Nolen: The Beckoning

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

I would like to give a very special thanks to

Jenna Thompson

(www.jennartandphoto.com),

Debra Stang, copyeditor,

Kevin Davis from Skin City Tattoo,

and Jamie Sholar.

Thank you for your inspiration and help with the Beckoning.

I stumble for a second, then regain my footing. My stride continues at a pace that my mind can’t process. I can feel the blood coursing through my legs, although the adrenaline that accompanies the plasma prohibits me from feeling the torn flesh on my right ankle. The fresh wound I contracted when I tripped is not life threatening and slowing right now could prove to be fatal. I can hear the ammunitions from the assault rifle zing past me in random spurts. They ruffle the leaves now and then, making a high-pitched whirring noise as they ricochet off nearby trees. I continue on through the thick foliage. Now and then, an unseen rogue limb catches my clothing or whips my hands or face as I pass. I press onward for what seems like an eternity. It seems that I’ll never reach a place that feels safe enough to slow or stop… in the thick forest or in my mind.

There’s a clearing about a hundred yards ahead. As I draw closer, I can see there’s a deserted two-lane road with street lamps every forty yards. Some of the bulbs are dim and flickering. The brightest ones do a poor impression of the sun, not lighting much more than the halo that surrounds them. As I approach the asphalt, the plant life begins to thin, and as I arrive within ten yards or so of the lifeless black strip of ever stretching roadway, I slow just enough to make a ninety degree turn, so as to run parallel and to the left of it. I accelerate to my original pace. Small, low hanging limbs from nearby trees continue whipping my skin, but I don’t dare leave the safety of the dark wilderness.

I run for another six or seven miles before slowing to a jog. I see a billboard ahead with a woman drinking a particular brand of soda. Beyond that I can see the glimmering lights of a small town, lit up mostly by more street lamps and porch lights. They probably have a local motel, but I’m still too close to danger. I can’t stay in this quiet, rural area tonight. I’ll need to travel much further before I stop.

There’s a diner just ahead on my right. It’s a small local place with dingy windows tinted a yellowish brown from years of cigarette smoke. The sign just above the entrance has one working bulb illuminating it, making it impossible to decipher more than one syllable of the name. In the parking lot, there is a very dusty and dated Cadillac with the diner’s logo cheaply airbrushed down the side of it. It’s no doubt the owner’s vehicle. Another car is crouching in the lot. It’s a midsize American sedan in canary yellow with a small taxi sign mounted to the top. I rush past the vehicles into the diner. Inside, the presumed owner of the diner and the cab driver are smoking cigars and drinking coffee at a booth in the far corner. I turn my back to them as I pull my wallet from my back pocket. It contains my license, my visa credit card and about four hundred dollars in cash. I separate two hundred into a front pocket.

I approach the men and ask what towns are nearby. I would ask where I’m at now, but that would probably seem suspicious. The cab driver speaks up, informing me that there are two towns in opposite directions, both about thirty or so miles from the current location. The establishment owner chimes in that there’s also a bigger town east of there that’s about eighty miles away.

How much to take me to that one? I ask the driver. My voice is shaky and overrun by heavy panting. I am beginning to sweat profusely as the cold night air is no longer rushing against my skin. My left eye is swollen and bruised. I realize at that moment that I must already look suspicious. Not wanting to attract undue attention, I create a quick story in my mind.

My girlfriend and I… she was driving… we had an argument. She kicked me to the curb and drove off without me. I’ve had a little to drink tonight and I’ve been walking forever. I have family in the town this gentleman mentioned. I nodded my head, gesturing to the shop owner. I just want to get somewhere I’m familiar with and relax.

It’s gonna cost you, says the driver in an informative tone. It’s gonna’ cost you about… oh, a hundred and thirty?

I agree to his fee. He asks if he can finish his cup of java before we depart. I nod and ask the shop owner for a glass of water. The man steps behind the counter and a few seconds later he presents me with two full glasses of ice water. How much do I owe you sir? I inquire.

