The Three Wise Guides (2 page)

Walking
through the park and talking with Gabe, Mary learned a great deal more about
her new calling.

“So, I’m
supposed to help dead people figure out why they haven’t moved on?” Mary asked.

“Yeah, that
just about sums it up,” he said.

“But there
could be dozens of reasons, hundreds of reasons,” she said. “How am I supposed
to figure it out?”

“You’re the
cop, aren’t you?
 
Almost
detective right?”

“Yeah, well,
until I started hearing voices,” she said with a sigh. “The force frowns on
detectives with psychosis.”

Gabe laughed
loudly and Mary glanced around, hoping no one would hear him. “
Shhhh
,” she cautioned.

“Mary, no
one can hear me but you,” he said. “And those voices are just ghosts trying to
get your attention.”

She stopped
in the middle of the sidewalk. “What?”

“There are
ghosts all around us,” he said. “Spirits who are stuck here because of
something they’ve done or something someone’s done to them. They want to cross
over.
 
When word got out that you were
recruited to help, well, there’s been a little excitement in the Spirit World.”

“Word got
out?
 
How in the world, I mean the Spirit
World, does word get out?”

“The spirits
are drawn to you. They know you can help,” he said. “And in a place like
Chicago, you’re going to get lots of attention. It can be a little
overwhelming.”

Shaking her
head, she met his eyes. “How can I do all of this?” she asked. “I mean, I’ve
been on investigations before and it takes a lot of work. How do I balance my
real job and doing this?”

“God has a
way of working things out,” Gabe said. “Just have a little faith and go with
the flow.”

“Go with the
…” Mary began, but was cut off by Gabe.

“Well, here
they are now,” he said looking out across the park.

Mary
followed his gaze and, at first, didn’t see anything but snow, trees and empty
park benches. She took a deep breath and concentrated. Finally, the air began
to shimmer and she saw two men, about the same age as Gabe, approaching.
 
One man was a tall African-American with a
scarred leather bomber jacket over his thin frame and loose khaki pants.
 
His face was clean shaven and his hair was
gray.
 
The other man was shorter and
dressed in jeans and a sheepskin-lined canvas jacket.
 
His hair was nearly black and cut in a short
well-trimmed style. His skin was slightly dusky and Mary assumed he was
American-Indian.

“It’s about
time you two decided to show up,” Gabe teased. “Mary, these are my partners, Otis
Freeman and Joseph Redfeather.
 
Gentlemen, this is Mary O’Reilly, our newest recruit.”

Otis nodded
and smiled at her. “We heard about you,” he said. “And we are honored to have
you in our company.”

“Your
company?” she asked, sending a quick apologetic glance to Gabe.

“There
aren’t many people who offer to lay down their life to save another,” Joseph
said. “You’re part of a small club.”

Shrugging, she
met his eyes. “I just did what I had to do. My brother would have died.”

“Greater love hath no man
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” Otis whispered.

“So, all of
you, you’re part of this club?” she asked.

Gabe nodded.
“And one day we’ll tell you our stories,” he said. “But for now, we need to get
you ready for your first assignment.”

“There are
things you need to know,” Joseph added.
“Important things.”

“Okay, I’m
listening.”

“First
thing, we are all brothers and sisters,” Otis said. “It’s not our job to judge
because we can never have the whole picture.”

“Only God
gets to judge,” Gabe added.

“I’m fine
with that,” Mary agreed.

“Once you
acknowledge a ghost, they are connected to you,” Joseph said. “They can follow
you.”

Mary rubbed
her arms up and down as a quick shiver ran up her spine. “Okay, that’s just a
little creepy,” she said. “Aren’t there any rules?”

“You can set
your own rules by announcing what you want out loud,” Gabe said. “A good rule
is no ghosts in the bathroom.”

Nodding,
Mary said, “Oh, yes, I think that’s a very good rule.”

“Make sure
you do it when you get home,” Joseph said, “or you might run into a little
company in the shower.”

“Once you
figure out what is holding a spirit back and you help them resolve the issue,
they might need a little help moving on,” Otis explained. “They’re so used to
being
here,
they might not know to look for the
light.
 
Tell them to look around and when
they see a light, they should walk towards it.”

“Is the
light always a good thing for them?” Mary asked. “Will it be peaceful?”

“Not always
peaceful,” Joseph said. “But they will understand that it will be a fair result
of the life they’ve lived.”

“Can anyone
else see the ghosts, besides me?”

Gabe shook
his head. “Usually not,” he replied. “But occasionally, when there is a special
connection between you and another person, they are able to see ghosts through
you.”

“Will people
think I’m nuts?” she asked.

All three
guides laughed. “Yes, they will,” Gabe said. “But it’s far better for others to
think you are crazy, than for you to think it.”

