Orleans

J. Gonzo Booth 8,078

[email protected]

ORLEANS

Part One: “Ella Morton”

Part Two: Voice “A”

Part Three: Voice “B”

Part Four: Voice “C”

Part Five: Voice “D”

Part Six: “Like waking up”

Part Seven: “The Grand Finale”

ORLEANS

Part One

“Ella”

I tell myself I will not go, even as we drive there. It seems strange to suddenly show up to visit grandma after not seeing her for fifteen years or so. But I truly felt obligated because it was my dad’s mom, and she had been nice to me and my brothers, in spite of the volatile marriage between her son and my mom. As we maneuver through the city, I find that I’m curious to talk to her or maybe even get some family information, as a lot of my heritage is cloudy.

She was in a very quiet, slightly dark room that was reminiscent of a hospital room except all the critical care equipment was hiding in cabinets. My grandmother’s name is Ella and she is nonresponsive and despondent. It’s equivalent to a light coma, or so it was explained to me by “Hospice Technician Barb Allen” at “pleasant View Home”. I decided to visit with her anyway.

“Grandma?” I whispered.

I tried to sing it lightly, “Grand ma”.

No answer and no response.

“She can hear you, just talk with her,” Barb reassured me.

This was immediately awkward. I’m alone in the dark talking with my nearly brain dead grandmother and I’m struggling with something to say.

“I guess it doesn’t really matter what I say because if she knows inside her head that I was hear then I have done what my dying father asked me to do.

That was a good thought.

I have nothing but fond memories of Ella Booth. She was the stereotypical baking and cooking Grandma. But there was something else, something special about Ella. On at least a dozen occasions I saw Ella phase out in a trance like state. Sometimes it lasted for a few minutes and other times it would go full blown convulsions complete with twitching, slobbering and speaking in tongues. This is a phenomenon that happens with a few people

Who claim to be touched by God? Ella claimed to have a personal relationship with god, and was a practicing Christian. When I was four years old speaking in tongues sounded funny. At eight it was weird but still funny. But when I was fourteen, I knew she was something special. Ella had one of her spells and recited nine verses of the Old Testament in three different languages at the same time. She was beyond our world and she was still so humble that she would finish every sentence with, “Praise lord”. These are the best childhood memories I have and I loved my grandma very much and I always looked forward to visiting grandma Ella.

As I stood in the near dark room looking down at Ella and she has the most serene expression. I spoke gently but out loud,

“I think you’re going to be alright”.

“Praise Lord” came out of her mouth.

I did a double take and asked her,

“Can you hear me?’

“Did you just say something to me?”

There was no response at first. Then, as light as a breath she whispered,

“More tomorrow”.

I made my way hurriedly to the nurse’s station and asked the nurse on duty,

“Is there any way my grandma could have spoke to me?”

“Oh my no, she is catatonic and incapable of a cognitive thought, let alone saying it,” the nurse explained.

I wanted to ask more, but I got the strangest feeling to just come back tomorrow.

”See you tomorrow,” I told the nurse and she politely nodded back at me.

I could not deny a feeling of being pulled in eight different directions when I stepped outside the facility. I felt like I knew exactly where I was at but completely lost and everything was a similar version of my hometown. I shook my head back and forth to try to clear my vision. It was a very strong “pulling” at my insides and it made me dizzy. I went down on one knee and caught my breath and began feeling better instantly.

“Stood up way too fast,” I thought as I started down the block.

“More tomorrow” reverberated in my head all by itself.

I showed up on time the next day for my visit with Ella and sat in a chair next to her bed. The room quieted and I said jokingly,

“Feel like chatting?”

Her left eye cracked open and blinked until it fixed on me.

“Praise lord it’s good to see you Jamie,” she whispered.

I panicked and yelled out for the nurse, and she responded with great urgency.

“She talked to me.” I said.

The RN looked at Ella and then me and then Ella and then back at me and said,

“No, I’m sorry but she just isn’t capable of what you say.”

I am quite sure she was angry or at least annoyed with me as she rushed out of the room. The room quieted again. Her eye opened again and she said,

“You are my grandson and you can hear me, Praise Lord, and I have much to tell you.”

“I am freaking out grandma, I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said as I bolted out the door.

I sat up in my bed unable to sleep when it came to me. I would prove that she was talking to me with an old cassette recorder I have and five cassette tapes. The plan was cloak and dagger with me smuggling in the recorder and secretly taping our talks.

