You’re Never Too Young To Die

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Caleb walked, but not really, his brain firing the necessary neurons to make his legs work, after a fashion, to bring him home. His neurons, indeed all the cells in his body, were bathed in outcastedness. After walking for an hour, an hour of suffering, a distance that should have taken twenty minutes, he came to the front door of his home. The wings that had been holding him up stopped beating and he fell against the door with a thud, holding himself up by the door handle, but when his brother opened the door because of the thud, Cal nearly did fall.

He stumbled past his brother, his eyes empty of life, but Josh did not notice. The walk to his bedroom on the third floor of the house was interminable and two more times, he nearly fell. Josh had called after Cal about work around the property as Cal ascended the staircase, but had gotten no response. In typical brother fashion, Josh shrugged his shoulders, went back to the kitchen and finished making the left-over roast beef and gravy sandwiches for himself and his father who was working in the woodpile on the Southeast corner of the property. Fifty cord was a lot of wood to split by hand. They would not finish that job today.

Mary Colvin Harris Smith was in her late thirties but looked to be in her twenties. With long dark hair and a warm smile, buxom figure and warm, inviting scent that was difficult to name, Mrs. Smith was like a sexy Betty Crocker with a high IQ. Right now, though, she was not smiling.

When Caleb had come home Mary was in the family’s library, crying quietly to herself, waiting for a call back from her closest friend. Sue Joergensen, had just minutes before, called with news that could not be true, then, as she was overcome with grief, quickly hung up. Sue’s world had been shattered in the most unbelievable way and Mary’s world had broken to shards right along with it. Mary had not told her husband or older son what Sue had just told her as they were out back working when the call had come. Patty was still at the swimming hole with the last stragglers before the night of the big end-of-school-year bonfire, and Caleb was somewhere between here and there.

Mary Smith had gotten out of bed that morning in a happy, almost giddy, mood. Her younger boy was about to complete his last day of high school, while her older was coming home for an extended break from seminary to discern his vocation. Her daughter, all of fifteen years old, was blooming into a young woman of exquisite beauty, warmth, and charm.

All of this and she had a special night planned with her husband while her children were at the annual bonfire at Cornelius Beach. She had been preparing a meal of greens with a vinaigrette, wagyu beef fillet and fresh peas from their garden. Those plans were now gone from her mind.

Sue Joergensen was an Icelandic transplant to North Island. A woman of about the same age as Mary, just a shade younger, also beautiful but blonde, she had had Asgeir, meaning “spear of the gods” in Old Norse, after being told that she would never have children. She was then twenty-four and desperately wanted children. Asgeir had been the blessing of all blessings.

From the beginning he had been a sweet child, sleeping through the night and crying only seldom. As he grew, he was a light to all who knew him, often behaving much older than his years. He spoke out loud to beings he called “his Angels” and could describe their appearance in detail.

He had shown a way with the elderly that had astounded people, talking to them and empathizing with them, so his parents, at his request, began taking him to the aged and infirm around parts of New England.

Many were the times he would walk over to an elderly man or woman in their last days, looking hopeless and alone, put a hand on their shoulder, and whisper in their ear, only to have a smile of peace and contentment come over the old one’s face. Asgeir would never tell anyone what he said, nor would his elderly friends.

When asked what the boy had whispered to him, a man who was just over a hundred said, “Son, if you’re lucky enough, one day you may find out.” He then closed his eyes and passed happily.

Mary was in her kitchen washing greens in the sink while the oven preheated for the roast her husband loved so much. The phone in the study rang It was a line that only a few people had the number to. Mary dried her hands on her apron, walked into the study humming “My Favorite Things” to herself in a soft alto and answered the phone.

From the other end came loud sobs. Sue Joergensen was crying, screaming, loudly. All Mary could make out was “He’s gone! Mary, he’s gone!” then she heard the phone hit the floor.

“Hello, Mary, it’s Neils. I have some terrible news.”

