29. The Weird Visitor
Michael is standing, together with a few ISKCON members, behind a folding table under a giant tree in St. George’s Park serving homeless people. It is delicious, free, karma free meals freshly prepared. Most of the street kids and beggars are by now old customers. They are waiting anxiously for these free, tasty and filling meals like the previous days and they quickly form a queue. Word has spread and every day the group becomes larger as new people arrive.
A new visitor, clad in a dirty, shabby, brown coat with strings of hair hanging down to his feet, approaches slowly. It must be a homeless Rasta! He moves queerly, bending forward and his face is covered so that only the bushy beard shows behind the hair curtain. He follows slowly and patiently up to Michael and holds out his hands in a pleading gesture. Michael hands over a paper plate but suddenly the man grabs him by the wrists and slightly pulls him forward over the table. Frightened Michael sees how the hair opens like a curtain as the beggar lifts his head and they look into each other’s eyes. The beggar’s eyes are weird, pitch-black pools that catch Michael like magnets and pull him in and everything around the man becomes dark and then he vanishes. Michael floats in the darkness and it is as if light shines from him.
A course, unpleasant voice echoes like thunder in a deep cave. “Show me the code, Michael.”
Instantly, back in time, Michael reads the code that he has just deciphered at his desk and then the awkward voice echoes again. “Also write the English translation down below.”
Michael obediently translates the code into English. He scarcely has written down the last letter when he hears another voice, not the one in the deep, dark cave.
“Michael, wake up! What is wrong with you?”
Michael sees the familiar face and then he becomes aware of Vyasa shaking him forcibly. “Michael, pull yourself together!”
Michael looks frightened but suddenly becomes wide awake and starts searching all around him. He sees he is stalling the queue. Anxiously he looks for the beggar but the man has disappeared.
~*~*~
The alarm on her bedside table noisily resounds and quickly she ends the noise. She turns to Jack and pulls lightly on his shoulder. He awakes and stares at her annoyed.
Rene kisses him lightly on the cheek. “Shame, you have slept too little, my dear. You are murdering yourself and must go and work a six-to-six nightshift.”
Jack pecks her on her beautiful, soft, full lips. “Luckily I am very busy at work. If it were something like standing guard, it would have been bitter, but time flies by and I scarcely realize that I become sleepy. It is returning to home that is the toughest. I just want to fall asleep when I drive.”
“Don’t you think you must put in some leave until everything is normal again?”
“Let’s wait and see how things turn out. It is definitely an option if this thing continues, my dear.”
“Kadin simply can’t wait to get to the man who deciphered the code, Jack, but I think the priority is to get them to a psychiatrist.”
Jack smiles. “Her curiosity! She is a born journalist, do you know, but I agree. Try to get an appointment as soon as possible tomorrow. Don’t let the children manipulate you while I’m sleeping. You are going nowhere without me and they will have to wait until I awake. I will take them to school and pick them up at the gate when school is out.”
“I promise, my darling, they will stay just here. I shall probably have to make an appointment for the afternoon.”
“No, try during the morning. Then we can finish everything and I can sleep in the afternoon. But if you can arrange it in the afternoon it is okay also. As long as I have enough time to prepare for work. And on the subject, you will have to give them both letters to explain their absenteeism from school. The best is just to say Kadin was ill and Billy was at the doctor for his back injuries. And another thing: if we get guests during the day, awake me. I shall open the door.”
“Okay, my dear, I’m only wondering how you will get enough sleep. I am a little worried about you.”
“Why? I have worked worse hours with less sleep before, my dear.”
Rene shakes her head lightly from side to side. “It is not what I’m talking about. I am worried that the dangerous Jack awakes again, my husband. This thing may awake that old devil in you. Kadin doesn’t know that Jack. Promise me she’ll never meet him.”
Without a sign of any emotion, he silently looks at her. Eventually, he replies: “Rene, you know it only happens in the most extraordinary situations when someone threatens our family. And was it not for the devil in me, we would not have been here and Kadin would never have been born, my dear.”
Rene frowns. “Jack, you are so gentle and kind-hearted. This is the Jack Kadin has always known. However, just as gentle as you can be, so utterly cruel you handle the evil ones and it happens so suddenly and unexpectedly. It is as if you turn into a monster much worse and vicious than the cruellest criminal and nothing is stopping you, my husband.”
