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“Departures” is a supernatural thriller and love story published as a serial novel with new episodes dropping every Tuesday morning. Anyone can read or listen for free. Paid subscribers gain early access to new episodes. Watch the trailer or visit the table of contents to browse all the published episodes.
Previously…
In the last episode, after a disappointing weekend spent in the mountains for Wild’s birthday, with him seeming distant and distracted by the burden of knowing June only has six years left to live, they were driving back to Atlanta. Wild had her pull off the road and he spontaneously kissed her. It was their first physical contact since they’d met. The moment was bittersweet for Wild as he was having to adjust to the weight of the horrible secret he must carry to protect June.
Wild wasn’t ready to go back to the anemic shell of his life in Atlanta, so when Gerry had to return to Atlanta for work, Wild stayed on at the beach house. It was a better place to be alone. The ocean was the perfect companion, and he took to spending early mornings and evenings in her company when the sun was at its least punishing and the beach was mostly void of vacationers with their tents, radios, and military-grade coolers.
That evening he sat cross-legged on a towel and watched the tide retreat leaving a plane of wet sand that mirrored the blood-red orange and bruised eggplant hues of sunset. He was trying to rehabilitate his meditation practice but found the tiny ghost crabs far more interesting as they did their shifty, side-ways tap dance across the sand. Was his life really so different from theirs? It was a life defined by avoidance. And what had that gained him at the ripe age of sixty-eight? This line of thinking was a definite side-effect of being in Gerry’s company too long. The wattage of Gerry’s ambition could power Tokyo. Who else would be inspired to return to work after hearing the news that he only had a year left to live?
Wild closed his eyes again and tried to focus on his breath. Throughout his fifties, meditation had given him solace and he had sought out teachers who could push him further, often traveling to remote places to study with great masters. But then he had just stopped believing there was a point. If there was a point, it was to ease suffering, and yet suffering was a bottomless well. He recalled being on a crowded bus traveling back from a retreat at a small Buddhist monastery in Vietnam. His soul felt clean, lighter than the billowing clouds he watched through the window as the bus picked up passengers and dropped them off. Outside Saigon, a group of young soldiers had flagged down the bus to catch a ride since their vehicle had broken down. They were joking and laughing and, like the other riders, were very curious about the American only they had enough bravado to engage him directly. They were a group of friends all coming back from a short leave. Each introduced himself in turn and upon shaking their hands, Wild discovered they would all die on the same day two weeks later. The lightness he had felt moments before plunged him into a despair so heavy he missed his stop which caused him to miss his evening flight. He ended up spending an unplanned forty-eight hours in Saigon, much of which was spent drunk on a hotel bed.
After that, he had given up on enlightenment as a placebo for the rest of the people in the world who enjoyed a life of blissful ignorance. Wild hadn’t thought about that trip in years. As the sun set and his crustacean companions scurried around him, he pushed past that memory from the bus and thought about the man he had studied with at the monastery, the one who had set him free for a time.
You need not worry about death, the man had said once when they sat together after the evening meditation. It is not your job. It is the job of the worm, the beetle and the mushroom. Your job is love or suffering. You choose.
When he had gotten on that bus to begin the journey home, Wild had understood. He had chosen love, and that choice had lasted exactly three hours. For the last decade, he had stuck with the suffering choice. It was easier. The world confirmed his choice on a daily basis, even if he didn’t happen to cross paths with a young barista bound to die a painful death by the side of the road. Maybe he wasn’t built for love as June was. Maybe he had chosen this curse somehow because he had always chosen suffering. As this thought festered and rotted away any hope of a successful mediation, Wild’s phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He was happy for the intrusion and determined he would answer the call regardless of who it was. A conversation with anyone would be better than this spiral.
“Hi, Millie,” he said, switching the phone on speaker mode.
“Hi Wild, are you still at the beach?”
“I am indeed. Wasn’t ready to go inside yet. Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just had some time this evening and wanted to talk if that’s okay. I can call back if I’m interrupting…”
“Don’t be silly. I’m just sitting here watching the sunset. What’s on your mind?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about you, and I want to understand. I mean, I can’t stop thinking about this power you have. Something had to cause it. There must be some explanation.”
“There’s not. There’s only acceptance. That’s it.”
“But it’s your brain. Whatever may be different about it, it’s also the same as mine and everyone else’s. Something caused your brain to be different and I want to figure out what that was so I can help you.”
“You’re an important person. Surely you have more important things to tend to than beating your head against this wall.”
“I do have things I’m working on, but I also have some time coming up and I wanted to see if maybe you and I could take a trip back to the place in South America where you said all this started. I’ve been doing research on psychedelics and…”
“I know you’re trying to help, and I appreciate it, but I just don’t think I have the energy to go digging up stuff at this point. I just want to find some way to live with this until I don’t have to anymore.”
“I’m sorry, but no.”
It was a very Millie response. Her energy was so much like June’s. It was the kind of energy that drove her to search for answers where none existed. She was also tireless. He didn’t say anything but allowed the surf to hold up his end of the conversation.
“Look. You can’t just reveal this amazing thing to me and expect me not to poke at it, to try to figure it out. It’s your fault.”
Wild supposed it was his fault.
“Millie, I’ll hang out with you and travel anywhere with you at this point just because you’re my favorite person in the world. But if you think you can figure this out, you’ll be disappointed, and I don’t want to disappoint you.”
