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Chapter Three

  John had felt alone all his life. As a child others came before him. His father always told him to be big about it and try and understand that others needed help more than he did. So, he had stayed silent and endured the enforced solitude all his life. The preacher's kid, standing off to the side as others went by living life and succeeding.

  Then he had gone to college. He was not like the other kids. They had normal lives with normal relationships. He did not fit in. He was alone there too. It was probably why he did so well. No distractions. He had always told himself that he was focused and couldn't be bothered with relationships through college. The truth was, he didn't have but a few opportunities to meet other people and he had no idea how to relate to them in a normal fashion. All his life he had been told to take a back seat and watch others to make sure they were all right. That did not help in preparing him to relate to others on equal terms in any way. Even his college roommate avoided him because the relationship was awkward at best.

  When Kathy had come along, he finally felt like his being alone was over. She answered all his questions of life and his ability to relate to her was as if he had known her all his life, like they were part of the same body that finally came together. It had been like a dream coming true, meeting and marrying Kathy. Then she was taken from him, too. Now his father was dead from giving himself away to unappreciative congregants and his wife was dead from keeping the human plane safe from a monster. Both gone and he was alone again. Both taken away to do service for others. Both leaving him alone to serve some higher purpose.

  He was tired of higher purposes. To hell with higher purposes. Or to The Place of Chains with higher purposes. Whatever. He wanted to scream at the world. He wanted to inflict pain like he was enduring. He wanted others to hurt like he was hurting.

  For almost one solid week, after Kathy's death, he had yelled at the woods. The woods were where the Mist resided. It was inside the Mist he met Marcie and Emil, two entities who had been killed too early in life and chosen to live out their eternities in the Mist, a plane of existence that transected many other planes of existence giving them extensive coverage and maneuverability. So he had yelled at the Mist and at the ultimate Creator of it all, the Creator of Life. He wanted them to know how he felt. He wanted them to hear him vent his anger and frustrations. He wanted them to know how much he hurt.

  No one could end his pain. Death had brought it and only death could take it away. He had been attached to his father and then to his wife and now both were gone. Dead. Forever. It made him mad to think about it. It made him furious to think about a Creator of Life who could do all things. He could slam a monster of incredible strength against a wall like he was slapping a doll. But he still let Kathy die on him. His precious rules. To hell with rules.

  Because Kathy had chosen to accept, actually beg for, Gol's seed inside her, a decision made under extreme influence from the spiritual charisma of Gol exercised upon her against her natural will, the seed was a viable existence in the human plane. It was the rules. To abort the seed was murder under the Creator of Life's rules. Impregnating her against her natural will was not against the rules, but killing the seed created by that rape was. So Kathy had been forced to make the more noble decision of saving the world with her death. A decision that forever altered John's thoughts toward the battle of good and evil. He saw it more as evil and eviler. It was easier to classify the world that way. Everyone was the bad guys. Some were just worse than others.

  His dad had died a similar death, choosing to give his life for the people he ministered to. He wasted away to nothing as cancer ate away at his body. But the cancer was only eating the flesh. He had already been consumed by the membership of countless churches invading his life at all hours and demanding he minister to their needs instead of taking care of himself or his family. Noble to a fault. Saving the world one person at a time. Still dead. Still making a choice for the good of the world that ended with his own death.

  Both gone. John alone. Again.

  John stepped off the deck of his camper. He balanced his cup of coffee with one hand while using his other to balance himself on the two steps to the ground. He heard the few birds calling in the trees but paid them no mind. Even the wildlife of his surroundings, something that usually made him happy to see, was of no consolation now. What made the beauty worthwhile before was the hope of a life. A life of togetherness. Not alone. Hope was gone now. It had left with Kathy.

  He strolled the campground across the back portion. Any campers still in the place were located toward the front, per his instructions to Enrico. He did have a soft place in his heart for Enrico and Juan. They were running the place without him and giving him the space to vent his rage at the rest of the world without any invasion from the outside world right now. Juan had even done the grocery shopping for him last week so he did not have to go to town and face all those townsfolk with their offerings of condolences on his loss.