“I feel like
Ebenezer Scrooge,” Mary mumbled as she got ready for bed. “But in a good way.”

The guides
had told her that her first assignment would show up in her bedroom later that
night and she should be ready for him.
 
She dressed for bed in sweats and a big t-shirt, wanting to be prepared
in case she had to leave the house in a hurry.

She climbed
into bed, pulled the covers up to her chin and waited.
 

The house
was quiet except for the sounds of the furnace blower whirring and the hall
clock ticking rhythmically in the background.
 
She could hear cars drive down the street in front of the house and, if
she really concentrated, she could hear the sounds of sirens in the distance.

She looked
up to the ceiling and thought about her day.
 
The three wise guides had been a wonderful
distraction. They had given her pointers, teased her a little and opened up
about their own stories.
 
Gabe had been a
high school teacher who had stepped between a confused student with a gun and
an assembly hall of other students.
 
Otis
had been a firefighter for the Chicago Fire Department who died saving others
in a high rise fire. Joseph had been a cab driver who dived into a flooded
river to save a mother and her children who were trapped in a minivan that had
been pulled into the raging waters.
 
He
was able to get them all to safety when a large tree limb swept by and pulled
him under.
 

Ordinary people who did extraordinary things.
She was honored
to be considered one of their
group
; although she
really didn’t think she deserved it.
 
She
nearly died saving her brother and, besides, she was a cop. What else could she
have done?

She paused
in her thoughts when she noticed the room was getting colder.
 
Blowing softly into the air in front of her,
she was amazed that she could actually see her breath.
 
“Hello,” she whispered.

“I heard you
can help me,” a voice came from a darkened corner of her room. It was a man’s
voice with a slightly Hispanic accent. “Can you help me?”

Mary took a
deep breath and concentrated, just like she had in the park.
 
The air seemed to shimmer, but whoever the
ghost was, he was still in the shadows.

“Come
closer,” Mary said, unwilling to leave the safety of her bed. “I can’t see
you.”

“I need your
help,” the voice took on a desperate tone. “Tell me you will help.”

He stepped
forward into the illumination from her small bedside lamp. Mary gasped, clapped
her hand over her mouth and shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “No, I can’t
help you.”

Jose
Martinez took a step closer to her bed.
 
His body was riddled with the gunshots holes he received from the other
police officers on the scene. His hair was still mottled with blood and his
eyes still held the desperate look of a junkie high on crack. “Lady, listen,
you
gotta
help me,” he pleaded.

“No. No,
don’t you get it. You shot me.
 
You were
going to kill my brother,” she quietly seethed. “You think you can do that to
me, to my family and I’m going to help you? Sorry, but I will not help you.”

“But you’re
the only one…”

Mary dropped
down in her bed, pulled up her blankets and covered her head. “Go away,” she
ordered. “Just go away.”

She held her
breath and waited, her heart hammering in her chest, listening to the soft
sobbing on the ghost beside her.
 
But she
was not going to move.
 
She was not going
to change her mind. She could not help this man.

There had to
have been some mistake.
 
Surely God
didn’t want her to help the very man who had shot her.
 
Surely he would realize it was too much to
ask.
 
Besides, this guy was a junkie and
a murderer; he deserved whatever he ended up with.

The room
became quiet and Mary realized that she could no longer see her breath.
 
She sat up in her bed and look around,
concentrating to make sure there was no one lurking in the shadows. Finally
satisfied, she placed her head back on her pillow and went to sleep.

Mary woke up
suddenly and sat up quickly in bed.
 
Her
instincts told her she was not alone.
 
She reached for the nightstand next to her bed in order to pull open the
drawer and get the gun she stored there.

“Hey, calm
down there Mary. You don’t need to shoot me, I’m already dead.”

She turned
and saw Gabe floating at the foot of her bed. “You scared me,” she admitted,
releasing a sigh of relief.

“Hey,
sorry,” he replied. “I just wanted to see how your night went.”

She
shrugged. “There must have been some mistake,” she said. “There was no way I
could help the guy that showed up. It was Jose Martinez, the piece of garbage
who shot me and tried to kill my brother.”

“So, you got
Martinez as your first case,” Gabe replied. “And it didn’t go so well.”

“I’d say it
didn’t go at all,” she said. “I told him I couldn’t help him. It was pretty cut
and dry.”

Gabe nodded
and crossed his arms over his chest. “You know, as a teacher, I used to tell my
students that often things aren’t as obvious as they seem.”

“Well, as a
cop I can tell you this is an open and shut case,” Mary insisted. “I saw
Martinez point the gun at Sean.
 
I saw
the intent in his eyes; he was going to kill my brother.
 