Jack tenderly looks at his beautiful wife and plays with her hair. “A burning energy runs through my skull and radiates from every cell in my body and I can’t resist it before it has burnt out. I feel so strong and capable I don’t even want to suppress it. It is like electricity that takes over and everything I do feel like a dream, but I am incredibly focussed and accurate.”
Rene is not finished yet. “Think back, Jack, how our place looked at that time. We couldn’t phone the police because the entrails were all over the floors and walls and their limbs were all over the place. We had to get rid of the human remains all by ourselves and keep it a secret. What if Kadin should experience something like that. It will change her forever, my dear.”
Jack smiles. “My adorable darling, here you are safe and sound because of my devil. This happened long ago and by this time you should have known that it is only the dangerous, utterly bad thugs that should not look for trouble. I don’t ever want to become like that again, my dear, and I will try to avoid it by all means as far as possible, I promise.”
“But it happened again years later, my dear, it hadn’t been the only incident. I don’t even know what you did to the hijackers next to the road in the dark. I am afraid to ask but I don’t think it is a coincidence that three months later the police found three mutilated corpses at the same spot.”
“Speaking of monsters! I am worried about that boy’s back. There is a good chance that he will keep welts permanently. I don’t hope he will be ashamed in the future to bare his upper body. He tries to hide it from us but his back is still aching and I can see how he tries to avoid something touching his back. I have to drive carefully because I see he tries hard to keep his back away from the seat. He really is a wonderful, selfless fellow. He must have endured immense torturing.”
Rene’s eyes soften. “He doesn’t want me to phone his mother because he doesn’t want to worry her unnecessarily and he lost his father at the age of 14, shame.”
“Where is his mother now?”
“She is in England up to the end of next week. He has told me a little while ago she phones him every evening from her hotel via WhatsApp to make sure everything is fine here. He showed me her photo. She is beautiful.”
“Rene, we will have to inform her before she returns. I don’t think their home is safe. Except if everything works itself out before she returns, we should rather meet her at the airport.”
“Jack, have you noticed the admiration in Kadin’s eyes when they look at each other? They are deeply in love, my dear. It is like a fairy tale how they were willing to sacrifice their lives for each other. How he, through the terrible torturing, protected her and his mother and those marks on his back will always be witness to that. This thing has created a very strong bond between them, darling.”
Jack wipes a tear of empathy that runs over her cheek with his thumb. “Where are they now?”
“They are resting, my dear. Billy is on his stomach in your shorts in the guest room and Kadin is in her room. I told them to rest before I prepared supper.”
The alarm sounds again and Rene silences it. “The last alarm. It is time for you to prepare for work while I lay the table.”
Suddenly hysteric yelling resounds through the home. It sounds as if both children simultaneously are being assaulted. Jack and Rene jump out of bed confused and runs to the doors of the children’s rooms opposite each other. They look to and fro and see the same scene playing off in both rooms. The children fight simultaneously against something immaterial on their beds.
Rene slips into Billy’s room and Jack into Kadin’s. Jack runs and hugs Kadin tightly. She wrestles to free herself from his grip while she yells hysterically as if something is assaulting her. She kicks wildly with her feet trying to break free.
“Kadin, wake up! It’s only a nightmare! Kadin! Kadin!”
Suddenly it seems as if she recognizes his voice and freezes. With wide, open eyes she doesn’t seem to be able to focus. “Wake up, my dear! It is me, your dad! You only had a nightmare!”
Slowly she starts to identify him and grabs him in a tight hug while she cries hysterically. Sobbing loudly she asks: “Where is Billy, Dad.”
“He is just over in his room with your mother. Let’s go to them, my child.”
They find Rene sitting on the edge of the bed while Billy, with his head in his hands, lies on his stomach. Rene looks up dumbfounded when they enter.
“I had difficulty to get him awake. He had a terrible nightmare. It looked as if he wrestled against something that attacked from within his mattress and I had to shout his name repeatedly in his ear before he came by. I was afraid to hurt him if I shake him.”
Jack looks from the one to the other. “Rene, the children are drenched in sweat as if they have plunged into the water.”
Billy rises slowly and looks at Kadin who suddenly rushes forward and runs into his arms so that he can press her against him and hug her tightly. She puts her arms around his neck and cries shamelessly while Rene and Jack can only look on dumbstruck.
Eventually, she controls herself and in between loud sobs exclaims: “Now I understand what he meant! I gave him the right! Now he will always be with us!”