Chapter twelve

It was August, the dog days of summer, and the overall energy around him felt strange. Zeke told himself he must be going crazy because of the heat. By now, he had enough experience to realize that the world and the entire cosmos were made of energy and were inextricably connected, but somewhere deep down, a part of him still questioned the signs. He simply couldn’t come to terms with his own significance, his own validity.

By the second week of the month, he noticed the signs and synchronicities around him were unusually high, almost blasting him with new information, trying to draw his attention to something he couldn’t decipher yet, but he knew it was coming. He would be nearing his fifteenth birthday in a few months and was keen to leave the impact of Nora’s death behind and look forward to the next chapter of life.

One evening, he sat at his desk and tried powering up his computer, but the screen remained blank. He tried it a couple more times and just assumed the motherboard had died. He decided to find a local repair guy, left a voicemail and waited for a return call. Not wasting any time, he opened the book Mr. Leitner sold him. His mother asked him to come for dinner, but he was so absorbed in his reading that she had to leave his dinner on a side table next to him. He eventually fell asleep with his cheek pressed against the keys of the keyboard. He woke to a loud bleeping. The screen flipped on and off a couple of times while it blared like a siren. Then it finally switched on, and he saw the following message written in bold:

Knock! Knock! Are you there?

Then he heard Zag’s shrieky voice. “Little Mister Tartal, can you hear me? Please help me! Please help me, sir!” Zeke was immediately reminded of the same experience he had years ago.

“Zag must be up to mischief again,” he thought.

Ziggy pecked on his windowpane. She looked worried. “Zag isn’t in his bubble. He must be in some silly trouble. Where is he? Where is he? How stupid can he be? He’s merely the size of a fig. Ziggy Zig Zig.” Ziggy wasn’t the usual mischief-monger.

“Her concern about Zag must be genuine,” he thought, and so it began worrying him as well. Zag’s distressed sounds were coming from somewhere close. “Maybe Zag climbed inside the computer tower and got stuck inside? That’s probably the reason the computer wasn’t switching on in the first place.” He searched around and banged the unit a couple of times, trying to get Zag out.

“Mister Tartal, help! Help me, please!” He heard the weepy voice again. It was very close to him, almost right in his ears.

“Where are you, Zag?” he frantically asked.

“Come closer, look inside, sir. Oh no! I can’t breathe. I’m strangling!”

Zeke realized the sound was coming from inside his computer. But that wasn’t possible. There was no way in and no way out. He leaned close enough for his forehead and nose to touch the screen. A powerful indigo light flowed from the screen and flooded the room. Zeke squinted his eyes against the glow of the bright light.

The next thing he knew, he was sucked into the screen and straight into a whirlpool of indigo light. A crystalline silhouette held his hand twirling right up along with him. It had a long, flowing cascade of hair.

Are you Nora?” he asked. “Are you taking me somewhere up in heaven?”

The entity didn’t respond. He was delivered to a pool of light outside the same palace he had seen in his childhood dream. The lion-headed gate guards bowed in reverence the moment they saw him. He walked in but turned around immediately to look at his companion, who had taken him this far.

The figure simply walked away, leaving him behind. Her long cascade of blonde, almost white hair fanned out behind her. She was unusually tall, and she wore a crown and a long, flowing gown like an empress. She turned back to look at him and smiled lovingly. Then, just like that, she was gone.

Zig and Zag sat on his shoulders, smiling and whistling in joy. He was immediately surrounded by many lion-like creatures, all equally tall, with lion heads and human bodies. They came up and hugged him as if he were a long-lost friend. He was totally bewildered, but his heart was overflowing with love and joy. One of them gently caressed his hair, kissed his head, and said, “You’ve finally come home. We’re so happy to see you again, Ezekiel!”

Zeke was stunned to hear his birth name. “How could they possibly know that?” Still, everyone and everything felt strangely familiar. The one who had kissed his head had such motherly affection; it really reminded him of his own mother. Zeke felt he was indeed back home. He thought about the soul who brought him into this strange kingdom and wanted to look for her, but they wouldn’t let him go, all wanting to embrace him and celebrate his return.

• • •

“Zeke honey, go to bed or you might wake up with a sprained neck tomorrow,” he heard his mother say as she lightly nudged him. Zeke jumped off his seat and looked all around. The room looked normal, and the computer was powered off. Zig and Zag weren’t around, either. Everything around him appeared normal, as if nothing had happened, except the moon outside the window looked unusually big and blue.

He looked at the calendar lying on his desk. It was 08/08/14. Nothing made sense, so he let himself believe that this, too, was no more than a dream. These dreams of his had become more frequent, and as such he had stopped paying much attention to them. But, unbeknownst to him, they were not mere dreams, and it was going to take some time for him to understand what they truly meant.