Chapter Fourteen
Upon hearing these words, Maxwell
began to feel a bit dizzy. He found himself having to sit down for a
second, as he was beginning to see spots of different colored lights in the
periphery of his vision. Maybe he hadn't necessarily heard the old man
correctly.
"Hold on a second, are you really telling me that you really do know my father? I got
news for you, pal, I don't know who you think you are, but my father just so
happens to be dead! You heard
me right, I said dead. That
means he's no longer alive. Perhaps you're thinking about someone else's
dad, because you couldn't possibly be thinking about mine."
The old man said nothing, then again
flashed his goofy yet slightly off-putting smile back in Maxwell's
direction.
Maxwell himself began feeling even
more uneasy, 'Hopefully, I haven't stumbled upon this crazy old loon's torture
facility deep beneath the earth. Maybe I
should be getting back home after all,' he thought.
"Yessuh, ah know exactly
who you ahh, and ih'm not mestaken
t'eithah. Yo'h father ees dead,
d'at's fo' sho, but ah know him still, and ah mus' sho'ly believe I be
talkin t'heem dang neah evruh day!"
Clearly this man was crazier than
Maxwell had originally thought.
"Like ah saide tho', nevuh mind
dis fo' now. I tole yah y'ouldn't believe me, didn't I? Who'm ah
but a craysie ole-timeh anyhow, right?"
And just like that, Maxwell jumped to
his feet. He was feeling much better now and had thus decided it was time
for him to be heading back home to the sanity of his mother. Before he
could turn around however, the lightbulb in his flashlight suddenly ceased
to function.
'Oh, come on. Are you
freaking serious!,' he thought to himself, 'Couldn't you have picked a
better time for this to happen? This old man probably has night vision
goggles, he's probably about ready to dress me up like a doll baby any second!'
As his heart sank, panic began to
flash over him in waves. It was completely and utterly silent in the room
around him, then suddenly Maxwell noticed something extremely peculiar.
The room he was in wasn't completely dark after all. In fact, it was
becoming increasingly brighter by the second! He slowly turned around and
lo and behold, the old man had a faint glow all about him.
The light emanating from the old man
seemed to ebb and flow around him more powerfully than Maxwell had ever noticed
on the others who'd possessed this aura like projection. In fact, it rather looked like the pictures
Maxwell had seen of the sun on those television programs on nature he liked to
watch where flashes of plasma and gamma rays would burst out of the star's
heliosphere in a myriad of colors that would utterly fascinate him. 'It's
the damnedest thing I've ever seen,' he thought, and just like that, all the
fear he'd been feeling suddenly dissipated into the state of pure curiosity and
calm. He couldn't seem to pull his eyes off the old man even though he
tried. The whole spectacle in its entirety became hypnotizing
really. It put Maxwell into what could
only be described as a trance.
"So as you can see, Mr.
Smartypants, there's a lot in this
world you don't understand." The old man was no longer speaking in
the same way he'd been speaking earlier. The previous strange vernacular
had been replaced by a crystal clear and perfect enunciation. ‘So the bum
comes with a vocal processor for a speech box with the capability to switch in
a moments notice.’
Maxwell found himself having to sit
down at this point. The light surrounding the old man slowly began to
fade, but as this happened, he reached into his coat and to Maxwell's great
relief, the old man didn't pull out a gun but rather a lamp from the inside
lining of his coat's pocket. As he turned on a switch, the light from the
lamp quickly filled the room.
"You've been having trouble
around lightbulbs lately, haven't you boy? It's awfully hard to find your
way around here when you can't even see what's in front of you!"
Maxwell wondered if the old man even
knew how true this statement actually was. 'Surely there's a logical
explanation to all this,' Maxwell thought to himself, 'There must be some
perfectly reasonable explanation why this old man lives inside this strange and
mystical cave, and was somehow able to sound like two completely different
people at a moment's notice, can glow in the dark with a crazy solar-flare-like
skin, and claim to personally know my
recently deceased and buried biological father.' Just as much as he was sure that there was a
logical explanation for his teletype eyelids, his strangely foreshadowing
dreams, and the recent predilection of sleepwalking into random unexplored
caves, all with the bizarre synchronicities and unreasonable amount of
lightbulbs which had been ending their life in his presence, the problem was
that Maxwell simply had no idea how to begin to attempt to make any sort of
heads or tails of any these occurrences in any way whatsoever.