There’s no charge for the water, son. You should probably drink more when you get to where you’re going. You look like you could stand to sober up some.

I smile and nod. I am careful to keep my face in the shadows of the dimly lit room; I don’t want them to get a good look at me. I gulp down the last of the water as the cab driver is squaring his bill for the coffee. I tell the owner to have a nice evening as the driver and I exit the establishment.

Now are you going to your relatives’ house at this time of night? The driver questions.

No sir, I was intending to rent a room at a motel.

Did you have a particular one in mind?

No, sir, but the cheaper, the better. I’m not concerned with amenities or a nice neighborhood.

Then I know just the spot. Um, I’m gonna have to ask you for payment in advance. It’s an awful long way and you’re not a regular… so…

Just before we enter the cab, I pull the two hundred dollars from my front pocket and place it in his hand. I enter through the back door and shut it behind me.

As we start pulling away from the diner, the driver hands me my change, clears his throat, and then politely asks, Do you feel like talking or listening to the radio?

No, sir, I don’t feel like doing either really. I just want to sit back and relax, if it’s all the same to you.

That’s fine by me, son.

I lie back against the seat and look out into the night sky and down to the barren road. I take in a deep breath and feel my body begin to relax. It’s at this point I feel the gash in my ankle. As my body slowly makes me aware of the throbbing and aching that I am due, my mind begins an attempt to absorb the recent events. I inhale another deep breath and collapse into sleep.

The driver awakens me when we reached our destination. It’s a single-story motel with a flashing vacancy sign and a parking lot full of trash and cigarette butts. I thank the driver and, as he pulls away, I ring the bell at the office window.

After a few minutes and rings on the bell a stern voice bellows, In a minute! A few seconds more and a middle-aged man in pajama pants and slippers approaches. His gut is peering from under a shirt with print that reads One Dollar Margaritas and Tuesday is Ladies Night along with the logo of a local pub. I inquire about the cheapest room available.

Well, I’ve got one for thirty nine fifty plus a key deposit of five dollars. The information seems more coughed out than presented, but I don’t care. I reach for some of the change I’d replaced to my front pocket, as he again forced out a sentence. I’m gonna need to see a license or state issued I.D. and a tag number, if you have a vehicle.

No sir, I didn’t drive. I really don’t like the idea of producing a piece of identification. I don’t care if he knows who I am, but knowing that I am being hunted, I don’t want any unnecessary traces left for them to follow. The motel attendant has retrieved the key for my room. I clear my throat and kindly speak as I pull one the hundreds from my wallet. You probably don’t have change for a hundred, huh?

I pass the bill through the slot in the window and give him a look of desperation. He looks at me distrustfully for a second, but then gives me a grimace and the key to room 107, which he tells me is to my right at the end of the building.

He says in a more hospitable voice, You’re right, I haven’t got change, and checkout is at eleven a.m., but since it’s already five a.m., how about we say three o’clock sharp, this afternoon?

How about we say nine o’clock this evening? I pass him another ten dollars through the slot. He nods, satisfied, and points toward my room.

As I walk down the strip of concrete beneath an awning that covers all the rooms, my legs let me know that an hour and a half of sleep was far from sufficient for them to want to be used again. I open the door and stand for a second to let the smell of stagnant air escape, then enter. Now I can feel my eyes beginning to swell. I know that once I was inside with the door closed, it will be okay to break down. I wonder if I’ll wake up surrounded… or worse.

I let the door close and lock behind me and fall face first into the bed. I hope that I will pass out again, but no such luck. My mind is forced to wrap itself around the horrible events that have taken place just a few hours ago. I can explain the catastrophic reality that I am running from, but I’ll have to back up… a lot.