“What? What could be so terrible that Sue can’t even speak?”

“Mary, Asgeir was found on a beach today, where the bonfire is every year.”

“What do you mean “found”?

This is where Neils Joergensen began to come apart himself. “Mary, Asgeir was killed. He’s dead. I can’t talk. Sue will call you back in a few minutes.”

“No need. I’m coming over now.”

“No, Mary. Not yet. The police are still here. But Sue needs you. As soon as the police leave, she will call you. I have to go.” Then, silence.

An hour before all this, back at the swimming hole, Caleb safely dispatched in his private Hell crafted for him by forces beyond our ken, Asgeir is having a good time with his friends. He is being a boy, just a boy, and that did not happen very often. Asgeir’s gift, like so many other gifts, had its darker side. He had been an adult in many ways since he learned to talk. He had an understanding of Scripture and of the ways of God that sent respected theologians feeling as if they had wasted their time in getting their educations. He had the gift not only of curing but of healing, which generally has more to do with the mind and spirit than of the body. But these things do not come for free. Asgeir Joergensen rarely had a day where he was not Asgeir Joergensen. The boy was frequently lost behind the gift. Not today, though. Today he was a hot-dog-munching, tire-swinging, laughing boy who was showing off for his girl. He had a girlfriend. He wanted to marry her, though he knew that marriage was not in the cards for him.

He had caught her eye earlier in the year and she was inescapably drawn to him. He was good-looking, but it was much more than that. She was anxious all the time; panic-stricken to the point of missing more days of school than she attended. She was nearly disabled by continuous nausea. Neither drugs nor therapy nor the near constant reassurances of her parents, who loved her dearly, could keep the panic attacks at bay. But one day, Asgeir walked by her in the school hallway and for a moment the anxiety, panic, and nausea were gone. Then she noticed, for this was the only time in her memory that her mind was not overwhelmed by her symptoms, just how handsome Asgeir was. It was all gone in a flash, the panic and nausea returned, but she remembered and sought him out after school. They had very quickly become friends, then a real item. Her parents could not believe it but were grateful. His parents were not surprised in the least.

He was happy that day. He had kissed his girl, he had rough-housed with his buddies, and he had eaten until he was nearly sick. It was beautiful. Then he saw her. He had been expecting her but had thought that she would not come for a while. Yet, there she was. Oh, he knew who she was. Ora was in his grade and she had always steered clear of him. He was too good. He was too much of something that she could not bear most of the time and could not understand at all, but she was no threat to him. However, he knew that the girl in his class, who was just a girl, was not all there was to her larger self. He had known for several months, almost a year, that at some point, she would change, almost like an assassin who has been programmed to kill upon hearing a certain key phrase. He knew that that sort of thing was Hollywood hokum, but in the case of Ora Dufaigh, it was too real.

The being standing at the edge of the water had Ora’s body, but this was not really Ora. She was in there. She had made a pact at some point in the unfathomable past that allowed this, but this being was not Ora.

She looked at him and smiled. He knew it was time. He swam over to his girl, took her in his arms, kissed her softly, looked into her eyes and said “I have to go. You will be alright from now on. I promise. I have been given this promise by Him.”

Glory Audel knew who the “Him” was. She had been with Asgeir long enough to know the odd quirks of his speech. It was one of the things that she loved so dearly about him. His words, though comforting, left her feeling frightened. She looked down at the water. Asgeir seeing her fear, lifted her chin with his right hand so that she was looking straight into him, directly into who he was.

“You will be ok from now on. I have His promise. I love you now. I will love you forever and always. Do you understand?”

She looked into his blue-green eyes, nodding, entranced by his voice and his words. He kissed her one last time, turned and swam to the edge of the swimming hole, leaving Glory Audel in her trance that would last until Asgeir was out of her sight.

As he swam by the boy who had been speaking to Joshua about the seminary, Asgeir stopped for a moment, put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and said “Take care of her Pete. She will be ok, but she will need you. Please take care of her for me.”