Again I showed up on time to see Ella and sat in the chair next to her bed. I took out the recorder and sat it on the bed and pushed the red button marked,

”Rec.”

“Hello grandma, it’s me, James,” I said softly.

“Well hello Jamie, it is so good to see you again,” Ella said.

As she spoke she turned her head and opened her eyes, exposing only whites with no color or pupil. She was now visibly shaking but the whites of her eyes stay fixed on me. She began speaking in different languages at the same time in different pitches. I could hear two or three dialects that resembled squeezing a cat while speaking Egyptian backwards. I am so glad to have the recorder going but not for the reason I set out with. There’s more to the story and I can literally feel the path I’m on. There were three complete cassettes I recorded before it was over for Ella, totaling six sessions of her speaking in tongues.

Six days later Ella Booth died in her coma with all the angels standing by with open arms. I was distraught and unsure of how I felt even though I was completely aware of her medical condition. But I was so glad to have those recordings and the real gift they are. She took special care to give them to me and only me.

That was nineteen eighty four. After four or five moves and storage at my parent’s house, the tapes wouldn’t see the light of day for eleven years. It’s now nineteen ninety five and the tapes are about to wake up.

ORLEANS

Part Two

“Voice A”

I honestly hoped this was the last full scale move I would have to do. This house had room for everything including my home studio for recording music. The musical gene has showed up in four generations of my father’s bloodline. I write dozens of songs and record them but have not recorded “the one”, yet.

On this particular day I was working on a Dixieland jazz piece and was looking through boxes for sample music when I happened upon a small box labeled,” speaking in tongues”. I let out an “ALL RIGHT” that was a full on shout. The music that usually resides in my head disappeared and the thought of Ella and the recordings took over.

The tapes were in perfect working order and properly labeled. I pulled the first cassette out and gave it a quick blast of breath on the underside to remove dust and excitedly popped the tape into my six track tape machine. The tape machine would prove to be an essential piece of equipment on this particular project. The original recordings are two tracks in stereo, one track on the right and one on the left, so the six track machine Scan separate and isolate all the sound on the original cassettes.

I placed the track selector on “all” and hit the play button. My heart sank as the tape started and a small amount of white noise began.

“What if it was imagination,” I thought.

“What if I’m just a crazy person?”

At that moment, the machine came to life with sounds like a cat fight in reverse while an old man recited Arabic. My face opened up with such a wide smile that it actually hurt a little bit.

There was a total of twenty seven minute on tape one side one. I slowed down the playback to see what would show up. I could hear two distinct

Voices on the left and something like two voices on the right. I began on the right side, isolating the tracks to the computer recording studio track “voice A”. Once the sound was loaded into the computer, I had many other filters and effects to help me discern the different sounds on the cassettes. When I played back the track on computer voice A without any treble or high end, I could hear one very decipherable dialect. When I removed all treble and boosted the low end, I got the other voice loud and clear. I copied it to an adjacent track on the computer and labeled it “voice B”. When I looked up again, it was five hours later and I was a zombie, but I now had “voice A” and “voice B” in digital tracks from cassette one and I can do many things to clean them up and try to translate the languages.

The next morning it hit me that all the cassettes were in the same order, with the same layering effect, and would need separating like tape one. After another four hour session, the tracks were separated and loaded into the computer labeled “voice A”, “voice B”, “voice C”, and “voice D”. It was amazing that from tape to tape and from track to track, the voices lined up perfectly with “voice A” from tape one is matching all the other “voice A” recordings. I tried to put logic to this, as to how this could happen, naturally, in the sessions I spent with Ella, but all logic eluded me and this felt mystical, not logical.

I burned a CD of each voice and labeled them accordingly. The first three had a definite dialect, of some sort, and the fourth was like no language I have ever heard. Voice A could have been some sort of ancient Arabic or Middle Eastern dialect. Voice B had a Latin or Roman feel to it, and voice C had a broken French southern dialect. It was voice D that had no structure to it, and there were no apparent syllables. I sat back and thought,

“What now?”

My mind is dancing with wild ideas and speculations beyond belief but down deep I know that Ella was giving me something important, something consequential and this was meant for me and only me. But this was all real and I have the tapes and the CD’s to prove it. I was a bit shaky and a little afraid in that moment. What if this was some sort of prophesy about impending doom? Then a thought hit me like a brick;

“What about the eleven year gap?”

