Erasing: Shadows Read online

  "I'm twelve. I thought you might be twelve too," he said carefully, so as not to upset her. Why hadn't she been at the study as we planned?

  "Hey, I know a lot for my age!" Her lip protruded in a pout.

  "Oh, I don't doubt that. Well, it was nice to meet you, Mira. I have to go find some of my friends," said Michael, rushing away to hide his fright. This has all gotten out of control!

  "Are you sure you have to go?" Mira asked before he had gotten away. He turned around. "Yes, I'm sure, but maybe we'll see each other again. Right now, I have to go help a friend in trouble."

  "Oh." She seemed to understand that.

  "Well, I hope everything turns out okay. Thanks, Mira." He all but ran over the hill. He wanted to hide his facial expression from her. He was close to tears. Or perhaps it was just teenage emotions having their way with him. Either way, Mira had obviously lost all recall of the situation. She was not in the real world. She was not nine. She was actually astral traveling and the world she was in was only a replica—to a point—of her real world. Worst of all, she had forgotten that Michael was her husband, though somewhere far, far away.

  He doubted very much she'd think their encounter more than a dream. Despite the fact she had been astral traveling since she was four, she hadn't remembered him, or that this was not the real world. He bet in a few minutes she would be back at her mind-conceived farmhouse, asleep. He hadn’t figured out how to counter-act that yet. He needed his friends. And God, maybe even Stu. But no, he didn’t trust him. In any case, it had just been too long since he and Mira had traversed these realms.

  ***

  When Michael returned to the real-world Ross house, exhaustion swept through his body. A train wreck of emotions played with his stomach. He looked beside him to the empty space next to him on the bed and hung his head. He guessed the trauma had been too much for Mira. It was still bright afternoon here, as time in the two worlds moved at a decidedly different pace—something novices learned right away. Time could go by in days, weeks, or even years in the other world, though few had experimented that far, while only hours passed in real-world time. It was the real-world time that one had to keep track of, and simultaneously, or one could accidentally go missing in the real world after just a few minutes in the astral. And it was never the same. Hence, their previous travels had all been short jumps. Sometimes they found they’d been gone minutes. Other times, they’d missed dinner.

  He opened the door to the bedroom. "Kids?" he called. "Is Brand—"

  Madison, who had returned from swim practice, interrupted. "—He's fine. Morgan is in the living room feeding him Cheerios."

  "Thank God," he sighed. "Is your mother here anywhere?"

  "Mom? We thought she was with you," Madison replied.

  The sick feeling stirred again in Michael's stomach. His fears were confirmed. "Well, she was—"

  At this point, Morgan, who had come to lean against the kitchen door, said, "Dad, have you lost Mom now?"

  Michael replied. "I'm just not sure what she's up to. Let's give it a few minutes."

  Madison spoke. "Give it a few minutes? She's missing! And apparently while I was gone, B-R-A-N-D-O-N," she spelled out his name so as not to alarm the baby "went missing too!"

  Mrs. Ross, who sat in the rocking chair crocheting, looked up. "She's lost is she? You know Brandon just appeared in the living room, wanting Cheerios— that problem hasn't been solved yet either."

  Brandon came toddling in and took hold of Morgan's hand. "Where's Mama?"

  Michael picked up Brandon and swung him around. "Mom will be home soon, slugger." He forced a smile on his face. Michael could tell from the look in his daughters' eyes that they didn't believe him. They were right. He didn't believe himself. Not at all.

  ***

  After waiting a half-hour amidst dirty looks from his mother, Michael Mason Ross decided it was time to enact crisis mode. "Everyone, I need your cooperation. Not everything I do is going to make sense to you, but I need you to bear with me and do what I say. We need to get your mother back."

  His tone was serious, and everyone nodded assent. Mrs. Ross looked up and nodded her head approvingly.

  "Where exactly is she?" asked Madison.

  "No time to go into that, dear," said Mrs. Ross. "When you're older."

  Madison looked thoughtful.

  Michael gave a grateful look to his mother. She really was on the ball sometimes. "Mom, can you look after the kids? I need to go out and round up some troops."

