THE NEW CHAPTER BOOK

CHAPTER 1

When Emmett Bailey opened his eyes his whole body was racked with pain and he couldn’t move, then the pain disappeared. Closing his eyes for a bit, he opened them again and looked around.

He still sat in his squad car. Turning his head, he could see his partner 

Aaron sat next to him but something was very wrong. Aaron’s eyes were closed and his body showed signs of several bullet holes. 

Emmett reached out to touch him but his body had a soft white glow to it.

The next thing he knew he was outside the vehicle looking in. He swung his confused gaze from where Aaron sat to where he himself should be sitting and stared in shock. His body was sitting behind the wheel. His eyes were closed and he could see blood everywhere. His chest was covered in it, so were the seat and the windows of the car. Broken glass had been scattered all over everything.

Emmett raised his hands to his face. He could still feel his body but something seemed different about it. He glanced down at his hands. They didn’t seem as solid as in the past and he could move them, but something seemed to be really off. Then he realized he was no longer alone. He stiffened briefly then turned to face whoever or whatever had joined him.

A small woman with cinnamon colored skin and the brightest blue eyes he’d ever seen, stared at him. Her long dark hair was brushed back over her shoulders and cascaded down her back, almost to her waist. “You have nothing to fear, I’m not here to harm you,” she told him.

“Ok, so what are you here to do?” he asked.

“Answer your questions.”

“What questions?”

Motioning to the car where he and his partner were shot and bleeding, she replied, “You don’t have questions?” She smiled at him while looking amused.

He didn’t see anything amusing about this situation. “Who and what are you?” he asked.

“My name is Synda and I am an Angel of Death. I was sent here to give you a message.”

“A message? From who?” Emmett asked as he felt confused and lost.

“From my boss. He wanted me to tell you, tonight wasn’t your time to die.”

Emmett turned to view his mortal body. It didn’t look any different than when he stepped out of the car. The bullet holes and blood were still present. “Then why am I dead?” he asked as he turned back to her.

“That is for you to find out,” Synda told him. “But I can tell you that you’re not really dead, this is an out of body experience. You still have time to reunite with your body but not much time. You are in a sort of limbo right now.”

Emmett snorted. “How am I supposed to do anything? If I'm in limbo?”

Crossing her arms over her chest she quipped, “You are being so difficult.”

He scoffed. “My bloody body is in that car, all shot to hell. My partner looks dead. As dead as I do… and I'm supposed to be easygoing and polite?”

She cocked her head at him. “Ok, you sorta have a point there. So, you are limbo but your life doesn’t have to end here. You have a rare opportunity right now. One that might give you closure if you accept it.”

“Please explain.”

“Because of your past acts, you are being given a second chance. Believe me, not many people get this offer,” she told him.

“A second chance? To do what?”

“To continue your work as a police officer…As a protector of the people.

“How can I be a protector when I’m stuck in limbo? I’m dead or almost dead, full of holes and my body hasn’t moved in five minutes,” Emmett ranted. “I can’t exactly fight crime anymore.”

“Maybe you can, with help,” Synda explained. “There’s someone out there that can help you figure out what happened here tonight and why.”

Emmett cocked his head to one side to ask, “And why am I being given this second chance?”

“You’re one of the good guys. You must realize that? You’ve shown that time and time again. You’ve stood up for the little people in this world where sometimes the only break they get are the bad ones. You may not realize this but that shows us you believe in justice for everyone, not just who can serve your interests.”

He sighed and said, “I was never a hero, but yeah, I hated how the odds are always stacked against decent people. So how do I find this person?”

Synda smiled. “You will know her when you see her. She will be your link to the living.”

Emmett turned to look at Aaron. “Will he live to see another day?”

“Perhaps…” She shrugged. “Let me ask you this… What brought the two of you here to this place tonight?”

Emmett stared off in the distance to try to remember, then he looked over at her. “Aaron and I were going to dinner when we got a call. Someone had called in a report of a gunshot, but when we got here it was quiet. I told him that it was almost too quiet. I was about to get out of the vehicle when I saw a man come out of the dark. He had a semi-automatic weapon. I reached for my gun but before I could even get my hand down, he opened fire….”  He paused, then said, “We didn’t stand a chance. The bullets ripped into us. I have never felt pain like that before.”

Synda turned and placed her hand on his arm. “I think you better look at the car again and tell me what you see.”

Emmett turned and stared at the car. He saw multiple bullet holes, then he noted something else. The pattern of shots, mostly located on the driver’s side of the car. The bullets had gone through the windshield but some had gone through the vehicle itself. Aaron’s side was barely hit. Three maybe four bullets on his side but there must have been twenty or so on Emmett’s side. He snapped his head back to Synda and asked, “I was the target?”

“You tell me.”

Emmett turned back and shook his head. “Why would anyone want me dead?”

“That, my friend, is what you have to figure out. But you were a cop, so there may be more than one criminal wanting you dead,” Synda said. “There’s something going on here and you have to figure out what it is. Someone wanted you dead and he almost made it happen. Now you have to find out why.”