We have more than a dozen witnesses, all
trained observers, who would testify that Martinez shot me and would have
killed others if they hadn’t shot him first. I don’t need a judge to call this
one, this guy was guilty and he got what he deserved.”

Gabe glided
along the side of the bed, until he was standing along the side, next to Mary.
“Well, it looks like you’ve got this one all figured out,” he said. “But I
can’t help but think you might need a little more background to clarify the
situation. You know, extenuating circumstances.”

“Extenuating
circumstances don’t change the fact that he stood by himself in the street,
pointed a gun at my brother and pulled the trigger,” Mary argued. “I’m sorry,
Gabe, but I need to call it as I see it.”

“Well, I can
understand that, Mary,” he replied. “And I think, from a police perspective,
you’ve been very fair and very honest.
 
But, I’d like you to see it from your new employer’s perspective.”

“My new?”

Gabe held
out his hand. “Come on,
Mary,
put your hand in mine.
I’ve got something to show you.”

Throwing her
blankets to one side, she slid out of bed and put her hand in his. “Fine,” she
agreed. “But you are not going to change my mind.”

Once he
clasped her hand, her bedroom melted away to a soft blur. “This is weird,” she
whispered.

“Yeah, but weird in a cool way, right?”
Gabe replied, humor
lacing his voice.

“Exactly,”
Mary agreed.

In a few
moments they were walking down a narrow street in a rundown neighborhood in
Chicago.
 
Graffiti covered every surface,
abandoned cars sat alongside curbs, store windows were boarded over and
concrete ran from the foundations of the brownstone apartment buildings to the
streets, with only a ribbon of black asphalt separating the depressing
gray.
 

Suddenly a
car screeched around a corner and Mary could hear gunshots ricocheting off the
apartment buildings brick facades.
 
She
instinctively reached for her gun, but remembered she was only in pajamas.
“Gabe, we’ve got to find cover,” she yelled, pulling at her guide’s arm.

“
It’s
okay, Mary,” he said calmly. “We’re only shadows from
the future. We’re not really here.
 
Nothing can happen to us.”

The car drew
closer and Mary could see the passengers wore the distinctive colors of one of
Chicago’s well-known Hispanic street gangs.
 
The older model Buick was filled with at least eight gang members and,
except for the driver; all of the other occupants were leaning out the car
windows firing their weapons indiscriminately at the apartment buildings.

“I
understand this is the territory of a rival gang,” Gabe explained. “So they
came here to teach them a lesson.”

The gunshots
continued, along with the sounds of screams of terror as windows exploded and gunshots
echoed in hallways. “Someone could get killed,” Mary shouted. “We have to stop
them.”

She started
to run towards the car, but Gabe held her back. “Mary, this has already
happened. We can’t stop it,” he said. “And, you’re right, someone did get
killed.”

The scene
around them blurred and a moment later Mary found herself in a dingy, narrow
apartment building hall.
 
“Gabe…” she
began.

He put a
finger to his lips and shook his head. “Listen,” he whispered.

She stopped
and did as he requested. The soft sounds of sobbing came from the other side of
a door they were standing next to. “Come,” Gabe said, holding his hand out once
more.

With her
hand in his, they slipped through the closed door and into the tiny
apartment.
 
A young woman lay on the
floor, blooding pooling around her body.

Mary began
to move forward, but once again Gabe held her back. “It’s too late,” he
whispered.

Then Mary
turned her attention to the other occupants of the room.
 
The soft sobbing she had heard came from a
little girl, no older than three who was embraced in her older brother’s arms.
 
The boy could not have been older than eight.

“Madre,” the
girl cried. "
Por
favor
madre
,
no
estés
muerta
."

“Please
mother, don’t be dead,” Gabe translated for Mary.

“Oh, the
poor baby,” Mary whispered. “Is she…did the mother…”

Gabe nodded.
“Yes, she died immediately.”

“Don’t
worry, Maria,” the older brother said fiercely. “I will watch over you.
 
I will protect you now.”

Maria turned
her tear-stained face up to look at her brother, her breath catching in quiet
sobs.
“
Tengo
miedo
.”

“You don’t
have to be afraid, Maria,” he said, hugging her closer. “I promise you, I will
always be here for you.”

“
Te
quiero
, Jose,” she said
quietly, laying her head against his chest.

“I love you
too, Maria,” he said, placing his head on top of hers. “I love you too.”

Mary’s
attention snapped from the children to Gabe. “Jose?” she asked. “Is this…”

He nodded.
“Yes, this is Jose Martinez when he was eight years old.”

Mary shook
her head and glared at Gabe. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Many children have
hard lives and don’t grow up to kill cops. He had choices. He just chose the
wrong things.”

Gabe took
Mary’s hand. “You’re right.
 
I can’t
argue with that. Come on, it’s time for me to bring you home.”