The Shelter Cycle Read online

  Wells drove away, toward home. He called Francine’s cell and it went straight to voicemail; he didn’t leave a message. He hoped she was waiting at home, awake, though he couldn’t blame her for sleeping, considering the hours she’d been working.

  As he turned into the driveway, he saw the girl. She coasted down the sidewalk on that red bike, dark hair blowing behind her. She swooped past, circled around as he parked the truck and climbed out.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hi,” she said, slowing but not stopping.

  “I live right here,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m your neighbor.”

  “I know that,” she said.

  “Your name’s Della?” he said.

  “Everyone knows that!” Standing up on her pedals, she sped away, looking back over her shoulder as she reached her blue house, where a shadow shifted in an upstairs window. Her mother or father, keeping track. Lately they’d been on the radio, asking for help, pleading with whoever had taken their daughter to come forward, to bring her back. There was a new billboard of her giant face, too, that hung over the highway, looking down at him as he drove to work.

  Wells walked around the truck, unlatched the gate to the back yard, let Kilo out. The dog followed him in through the side door, into the kitchen. Down the hallway, Wells eased the bedroom door open, squinted in the dim light. The bed was made, or half made, as he’d left it this morning.

  “Francine?” he called, just raising his voice.

  He’d forgotten—she’d said something about picking up an extra shift, perhaps, working tonight. Something like that. He walked back into the kitchen, looked out the window. Francine’s car wasn’t in the driveway—he hadn’t even noticed on the way in. He picked up the phone on the counter, dialed her cell again.

  “Kilo,” he said, stumbling. “You’re underfoot.”

  As he waited for Francine to answer, or to leave a message, the ringing in his ear was echoed by a louder ringing somewhere in the house. He followed the sound down the hallway to the bedroom, where Francine’s phone was ringing atop her bare dresser. He almost answered it, then hung up the other phone, still in his hand. The house went quiet again.

  The baby’s room had become Francine’s place, where she went in the middle of the night, typing on the computer or rearranging the baby’s things. He stepped inside—the crib, the mobile, the desk—and opened the closet, looked at the metal shelves they’d installed there months before. Baby clothes and blankets, all shades of blue and purple, all chosen by Francine. He lifted up a fleece sleep suit, set it down. What if they had a girl?

  The computer hummed, the screensaver bouncing a prism of colored light from edge to edge. When he tapped the keyboard, the screen flashed blue and, after a moment, began cycling through pictures of other times, other places. Back on the campus in Salt Lake City, not long after they met; and when Kilo was a puppy; a photo of himself, swimming in a mountain lake last summer; then one of Francine, just the long pale length of her, running across a campsite, smiling, right before she ran off into the forest like that. It was gone too quickly, shifting to a picnic, then a picture of this house when they bought it, the rooms so bare—

  Wells stood watching, forgetting everything, laughing to himself with each new picture, and then the screen dimmed and went black again, reflecting his expectant face, his hair sticking up, his arms crossed. He stepped back, looked around. The mattress leaning against the wall, the desk, the closed closet door, the wheeled office chair with dust on its vinyl arms. Above the crib, the horses on the mobile spun, the air stirred by his body moving inside this space.

  When he tapped the space bar on the keyboard, the screensaver stopped, and the photos started again. He tapped the space bar again and then the screen shone bright blue. He clicked on the hard drive, then the Documents folder, checked the dates when files had last been edited.

  In the silence he expected to hear the door opening, Francine’s voice calling his name. He clicked on the document named “Shelter Cycle,” then waited, the white rectangle opening.

  The page was full of words, sentences, paragraphs. He read the first line:

  When I was out by myself in the mountains, I liked to think he was somewhere in the trees.

  His gaze trailed down, skipping ahead. He reached for the chair, began to sit, then switched on the printer, checked the tray. He’d print it all out, then read it in the living room—that way he could see Francine returning, if she wasn’t working tonight, if she came home early.

  For the big services and the conferences we drove south from Glastonbury, along the Yellowstone River, twenty or so miles to Corwin Springs, where the headquarters were and the Messenger lived.

  This was in our station wagon, my father driving and my mother leading the Archangel Michael decrees, for protection. Maya and I sat in the back; behind us and in front of us drove other cars from the Activity, our combined energy keeping Entities and Forcefields at bay. If a motorcycle passed, we sped up our decrees, got louder. No person with any Light rode a motorcycle, only Fallen Ones who liked the vibration between their legs, the noise and the smoke. You had to be careful not to let such a rider look into your eyes.

  If it was summer we went up into the mountains, to a high meadow full of energy, the Heart of the Inner Retreat. In the winter the services happened in a big building, a chapel called King Arthur’s Court; it only held the adults, so we children were split up by age and taken to trailers, where we were fed and could sleep until our parents were finished.

  This night that’s where we were, in a trailer. The women called to tend us bustled around the kitchen, where all the cabinets and doors had to be completely shut at all times, to keep dark spirits from getting in or coming out. Above the door that went outside was a picture of Cyclopea, the all-seeing eye of God. A right eye, blue, with rays shooting out. It never stopped watching us.