  Hell, they had known Kathy longer than he did. He should have been offering his condolences to them. But they had never taken to her like she was one of their own. She was the girl who had been kidnapped. Different. Strange. Somehow tainted by her forced abduction. Not her fault, but it still happened. Too bad. Now she was gone and they offered their sorrow to John. Not her. To her husband.

  He could imagine their thoughts. He must have loved her. He made her happy. She must have loved him. She made him happy. Together they always seemed happy. Complete. Finally. The strange distant girl and the hapless, uprooted young man. Together.

  Tears filled John's eyes as he walked. He wanted to yell some more. To vent his rage. He was starting to think he was all yelled out. The yelling did not excite anything in him any more. It was just so much noise. It didn't help with the pain either. Just made him more aware of it.

  Sadness was his thing now. Tears and pain and sadness and pain and crying and pain. Pain. Hurt like he had never known was possible. Not physical but so deep that it hurt worse than any physical pain he had ever endured. It burned its way inside his heart and stabbed him in one long, quivering dagger of sensation. Pain. The kind of pain that no one could see. Everyone knew it was there. Some had dealt with it. Everyone knew it existed but no one talked about it. No one knew what to say about it. No words could lessen it. No advice could shorten its duration or make it go away. It was different for every person.

  He did not wipe at the tears streaming down his face. He just walked and cried. He let the emotion of his pain overcome him until his breathing came in ragged gasps. It was too much. He wanted to avoid the pain. He wanted it to stop. But if it stopped Kathy would be gone. He feared that more than death itself. When the pain grew to be too much for him to hold inside he let it out.

  “Kathy!” He screamed into the woods around him.

  He didn't care that the few campers up front might be able to hear him. Pain motivated his actions. Whatever made the pain stop. He knew how to stop the pain. Stopping pain was as easy as not caring any more. He wanted to care. He wanted to care more. He wanted to care so much that Kathy had to come back to him. Somehow he wanted to do that Superman thing like in the movie and raise her up by flying so fast in an opposite direction of the world's turning that he reversed time until he could rescue her from the fate that befell her. He forced his will to exude from his body with every breath of forced air he yelled into existence.

  “Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy!”

  He repeated her name over and over. With every utterance he forced himself more and more into the words that escaped from his mouth. He exhausted his energies by screaming louder and louder with every try, to exert his will upon the world. He would accept no defeat just like he had refused to lay down against the far superior strength of the giant, Gol.

  “Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy!”

  He repeated his efforts driving himself harder and harder toward whatever wall he fe
lt he was pushing against. He had to break through. She was on the other side. He had to be with her and make this pain stop. If death was the only way then he would force the world to bend to his will or die trying. Accepting the pain was not an option. Forgetting the woman was never part of the question. John would make this work, too.

  “Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy!”

  His voice was growing hoarse. He was pushing himself to the physical limits of his body, especially his throat, which was already hoarse from previous shouting blasts. But quitting was no option. He would still yell even when his voice quit. If his body died in the process, he would continue shouting her name. Nothing could stop him. He refused to take a back seat to anyone or anything, even death.

  “Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... Kathy! ... K-a-t-h-y!” He choked out.

  “Ka-a-a-t-t-t-h-h-h-y-y-y!” He croaked one last chortle of breath and sound from his strained vocal chords. Only air came forth after that. Raspy, tired air.

  Then he did something he had told himself he would never do again. He called out in his mind for his lost love. He had to make someone hear him. If not the world he lived in then … the Mist. He was desperate. He was tired. Tired of being alone.

  “Kathy!” He cried in his mind. “Kathy!”

  He felt the Mist swirl around him at once. A cooling wetness with a metallic tinge of smell and taste he was familiar with from better times. The light made its way through the swirling presence of the Mist but no sight could pass through. Anyone entering the Mist now was at the mercy of the entities of the Mist. John was completely engulfed and enshrouded in its protective embrace as the Mist coddled one of its own.