I got a slightly chilly feeling creep up my spine. What if the message was intended to be read or heard in say, nineteen ninety two? I have a tough time believing that Ella gave me a message for the future and I missed it. But there has been no worldwide catastrophe, no nuclear holocaust so I dismiss the feeling of “what if”.

My mind was on fire with imaginative thoughts of lost Spanish gold, extraterrestrials and even God.

The God part was undeniable. Ella was deeply religious and I could not shake the “biblical prophecy” feeling to this whole mystery. I am not a religious person and have my own thoughts on creation and evolution. Oddly enough, I cannot remember ever talking to Ella about my faith or the level of it. She let people be exactly who they were, and held no grudges to non Christians. She truly embraced all walks of life and had a respect of all people.

“What if this was a pitch for recruiting to the church?” This was an irritating thought and I disregarded it immediately, it would have been a deceptive practice and Ella was simply incapable of deception.

It took me a couple of days of diligent internet sleuthing to find a person

Who could try to translate the voices. I located a Ms. Stephanie Jones at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and emailed her my story, and my request to translate the Cd’s. She is a double major in linguistics and was enthusiastic about this project, even with the “super natural” over tone.

I was beginning to get an “Indiana Jones” feeling with all this and I like it.

Stephanie was not one full day on the project when I got an email telling me we had a lot going on in the Cd. I replied promptly with a dash of optimism and a bit of curiosity. I said,

“Well, let’s see what it says, if anything, before I start to hyperventilate.”

The next few days were painfully long in waiting for Stephanie’s email and the thought crossed my mind that she might have ditched me and labeled me a lunatic. That afternoon I got the email.

”Analyzing the Cd for known dialects, I discovered a great deal of language and what appears to be a narrative or a brief biography,” Stephanie said. She had attached a file to the email and I was nervous when I clicked on it and downloaded the file to my desktop.

The attachment named “voice A” began with a linguistical analysis and found it to be ancient Sumerian from Mesopotamia around five thousand B.C., give or take five hundred years. I sat reading this with my mouth agape in total amazement.

It started with the introduction of a wealthy monarch named “Hymed” and a princess from a rival kingdom “Ru kaan”. Hymed was not in line for the throne and was treated poorly because of that fact. Eventually Hymed made a plan to leave the city and gather his bride to be from the next kingdom. Hymed’s father caught wind of his intentions and did what he had to do to protect the sanctity of the city and the king. The king ordered his son hunted

And killed. Hymed was already traveling when his father found out and he had sent word ahead to Ru kaan to meet up with him in the small village of “Milaa” at the waterfall. They found each other there and a high priest performed a ritual blood marriage. This ritual signified the telling of the gods that this union of souls was already forever because it was right. The priest asked the gods to oversee the couple for all of the time of men. Then he cut the right palm of the man and the right palm of the female, placing their hands together and mixing their blood, their universes and their souls. When the couple looked into each other’s eyes a small tremor was felt and the priest was dizzy. The couple fled into the night to start their new life, somewhere, somehow and they were as happy as they had ever been.

Two days later the bounty hunters caught up with the couple and prepared an ambush for Hymed. The birds suddenly darted from the trees and bushed and Hymed knew they were there. He immediately grabbed Ru kaan in a front to front hug and gripped her very tightly. They were trying to ignore the shouted requests from the hunters for her to step away as not to be hurt or killed; it was him they were after.

“I will find you again Ru kaan, we will be again.”

“The gods have shown me images and they have blessed us in our union for all time,” Ro kaan whispered to her new husband.

A spear pierced both bodies, going through both of their hearts at the same time. They stood for a few moments in silence and then they smiled, and then they died.

I did not realize it when I was reading the email, but a tear found its way down my cheek and plopped onto my desk. The last sentence of the email read,

This is your story and only one of your stories.

ORLEANS

Part Three

“Voice B”

This all felt very factual and legible. This was not just a story, but me and LuAnn’s story and it all began to make sense. I have had a feeling that I have known Lu many times, as many people for a very long time. I was working hard to keep this in some sort of perspective, but I have a suspicion that Mesopotamia is not the beginning of the story, and this present chapter is not the ending either. Perhaps the story is just one of many timelines attempting to exist or maybe circumstances do prevail and there is no order.

But there is the nagging question of “why”.

Why did grandma select me for this message?