  Colville lived here, at Corwin Springs; he’d moved away from us months before. His hair hung down in his eyes so he was always shaking his head now, and he had new friends. He didn’t sit with me. He sat right behind me, his back almost touching mine, so I could hear him talking.

  I could tell by my feelings that I missed him, his family, all the space where his family had been; we hadn’t moved into their rooms. I ate my rice-and-bean stew and listened as he talked about the shelter up at the Heart, how his father had shown it to him even though he wasn’t supposed to. The shelter would hold more than seven hundred people, and there was another underground place for animals. We’d need animals after the blast, ones that hadn’t breathed fallout or radiation. There were also storage rooms full of coins, since paper money wouldn’t be any good, and a concrete vault where all the Messenger’s Teachings and dictations would be kept. There were even places, Colville said, where army tanks were hidden, ready to protect us.

  The trailer was crowded. Kids cried, some talking in a language no one understood. Some of the adults tried Spanish, and that didn’t work. They decided the kids were Dutch. No one spoke that.

  After they took our plates away, the adults wheeled a television out on a cart. The service was broadcast on a closed circuit from King Arthur’s Court, and the adults wanted to watch it. They told us to play quietly with the jigsaw puzzles and the geography books. We half obeyed, whispering to each other, looking sideways at the screen. At first there was only silence; people filed in, sitting in a special order. They meditated with their hands on their knees, their palms facing upward. The altar had a huge picture of Saint Germain and one of Jesus Christ; between them was a bigger picture of the Chart of Your Divine Self, all blue and purple and white rays, the little person at the bottom with the Crystal Cord reaching up from his heart, up to ascension. Below that was a long golden table covered in flowers. Soon the people on the screen began to decree.

  I AM the Violet Flame

  In action in me now

  I AM the Violet Flame

  To Light alone I bow

  Along the traile
r’s floor, mats had been rolled out for us. As the decrees came in their rhythm, over and over, they lulled us all toward sleep. Colville lay on a mat near mine, stretched out on his stomach, drawing something on a piece of paper, whispering to himself. I was working on a puzzle of three puppies, black and white, playing in some flowers. On the screen the whole crowd was decreeing. I could hear it outside, too, from other trailers and maybe even from King Arthur’s Court, half a mile away. Hail Saint Germain! Hail Saint Germain! Hail Saint Germain! They raised their hands and chanted louder.

  I AM the Violet Flame

  In mighty Cosmic Power

  I AM the Violet Flame

  Shining Every Hour

  I AM the Violet Flame

  Blazing like a sun

  I AM God’s sacred power

  Freeing everyone

  The decree came fast, in circles. With every time around, the energy rose. The more voices, the more vibration, the more Light to send out into the world. The Violet Flame decrees shook the bad thoughts and feelings from us, and situations, and other people, far away. If our thoughts vibrated with enough power, we could see and understand things that had been beyond our range before, like the way dogs can hear whistles at high frequencies. If we could balance the dark with our Light, so much more would be visible. For instance, all the Elementals that surrounded us.

  I slowly slid my mat closer to the television. I leaned in toward the screen and stared into all the tiny decreeing faces, listened to their voices. Sometimes in a service, the Light would come down so powerfully that a person would just collapse. I could see that happening, here and there in the crowd, and I leaned close, squinting to be sure it wasn’t my mom. I was always afraid that she would be taken by the spirit. My father, he loved to decree. Once I heard him say that decreeing surrounded by hundreds of people for twelve hours straight was better than putting two hits of acid on his tongue. What he meant was that it took his soul out of his body, happy, closer to where we all came from.

  Someone whispered my name, then. It was Colville, still flat on his stomach, sliding closer. He whispered, his voice along the floor, telling me that the two of us were not supposed to be apart, but that we had to be, for a time, because of his brother. He said that the Messenger had been talking with his brother, even though the baby wasn’t born yet. The baby would be special, a boy of great Light, necessary in the coming trials. I nodded. I told him I believed it, and I did believe it. We both went silent, watching and listening, so close together again.

  All the decreeing had finally cleared enough energy that the Messenger could appear. She entered the stage in a white gown, floating almost, sitting on a blue chair while things settled. Then she stood and crossed the blue stage, flowers all around, crystal chandeliers overhead. There was no sound at all until she spoke.

  She called everyone dearly beloved friends, Keepers of the Flame. She warned that not enough Violet Flame had yet been called forth to reverse the tide, to transmute or stop her prophecies from coming into being. Her voice echoed. She said that she had been on Atlantis and Lemuria and that she was still here, loving us. Her face was fixed, staring; and then her voice went deeper, into a kind of monotone, as she dictated from the Ascended Master Saint Germain. His handsome face shone in the painting behind her—his blond mustache and pointed beard and swept-back hair, his calm, pale eyes.

  Through the Messenger he told us that we should stay close to the shelters, to listen to the news. He seemed to be promising something, to know something, and not quite to say it to us. He told us to give up earthly attachments, to be willing to leave everything behind.

  The Ascended Masters could speak to us only through the Messenger. She spoke in their voices, dictated their thoughts and feelings with her voice. When the Masters communicated, it was at such a high vibration that only the Messenger could hear them. And even if you could hear or see a Master, your body would be shaken apart by the energy, the vibrations. The Messenger could withstand it, so their voices came through her to us.