  He heard the voices immediately. He had let them in. He didn't want to. He wanted to maintain his anger. But he couldn't help himself. He was alone. He did not want to be alone. He hated being alone. Alone was like an amplifier to his pain.

  They all came. Marcie. Emil. Kathy and Him. The Creator of Life.

  “Please.” He heard Kathy say.

  It was not a teary eyed crying. It was a statement of desire. There were no tears in the plane of the Mist. But sadness existed there. And John heard the sadness in her voice. Her sweet voice. It still had its musical tone and its mirthful call to it. But there was a definite sadness to it also. She was concerned about something. He presumed it was him. He felt guilty because he knew his self destructive ways of late were upsetting to her. The one time he had tried to talk with her, she had made that plain enough. But he could not help himself. He could not do one more thing for someone else, even if that someone was Kathy. He owed this rant to himself. It had been building for a long time, all his life. He was not going to be denied this time. Not even for the love of his life. Hate was the language he chose lately.

  “John?” It was Marcie. She appeared before him in her little girl body. Beaten and still wearing the ripped clothing from her attack over a hundred and thirty years before. Her stringy hair hung across her puffy, battered face obscuring some of the damage her attacker had done to her.

  “Marcie,” He thought her name in his head. A friendly face. A friend. She had once told him she would never do anything to hurt him. He remembered that now.

  “Never,” she repeated in his head, knowing his thoughts.

  “Marcie.” He let his legs give out and sunk down on his knees. He kept his eyes down to avoid the image of her beaten little girl personification. “Help me.” He forced himself to think the words.

  “Whatever you want, John. If I can do it.” She qualified her words. “You know I want to help.”

  “Make the pain stop.” He broke down with racking sobs shaking his entire body.

  For all the strength he had shown for weeks now, he could contain it no longer. He let it flow. He opened up the dam and released the waters. Every bit of pent up anger and pain and frustration and pain and hopelessness and pain and sorrow and pain and sense of loss and pain, he let go. He wailed into the lap of the little girl ghost as she cradled his head, kneeling there on the ground in the midst of the Mist. He was on his knees leaning forward to her. She accepted him in an embrace of comfort and love that she invited him to accept. For all his anger and pain, he wanted the solace and comfort more. He needed someone who could understand his pain to come along side him and offer him that comfort of acknowledgment. His wails of release went up into the Mist but never left it. They absorbed the energy of his cries and took solace in the fact that he was now sharing his pain with them. He was one of theirs again.

  Paul Paxwood awoke in the hospital with a powerful thirst. He was to discover that the thirst never went away again. He kept the nurses hopping with filling his pitcher of water with ice several times an hour. It got to the point where they just brought him another pitcher of fresh ice and water each time they came in to check on him. It saved time and hassle for them. It was a little inconvenient to keep the second pitcher at their station all the time, ready to fill for the next visit to his room, but it was easier than being sent from the room to do it before Paul would allow them to complete whatever check they were making.

  His wounds healed quickly. No major damage had been done to any organs or muscles. He had been very lucky, the doctors told him. He knew there had been some help involved they knew nothing about. He had lost a lot of blood but the wounds were not too deep. The attacker must have been weaker than he looked or Paul was luckier than any man should be.

  Rita stayed by his side night and day for the first two days. By the third day, she was looking haggard and he was feeling so much better that he actually asked her to go home and get some rest. She admitted she could use a shower and after a long talk and a promise from the nurses to call her if anything changed, Rita had gone home to shower, catch a quick nap and then return with his favorite, fried chicken from their favorite restaurant.

  By day five, Paul was making such good progress the doctors started talking about sending him home soon. Rita was going home at night and returning each morning at breakfast to see to her man's needs again for the day light hours. Paul found himself stronger and stronger with each passing day. He loved Rita and was sure that everything he was doing was for her. But he could not deny how much he enjoyed the new strength he felt flowing through his body with every passing hour.