I am convinced there is more to this than mere coincidence can explain. There are names and approximate dates and that should be easy enough to verify. After a few hours on the internet, I had pages of historical information and a bunch of the data lines up with the email from “voice A”.

“So, we have been together before”, I said softly out loud.

I am amazed but not shocked and I am thinking a million thoughts at the same time, but mostly I’m thinking about “voice B”.

I had been waiting for eight, agonizingly long days for Stephanie’s email regarding “voice B” when I finally heard the pleasant little “ding” ring out from the computer. I hurriedly clicked on the little envelope signaling I have email and greeted Stephanie’s email with a smile. This would be a mind blowing forty six minute story about another life or past life, I don’t know anymore, it is tough to keep it all straight in my head. The more I listened to “voice A” is the stronger the “stomach is connected to the brain” feeling came on and I could feel the words creating room for a memory to exist. Things started to make sense and completing a version of myself that I did not know.

“Maybe our future is so muddy and unclear because of the perfectly misunderstood and misinterpreted past,” I thought.

Someone once told me that we all live multiple times until there is something fulfilled. I didn’t put much thinking into that kind of philosophy at the time, but now I do have a different opinion on the topic of reincarnation. I have lived before, and I have been married to LuAnn before in many places in many times and of that, I am now positive.

“Wow, this is a truly timeless story I am part of,” I said out loud.

Stephanie started the second email by thanking me for involving her in this project and then she waived all her fees. Apparently she is caught up in this too.

The email started with the linguistics and found “voice B” to be ancient Dutch from a region in the Netherlands around 1350 B.C., and this raised my eyebrows due to the fact I had read LuAnn’s family history in a book her sister put together. The first two sentences of the body of the email blew me away completely.

“He is the she.”

“She is the he.”

My eyes were wide open and my brows were raised.

“What?” I stammered.

“What the hell?”

I was the woman in a past life, and LuAnn was the man?” I said aloud and quite baffled.

Laughter ensued. Great and giant belly rolls of laughter came out of my mouth for at least five minutes. LuAnn is a strong life force and our marital dynamic is based on equality with no amount of “traditionalism”. We both do dishes and we both get our own gasoline, but I do like to get her coffee every morning. The thought of the gender role reversal was hilarious to me, but also somewhat informative as well. I have never come across a story of reincarnation with gender switching, and I read a fair amount of testimonials. That was a new twist.

The email began with a stoic preamble,

“In this year of our lord thirteen hundred and fifty, the twenty five year union between “Abel Tranzoon” and “Kenau Simonsdochter” is recognized as permanent and for all time on God’s earth.”

The email continued,

“It is regrettable to inform all attendee’s that a postponement is unfortunately necessary due to the illness of Kenau Simonsdochter.”

“No!” I yelled.

“No way!”

Let’s see, I am her, so it’s me with the black plague and its LuAnn taking care of me?”

“Oh my God, I was nearly shouting.

The email continued;

Abel would not leave kenau’s side and tended to her every need. He fully understood that this was a disease that you could catch from the infected but did not pay attention. However, Abel did not get the Black Plague. Abel did not get sick at all ever. There were millions of dead and dying in the streets and Abel was in contact with a fully infected woman and did not get sick. This could have been construed as a miracle but no one talks about their family and the Black Plague. Now there’s a lump in my throat to go with the wide open mouth, they bulging eyes and the raised brows.

Able diligently produced a damp cloth when the fever raised and gently assisted with a sip of water when Kenau was thirsty. Abel protested his love and admiration for Kenau that day using the same words he used to dedicate his heart and soul to her twenty five years previously.

The only regret Abel carried was a long and healthy life after Kenau’s passing. The survivor guilt was like a tidal wave of depression with weeks spent in bed and the constant question unanswered,

“Why?”

Abel Tranzoon lived an unusually long life to the age of seventy seven and died in his sleep, never remarrying. Abel wrote to a relative,

”My heart has been broke into many pieces and can only be whole again with Kenau, on earth, or in heaven.”

As I read the last few words, my chest became heavy and painful like severe heartburn. I clicked and saved the email and leaned back in my chair, staring at the ceiling. Phrases like “Plague” and “suffering” kept flashing in my mind and I could feel spaces opening in my soul, ready for another part to be inserted, completing the ‘me’ I am now with the me I have been.

I sat there, with my hands on my head, thinking about Abel and Kenau, me and LuAnn. I’m not sure if I am happy or sad. I’m not sure of much right now.