  Some of this, as I write it now, hardly seems real to me, or believable. But I wonder how much anything can slip away from inside you if you believed it at one time. I write one memory in this letter, then remember another, and another, all coming up from inside to surprise me.

  That night I closed my eyes because it hurt them to stay focused on the Messenger too long. I smelled propane, heard the baseboard heaters’ rattle. I wasn’t afraid. I trusted my parents, even if our shelter held only seventy people, not seven hundred. I knew we were prepared. Stretched out, I listened, the puzzle pieces close to my face, the smell of cardboard.

  The Ascended Masters were once people like us who had simply shone a little brighter, a brotherhood of spiritual beings who had ascended. Instead of staying in the higher planes, they came back to work with us, to make life on earth better. There were hundreds of them, and they all had different concerns, and we had to learn from each of them. The ones we mostly talked about were the Masters of the Seven Rays, the colors of the visible spectrum. Saint Germain was on the seventh ray, the Violet Ray, and violet light had the shortest wavelength, the highest frequency, the most energy, the greatest ability to change matter. He had been in Atlantis as well as Lemuria, like the Messenger, and in his embodiments he’d lived as the prophet Samuel, and Joseph, Christopher Columbus, Merlin the Magician, Francis Bacon, and plenty of others. His ray was also called the Freedom Ray, which is what made him so interested in America.

  The Masters watched everything we did, and they would tell the Messenger. How much meat we ate, or if we wore red or black or had it in our house. If we listened to rock and roll, if we decreed or did not decree. If our Light was shining or if it was dim.

  While we children slept in that trailer, the dictations, the decrees, the voices entered us, our dreams, taught us. I don’t know if I slept. When I looked up again, the Messenger was still talking, now swinging a large sword through the air, slicing through the energy, piercing the planes where dark Entities lurked, waiting to do us wrong. I’d taken my shoes off, or someone else had; I stood, barefoot, and wove my way unsteadily around all the other kids, asleep on the floor. The adults were still watching the screen, whispering decrees. They didn’t notice me.

  I went into the bathroom and shut the door. I did not turn on the light. The one window was iced, frosted over, and when I turned the handle the ice cracked and the window came open, a little at a time. Cold air sliced in; I was awake.

  The snow had stopped falling. Squares of yellow glowed, the windows of other trailers, where people were still listening to the service. Moonlight shone down on the white slopes.

  The Messenger’s voice was everywhere, traveling all through that lighted landscape. I couldn’t make out the words she was saying. It felt special that thousands of other people were so quiet, listening between the words, listening to the words. There was this wonderful hush of attention, this echoing voice that everyone in all the miles around us was straining to hear, that was focusing us all in this amazing way. All up the white slopes into the dark trees, the night sky, the canyons where the narrow roads went, five miles away into the Heart of the Inner Retreat, where the shelter was waiting, where men were probably working at that very moment.

  Later, much later, our parents came for us. They picked us up, bundled us up, carried us out to our idling cars with the heaters blasting. It had to be hours after midnight, and my parents didn’t seem tired at all. They were energized, full of energy. I could feel the wild vibrations in their arms. The air around us felt like everything was about to happen.

  5

  A CANDLE, A MATCH. These were what Colville needed, and he was only half unpacked; he’d moved into this motel room hours ago, and tomorrow he’d be gone again. It was a precaution, this constant movement—it kept the dark forces and spirits confused, so they could not find and surprise him. After all, the Messenger herself had often slept in a golden bus that was driven all night, never still.

 
He felt so much inside these days, so much Light, as if anything were possible. There were still moments when he tried to explain something and people’s expressions showed that they couldn’t follow, or that they felt sorry for him—when he feared he would begin to cry, or he did start crying, just walking down the street or riding a bus. Those moments came less and less frequently now, the more he trusted his path, the further he followed it.

  At last he found a book of matches in a drawer, a candle in the side pocket of his orange frame pack. After lighting the candle, he set it on the seat of the chair. He sat cross-legged on the floor and, placing his hand over his heart, stared at the flame for several seconds. He closed his eyes, visualized the flame in his mind’s eye, turned it violet, held it there. It climbed, its point sharp; gradually, it began to flicker. He tried to draw his focus to his heart again, to slow his breathing. Yesterday, the flame had not wavered at all. He’d been so certain, he’d sensed that he was being called to the mountains, back to the Heart to renew his balance and purify his Light. Now he could not hold it steady. The violet flame forked and twisted.

  A knock, a knocking at the door.

  He opened his eyes.

  He blew out the candle and steadied himself against the wall, then hurried to the door, squinted through the peephole.

  Francine. Standing there, she licked her lips, turned her head from side to side.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Don’t go.” He found his pants on the floor, pulled them on, searched his pack for a clean shirt. Then, ready, he opened the door.

  She wore white clogs, a white jacket with her name embroidered in red thread above the pocket. Cursive. Her hair was loose, sticking up a little on one side, and her dark eyes were on him, watching and waiting.