Since I was a child, I had heard the great story of how the sun god, the god of life and growth, kissed the Earth millions of years ago to give birth to all of life. The sun god has a name of course, but calling him by name would divulge information that could be harmful to myself and to my people. I will use the name most commonly affiliated with the sun god. The ancient Egyptian word Ra is how I will refer to him, though we called him by another name.

To understand this story, you must first understand that fire is a living thing. Fire breathes oxygen, consumes flammable gasses and materials, and reproduces itself. I’m sure you’ve heard these traits associated with fire before, but its similarities go deeper than that. As animals and believed descendants of fire, we reproduced in areas that were plentiful in food and had a pleasing environment. As we began to overpopulate that particular place, we started branching out to places that were less hospitable.

Fire will burn a field of dead grass first, spreading rapidly through the abundant nourishment. If there is a patch of healthy green grass in the center of the field, damp with vitality, the fire will simply move around the healthy plant life and devour the dry brown reeds. When the brown reeds are gone, and the fire has grown larger, nourishment becomes less abundant. It is at this point that the fire will begin consuming the greener reeds in order to continue growing and consuming and existing.

We also have battled throughout history like a fire. If an army was relatively small, hungered for territory and power, it would fight even smaller armies, and as the hungry army battled and won, it grew. It grew by taking over properties and people and resources. As the army became larger, it took on more sizable opponents, but only after it had surpassed them in size. By the time the hungry army reached a foe that was once too big to engage in battle with, this was no longer the case. The hungry army now stood at full power. They were bigger and stronger than ever before and could now overthrow their opponents.

Had the hungry army attacked early on, they would surely have been defeated. So, it’s safe to assume that we, as warriors in our armies, battle and consume other lands as the flames do. Our psychology is based on the will inside us to accomplish the small tasks and grow in power before handling more complicated tasks. By all characteristics, that make us a living creature. Fire also is alive. Its life gave birth to my people’s earliest legend.

Millions of years ago, the Earth was barren. It was a planet as void of life as the others. There were no trees, grass, insects, or aquatic life; the planet was absolutely nothing but a dead rock covered mostly by ocean. Ra, the God of Life watched over our lifeless planet every day, warming it like a child in an incubator and keeping conditions appropriate for what was about to happen.

Ra was older than time itself and more powerful than anything else in existence, but still, he had his limitations. For instance, Ra had no jurisdiction in the night sky. He could not watch over the distant side of the planet. The god was deeply frustrated by this constraint on his power, and he was determined to find a way to overcome the constant vexation. The common element that would lead to our existence and the cure for Ra’s affliction was a comet traveling from another galaxy at speeds that cannot be measured. Its trajectory put it on a collision course with Ra.

This was not the first comet to do this, since the beginning of our God’s existence. Nothing survived Ra’s intensity, but this time Ra would use the rock to spread his presence even into the nights of our planet. The comet passed through Ra with blinding speed. The God’s intense heat split pieces of the rock’s surface into a million pieces, dramatically reducing its size and exposing the core of the dead rock.

Then Ra kissed the very soul of the rock and brought it to life with brilliant flames. The rock passed through the sun and came out the other side blazing at temperatures that could crystallize sand. It was on a direct course with our planet. The rock split into fragments as it entered our atmosphere. Pieces of unbelievable magnitude crashed into the oceans, onto the lifeless expanses of land, and onto our unattended shores. Ra was now omnipresent and could watch over our planet all day and all night as well, from the vast expanses of nothingness to the shores of the oceans. But what was this? When the pieces of rock hit the ocean’s surface, the life Ra had given them died. It just… died.

Ra had knowledge of constant renewal of himself; as old flares fizzled out, new flames exploded with life, but Ra had no knowledge of being extinguished. Not since of the beginning of time had he witnessed death. How dare this substance annihilate his creation, his very essence, and so effortlessly? He had no reason to worry, though. Just as we know that all life constantly evolves, so would the fire that burned on the surface of our planet.