ORLEANS

Part Four

“Voice C”

After two and a half weeks of “no Stephanie”, I called her cell phone. She explained that there was a little difficulty in the “voice C” Cd.

“It is not ancient or even old,” she began.

“It is like a variation of an 1850’s mid west dialect from The United States and there is no explanation as to why it is in this specific dialect,” Stephanie stated.

She sent the email and I opened it post haste. This email would make sense to me, but not on this day. It was fast paced and vague, with fractured sentences and it did not resemble the other emails at all.

In eighteen hundred and sixty nine, Mr. and Mrs. Great grandpa picked a small town in the Midwest to homestead and a raise a family. They last born boy found a good church woman in Phillipsburg, and started a family of his own, after they packed up the “Tin Lizzy” and moved west. They finally stopped in Colorado and started up the general store in “Buckeye Colorado.”

That was your grandpa and he and Ella had five children and their last born was a boy too. He was a very charming boy and very gifted and talented at music and performing, but his dreams were bigger than his opportunities and he settled with a job in Denver, Co. His name was Robert and he went by Bob and his fifth born was a boy too, along about nineteen hundred and sixty four.

That boys name is James, and that is who you are now.

This whole time, another story was playing out in New Richmond Wisconsin, with the birth of a baby girl. She was fifth to her parents, and meant to be part of this story. Her name is LuAnn.

I feel an incredible amount of optimism as I read this email. This is who I was, and who I am. I was never told stories about my family heritage and I thought it was out of the disgrace of being related to John Wilkes Booth, but that’s was not the case.

The sheer number of probabilities that intersected for me and LuAnn to meet is completely mind boggling.

Our lives had been a series of “near misses” and along the way and we realized we knew all the same people, but had not met each other until a cold February Friday night in nineteen hundred and eighty seven. It sounds cliché, but I really did look at her once, across a crowded beer party, and told my best friend,

“That will be the woman I marry and she will have my children”. It is a story LuAnn and I both still tell to this day.

The second paragraph of the email had a different feel to it. It gave instructions and they were specific.

“The discovery has been made. You are just unaware that the connection has been made. You will find ORLEANS. You will and find J.O.B. and talk to his neighbor,” Nichols”. You are already connected to this place and it is the key.”

This was the shortest email yet because it showed linear time and how things came to be as they are. But Ella told me this in nineteen hundred and eighty four and now it’s nineteen hundred and ninety five and I’m still wondering if I missed the proverbial boat on acting on this information. I actually thought this was the pinnacle of the situation, but I was wrong. I was REALLY wrong.

It wasn’t a week after the last email that I received a phone call from LuAnn’s brother with an invitation to a family reunion this Fourth of July. He explained that the reunion would be in a small town half way to Omaha so the rest of the in-laws didn’t have to travel all the way to Denver. The idea was to, more or less, meet in the middle and I thought a little break from Ella wouldn’t hurt, so we agreed to attend. I asked what kind of accommodations I would need to book and he said “none”. There was a small house in that small town that was purchased by her brother for somewhere to stay while they hunted deer every year. The arrangement was that if we liked it there, we could buy in to the house and own part of it. I had no idea of the absolutely awesome golf course that was there and my kids love fishing and boating, so this was an unexpected perfect fit.

That was maybe the best Fourth of July in my life. There fireworks and a real, small town parade complete with tractors, the Alfalfa Queen and clowns in small cars. All of the above were throwing hands full of candy at the dozens of spectators whom lined Main Street. My family had a glow to them that year, and I have never forgotten the happy, care free looks on their faces.

When we got home that following Monday I received a phone call from my dad.

”Where did you guys go for the holiday?” he asked.

“The nicest golf course in the world”, I replied.

“Oh yeah, where was that?” he asked.

“In the middle of absolutely nowhere Nebraska”, I said.

“It’s called “Orleans”, Orleans Nebraska”, I said nonchalantly.

The phone was silent as though we had been cut off.

“Hello?” I inquired.

“Are you sure that’s where you were?” he inquired.

“Yes, I’m sure, LuAnn’s brother sold me part of a house there,” I stated calmly.

“Your Grandfather was born in Orleans Nebraska in eighteen hundred and sixty nine. Your Great Grandfather homesteaded in Orleans in a covered wagon, after leaving Illinois and Iowa,” My dad’s tone was serious and full of intrigue.

