Excerpt "Beacon"

I had dreamt that I was but dreaming and awakened with a start. My heart thundering in my chest, I gasped for air, staring into the darkness. Faint faces rippled like photographic negatives in the space above, looking down at me, and I could not move. Their eyes blinked and the specters dissolved, quenching air seaping into my lungs as they opened.

Erinn-nn-nn… I thought I heard someone call me and rose from the bed. The hum of electric water pumps droned with chant-like monotony, and I followed the sound down the stairs to the screened room.

Drip… splat… Water trickled all around, dropping through the stand pipes in the aquariums and down into the wet-dry filter systems beneath them.

Erinn Cailín… A voice in my mind called to me and I understood what I was looking for was not to be found in the space surrounding me. It was not in the world “outside”. I was going to have to go within to find the one who called me, and I let my body down to the cool concrete floor and allowed the sleep that still clouded my mind to take me deeper.

“You asked me to go,” he breathed and wrapped me in his embrace. “You wanted time to just be safe and happy and loved and, because you were happy then, I allowed you that semblance of separation. But you are no longer happy, my love, and I have returned to you because you are mine and I am yours. We are a part of one another and so we can never be apart from one another.”

“Who are you?” I whispered, rafted away on the waves of his ardor and swallowed in the power of his presence.

“I am he who has ever been with you, your Shepherd and guide. I am your husband and you’re your brother, the one who sent you into time and the one who rescues you from it. I am the voice that has directed you, calling you always closer to me. I am your truth and your destiny. I am yours and you are mine.”

“Michael,” I whispered the name and remembered him whose love had always been, whose comfort had always attended me, who loved me across lives and worlds. He squeezed me to his chest and I heard his heart beating with my own and I knew I had to find a way to bring our separate universes together. “I Will, my love. I Will with you, and if I must build myself the world we will be in together, I will accomplish it,” I vowed, and he kissed me on the brow, his arms unraveling as his presence dissipated. And then I dreamt I was awake and I rose from the floor and went back upstairs to my office and sat before the computer – a stranger in my own story – waiting until the words began to flow, and I typed them like a woman possessed of a daemon spirit: The blacker the water, the more obliging the fear…

“Are you awake?” I heard a voice ask and I turned to see his shining chestnut eyes regarding me with concern.

Rob…

“Of course I’m awake,” I answered and wondered if it was really true.

Dreams seem real while they last…

He eased over next to me and placed his hands on my shoulders.

“You always say that,” he chuckled, “even when you’re sleep walking. I don’t know why I still bother to ask you.” He laughed and kissed the top of my head. “Writing at 3 AM?” he sighed. Your muse is more of a task master than I am. He doesn’t allow you much sleep.” I scoffed at the observation.

Who’s to say which worlds are real, who is sleeping, and who is awake?