Beyond The Shadow

Chapter One

I guess I am a Christian. I was brought up as a Christian and if I have a faith, that is it. For most of my thirty plus years I hadn't thought too deeply about it, but I knew all the Bible stories from Sunday school and church when I was a boy.

Having briefly been a cop in New York and now with the FBI, I know a lot about evil in it's manifested form on the streets. Until the day I came across the book, I hadn't really thought about evil as depicted in the Bible, or as an entity of itself. Just man's inhumanity to his fellow man and  more often to women. Violence, murder, abuse all of these had figured in my career.

I'm based in the New York office of the Bureau. The coffee in the office is awful so I frequently, when I'm working from my desk, go out to grab a decent cup. Coffee in hand I did what I normally do according to the weather. I go sit in the park a block or so away and take a break there. I found a bench sat down and sat back while my coffee cooled a little. It was a good day, sun shining and folk enjoying the good weather.

I leaned forward on the bench and started drinking my coffee. For some reason I looked down. There, beneath the bench, was a book. No ordinary one by the look of it either. It was leather bound with intricate patterns. I stared at it for a short while, then picked it up. Looking back now, I sorely wish I hadn't because of where it led me.

I started to look inside. The script was old, very old, of Gothic type in appearance and as I flicked gently through the pages I saw pictures, or rather drawings or etchings, of angels and what might best be described as depictions of demons and what I supposed was the Devil. I looked around, half expecting some aged professor to turn up and say he had absent-mindedly forgotten his book. No one was taking any interest.

I picked it up and decided I would hand it in at the PAB - Police Administration Building - to go to lost property. That was the intention, but it never happened. My cell phone rang. I was required immediately at the site of a stake-out we had been running in Queens. I picked my car up from the underground car park and headed to Queens. The book was thrown on the back seat. I would hand it in later.

I arrived in Queens parked the car up a few blocks from the stake out and walked the the rest. Two hours later I and Frank Carson were relieved. I walked back to my car and Frank walked to his. When I had seated myself in the car, I remembered the book. I turned around to get it from the back seat. It wasn't there, nor was it on the front seat.

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The car was untouched when I returned. I decided to look under the seats - nothing. It had gone. Just to make sure I got out of the car and down on my knees I searched the car floor thoroughly. Nothing, zilch, zero. I settled back in my car and decided that although something of a mystery I would forget and I drove home. 

I arrived at my house, a bachelor pad  since my divorce, put the car in the garage and entered my home. I threw the keys on the kitchen counter, got myself a cold beer from the fridge, took my mail and went into the lounge to enjoy the beer and deal with the mail. That was when I saw it. The book. It was dead center on my coffee table and it was open, as if waiting for me.

I walked over to the table, my beer and the mail forgotten for a moment. I didn't touch it straight away, just stared down at the pages that were open. Until that day I was not given to any belief in the supernatural. I Looked a little closer at the Gothic style script on the pages. It looked old, medieval perhaps. The pages were some sort of parchment material. I didn't touch thee pages that were open. Something stopped me doing that. I had intended closing the book.

I started to read.  It was difficult at first, due to the script, but I soon got my eye in and read both pages in full What they said shocked me. Apart from the content, there at the bottom of the left hand page was my name - Michael. It was a book it seemed of angels and evil, from what little I had read. 

Later further research and help would reveal that the book came over from England in the 16th century, but I was told it was far older than that. I sat there that evening wondering what to do with the book, whether to hand it in or not. I decided not to, at least not immediately. 

I went back into the kitchen for my second and last beer. When I returned the book was closed. I left it untouched. I was still puzzled as to how it had disappeared from my car and re-appeared in my home. Had I had a memory lapse? Had I lost some time somewhere? Was I going crazy? 

All these thoughts passed through my mind and then … it happened. The book opened by itself at what seemed to be an illustration. There was a movement in the air then right before my disbelieving eyes a figure appeared in the room standing well over six feet. I lay back on my couch in a state of fear mixed with extreme apprehension. 

Then a calm settled over me that seemed to come from the apparition before. He, it was a 'he', spoke and what he said led me into a world I had never before encountered as an agent of the FBI.

Unbeknown to me at the time, far to the north in the State of Maine, something stirred in the Great North Woods.

Chapter Two

I fell asleep on the couch  that night and woke after midnight still in my suit with my holster sticking into my ribs. I had placed the gun where I always do in my bedside table. I shook my head free of fuzziness, undressed and went to bed. Had I dreamt everything that evening - the book, the figure taller than me by a foot and what he said?

I fell asleep. The weekend had come around and although I work some, this one was mine. I showered shaved dressed and decided to go out for breakfast as I always do weekends. Before doing so I considered what I had heard the night before. I knew that morning, it was no dream and very real. In the lounge the book was closed, but had been moved from the coffee table to the small desk I have in there. Had I done that? The answer was no. I hadn't touched the book from coming home the evening before, to waking that morning.

Then there was the matter of my name - Michael - appearing in the book in the same script as the  remainder. The figure or more precisely apparition had been a man without doubt, very tall. Ethereal almost, in a kind of cloak that hung from his shoulders all the way to the floor. I don't recall seeing any feet, but I do recall to fairly large protrusions either side of his head emanating from between his shoulders.

The evening before and what I had experienced, felt and witnessed, was becoming clearer. I decided to consult an old friend. His name was Shimon and he was a rabbi.

And...something stirred in Maine, far to the north.

Shimon guarded his speciality so much so that few were aware of what he knew. I called to arrange a meeting and after mentioning the book was told to come immediately. I arrived at Shimon's place in Brooklyn shortly after the call. Shimon greeted me with his usual 'Shalom aleichem' to which I responded in the Jewish way, 'Aleichem shalom'.

He almost grabbed the book from me once we were settled in his archaic office deep in bowels of his home. He opened it slowly noting I had put a marker in the page. Questions flowed,. Where did I get the book? What happened when you opened it? Did you see anything?

He seemed to know more than I did already, so I asked him why my name appeared in the book in that ancient script. He smiled at me. I asked him 'What?' 

He replied that it wasn't my name in the book, but that of the Archangel Michael. I quickly followed up with what I think I saw and what I heard from the apparition.

Shimon simply replied, 'You have been chosen'.