  Sand definitely had a thirst to it. Every day it seemed his desire for water grew exponentially. He was now sipping at his water constantly. It never was far from his hand. When no one was looking, he guzzled it down until the pitcher was empty. But he felt stronger with every glass he drank, every minute he breathed, every second that passed until he could walk out of this hospital.

  The doctors were amazed at his progress. He had been brought in near death. Less than a full week later, he was ready to go home. That was an amazing turn around. A miracle, the doctors called it. Rita just told everyone her man was stronger than he looked.

  John spent two days inside the Mist being comforted by Marcie, the one hundred and thirty year old little girl ghost who had first come to him when he was in dire need to find Kathy almost a year before. At first the emotional pain that consumed him made him feel like his heart was going to explode inside his chest. Everything from the last year had built up and claimed him as a man in love. Now, with that love ended at the hands of a giant, he had fallen into a dangerous course of wandering through uncharted regions of his mind. He was not at all pleased with what he discovered. John was convinced he could not be the man he was when Kathy was alive. And he desperately wanted to be that man.

  Marcie comforted him the entire time. She never left him for even a minute. She held him when he wanted to be held and stood or sat beside him when he just wanted her to be near. For hours on end, they said nothing. When words were spoken, they were monosyllabic and only communicated more pain on his part and more empathy on her's. At times John cried out and screamed his pain like he was hurtling balls of his fury far into the distance. At other times it was
soft moments of gentle sobbing as he lamented the loss of his great love.

  Half way through the first day, he asked Marcie why Kathy did not come to his aid, since she was of the Mist now. Marcie had replied softly and sincerely that Kathy wanted to come but the Creator of Life did not want him to think his relationship was the same now, only that Kathy was inside the Mist. She had explained that as a human he needed the relationship of a human woman to make him whole, just as the woman needed the relationship of a man to complete her. It was part of the Creator of Life's plan for the human plane that it would be such. As man and wife, a couple became one completed individual capable of understanding to the fullest extent possible, all that the Creator of Life had designed them to be.

  But inside the Mist it was not so. The awareness of the universe and the Creator of Life was so intense inside the Mist that an individual was completed by their relationship with the Creator of Life. That wholeness allowed them to not have to marry. They could enjoy the pleasures of the universe in relation to the plan the Creator of Life intended for all living entities. In other words, she had explained. The Creator of Life did not want John thinking he was still married to Kathy, only now that relationship had her inside the Mist and him still in the human plane. It was not so.

  For a long time that explanation had caused John some little pain. To believe his Kathy was gone for good was too much for him to contemplate. He had bolstered his false bravado over the past few weeks by reminding himself that she was close by at all times. Now, Marcie had torn away that charade of curtain he had been living inside. It had caused another round of racking sobbing and then finally a screaming session aimed at the Creator of Life for allowing this pain into his life.

  Through it all, Marcie stayed quiet and comforting by his side. She reached out to him when he needed her to and let him have his moments of alone time when he seemed to be thinking things through. She never spoke unless he addressed her first and never offered any advice. She just listened and explained what she knew. He absorbed her comments and her presence like a thirsty sponge. She was not a replacement lover, though she had been his lover that one time. Instead, she held a far more exalted position at the moment. She was his friend. He had time to think on that as he laid there in her lap. He had been taught a friend loves at all times. Not just the good times, but also in the bad. Marcie was proving to be a great friend.

  By the middle of the second day, John had ranted and raved all he needed to. He had mostly flushed his anger and allowed the peace of Marcie's friendship to nurture him back to sound reasoning. John was a logical person and no one was more aware than he that his actions of late defied any real sense of logic. His conversations with Marcie became more and more civil and productive as the afternoon wore on. He confided in her the pain of loss he felt and still felt. She comforted him with her own closeness and the knowledge that true friends never part. He accepted her explanations as fact. She had never lied to him and only done things that made him understand she wanted to help him.

