A Presence There….
I woke from a troubled sleep, an uneasy rest, a mid-day slumber after a morning of hard work. I didn’t remember how I got to where I was when the fog of sleep left me, but I felt as though I had been transported somewhere, to some other place and odd. My body sensed that it had been enveloped and moved, taken whole from a place in my past and brought into a place new and unknown. My eyes opened from their unrest and I beheld strange objects, both near and far. The sun was askance and out of its normal place, for shadows moved and danced and were moving still as I stared about and they weren’t in their regular place, either, the shadows weren’t, and then.
I looked around and rubbed my eyes and heard and felt a thing above me, like a thing there and not. It was a presence almost, an electric whir, an electric hum, a tingling somehow and a scattering in the air. “Someone is there,” I said, and “Hey…hello?! Hello?! It’s me; yes, I’m here! Hello?!” I heard myself say those things in my mind, but didn’t hear them with my ears. I did feel a mighty presence, like I said, something or someone more powerful than I, something that caused the air about me to move and swirl, to sing almost in a whooshing Hey. It moved and was gone; it moved and was gone; it moved and….
I wanted to move, too; I wanted to rise and walk around, but something held me fast; it was tight and across my chest and the light was bright still from the sun and sun and it reflected in a prism-like glare as though it was shining through cracks and splinters of glass and then. And that thing was still there, too, that presence and moving something that made me feel small and raised the hair on my neck and charged the air with a static pulse and pulsing.
Was it Him, was it that childhood thing, was it that mover from above, that ever-present something that stirred within, but came from without? I didn’t know; I didn’t care in those moments there; I only wanted the next moment to come so I might be away and awake and alive and somewhere else.
As I tried to rise again, I felt the earth start to move beneath my feet, from deep within the ground maybe, or not so far as that, but close and still. I felt the ground start to quake from beneath my soul, from beneath everything that I knew and that thing or someone was still above me and then a scream crashed through; it was sharp and severe and it screeched into my bones and my brain and I screamed out loud, “Yes, I am here, and here, and what do you want…?” as the thing screamed back at me and the earth shook and still and the thing moved above me and whooshed in a feathered crush and hard and rough and then it moved again and the scream again and the earth moved beneath and within me again and the cells of my bones rattled and I closed my eyes and tried to hide from that unknown thing that I didn’t know, but felt in my soul and body core, that spirit, that god, that reckoning thing, that thing that screams and has no mover…it was the end of time, maybe, or even the beginning, too, I didn’t know.
I rubbed my eyes again and looked around again and shook my head and turned around and around as much as I could again and I was still held there and was taut or tied or something. I looked for anything I knew, maybe a person, too. I strained and saw near and behind me a little face with rounded cheeks and gray-green eyes; a little man or boy, and smiling at me…and he pointed there, out and away from me, from us…and he said…
“Hey Dad, look at the train!”
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