One rock in particular burned on the shore of an ocean. The fire consumed various flammable oils that remained on the surface of the scorching hot mass. The glowing boulder was of an unimaginable size, embedded hundreds of feet into the Earth’s crust and burning for hundreds of years. A long stretch of the rock protruded into the ocean. The flames danced atop the rock day and night, dining on combustible oils, breathing the Earth’s fresh air and perpetually reproducing and dying all at the same time. These flames were pieces of our God Ra, his essence now on this planet.

As the flames danced just above the shoreline on an overhanging piece of the rock, they were in constant danger. The raging sea would crash its mercenary waves into the boulder, sending droplets of water onto the overhang. Any flames touched by the water were immediately laid to rest. The surrounding flames would avenge these deaths by surrounding the drops of water with such intense heat that the tormented liquid dried into the beach sky. This war would go on for hours until high tide. The ocean would show its wrath and consume the rock and flames until it had had its fill. This war went on for hundreds of years.

Sometimes small droplets of oil would fall from the rock into the tide. A flame would dance atop the drop of oil that floated on the waves. Sooner or later, the inevitable would happen. Either the tide became too violent and engulfed the tiny flicker, or most often, the flame consumed all of the droplets of oil and starved as the sea let it have its final breath. Over hundreds of years, this occurrence happened thousands upon thousands of times. The smaller flames lived longer because they did not consume the oil as fast. These sparks could explore the calm surface of the waters for almost a full day before fizzling out.

Some of the oils dropping into the ocean were rich in oxygen. This made all the difference in the world. If a spark could get its food and oxygen from the oil, it didn’t necessarily have to stay afloat on the droplet of oil, but might prefer to embed itself into the drop. After hundreds of years, a microscopic spark embedded in an oxygen rich drop of oil fell into the ocean. The oxygenated oil was a little heavier than the water, so after a few seconds, it sank. No one knows exactly how the spark evolved into the first form of life as we know it. We don’t know at what point man arose from our descendant, the ape. We do know, however, that every living thing seems to have a will to survive. We also know that if you give any living thing an obstacle that conflicts with its survival and give it enough time, the living thing will find a way around the obstacle or a way to coexist with the obstacle.

Now a microscopic piece of our Ra, surrounded by oil, breathed oxygen, consumed small quantities of oil for food, and constantly reproduced himself. It’s believed that the spark’s protective layer of oil limited how much waste or smoke and ash, could be emitted from the spark’s consumption. Limiting the spark’s consumption, also limited the spark’s size. This proved to be brilliant in the grand scheme of survival, as a small spark could exist in the same amount of oil much longer than a big one. Sometimes the spark would consume a small amount of the oil that was richer in oxygen or flammability. In that moment the spark would flare up a slight amount, then the failure to exhaust waste would force the spark to its normal size. The act of the spark flaring would create extra heat or energy, and this caused the drop of oil to have a difference in buoyancy. In other words, when the spark flared, it made the drop of oil warmer, so it climbed towards the ocean’s surface, but as the spark faded to its original size, the drop of oil descended again.

Miracles were occurring beneath the ocean’s surface now that there existed a spark of life that was capable of motion and could control its ascending and descending through consumption. The tide carried it toward the shore and back out to sea.

It wouldn’t be long before the spark and its protective drop of oil collided with other drops of oil. If the drops of oil were originally from different areas of the meteor, the consistency or atomic construct of the two oils could vary. If the oils varied on an atomic level, they would not permanently bond, but if there was a temporary connection, as the walls of the drops of oil opened into each other, the spark in one might be attracted to the adjoining empty drop if it contained richer nutrients.

As the spark moved into the nutrient rich drop, something magical happened. Part of the spark remained in the original drop, and part of the spark entered the nutrient rich drop. The part that entered the new drop flared up as it consumed richer nutrients and this caused the richer drop to propel and pull away from the original. Now two drops with two different size sparks floated independent of each other.

More often than not, the richer