My mind was upside down. The universe showed me the way to Orleans when I wasn’t even looking for it yet. But the recordings were made in nineteen hundred and eighty four and LuAnn’s brother bought the property in Orleans in nineteen hundred and eighty five, there is no way for this all to be happen stance. It was all lining up but I am missing the bigger picture. What is the LuAnn connection?

The next trip to Orleans was Labor Day and I had done my homework. I had land deeds and titles, plotter maps and information on a book that was written about the history of Orleans from eighteen hundred sixty to nineteen hundred sixty, in which my family is mentioned in more than one place.

Somehow I found Orleans or it found me, and now I’m supposed to find a job?

“What the hell?” I murmured.

“Find a job?”

“This means something else,” I was blatantly talking to myself now. The first sheet out of my binder labeled, “Orleans”, was a land deed from eighteen hundred sixty nine in the county of Harlan where a man had purchases half a block of real estate in Orleans. The name on the top of the deed was the purchaser, John Oliver Booth and he was my Great grandfather.

“John Oliver Booth, John Oliver Booth,” something was on the tip of my tongue.

“Oh hell, J.O.B. is John Oliver Booth!” I was shouting.

“I found J. O. B. and I know where he is right now”, I had a grin half the size of Texas. I got in my car and raced the four blocks to the Orleans Cemetery and looked over the map of grave sites. It took eleven seconds to locate John and his wife Jane’s side by side burial plots. They were laying in the same exact spot where they had been laid to rest in nineteen hundred and nine for Jane and nineteen hundred and twenty five for John, both of them underneath a medium size shade tree. I sat under that tree for the better part of an hour and just felt the warm Nebraska wind while I thought about all this. There is way more to this and there is a bigger game being played here, but I am just out of sight and I cannot see it.

As I sat there, I got a little twinge of curiosity as to which direction the wind was blowing. I pulled a small grip of grass from the ground and tossed it in the air. The grass flew up and to the right; I would guess seven miles an hour was the wind speed. As the grass flew to the south, I saw it. Right there in front of my eyes. To the right of my Great grandfathers grave, or his neighbor in the cemetery, was a large stone with the name carved out in relief,

“NICHOLS”.

“Really?” I yelled.

“You have to be kidding me,” but I was not as surprised as I should have been.

We returned to Denver on that Monday and I went to the computer and found exactly what I was looking for on a founding family of Orleans. I dug a little deeper and found that there were a few Nichols in the Harlan County White Pages. There was a “Vettie Nichols” listed in McCook Nebraska and she was on the family tree. Vettie Nichols was a “water witch” and a local metaphysical consultant, which is a fancy way of saying “Psychic”. She had a grade ‘A’ reputation finding water wells although she was a bit eccentric. She did have a posted email address and I pondered how this would sound to a stranger.

“Even a psychic will think me a lunatic,” I thought.

“It’s been fun and games till now and I have a very serious feeling in my stomach.

ORLEANS

Part Five

“Voice D”

The last email from Stephanie was brief and puzzling. It was a one line email that was direct and to the point. It read,

“This voice D is an unknown language that has ever existed to my knowledge”.

She concluded with an obligatory,

“Keep in touch and let me know how this turns out”.

I knew that would be our last correspondence. I believe that she got a little freaked out and who wouldn’t. I laughed a bit at the thought of her professor reading this research paper.

I was at my first real dead end and I felt real frustration. When I get frustrated I fix things or do maintenance. I headed for my yard to mow and trim to exercise the anger from me and give me a moment away from all this. Sometimes it is a different perspective that shines light on the predicament and this scenario was no different. It hit me like the proverbial “ton of bricks”.

Vettie Nichols. This came to me all of a sudden and I am unsure where the thought originated. I prepared a carefully worded email and addressed it to V Nichols. It began with a half hearted apology about how this all must sound and a full explanation as to how I got where I am. I hesitate and glance at the ceiling. I then attached an mp3 file labeled “voice D” and move the mouse over the “send” button and click on it. I had an optimistic feeling with a slightly ominous over tone.

The response to my email came in eleven minutes and the “ding” signaling that I have an email actually startled me. I had “goose bumps” on both arms and the hair on my neck felt like it was standing up. I clicked on the icon and read the subject line.

“1080-102020-151100.”

“This means nothing to me, maybe an internet address,” I thought.

I moved on to the body of this email and I was blown away, even taking into consideration all I have read about me and LuAnn. What I was about to engage in towered over everything else and nothing would be the same after that day.