  "Of course, dear." She kept crocheting.

  "Madison and Morgan," he said in a serious tone, "keep a close watch on Brandon."

  "We will, Dad," Madison answered for both of them. Morgan took Brandon's hand and led him back to the T.V.

  "Mom, I'll be back as soon as I can," said Michael. He went to the kitchen and threw down a couple Tums.

  "I know, dear," said Mrs. Ross. "Go find your friends."

  Michael looked at his mother. He could swear sometimes she knew more than she was letting on. Then he went out the door.

  Next he headed to the nearest quiet place he could find—a park down the street—and took out his cell phone. He scrolled down to numbers he hadn't called in years, though they often still texted each other. He called his brother first. "Jon, yeah it's Michael. It's a code MSG." The surprised gasp on the other end traveled clearly down the phone line—code MSG was an unexpected occurrence from anyone they knew. They only hung out with experienced travelers.

  "It's Mira. Something went wrong."

  "What in the world was Mira doing traveling at her age?" asked Jonathan.

  Michael heard the concern in Jonathan’s voice. Jonathan and Mira had always gotten along well. "I'll explain more when we meet up," said Michael, kicking at an old fence over and over. "Can you get Zac and meet us at the old place? I'll gather up Lu and the girls."

  "What about Stu?" Jonathan asked.

  "I don't trust that guy." Michael wasn’t ready to admit that maybe Jonathan was right.

  Jonathan didn't give up. "Michael, I'm telling you, personalities aside, that guy knows more about this than all of us put together. I know you don't want to hear this, but Stu and I have kept in touch over the years. I swear he's like a teenage Yoda."

  '"Jon, he's barely older than Madison. I don't care what he thinks he knows, and I don't want him along."

  "Fine," said Jonathan. His tone didn't hide his disagreement, but now wasn't the time to argue. "I'll just get Zac. But remember, we weren't any older than Stu when we started."

  Michael knew Jon had a point, but he didn't give in. Not after the attitude Stu had pulled on him the last time they met. Stu, only sixteen then, and Michael, thirty-five, had a large disagreement during a conversation about metaphysics. Stu had acted as if Michael was ignorant, when actually, Michael had been traveling far longer than Stu. Only Mira was more advanced. Michael had no time for overconfidence or prima donnas. This was too important.

  "Jon, listen," he said, hanging his head. "My overconfidence in my and Mira's ability is one reason we're in this predicament. It's all my fault."

  At that, Jon stopped arguing. "Fine, Michael. Meet you guys in an hour." He hung up.

  Michael called Lu to round up the rest of the girls. Though really, they weren't girls anymore. Michael just still thought of them as he had known them back then, when they were a gang of friends that hung out in real life and traveled together to the other world secretly. He tucked his phone in his pants pocket and headed to the old skateboard park.

  When Michael arrived, most of the gang were already there milling about. He saw they were trying to look inconspicuous and doing a poor job at it. He hadn't previously considered that they would be much older than the current residents and stick out like sore thumbs. He still thought of them all like back when they traveled together. That was years ago. Trina, the youngest was actually thirty. Where had the time gone? The only actual person still young in the real-world was Stu, but he was never pa
rt of the original gang.

  Still acting eighteen, she looked at Michael and laughed. "Well hey, old man, what's cooking?" she said as she tagged graffiti from her still ever-present spray cans. She saw his look of disapproval. "Hey, it's protocol remember?" Trina had half her head shaved and a cowlick on the other side. Michael saw she was wearing her typical dress of jeans and a T-shirt.

  Oh yeah, the protocol. He took in the smells and sounds of the skateboard park.. The scent of stale beer was overwhelming. It mostly came from the covered bags lying around.. He was also getting hungry as the smell of hotdogs and pretzel worked their magic. In the background the skateboard wheels rolled over the concrete. He heard yelps as random spills tore at knees and hands of the riders.

  Trina was spraying the initials 'MM' per their agreement so many years ago. The start of the journey, the initials of the initiator—a sign for anyone who came later and needed to follow the trail yet clandestine enough so that no one outside of their group would know what the initials meant.

