“…Shit”
As soon as the words leave Greg’s mouth, the man who is telepathically lifting his best friend off the floor, turns his attention towards him, and he looks pissed. The intense stare is accentuated by the glow from his eye. He’s obviously upset by the intrusion of Greg and wants to remove the distraction immediately. The momentary lapse in concentration is enough for Ezra to regain control of his body and fight back.
And boy, does he fight back.
With the intruder’s focus now on Greg, Ezra falls to the ground, and immediately pushes himself up to a standing position, simultaneously spreading his arms wide and then slapping them together in front of him. The resounding shockwave that follows rattles the windows and the walls around them. In the blink of an eye, the attacker who was standing across from Ezra, and about to attack Greg, is blasted through the wall behind him and through the next few walls beyond that.
The force of it knocks Greg on his ass into the hallway, and his ears begin ringing like he was standing next to a cannon.
He reaches up to cover them with his hands, when all of a sudden something grabs him under his arms and lifts him off the ground like a small child. When he opens his eyes, he sees the side of Ezra’s head next to him. Looking back up the hallway he sees the dust settling around the doorway he was previously occupying and it’s thicker than a veil of smoke.
He’s moving away from the explosion at a surprising speed, especially considering how he’s being transported from the scene.
As he considers what snarky comment to make to his friend, Ezra slows down to a stop, and drops Greg onto the floor. By now, they’ve reached the other end of the building and are about to descend the stairs to the floor below.
Ezra and Greg are both panting.
Greg turns to ask his question, and notices Ezra is refusing to meet his stare.
“When we first met, didn’t you say that Ezra is short for something?” Greg asks.
Ezra turns as if to address him, but looks away again as if torn between two paths.
“Not now,” he says. With that, he gets up and dusts himself off while catching his breath. “We have to keep moving. Let’s go.”
Before Greg can stand up and argue, Ezra runs down the stairs, taking a couple at a time. A loud noise up the hallway motivates Greg to get moving as well, and before long he’s bounding after Ezra in one of the first floor hallways.
Entering the grand entrance for the terminal, Ezra stops and stands still, looking at the ground as if listening for something. Greg almost runs into him, but stops in time, once again panting from the sudden need for physical activity.
“We have to get the hell outta here, Ezra. What the hell are you doing? Come on.”
All Ezra does is shoot him a look before he starts moving his hands in weird ways in front of him, and whispering some type of language that Greg has never heard. Or maybe he has?
“Is that Latin?” he asks.
Ezra’s response is in the form of an empathic slapping of his hands to his chest, and then holding that pose. Greg, cautiously viewing the entire situation from a few feet away, almost bursts out laughing at the way his friend is acting. Some hanging sense of dread in the air stops the laugh in his throat, as the very air around him seems to contain some electric feel.
An explosion through the ceiling above knocks Greg on his ass again, and he slides across the floor as dust comes falling down like snow.
When he’s finally able to clear his eyes of the debris, he sees Ezra and this other person fighting, and he can’t believe how fast and strong his old friend looks. He appears to be an entirely different person. Ezra grabs the man by his shoulders, steps forward, and using his hip as a leverage point, throws the man to the ground. Again, the shockwave created by the move seems to be something out of an action movie. Greg is speechless.
While Ezra towers over this individual, he starts chanting Latin again, and suddenly he slams his hand, in an open palm strike, into the man’s chest.
The man disappears. Just like that, the person who attacked them is gone, and the dust and debris surrounding the two of them is spread out like some kind of impact zone from a missile. Eventually, Greg finds the courage to push himself up and walk over to his friend, who is breathing heavily, but steadily, over the spot where the man was lying.
“You okay?” Greg asks, cautiously keeping his distance still.
Ezra simply nods as he continues to catch his breath.
“Uh…do we want to talk about that? What…what just happened?”
“Ahem…” Ezra clears his throat, “not just yet, Greg. I’m sorry, but we still have work to do.”
He finishes the statement by pointing over Greg’s shoulder at some distant point behind him. Greg turns to look, but doesn’t see anything.