The boy, Peter Johns, looked at Asgeir wondering what the heck he was talking about until Asgeir turned to look at Glory. An understanding came over Peter. It was an understanding that was deep; an un-understandable understanding and Peter knew. Asgeir swam off, not looking back. Peter and Glory would name their first child, a boy, Asgeir Neils Johns.

The Lost Boys

And when Pharao had sent out the people, the Lord led them not by the way of the land of the Philistines which is near: thinking lest perhaps they would repent, if they should see wars arise against them, and would return into Egypt.

Ex.13.17

Caleb was on his bed staring into the crook of his arm. He had stripped down to his boxer-briefs, tossed his clothes in a pile beside his bed and was lying on top of the comforter. He was watching the crazed patterns of light that shown on his closed eyelids, trying to hold down the nausea brewing in his gut. The unseen boy (the boy had been following him was walking through the dark forest toward the clearing when he was following Caleb) who had been following him on his walk home now sat, still unseen, in a chair at Caleb’s cluttered desk. From the boy’s perspective, he was lost. He could see a circular clearing of trees. He could see a semi-solid Caleb crumpled on the floor of the clearing, unconscious. He could feel his own terror at being alone, abandoned, feeling tossed aside by God. What he could not see was that Caleb, the part of him not trapped in the clearing, was in his room, on his bed, suffering right along with him.

Anyone who looked closely enough would have seen that Cal was shaking, very slightly shaking, but shaking, never-the-less. He could not believe it, but he was crying. His head, eyes, throat, chest, and stomach hurt. Hopelessness hung over him like a heavy, damp shroud. The tears that ran down from the corners of his eyes felt like acid burning his skin. The breath caught in his throat like steel wool and the sensation of having to vomit was unrelenting.

This was not the first time the despair had threatened to end him. Part of his soul being torn from him in the clearing was only the latest assault in a very carefully planned war that had begun before his conception and whose only planned casualty was Caleb Michael Smith.

When the gray figure had been unable to kill him at his birth and other attempts upon his physical existence failed, it was decided that his mind would become the target. The change of strategy had been a stroke of genius. Progress could be made slowly. It would be hard to notice, especially for the victim. And somehow, someway, for reasons that even the forces unfriendly to Caleb and others could not understand, the Powers-that-Be in Heaven seemed to take less notice if minds and souls died the “death of a thousand cuts” over a lifetime.

“Unfriendly” forces were more than unfriendly. They did not just want to hurt Caleb or anyone who was their target. These beings of dark intent wanted to make their targets, and those around them, hurt as much as possible. Toward that end, these forces had allowed Caleb to reach the age of eight before their efforts began in earnest. They allowed his mother to get used to a happy, cheerful child. When Mary was at her most content, the malevolent beings began to take jabs at her son’s psyche. The fear and disappointment had that much more powerful an effect. Mary’s once smiling child was transformed into a child who periodically went into dark funks from which he could not be retrieved for days on end.

The demons are smart. Some of them are smart. Ok, most of them are dumb as nail clippings. Amongst the smart ones, a certain subset were mind-bendingly smart. Intellects on a cosmic scale. Where the bell-curves of Demon-Badness and Demon-Smartness intersect is where the really dangerous ones are. High intellect alloyed with high psychosis is frightening. High dope factor combined with a penchant for evil is also frightening. When the dumb-asses of Hell carry out the plans of the Einsteins of Hell, terrible, terrible things can, no, will happen.

In the case of Caleb, the smart ones had told the dumb ones to carry out a siege on his mind, it was a terrible, terrible thing. Sometimes the demons would leave him alone for a year or more. He, and his family would begin to think that he was well again, the old Caleb had returned. Then, with all the grace of a mugging, the dark times would return, and worse than before. Cal would retreat to his room, lying on top of his covers in his underwear, because being under the covers felt too suffocating. An eleven-year-old boy who could find and correct mistakes he found in his father’s graduate engineering texts was reduced to staring blankly at the ceiling in his room, at times unable to respond to anything said to him.

