Abel

Photo by Jorge Filipe Pires
(www.olhares.com/jorgefpires)

Like I explained before, the frontier between Life and Beyond is an endless limbo. So, if I want to find someone lost around in there, a good way of doing it is through sound. Sound, in some frequencies audible only to animals,  causes the air to vibrate in waves that alter the barriers between their world and ours, in a way that guides the spirit I’m trying to attract to me.

These wandering souls have actually the ability to cross the frontier whenever they want to, but they are not always aware of it. Abel hadn’t yet realize what happened to him, and he was walking around here and there, not knowing that in the way, he was scaring people to death. For those who cannot see them it’s like they don’t exist, but it’s always possible to somehow feel their presence. In Abel’s case, the strength of his presence was tremendous.

Now I needed to call him here, and I had no idea of where he was. It’s more easy to find a lost star in the Universe than a lost soul in the Limbo. Besides the sound, I was going to need a little bit of sunlight.

I took a wrought iron lamp from my bag and put it on top of  a desk that was next to one of the huge windows facing the terrace in the back of the house. One could see the sun getting ready to reach the horizon, and its full light hitting on that window, warming up the main room with the sunset’s colors. Next, I put several little glass vases with a special format on the iron lamp.

Very conveniently installed in the wall next to the desk, was a giant mirror. Mirrors are great entry portals to our world. Sometimes, they come out from there, these wandering souls. I looked around. There were many mirrors in that house.

- No wonder the old man comes here so often.

I went upstairs.

I took a look at all the bedrooms again. There was the main bedroom, a couple’s suite, decorated with all the luxury. There were two other bedrooms, which I understood to be the boy’s. Then there were three more bedrooms that, by the look of it, seemed to be for visitors. The old man’s bedroom was one of those. They had been all remodeled after the fire and it was quite obvious that they’ve had very little use since then.

Now, what? The sun was about to set, I didn’t have much time. Once again, a took a look at all three bedrooms, this time trying to look at them more carefully. That’s when I saw it. In one of the bedrooms, there was a book on the bed. A book that wasn’t there before. I entered the room and picked it up. It looked like it was read many times.

- Huum… – I whispered to myself – Who would have thought of that?

It was a collection of poems from several authors, and it had a page marked by him. It was  Tinúviel’s poem, written by J.R.Tolkien. I recognized it immediately because of the kid that goes to my house. The little one is very fond of the Lord of the Rings, with a passion out of the ordinary for it. Anyway, the old man should probably like that poem a lot. I figured it reminded him of his wife, and so, he read it frequently.

I took the book downstairs, walking by the kitchen.I filled up a jar with water and went to the living room, towards the lamp. The water is an amazing thing. It reflects the light in an extraordinary way, illuminating the darkest corners of wherever we are.

- You are the Queen of the Earth, Fountain of Life. – I whispered while carefully filling up the lamp’s twelve little jars, one by one – Without you, we’re nothing and with you, we’re everything.

The sunlight connected immediately with the water and the living room soon gained an ethereal luminosity.I connected my PDA to the stereo which was covered with dust, but still worked perfectly. I looked for the music I had in mind.

- I know the perfect music for you, old man. – I said, selecting a music that I liked very much myself – We’ll solve your problem quick enough.

I sat down on the sofa, while the delicate sounds of a pan flute softly filled the air, disguising the ultrasounds launched by the PDA. The neighbours’s dogs started barking right away. It was a sweet melody, played together with some notes from a piano and the grave sound of a bass. A fantastic combination, in the opinion of yours truly. I started to read the poem, slowly, in a loud voice:

The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimering.
Tinúviel was dancing there
To the music of a pipe unseen…

I kept reading for several minutes, until I finally saw a movement in the corner of my eye.I looked at the light reflected in the mirror by the water lamp. A portal opened there, slowly, like paint spread out in water, only in the middle of the air. Somewhere, a dog yelped and went quiet. One by one, all the other dogs stopped barking.

A human form came up and crossed the portal, slowly walking towards the stereo. There he was, old Abel. He had tears running down his deep wrinkled face, while listening to the melody. Spirits are more affected by music than us, the living ones.

He recited the whole poem with me, which took several more minutes. I read from the book, he knew the whole poem by heart. He looked like my kid. When we finished, I put down the book on the sofa and got up, calmly aproaching the man.

- I can hear you. – I told him, looking him in the eyes – And see you.
He turned to me, stupefied.
- You can see me? – he asked, eyes wide open.
He had incredible blue eyes.
- Yes. My name is Emma. Emma King. And I am your friend.
He smiled:
- You can see me! – he started laughing, very happy and excited like a child – You can see me! You can see me…

He stopped laughing and pointed at the stairs that went upstairs, with an anxious expression in his face.

- There was a fire… And… And…

He started trembling, with the frustration of the old people who wanted to express themselves faster and couldn’t because of the old age. The moved me immensely and I grabbed his hand:

-I know.

He looked at me, surprised. It’s been years since he was touched by someone and his hand was freezing cold. Heat is something that exists only in our world. The Limbo is an arid place, scarped, dark and cold.

- I’m here, Abel. I’m here with you and I’ll be with you until you tell me what you’ve been trying to tell your family all these years.

He stared me, even more stupefied.

- I have all the time of the world. – I promised him, confident.

Again, tears invaded the deep blue of his eyes:
- I tried… I tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen to me. And then, they disappeared.
- And whenever they came back here, you tried even harder, right? Because when they came, it was always for a very short time.
- Yes! Yes!

“Unfortunately, it scared them even more”, I thought.

- Upstairs… – he said – I was sleeping and… and… I felt my legs hot… But I was so dizzy, and I tried to get up… But I fell! And it hurt! It hurt so bad…

His body began to suffer a strange transformation. His hands and legs caught fire and started to crumple, burning like paper. In his face, the scars started to show up again.

- Abel… – I called – Abel!

He suddenly woke up, wide opening his eyes and fixing them on me. The scars and the flames disappeared.

- Abel, did you fall asleep with a cigarrete in your hands, or in your mouth, in your bedroom?
- No!
His eyes were flooded with with tears again:
- I don’t know… I don’t know!

“OK.”, I thought, “We have a problem.”

- I used to smoke a lot but not in my bedroom. I don’t even know why I was in my bedroom. I don’t know how the fire started. I was so dizzy.… Like I had my pills. .. But I didn’t take anything! I only take them at night!

“So, either the police made a mistake, or someone lied.”

- That’s what I’ve been trying to tell my grandchildren and my daughter. Until I tell them, I cannot leave in peace.

He looked at the stereo. The melody filled the air with sweet sounds, which seemed to sooth him.

- I am not the one who started the fire. – he walked towards the stereo – It wasn’t me who destroyed the house.

He put his hand on top of the stereo, and an expression of sadness invaded his look:

- But they are not here now. They have disappeared for ever… - he looked at me - …and this house will never be the same again.

In this, a shadow rapidly overwhelmed the living room and a violent tornado formed at precisely the same spot where the old man appeared, when he left the Limbo. I clung on to a sofa. The daylight completely went gone and Abel was sucked in by the tornado, vanishing through into the vortex, towards the mirror. The beautiful melody changed into a cacophony of terrible sounds, meddling with the strong wind. The tornado throwed everything in that room to the air, breaking several objects in the way, and when it finished swallowing Abel, it dissolved as fast as it had suddenly formed itself. The sunlight returned to the room and the wind stopped blowing around me. The book of Abel fell at my feet.

I looked around, feeling my hair gradually falling down back to my head. The whole place was a mess.

- Beautiful. – I grumbled.