“What? I don’t see anything.”
“Pull out your EMF reader.”
Greg checks his back pocket. He completely forgot how it got there after that initial explosion knocked him down upstairs. Did he put it back? Did Ezra magically do it while he picked him up to run down the hallway? How did he do that anyway?
He catches himself staring at the EMF reader in his hands while his mind cycles through all the questions. After flicking the switch on the side, the device comes to life. A low whirring is heard with a few flicks of the lights, but as he turns and faces the point that Ezra mentioned, it begins to light up like a christmas tree.
Greg turns to look at Ezra for confirmation, who nods in the affirmative, so he walks towards the signal as it gets stronger and stronger. When he feels comfortable that he’s near enough, he stops and places his flashlight on the ground. The light is on and pointing away from him.
“If someone is here,” he begins to say, “please turn the light off.”
After a moment, the light momentarily shuts off, then back on again.
“Great, thank you. Can I ask you a few questions? Just ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Turn off the light once for yes, and twice for no. Do you understand?”
This time, it takes a second or two longer, but the response comes back in the affirmative. As Greg prepares his questioning to discover if this is the spirit of the soldier they’ve come to commune with, he feels something approaching his side. Ezra places a hand on his shoulder and looks over at him with compassion in his eyes.
“I’m sorry for all the surprises tonight, friend, but there are things outside your understanding happening here and I need answers. I’ll explain what I can later. Right now, I need those answers.”
He pats Greg on the shoulder in a way that can only come off as patronizing, but Greg is still so caught up in the mystery of the night that he doesn’t care. He simply watches as Ezra takes another step forward, toward the spirit, and starts moving his hands in weird shapes in front of him again.
That’s it. I’ve lost my fucking mind, Greg thinks as he watches his friend dancing with his hands in front of a ghost.
Suddenly, a veil seems to appear in front of Ezra. It looks like a fog, on the foggiest morning you’ve seen, but all within an area about three feet wide and three feet high. Slowly, something starts to come through the fog. Or maybe not come through it, but somehow seen through it. Like wiping a mirror in a bathroom after a hot shower. Before long, a person can be seen. A person dressed like a soldier from 1945.
“Hello,” Ezra says.
The ghost looks over to Ezra. Some level of recognition is there, and then it speaks, and Greg can actually hear it as if the veil somehow transmits sound as well as sight.
“You can see me,” it says. “I can tell by the way you’re looking into my eyes, you can actually see me.”
“That’s correct,” Ezra replies. “I’m sorry for this. I know it can be overwhelming, but I need answers that I’m hoping you can provide.”
The spirit shuffles back and forth ever so slightly. It’s nervous for some reason, and Ezra reads it.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve spoken to a man through this method, is it?” he asks.
The eyes of the ghost dart back and forth, past Ezra and Greg, searching the surrounding area for some other threat that may or may not be there.
“No,” is all it says.
“What did he want with you?”
“Nothing. He didn’t want anything. He just told me that you would be coming, and that he wants to speak with you. I guess I was just bait.”
The spirit looks down as if that diminishes him somehow. A proud soldier, who fought bravely for his country, reduced to a pawn in someone’s trap. Greg feels sorrow for him, and debates speaking up to comfort him, but Ezra speaks up first.
“Did he mention what his plan was after I came and he spoke with me?”
“He said the two of you would leave, and I would be at peace, but I don’t know how.”
Ezra drops his head a moment, a thought crossing his mind. He then looks over at Greg who is still standing speechless next to him. He chooses to not hide from his friend any longer.
“You will be at peace. Thank you, sir. For everything you’ve done.”
With that, Ezra’s fingers and hands dance once again, as he speaks a few lines of Latin, and the spirit slowly fades away from the veil. When he’s completely gone, Ezra closes the veil with another few movements. He and Greg stand in silence. Ezra knows Greg is still digesting all that he’s seen tonight and he doesn’t want to speak too soon. Silence forces the seconds to pass by like minutes. Eventually, Greg musters the courage to ask the only logical question in his mind.
“Who are you?”
Writing by Adam 