At the moment, Caleb was afraid to even move. As if any movement on his part would push the wrong domino and the rest of his world would come tumbling down. He could feel himself being pulled from the inside and out in every direction.

Asgeir was a lost boy. He was fragmented and lost. He sat in his fragmented lostness, staring into the sky of unfriendly stars. His only comfort was the semi-transparent body of his friend, Cal, laid out next to him. He could not remember how he had gotten to the clearing. He could not remember where he had come from. He could not remember who he was or had been, for he was sure of only two things; He was dead and the large boy lying next to him had been his friend, though his friend’s name escaped him.

Since being dragged here by the monsters, he had been attacked several times by creatures he could not see in the light that came from nowhere but shone, dimly, everywhere. The only warning that the creatures were nearby was the feeling of their claws and teeth sinking into his flesh. As they bit and scratched they would appear fleetingly, not quite even shadows, eyes hungry, tongues licking. probing, tasting until his now nearly naked body was covered in scratches, bits and a thick, foul-smelling saliva that both burned his cuts and nauseated him.

The pressure in Caleb’s head would have been unbearable under normal circumstances. Under the current circumstances, he wanted to blow his head off before it exploded of its own accord.

When he could take no more he jumped out of bed over to his desk and sat down, elbows on the desk, head held in his hands. The mirror that sat on the wall behind the desk did not show any kind of strange things that people see in movies. There were no apparitions, no ghostly images, no alternate versions of himself, ala the Twilight Zone. The only image that shone in the looking glass was that of a brilliant but confused seventeen-year-old boy at the end of his rope not knowing what to do or even what was wrong with him.

He puts his hands on either side of his face so that he could look into his own eyes staring back at him. Whenever he was particularly agitated he would do this, look directly into his own eyes in a mirror. It was as if he were looking for the answers to questions he did not even know how to ask there. The answers never came.

He looked at himself, stared at his own blue-green eyes, then he spoke. “Why are you doing this to me? What have I ever done to you? Please leave me alone!”

At these times he was not even sure to whom he was speaking. Was he speaking to himself? He did not think so. It felt as if he were speaking to the psychic parasite that had taken up residence in him at some point. What he did not know was that feeling was almost dead-on accurate.

He sat at his desk trying to fall into the looking glass, trying to lose himself in himself, trying to tumble out of this world, this body, this mind, this life and into one that better suited him. He did this for what felt like hours because it was until he heard a gentle knock on his door.

“Son, may I come in? Josh said he saw you come up here when we were expecting you outside with us.”

“Come in, Pops. The door is open.”

Arthur opened the door, almost gingerly, trying to signal to his son that he knew the boy was suffering terribly and that he was here to help in any way he could. His father walked quietly into Caleb’s room and sat on the bed behind him. He could see his son’s face in the mirror and so could see just how much pain the boy was in. The man noted with some pride that his son was no longer really a boy. His son was muscular, the last remnants of his being a boy were almost gone. Caleb looked like a bull moose sitting in a chair. Arthur just wished that his son’s mind, emotionally, anyway, could be as strong as his body.

Arthur Smith sat on the bed, looking at his son looking at himself in the mirror, not knowing exactly what to say. Arthur was himself a big, burly man with a less-than-friendly exterior appearance, but that was all show. He was a soft-hearted man who hurt as much for his son as his son hurt for himself.

The silence was uncomfortable, so Arthur said “Have you seen your mother? When I came in to look for you, she was not in the kitchen.”

In a low monotone Caleb replied, “I do not know, Pops. When I came home I saw Josh, then I came straight up here.” Then he was out of gas. To speak another word for at least a few minutes would be torture.

“Cal, what happened? This morning you looked ok, but I had an odd feeling about today. I hoped that I was just being over-cautious. I wished that’s all it was.”

“Things are happening, again.”