“You are not like him because you are not dark”, the first line read and continued,

“We assumed our task was to repopulate the earth with our own brand of people whom are really ‘Extraterrangels’. This would breed out the sin that was inspired by the humans and make humans out of us,” said the email.

“One third of the heavens descended onto the earth and found their daughters to be beautiful, and made them our wives. But there is a dark one, known as the ‘Nephalem’ and ’The Dark angel. He has eyes of two colors and is still pure Nephalem, as are you and your wife, except you are light where he is dark.”

I was part of a plan conceived since the very beginning of time and every detail has played out perfectly so that I am here, right now, in the right time and the right place. But for what?”

“The language on voice D is ‘Angel Speak’. It is the language spoken between angels,” Vettie typed.

“The last part is; you are The White Nephalem and so is LuAnn and you have been together ever since the descending to the earth. However, instead of breeding with the humans, you bred with each other and purified your blood line forever. This plan was set into motion at the start of it all and there are only three pure Nephalem left on earth. Your time is now, and his time is up.”

P.S. There is always more to come.

ORLEANS

Part Six

“Like waking up”

I turned off the computer and made my way downstairs to make a cup of coffee. As I sipped the delicious java I gazed out the kitchen window with a particularly blank expression. I was starting to deny all of this as it was just too much to take at once.

“This has to be a mistake of some sort, I am no angel,” I thought.

“I have lost my mind and I am out of my head crazy,” I admitted out loud.

I have not shared this story with anyone outside of LuAnn, Vettie and Stephanie and I wondered what was next.

I turned the computer back on and clicked on a desktop file labeled, “Orleans”. As I typed out everything from the very beginning of this journey, I saw it to be my story of who I am according to who I was, and the voices were meant for nineteen hundred and ninety five, and there was no denying that. Calm fell over me and I became warm. Not the ‘fever’ kind of warm, but noticeably more comfortable than a moment ago. The next move was to talk to LuAnn and show her everything and just see what she says. It is just as much about her as it is about me. I have told her bits and pieces along the way, but I have to tell her all of this.

After a lengthy, in depth conversation, LuAnn did not freak out or panic at all. Her response was simple and with great poise;

“I am not surprised, really. We both know there is something special about the two of us and I would do it all again,” LuAnn said.

Hugging and crying ensued and I felt like everything would be alright. I always feel like that when I am with her.

The thought that still troubles me is what was Ella really saying with all of this? Grandma was a vessel to convey this message directly to me and I do not know the purpose or the meaning. My next move is to do nothing and see what finds me. “1080-102020-151100” flashed in my head, inexplicably.

ORLEANS

Part Seven

“The Grand Finale”

It has been a little over a month since the last email from Vettie and my life has calmed down. I feel better about the whole deal, and I think I have rationalized most of it. Perhaps abandonment issues and memories not dealt with was the most likely culprit of my ‘episode’.

Life finds itself moving forward, even if time stands still. I was back into an established routine of new job title, complete with 401K and gainful five day work week delivering packages and parcels around the Front Range. This was a perfect duplicate to the last few Tuesdays and I received a text to pick up one medium sized box and deliver to the Democratic Election Headquarters. I drove to a print shop just outside Fort Windsor and that was a forty five minute drive by itself, but one of the few perks to my current employment was an hourly wage. So I ease back and enjoy the ride without worry or stress and turn up the music in my delivery van. By most respects, this was the perfect job for me, minus the other drivers and the bad weather days. The best part of my job is a lot of really quiet alone time to think and reflect on the last three months.

When I arrived at the print shop for the pickup, the box was getting packed and I could see the items were shirts for the candidate named “Dan Cassleman.” The T-shirts were royal blue with white lettering that read,

”Dan’s our man, if he can’t do it, no one can” in a brush script font on the front of the shirt. The top of the box was secured with a strip of tape and I picked up the box with an invoice in my teeth.

“Let’s see, where am I going this morning?” I asked myself.

“1080 Santé Fe Drive, Denver CO,” the invoice read.

I stopped in my tracks and stared at the invoice. What was it about the address? I got that warm and tingling feeling again and I knew something was going on here, and it felt like an Ella thing.

That’s when it hit me in the face. The number 1080 is the first number in the subject line of the last email from Vettie. The rest of the numbers were,

“10/20/2015 11Am,” which meant Vetties email had today’s date and location over a month ago. Whatever ‘it’ is, ‘it’ is today, and I’m on my way there now. It occurred to me just how many timelines and lifelines had taken place in order for this moment to happen exactly now and it looks as though I may find out what Ella meant.