  As night fell inside the Mist, John was under control again. He had reasoned out his situation and come to understand the necessity of the things that happened. He came to put less blame on the Creator of Life and take more responsibility for his own healing process. Marcie was there by his side every step of the way, always knowing the right words to build him up at the moment when he needed them. It was an intense, emotional time that John thought might equate to the kind of bonds soldiers create between themselves. If it was or if it wasn't, John knew that Marcie was now a friend for life and even beyond.

  For her part, Marcie was happy to help. There was nothing she wanted more than to be there for John in this hour of torment he had created for himself. She knew it was the human way of burrowing inside their guilt and then lashing out from that protective womb at anything and everything that moved until they had chased away every good thing in their life. Men became drunks, drug abusers and violent offenders of mankind when pressed with such emotional issues as losing a close love like John had. Women became drug abusers, drunks, sluts and worse to ward off the pain that came with emotional distress and physical separation from their loved one.

  The human condition was a frail one, as conditions went in the planes of existence. Why the Creator of Life had made such an existence was an oft talked about subject among those in the other planes. No one knew the real reason for sure. When asked, the Creator of Life always said, “Because.” But Marcie had her own thoughts on the matter.

  Marcie believed that the knowledge of the Creator of Life in the other planes was so evident and clear that He had desired a less evocative presence with the Human plane. He had created a limited existence species in the humans and given them promises of great revelation and eternal endurance. While other planes lived in the knowledge of life and existence and purpose, the humans lived in hope of life and existence and purpose. With the other planes, the Creator of Life was mostly hands off as they lived out their purposes mostly with just His life force flowing through them. But with the humans it was necessary for a more hands on approach. They needed something from the Creator of Life everyday. And Marcie believed the Creator of Life was in need of that constant and continuous relationship. After all, in the other planes, relationships went on everywhere all the time as everyone passed by and enjoyed the pleasures the Creator of Life had made for them all. But no one really tugged at the Creator of Life's heart strings like his humans. They were special. They were designed to need him. She believed the Creator of Life had created humans because He needed them as much as they needed Him.

  In the course of John's recovery Marcie had revealed her logic on the motives of the Creator of Life and he had agreed with her. Having studied the religious aspects of human life as he had as a young man, and combining what he had learned from his experiences with the Creator of Life, as He was called in the other planes, John agreed wholeheartedly with her assessment of the situation. Through his growing understanding of the plan of the Creator of Life, as Marcie outlined the idea of living out their purposes, John came to recognize that the people of the human plane were God's lovers. Despite all claims from the religious factions as to God's design of the human condition as rulers and conquerors over the earth, John understood one thing, God was love. The Creator of Life was love. It was both definition and purpose.

  Now, as the Creator of Life, stepping into John's world in a huge way and giving his wife options on how to live her life, John saw greater purpose of love in the Creator of Life's actions than any thought he previously had about keeping Kathy with him. It was the love the Creator of Life had for her that had given her options. If Kathy had stayed in the human plane and given birth to the baby of the giant, her actions would have legitimized Gol's existence and claim on the human plane. But choosing to die and move to the plane of Mist, Kathy had chosen not only to forgo the misery of such a motherhood experience but also to save the human plane from Gol's treacherous plans upon mankind.

  John was no longer mad at the Creator of Life. He had worked the anger out of his system. Not that his anger would have done any good, anyway. He was also surprised that with his better understanding of the way things worked, he was no longer mad at Gol for trying to gain a foothold in the human plane and using Kathy as his surrogate mother. Gol was merely carrying out his purpose as he had chosen it to be. Kathy had chosen her purpose when she decided to thwart Gol's plan by giving up her physical life in the human plane and moving on to the Mist.