“The things you told us about when you were a boy?”

“Yeah. I guess so” Cal said trying to be mildly evasive out of embarrassment.

“Cal, when these things first started happening I admit that I did not believe that there was any kind of outside cause.”

“I know, Pops. I still don’t believe in that balderdash that mom talks about.”

“Son, I think you may have to widen your set of beliefs. There is more to this world than equations and finely crafted sentences.”

“This thing…this thing that is inside of me….I can feel it. That is what bothers me; I feel as if something has either taken part of me or has taken up residence inside my mind, or both. Either explanation sounds stupid to me, Pops. I do not like this.”

Caleb said this in a low voice, nearly a whisper, with his forehead in his hands.

His father was about to speak when Joshua opened the door, out of breath. “Pops, you’ve got to come downstairs now!”

“Joshua, I’m trying to help your brother. What’s the problem?”

“I’ll stay here with Cal. Mom really needs you downstairs.”

“Well, what is it, Josh? Can’t it wait a few minutes?”

“Dad, I can’t go into it right now. You need to go see mom, now!”

When Josh switched from “Pops” to “Dad”, Arthur knew to stop arguing and go to his wife.

Arthur Smith made his way down the labyrinthine staircase quickly coming out on the first floor calling for his wife.

“Mary! Mary! Where are you?”

The only response was the just audible sobs he heard coming from the library. He walked to the library, opened the door to see his wife, crumpled on the large leather sofa, phone receiver in her hand. A busy signal blared from the receiver and Mary was visibly shaking and sobbing.

Arthur ran to his wife, lifted her from the sofa, sat and held her on his lap. “Honey, what’s going on? Between you and Cal, half the house is in a bad place!”

“Oh, no! What’s happening with my baby boy?!” Mary said through her tears looking up at her husband.

Arthur gave her a sad look in answer. “So what’s happened to have my girl crying so?”

“I got a call from Sue. I can hardly think the words. Artie, Asgeir was found on Cornelius Beach this afternoon. He was….” She could not finish the words.

A knife of pain stabbed at Arthur Smith. If there were two other boys who had been like sons to this family they were Harry Martin and Asgeir Joergensen. This situation had always struck Arthur as a happy but odd sort of thing. Harry Martin was a good young man and had stood by Cal during the worst of his storms. Harry had always been a loving and obedient son to his parents and was no less than that to Arthur and Mary. There was a big “however”, however. Harry had something hard and sharp deep in his soul. Harry had fangs that he had never shown, to the best of Arthur’s knowledge, but Arthur could sense that they were there.

Asgeir was a sort of yang to Harry’s yin. Asgeir was good through to his core. He was not a Kaspar Milquetoast, though. Not by a long shot. The fact that Harry respected Asgeir, (feared him a little?), told anyone with eyes what the younger boy was made from. However you sliced it, though, the Smiths, Martins, and Joergensens were not really three families, but one, large extended family. To Arthur Smith, it was a beautiful thing. If what Mary said was true, and he knew it was, their large extended family had just been dealt a blow from which it would not recover for a long, long time.

“I have to go see Sue. She’s almost catatonic from grief.”

“I understand, sweetheart. I will drive you over there. You are in no condition to go alone and I want to see Neils while you comfort Sue. I think that the boys should come, too. Caleb, himself, is in no condition to be left alone. I’m afraid of what he might do if left alone.”

“Is my boy that bad”

“Yes, Mary, he is.”

“Then he needs me, too. Joanna Martin is on her way to Sue’s place. Sue and Joanna will want to see Caleb as badly as he needs to see them. Cal’s state and Asgeir’s death are related, Artie. I just know it.”

“I hate to think that that’s true, but you might be right.”

“We will get each other through this.”

Arthur kissed his wife on top of her head, “Yes. Yes, we will. I think that we should let Caleb and Josh stay here. Josh will look after his baby brother.”

Category: You’re Never Too Young To Die

Angels, and ministers of grace, defend us!