  "Hey Jonathan." Michael gave him a hearty hug. "Mom says hi."

  "Yeah, sure," said Jonathan.

  His mother had said no such thing, but Michael had said so anyway. She had never approved of Jonathan's continuing travels, whereas Michael had settled down like a good son, he supposed. Jonathan was tall and good-looking with some Asian features that had made it through the Ross line. Michael noted some of the teenage girls at the skateboard park were eyeing him.

  "Hey, everybody," said Michael to the gang.

  Lu stood next to Trina as usual. Lu still had dark hair and those bright blue eyes. She still favored hats, wearing a floppy one over her dark hair today. Onie said a soft hello. Michael felt bad; they hadn't talked much in the last ten years. They used to date before Michael was with Mira. Back in those days, Michael remembered the gang of friends had gone out with each other like a merry-go-round, as teenagers are prone to do over periods of time.

  Zac grabbed Onie's hand. Zachary Brian, as he was called back then, was obviously now with Onie. Michael wondered how long they'd been together. Apparently, long enough to marry and have kids. He noticed their rings, and Onie had been busy showing baby pictures to Lu when he first walked up. He congratulated both of them.

  "It's been a long time!" said Zac with genuine happiness. Zac was tall also, good-looking, and wore his hair slicked back. Onie, was a light-skinned black woman, still beautiful with those big, brown eyes.

  "Gather up, everyone."

  Michael noted that Jonathan had actually made it an order. Jon always somehow took on the role of inherent leader, though no one ever said a word about leadership in the group. Michael smiled, glad to have such a good group to call his friends. Everyone did their part and worked together well. Except Stu. Stu always seemed to go off on his own. Michael chalked it up to Stu’s age difference. He was only nineteen. Jonathan had tried to bring him around a few times in later years when the friends had gotten together socially, but it hadn't worked out. Zac asked about Stu, and Jonathan diplomatically said this was a mission for the "old" gang. Michael nodded to Jonathan, grateful.

  Jonathan described what he knew to the group and then handed the floor over to Michael to fully explain. Several kids were skateboarding nearby. Michael decided to give a quick run-down. He let everyone know about Brandon and Mira and her loss of continuity and age. Then he decided to have everyone go their separate ways and meet up later, since the skateboard park was fairly crowded. He remembered when it used to be crowded with their own friends. It reminded him of Mira's absence. He never felt old around Mira.

  Once they heard about Brandon and that Mira was in trouble, he noted everyone became very serious. Michael knew he had a tight group of friends no matter how much time had passed.

  Haltingly, he started to say thank you, but his throat caught. Jonathan covered for him.

  "Now remember, Mira is only nine. That's before she learned everything. Michael is going to have to teach her the astral all over again. And we"—Jonathan motioned around—"are gonna have to become her friends all over again."

  "Hopefully that won't be hard," said Lu. "I mean, we all love her."

  "Yeah," said Jonathan, "but she doesn't know us from Adam currently." He sounded downcast. He'd spent years joking and kidding around with Mira. Suddenly, she would be like a stranger.

  "Remember," Michael added, "if we can find her at twelve, our problems are solved, because by then she knows all the tricks. Otherwise it's going to be slow going."

  "We got it," said Trina in her usual 'not meant to be sassy but sounded that way' voice.

  "Um, Michael?" Zac interrupted as they were about to break.

  "Yeah, Zac?"

  "We haven't been there in a long while. How do we know how old we'll be or how we'll look? Couldn't that ruin everything? I mean I don't think Mira is going to relate to a thirty-eight-year-old. No offense."

  "That's a good point, Zac. I've already been back, and since it was my first time in a long time, I was twelve. But I want to go back a little older so she'll listen to me and I can teach her. I am hoping I can control myself better now that I've got the hang of it again and come in as my true self, which is a bit older. I think showing up as twelve for me was just a fluke of having not traveled astrally in a while. When we round up together, we'll see how everyone appears."

