, wondering what good it would have done him to at last find the woman in his dreams since she was human and he was nothing more than a spirit in the body of a bird.

  And now he found himself in the same predicament. He had rediscovered himself, found his former wife, but could do nothing about it. She was human; he was not. She was alive; he was dead—at least in the traditional sense of the word.

  In a nutshell, Megan had moved on with her human life and his own essence had moved on to another dimension.

  All of this suddenly made Greshmere think of something he had not yet considered.

  How exactly had he died?

  He thought back and recalled the obit saying that he had passed suddenly. This implied that there had been some kind of unforeseen situation or accident, yet he couldn’t recall his final moments before he had passed on.

  He strained to recall his last conscious moments while living as Daniel Kendall. It seemed impossible now for some reason. That part of his life was a blur that wouldn’t crystallize. So he tried instead to think back to the last time he had seen Megan.

  As he struggled to collect his thoughts, the memories that he could recall came in tiny fragments without any particular rhyme or reason. He recalled his job at Barrington Industries and what his typical workday was like, yet he couldn’t specifically remember the last day he’d worked. It was a big void on the radar screen. He then tried to recall what route he took to get to Barrington and that was simple enough. He had drive
n—

  The Porsche!

  He had owned a classic ’57 Porsche that had been his pride and joy!

  So where was it now? He had checked the garage but it was empty.

  For a split second, he recalled the last time he had driven it. But the thought was gone as quickly as it materialized.

  Had Megan been with him, or had he been driving alone? Probably alone, he decided, since they had usually taken her Mini Cooper to run errands and whatnot.

  So he had quite possibly been on his way home from work the last time he had driven the Porsche. But why wouldn’t it be out in the garage now if that were the case?

  Think back, man!

  He recalled the obit stating that he had died on December 9 of last year—that had been a Friday. That would mean that he had gone to work that day. He had always been allowed to leave a little early on Fridays and that was his day to cook dinner—

  A snippet of blowing snow flurries hitting the windshield flashed through his mind. It had been snowing that day, he recalled. He had been excited to see the snow because the holidays were coming up and nothing could put him in the Christmas spirit more than a good winter storm. He had been debating what to cook for dinner that evening. He wanted to cook something special for a change, something Megan really liked. He had decided on steaks. He would stop off at Kroger’s and pick up a couple of T-bones on the way. Toss a nice garden salad and throw a couple of Idaho bakers into the oven.

  Megan had been a bit down at the time. And for good reason. They had been trying to get pregnant for years but hadn’t had any luck. He knew how much she wanted a child and she had been taking it hard lately. He too was frustrated and couldn’t understand why it wasn’t happening.

  So he had decided to fix a nice dinner and get a bottle of Megan’s favorite wine. Hopefully, it would cheer her up.

  So he had been driving home, thinking about dinner and what they should do next about having children. Should they adopt? Then a guy in a pickup truck had suddenly pulled up beside him. He’d noticed the truck in his rear view mirror for the last few miles but hadn’t given it any thought.