Emmett raised his head as he heard police sirens coming their way. He turned to speak to Synda but she was nowhere to be seen. With no real choice, he stood there and waited for the ambulance to come. He hoped his partner would still be alive when this was over.

Emmett knew one thing, he had one more assignment… find out who wanted him dead and why.

 

Maybe an hour later…

 Emmett found himself in the hospital. 

Several other officers were standing around waiting for information about Aaron. Everyone had questions about what happened on that dark road. Someone here in the waiting room said they found over a hundred empty shells around the car.

He heard them talking then it all seemed to be nothing but a buzzing in his ears. Turning away, he walked into the room where Aaron was. 

His partner lay on the bed with tubes and wires all over his body. He’d been hit maybe four times but he was hanging in there. 

A young woman sat next to him, Aaron’s wife Denise, wearing a badge around her neck. She watched her husband even though he did nothing but lay still on the bed. She held Aaron’s hand carefully, tears in her eyes. 

Emmett stood at his side, staring at the machine keeping his partner alive and whispered, “Don’t let the bastards win. You hang in there buddy. I’m going to find out why I had to die and you are fighting for your life. I swear it.” 

Denise sat there, fresh tears ran down her cheeks. She scooted forward on the chair and brushed the hair from Aaron’s face. Then she leaned down and kissed the back of his hand. “I love you, babe. Please don’t leave me,” she whispered. “I can’t live without you.”

This scene almost got to him. He wanted to sit in a chair in this room and pray for Aaron. Not leave until the man woke up and smiled at his wife. After all, if there was an Angel Of Death, there had to be Angels Of Life, right? 

Emmett swallowed heavily then forced the sadness away. He couldn’t stay that long, he had things to do and people to find. He went to the room next door to see doctors and nurses standing over his own body. They had him hooked up to a number of medical devices and a slow heartbeat kept sounding with blips. He felt truly surprised by this as he stared at the machines. He thought he was toast already.

The doctors were shaking their heads.

One of them spoke, “Holy Christ, he took eleven bullets and he’s still alive? That’s a miracle in itself. He should be dead.”

“Well, let's hope he stays with us,” another doctor said as he slid Emmett’s chart into a slot at the end of the bed. “As long as there’s brain activity, he’s golden.”

Emmett  shook his head. Nothing golden here, doc. He needed to find this person who could help him and he had to find her fast. Only problem was he had no idea where to even start looking. He headed down the hall, got into the elevator and took it down to the main floor. Then he walked outside. 

The harsh Arizona heat blasted him as he made his way along the huge parking lot. The sun was just going down painting the sky with yellows and reds. Wasn’t it night already when they were shot? He wondered about time…Did it exist for him?

He turned and went east, he didn’t know why, but something in his brain told him to go toward the Sleeping Maiden Mountain. It was across the desert though. He didn’t know what he would find there, maybe nothing and he was just wasting time here. Time, he didn’t have to waste.  How would he get there though?

He stopped and listened to the wind for some reason. At first, it just sounded like wind, then it began to change into like… almost a whisper? It seemed to be calling his name. He shook his head. How could the wind call his name? He turned around to go back but he heard a crack of thunder just then and he stopped. Once he raised his head he looked around and he now stood at the base of the mountain.

 How in the hell? 

The moon was high in the sky when he reached it. When he stopped the whole mountain was right in front of him. He had no idea why he was here or how he was supposed to find the person who could help him.  Then the wind shifted again as he started to climb the mountain. The terrain was rough and hard, so Emmett felt like it was too much to climb to the top. So when he couldn’t go any further, he stopped to sit on the ground and wondered if he was being stupid. 

The evening air was cooling and he’d only gotten half way up. He laid back on the ground and stared up at the sky. The stars were sparkling and in the night canopy and he couldn’t help but wonder if the rumors about this mountain were true. He paused..where did he learn about this place anyway? He knew some things about it… Like this mountain held the old spirits of people that lived here long ago. Back before this country had been a country. The woman was supposedly waiting for her warrior to come back home.

And…Well, that’s all he remembered.

He closed his eyes. Behind his eyelids, he saw the man who had stepped out of the dark and fired at the squad car he and Aaron had been sitting in. It all happened in slow motion. He saw the face of the man come into focus and he was shouting something. Emmett couldn’t quite hear the words though as the shooter squeezed the trigger on that rifle in his hands.

Emmett’s eyes snapped open and he sat up while breathing hard. He didn’t know why his body filled with panic but it did. Again, his mind went back to the event as the man stepped out and Emmett could see his face. The whole scene was terrifying in its gray reflection like some dream, it all happened in black and white, except for the blood— it almost glowed a bright grisly red as the crimson liquid  seemed to be everywhere, dripping from his chest down along arms and legs. 

The shooter had dark hair and green eyes, and a scar on his face as well. The scar ran from his temple all the way down to his jawline. Something seemed familiar about that scar but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what it was. Caught in a nightmare that had been all too real, Emmett laid there on the sand in the desert at the base of a mountain range…trembling in the dark.