"Okay, sir," Maxwell began,
"will you please explain to me what the hell is going on? I promise
I'll try my best to understand. First, who exactly are you and what have you been doing living in the middle of this
cave in my back yard? I've never even seen you before, except for in the
street a couple of days ago!"
"I'll tell you only what you're
really ready to hear, and I won't tell you anything else. Like I said,
you can call me Tom. Appearances, as they seem, are seldom what they
appear."
Maxwell was already beginning to
gather this from his own recent experiences.
"I know this sounds strange to
you, but I knew your father in the final days of his life. I actually
helped him through many deep and difficult issues he was dealing with at the
time. He was terribly afraid of leaving you and your mother behind
without being able to care of you himself. It was my job to make sure
that his transition went smoothly, just as it is now my job to make sure your transition goes smoothly as
well."
This was not at all what Maxwell
wanted to hear the old man say, "Are you telling me that I'm going to die soon?"
"No no," Tom chuckled,
"yours is a much different kind of transition. These are strange
times we live in. This world is
undergoing some very radical changes indeed."
"You could say that again," Maxwell said, nodding
in response.
"We can't really talk about this
for long because you need to be heading home shortly, but I will say this, 'I can communicate, so to
speak, with the place that is beyond the place we are in right now'."
Maxwell was really skeptical of this,
but he decided to hear the old man out regardless.
"I know this is hard for you to
understand, but the reason I'm trying to tell you this is because I know how
much easier it will make everything once you truly take the time to fully
understand it. There are actually many other worlds than these, many
different frequencies, so to speak. This world, the one which you and I
are in right now, is only one of many of these frequencies. I am actually tuned into many different
frequencies all the time. When your father passed away, just like when
many others have transitioned from one frequency to another, he didn't actually
'disappear'. Of course to you, and to others around you, he's no longer
physically able to be here thus making it appear as if he simply has gone into
the invisible state of not really being, but I assure you that he is most
definitely alive and well in a different frequency or 'plane' if you will,
right at this very moment in fact!"
Maxwell had heard many crazy things in
his day, but he was for sure that he'd hit the jackpot with this one.
"We don't have much time right
now, Maxwell, and it appears that our time for now has just about come to a
close. But how does all this apply to you? I'll make it as simple
as I can. You're in danger, Maxwell. You think your life has been
difficult up until now? I assure you
that it will most definitely be getting worse before it gets any better.
You're going to be seriously tested in the days ahead. Understand that
deep inside of you, you already possess all of the tools necessary to succeed
in the trials that await you, but also understand that all of your actions
from this point on carry a certain and very powerful consequence. I
wish I could tell you more about this, but right now what I have said will simply have to be
enough. Do you understand?
If you
still find it hard to believe me, then perhaps you should have a talk
with your mother later on. She has a very amazing power herself, and she
also happens to love you more than anything else in this world. But right
now it's time for you to go home. You can come back whenever you want,
but please, never bring anyone else down here with you, it's very
important."
Maxwell was left just standing there,
blinking. He didn't really feel like he knew what to think about anything
at all, but reluctantly, he forced himself to nod in understanding and tell the
man goodnight as he slowly turned to make his way back through the
twisting wormhole from whence he came.
"Maxwell, before you go, I
think you should know that there's a better way to leave this cave.
You're very close to the exit from where you're at right now. You don't think I'd really take that hole to
get in here myself, do you? I'm too old for that kinda stuff," he
smiled and winked, "Just remember how you got out of here so that when you
come back, it'll be a lot easier."
Tom revealed a hidden passageway
as he briefly explained to Maxwell that if he followed the corridor far enough,
it would begin to open up into the original chamber in the beginning of the
cave right before where he would find the entrance.
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