I rounded the last corner on my approach to the Democratic Headquarters and I am nervous and a bit shaky. I really have no idea what may or may not happen here. I parked in front of the building and did not feed the meter. The box weighs about 30 pounds so I can carry it by hand. I entered the main room and there are four rows of desks with telephones on them. There were two men sitting on one of the desks. One of the two donut moochers spoke up and said,

“If you’re looking for Cassleman, he’s up on the roof.”

I went through the door marked ‘stairs’ and climbed two flights to a metal door propped open by a folding chair.

“Hello?” I said.

I proceeded to a small area set up to look like a back yard, complete with lawn chairs and a table with an umbrella. Cassleman even had Astroturf around the roof top. There was a man in a Hawaiian type shirt with his back to me talking on a cordless phone. I could see him for who he was. He was the Dark Nehalem and that’s why I am here now.

“Are those my shirts,” the man asks but does not look at me.

“Yes sir, “I responded.

“Great, just put them down and leave the invoice, I’ll mail the payment.”

Without making eye contact until their hands were already locked in a customary business handshake, the dark One now looks me in the eye and sees who I really am. I see his one blue eye and one green eye and I feel his fear and surprise.

It was then one thousand hot needles went into my fingers and began going through my hands and then up my arms. The sensation was both extreme hot and brutal cold and I could see what he was planning. He is the downfall of the human race. He is the greed, pride, and lust of mankind and he was the black plague as well as the earthquake. All of time was culminating in this one moment, right here right now and I can see Cassleman as the President

And I watch him push the big red button in the briefcase.

“No!” I yelled.

I held the handshake and said it again,

“No!”

Cassleman’s head started flopping back and forth, as if he had no spine. His mouth was open wide and his eyes were flaming as his skin changed to scales. I can see my colors bleeding into his hands from mine, infecting him with the ‘White Nephalem’ blood. Cassleman began screaming like an eagle on fire being played backwards. Beams of light are breaking through his body, shooting out brightly, and he lets go of my hand. He was coming apart and the light was consuming him. A thunderous boom rolled off an echo and there was a puff of smoke. I saw a thin ball of light fly away over the tree tops and through the clouds. A couple pounds of dark gray ash fell to the roof top. I became very light headed and nearly fell over, barely catching myself. I closed my eyes and thought about LuAnn. I started to feel calm and warm and a prism of sunlight hit my eyes, spreading out in a coronal spiral pattern of all the colors of the rainbow. The prism said to me,

“You can come with me and see all those whom you miss so dearly and your job can be done.”

“Or you can stay for another life, another plot by the dark Nephalem, and more time.”

“LuAnn really has an infectious smile, don’t you think?” I asked.

“His will be done,” said the prism.

I opened my eyes and threw up a black oily substance that I don’t remember ever eating. I quickly grabbed the invoice and headed for the stairs. It was all quiet when I peeked out the door from the stairs to the main phone room. There was no one in the big room. I was out of there and in my van in thirty five seconds flat. The craziest thoughts were running through my mind about getting caught. Caught doing what? What am I guilty of, all I did was shake his hand? But I did have a feeling of great accomplishment as though I had completed an important task.

The next morning I was the first person in line at the savings and loan to visit the safety deposit box. Once in the box, I remove an envelope labeled,

”LuAnn” and placed it in my pocket. It was a full explanation and a formal apology, just in case things didn’t work out the way they did. We would not need this letter, I am here and here I will stay. Things will happen the way they do, either by happenstance or by design, and most of the time, you are in no control of the outcome. The big secret is there is no big secret, and while we scurry about trying to make sense of it all, the universe takes care of itself.

It is now springtime, 2017, in Chicago at Hope National Hospital’s maternity ward where there is a shabby dressed, tired looking man and a bathrobe clad woman and they are picking up their new baby boy to take him home. All the wrist bands match as security is top notch and they put the baby boy into his car seat.

“He is a perfect little boy, and such a unique look with two different colored eyes,” the attending physician said with a grin.

Smiles and handshakes ensued finishing with big hugs and the three drove off to begin, again, and see what the future holds.

Somewhere deep inside of my mind, I knew it wasn’t over for LuAnn and I, and we would be back because ‘HE’ will be back.

There are certain kinds of love that can stand the test of time, and this is one of them.