  Michael and Jonathan both figured they would all probably look as they had twenty years ago when they used to travel to the other world. No one had continued to do so, or not very much, so the ages should be about the same. Made things easier. And harder. In your thirties, getting used to teenage hormones again was difficult. Even though you retained your intellect, except in cases of trauma, like Mira, the hormones sometimes overrode the rationality. The younger you were the more likely you might lose your intellectual and emotional maturity. Twelve seemed to be about the limit of maintaining the adult intellect while still in the body of a child.

  "Okay," the gang agreed, wondering how much they had or hadn't grown in their inner selves since years ago when they traveled all the time.

  Jonathan thought to himself, This is why we need Stu. Stu never stopped learning and traveling. He's light years ahead of us all. Jonathan held his tongue in deference to his brother. He would bring it up again only in an emergency.

  "All right then," he said to everyone. "Meet you in one hour on the astral." Jonathan didn't mention that he would most likely be older than Michael due to his continuing work with Stu.

  Michael didn't mention that he knew Jonathan had been practicing some with Stu; there was nothing he could do about that now.

  The gang already knew where to meet up. They always knew.

  It wasn't in this reality.

  Chapter Three

  The High Five Gang

  Exactly one hour later, six raggedy looking teenagers showed up out of nowhere in the astral, sitting on the ground near a farm. For a moment, they weren't quite sure where they were. Then it all came back to them. The gravel underneath their legs was leaving imprints like always. They smelled hay. It was a sure sign they were 'there.'

  The Emergency Meeting Place.

  The group surveyed the landscape, and it appeared exactly as it was supposed to be. The field over the hill lay behind Mira's childhood home. Then they caught themselves staring at each other because of the sheer scale of difference between their before and after appearances.

  "Wow." Jonathan spoke first. He gaped at Michael, who, true to his word, had come back at about sixteen-years-old. Even his clothes were teenage clothes. "You've learned some things haven't you!" He was impressed.

  "From Mira," answered Michael. "And apparently you have too." Jonathan looked obviously older than Michael. If Michael had to guess, he would say Jonathan was nineteen or twenty. "But, I've re-thought this, and maybe I am going to return to age twelve. It’s closer to Mira's age, and I can build more rapport with her."

  He didn't mention that also he just plain missed her. If
they were both twelve, well, hopefully her former crush on him when they were younger would manifest this time too. In real life she was older than him, though not by much. That was the weirdness of the astral. Playing with ages got really complicated.

  Michael amazed the others as he shrunk. Suddenly he wasn't sixteen anymore. Jonathan knew the technique, but the others were in awe.

  "Can I do that too?" asked Zac, who was changing into the clothes he brought. Jonathan noted his older clothes were hanging off of him. Zac was the only other one at about age twelve. He was also the only one who hadn't seemed to travel into the correct clothes. He had arrived still wearing his adult attire. Somehow his traveling skills were a bit behind the others, who looked their appropriate ages.

  "No," said Michael. "You are the cousin I have that is Mira's age. The more people her age the better."

  Trina laughed at Zac's adult clothes falling off. "Okay, Mr. Hobo, about ready there?" she teased.

  Then she turned to Onie. "Wow, you're suddenly a cougar , aren't you,?" she said laughing, for Onie had turned up as age sixteen, four years older than her husband.

  "Ha, ha," said Zac.

  "Yeah, forgive me if I wait until we're back into the real world to um—oh never mind," said Onie.

  "So you do only love me for my body!" teased Zac.

  "Well," said Jonathan, getting everyone back on track, "we have to be careful how we introduce ourselves to Mira. It needs to be like it was before; except at our current astral age, so we don't freak her out. I'm not sure where she would end up if she got confused and upset, but it wouldn't be good."

  "Right," said Michael. He popped a few more Tums. "She could end up in a forest or a storm. Or alone in the desert—you never know what the unconscious will do, so everyone needs to concentrate hard because Mira won't be able to. So I will find her first and try to develop our old rapport. Knowing her, she will want to learn, and then I'll introduce her to Jonathan like before."

  "Let's write this down," said Lu.

  "I have paper and pen," said Onie.

  Lu looked at the group. "We really haven't changed much personality-wise. There's Onie with supplies on hand, Jonathan ordering us around, and Zac falling apart." She laughed.