SR Urie
How much patience do you have with those around you? Try to imagine if they didn't know that you were even there. When you're a ghost, on a different plane of existence, there's little you can do but observe. To some, life is so precious that as their children grow and face ordeals, decades pass. And while an ancient resolve waits and watches for an evil force that feeds on innocent death in a benevolent disguise, centuries pass. When marriage becomes so intolerable that only death can grant peace in a haunted house, the only refuge found by the troubled spirit is in the seat of wealth and power, covered with cobwebs and infested with a demon.
What happens to young children after they're taken away in unspeakable ways beyond their comprehension? Do they just fly away on the wings of angels, or are the living around them so important that death blooms hope for another chance for life? How much love would a mother's spirit need for a daughter to follow her own murderer into a new country, just to be stuck outside in the snow, waiting for a school bus and the smile of a living angel? For a dispatched warrior who hides in the dark to remember what life had once been, when will his tortured spirit find release, transform his grief and rage to revenge, and free him from what imprisoned him for so long?
There's a distorted predator on the road, experienced and motivated. Another child has been abducted, and the end of the journey means more than death if the monster has his way. There's also a man who walks alone in despair, who finds a means for redemption along the infinite highway. Art, music, and religion have always had a way of enlightening our lives, but also to keep the spirits alive. The question is what will it take to save a young boy from the hands of fate and the designs of a murderer?
NA
It was Spring but the snow held firm higher up in the mountains. There was still some of the familiar plant life on the river banks. Weeds and tall grasses that once grew everywhere the water flowed had only a remnant patch remaining where the ground was left untouched by human hands, and the white man's machinery that upturned the sacred grassland then leveled it back again. In time, letting the earth heal resulted in the appearance of a meadow with soft grasses and patches of wildflowers for the benefit of people who drove by on the highway.
He was a ghost, squatting on the river bank near the water. It was peaceful there; easier to ignore the buildings and telephone poles ravaged with wires that lined the road alongside the track of land the stream flowed through. Crouching down near the water, he poked at the mud with an old stick, tracing tribal symbols of wildlife he learned to draw as a child. The water flowed past his eyes in the light of day, its endless current reflecting the sun and the infinite time as it passed. Tears would try to erupt, but he was still an Apache warrior to his very soul, and would control his emotions lest his manhood diminish. He always looked up towards the afternoon sun to try to show the sky that his face was made of stone, and that he could endure.
Several times a day he'd venture beyond the steep banks to seek some sign, some memory of his people. It always ended up the same with him franticly running back to the river, wading to the place beneath the water. In the later hours of the afternoon his solitude and the curse of all he'd lost so long ago would get the best of him, and he was never able to keep from falling to his knees in the water with his head in his hands, weeping like a woman. Eventually he'd crawl back to the bank and pound his fists on the earth, cursing his weakness until the sun would begin to set. His grief would change to rage, and he'd howl and scream bloody murder to the waning sunlight; muscles and tendons in his arms and legs that should have disintegrated with his mortal remains clenching in fury. It was a torture he went through every day as the sun moved across the sky and beyond the mountains.
When night would finally come, he'd sit with his back on the river bank in the darkness, away from the white lights where his memory could look into his woman’s face, touch her body and run his hands through her long hair, soft as the beaver’s fur. He could also hear his sons laughing and playing, hold his infant daughter in his arms, and comfort her squalling. For that small span of time he could dwell with his family and his people in his mind, his incarceration forgotten until the rising sun brought a new day, another circle of torment to his trapped spirit.
Finally one morning he was poking the old stick at the mud in the early chill and a shadow passed in front of his eyes. He looked up and saw a phantom in the sky, a boat with a log set in the center with canvass extended in the air. At one side of the boat sat a bearded man with a rope in his hand and a furious expression on his face. The boat slid across the valley about a hundred meters in the air. He saw another angry looking fellow at the back of the boat after it passed above him, steering with an oar. Recognition crossed the second man’s brow. Before the boat sailed around the steep mountain face, he saw a smile form and the man beckoned at him in the distance.
He stood and waved back, and as the phantom disappeared behind the upper boulders of the mountain, he waved again. He stood there, staring at the high rocks the boat had circumnavigated. The loud noise of a big truck stole his attention, and he looked towards the busy highway. He squatted back down to the river bank, poking the mud with the old stick.