“Let me worry about that. I’ve been looking into tickets and…”
His niece’s shift into the role of Chief Operating Officer was decisive and he played his supporting role, answering her questions as best he could so she could plan out the whole trip. She wanted to leave in two days which didn’t surprise Wild in the least. He fully expected to be told she would send a car for him that night.
“It’s going to be strange to go back there after all this time,” he said once she had extracted all the necessary information.
“You never really thought to go back to the scene of the crime?”
“Sure, I did. June had the same idea, but I had more interest in enjoying every minute with her than I did being her project.”
“That must have been horrible for you, knowing the countdown. I can see why you’ve never allowed anyone else in.”
“It was horrible, but I never saw it like that until after, when I realized how much life was left for me,” he said, standing and walking down toward the water. “I met other women and some of them had a lot of time, but I just couldn’t do the dance again.”
Millie had a way of getting him to talk that no one else did. He checked himself. The last thing he wanted to do was overshare with his niece. But she wasn’t ready to hang up.
“Can you tell me what it feels like, I mean when you touch someone, and you have the vision?”
“I’m not good with words and even if I was, it’s hard to describe because it’s a little different every time.”
“Try, please. Tell me about when you learned Mom was going to die. You must have been pretty young.”
“You have to understand for those first couple of years, I had no idea what was happening to me or what it meant. Your mom was one of the first people I hugged when I got back from that trip.”
“So, you just saw this date in your mind when you hugged her but didn’t feel anything or know what it meant?”
“No, I felt something powerful, but I didn’t understand the date. At that point I was convinced the date thing was just this weird, highly specific side effect of the bad trip I had in the Amazon.”
“Try to remember what it felt like and describe it.”
“The vision’s always more than just one thing. It’s multi-sensory on that first contact. There’s always a bitter, earthy taste and an explosion of color. For the really intense ones where the date is close, I often have this ultrasonic ringing in my ears. And there’s always a headache.”
“You had all that with Mom and you just what, took a seat on the couch and asked for a glass of water?”
“Something like that. I was afraid to tell anyone the extent of what I was feeling. When it was obvious I wasn’t right in the head, your grandmother booked appointments with the best neurologists in the country, and they did every kind of scan and test available in 1980. Nothing showed up of course and that’s when I became your crazy uncle.”
“So, grandma, grandpa, and my mom, no one ever knew you had this real thing?”
“No, sweetie. They just thought I was crazy. After a few years of being in and out of psych wards, I learned I had to mask what I was experiencing every time someone clapped me on the back at a party.”
“It happens again, even with someone you’ve known for a long time?”
“Yes, but it’s much different than the first time. It’s not such a physical response, it’s more of a mental note, a reminder.”
“I’m not gonna ask you about mine,” she said, her voice reminiscent of when she was ten. “I don’t want to know.”
“I think that’s wise. All I’ll say Mills, is that you’ve got a lot of life to live which means you should be taking a girl with you to some exotic place, not your crusty old uncle.”
“There’s time for that. Besides, I’m seeing someone new. You’d like her. She’s kind of a hippy chick.”
“Really? On the granola scale, what are we talking?”
“Oh, she’s full crunch,” Millie laughed, and her laughter was like music. “I met her at a book reading over in Little Five Points. The author was talking about past lives.”
“I see, and does she know the kind of powerhouse she’s hooked up with?”
“I’ve told her a little bit, but I don’t want to scare her off. It was actually talking about you and my mom that made us close. But don’t worry, I haven’t told her anything specific. Even if I did, she’s one of those open people who wouldn’t judge…”
“It’s okay if you did. I’m just glad you’ve met someone. So, was this little field trip her idea?”
“Um, not exactly but she knows a lot about the subject. She’s a real psychonaut and has guided people on all kinds of trips long before it was cool like it is now. She’s really great. You’d like her…”
Wild could sense his niece was working her way up to something. He knew this register and tone of her voice. She had used it to get anything she wanted from him when she was just a girl and then later as a teenager. Like him, she’d never really wanted for anything that money could buy growing up, but for everything else she asked her Uncle Wild.
“You want to invite her to come with us?” he asked.
“Would that be okay? I mean, if it’s better to just be a you and me thing, that’s cool.”
“Of course, Mills. I’d like to meet her. What is this girl’s name, by the way?”
“It’s Raina and you’re gonna love her. She’s… different.”
“I’m sure I will. Hey, just please remember that this thing I have is real. It’s like a loaded gun. It’s not a fun party trick. I’ve met a lot of open-minded people in my life who believe all kinds of crazy things, but when push comes to shove, they think I’m a lunatic. I’m used to it, but you’re not.”
“Okay, I hear you. So, we have a plan then. I’m excited.”
“I’ll look forward to it. Goodnight, sweetheart.”
“Goodnight, Wild.”
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Want More? Check Out My Other Novels
If you’re enjoying “Departures,” chances are you will also like my two previously published novels. I’ve made the first two episodes of each free for you to preview. If you prefer reading the old fashioned way, you’re in luck because “The Memory of My Shadow” is now available in print, ebook, and audiobook anywhere you purchase books. I give you all the details in this announcement post.
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In the reality show competition for Houze, a revolutionary eco-home, six contestants face a winner-takes-all challenge. Beneath the surface of sustainability, altruism battles greed, turning a hopeful vision into a life and death struggle. Fans of “Nine Perfect Strangers” by Liane Moriarty will love this story.
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