Camp Damascus(56)

Rose 7:8. And upon the wicked she shall rain a mighty tempest of fire, smiting those who dared steal away her thoughts, but forgot to quell her vengeance.

“I’m ready,” I finally announce.

“You’re up, Darling,” Saul affirms.

Huge metal shelving units loom on either side of me, big enough to hold car parts or even whole vehicles, but rigged with enormous, heat-conducting copper sheets. The rectangles are hanging high above each one of the four hallways that extend into various corners of the hangar.

It’s a cartoonishly basic trap constructed at an extra-large scale, but as I gaze off into space these technicalities fall away. My eyes are wide open, but what I’m witnessing has nothing to do with the physical realm.

I’m gazing into the past.

Slowly, Willow’s face appears through the haze. Typically, I’ll get a flash of her smiling and laughing before I push these thoughts away, but this time her expression is something different. She’s upset with me, disappointed after a misunderstanding.

It’s not a big fight, just a little disagreement about some trivial thing, but the emotions it floods me with are breathtakingly potent.

As a potential reunion with Willow draws closer, my memories of our past life are starting to change. These dreams used to be marked with nothing but smiles and laughter, sunny days at the park or cozy nights indoors. It was perfect, but real relationships are never perfect.

In these visions, my bedroom still has a door. I hold my breath as I open it, slipping out with the care of a life-or-death prison break.

I can’t believe I actually snuck out of the house.

I see a car parked down the street, Willow waiting for me to crawl out under the cracked garage door and sprint toward her through the darkness. We drive through the night and laugh and cry and buy terrible fast food, and Willow sings along because she knows all the words to these songs I’ve never heard. Sometimes she raps, and her lips are moving so fast I’m reminded of Baptists speaking in tongues. I tell her this, and she seems both confused and deeply moved by the compliment.

Other times, we sit at some late-night diner stuffed full of grizzled truckers and good ol’ boys, but for some reason I’m not frightened by this scene. With Willow, it all feels like an adventure.

I see us sitting at a park in the light of day—the same place we accidently crossed paths in that chaotic reunion—and it suddenly dawns on me that this location was never quite erased from my mind. Willow and I were drawn here, unable to shake the habit of our meeting spot on the edge of town.

We lay out on a blanket and read, not saying a word to each other as we bask in the mere presence of someone we truly, unflinchingly trust. I remember deep conversations on this blanket about faith and love and the size of the universe.

“Are you with me?” she asks, calm and patient when I’ve started drifting away.

“No,” I admit.

“Let me know when you are,” she warmly offers.

Another time she’s sobbing because a pet died—at least I think that’s what happened—and when I try comforting her my words come out wrong and cold and strange.

She’s upset at first, but we talk it through. I apologize, and she accepts.

Our relationship wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but it was real. It was misunderstandings and growth and forgiveness and acceptance and, of course, the beauty that comes along with all that. We were so much more than a montage of upbeat music and endless smiles.

In those days, we weren’t afraid to be ourselves, and that’s something I’d never felt before.

A tear rolls down my cheek and I wipe it away.

“Yo!” Saul’s voice suddenly erupts in my earbud. “There’s a lot going on up here, Darling.”

“Where is she?” I ask.

“I’m getting some weird signals on the monitors,” Saul says. “The rip is forming down the hallway to your left.”

I look to the aisle in question as the hangar lights begin to flicker sporadically. These intermittent flashes continue to build in severity as a wash of frigid air overwhelms me, chilling my body to the core.

“I see her!” Saul shouts. “Pachid’s right in front of you!”

Gazing down the passage, I try my best to get a read on any shapes moving through the strobing corridor of scrap metal.

“I can’t see anything,” I report back. “How close?”

There’s a loud clang as the lights shut off entirely, plunging us into darkness.

Every muscle of my body clenches tight.

“Sa-Saul?” I stammer into my earpiece. “You there?”

There’s no response, just deafening silence as I sit here in the vast abyss. Outside the hangar there’s still a bit of sun hanging in the evening air, but this large chamber leaves very few opportunities for light to creep inside. The only source is a few random slivers of illumination slipping through metal sheets.

The universe is almost entirely dark: made up of 95 percent dark energy and dark matter.

It suddenly occurs to me that I hold the keys to a simple, safe retreat, an easy way to make this whole ordeal come to a grinding halt and appease Pachid once again. All I have to do is stop thinking about Willow and let the past fade away, returning to my place as a “straight” Kingdom of the Pine congregant; at least for the moment.

It’s an easy out, and clearly the safest choice, but what then?