  John now understood that purpose was not part of anything designed into the human condition. It was a choice. John had always known that people had to make choices for their lives. He had planned his life around choices that brought him to the place where he had met Kathy. He would never regret that series of choices. Instead, he cherished them. But now he saw a greater depth in choice that actually controlled a person's purpose. People were not born to fulfill a purpose, they grew to choose one. Kathy had chosen hers and now John had to
choose his.

  It also helped him deal with the choices his father had made. John saw that his father had made hard choices, just as Kathy had made a hard choice. Both their choices defined their purpose. Set it even. He had to respect that now. His father had made hard choices and set his purpose. Not to be away from the family, but to help those in need who were not growing or could not find their own purpose in life.

  John was ready to set his own purpose now. His next round of choices would accomplish that. He recalled the story in the bible of David after his child had died. He mourned that child for a while, even denying himself food and water. But when the time for mourning was accomplished, King David got up, washed his face and called for a meal to be brought. It was time for John to wash his face and have a meal in celebration of his wife's choice. He would celebrate her purpose instead of lamenting his own loss.

  “Thank you, Marcie.” John told his shimmering friend when he made the decision to get on with his life.

  “It was a pleasure to be there for you and I thank you for letting me help.” The battered little girl winked out and became the beautiful naked woman John had become used to seeing. He hardly noticed the transformations she underwent constantly because of the pain inflicted on her at death.

  “You truly did help, too.” John told her. “I could not have come through this without your help.”

  “That's what friends are for.” Marcie smiled at him.

  “You're better than any friend.” John smiled back, no longer feeling guilty or weird about their relationship.

  “I am happy to hear you say that.” She smiled even brighter. “I like being your friend.”

  John reached out and took her hand. He felt comfortable with her even if she was from another plane of existence. He saw the surprise in her eyes as he gripped her hand.

  “I want to apologize for any bad things I ever said to you or any wrong ways I ever acted toward you.” John apologized.

  “You were only going through hard decision times,” Marcie offered him a way out gracefully.

  “No.” John was going to go through this like he had the rest of his life. The right way.

  “I was a jerk sometimes, ignoring you and wishing you would go away. You just wanted to be my friend and when I was down, really down, you proved that I was even a bigger jerk than I thought I was being. You have proven to be my best friend while I was being a rotten person. I am sorry. You are welcome around me any time from now on. All the time, if you want.” He offered.

  “Well. That certainly is a turn around I did not expect.” Marcie laughed. “I did not do it expecting you would change. I did it because I want the best for you.”

  “Why?” John was perplexed.

  “Because you are family, John.” She said it like she meant it.

  “I am truly glad to be accepted of the Mist.” John replied and bowed his head in recognition of the honor she was giving to him, to be part of their plane while still existing in his own.

  “No, John,” Marcie went on. “I mean real family.”

  “How do you mean, Real family?” John asked.

  “I am your great, great grandmother's sister, John.” Marcie let her words sink in.

  “My family?”

  “On your mother's side. Yes.” Marcie flickered back to the little girl ghost.

  “So, one of my relatives was killed by a child murderer?” John was aghast at this revelation. He had thought his life was more normal than that. How could he have a murdered relative in his family? It shook his view of his family.

  “Actually, the man who killed me was my uncle.” Marcie explained. “They caught him and he was put in jail for life. He died there many years ago. I have kept a watch on the family ever since.”

  “On me?” John was still dumbfounded. Short questions were all he could manage.

  “Yes. You and others. I told you once that your mother was part of the Mist because of her accident and the blood she shared with us.”

  John nodded his head.

  “I was not there by accident when she had her accident. A man was trying to kill her by running her down with his car. I knew his plans and was trying to get her to alter hers to make his plans of no effect. She refused me that day, much as you have done these past months. The best I could do was offer her help after the fact.” Marcie explained.

  “Someone tried to kill her?” John could not believe what he was hearing. Once again, Marcie was turning his world upside down.

  “Yes. She had had an affair with the man and broken it off when it endangered her relationship with your father and you. The man was mad. He was determined that if he could not have her no one would have her. So, he decided to run her over with his car and make it look like an accident.”