The Atua Man: A Novel

Barbara Buchanan, an African American woman in her early fifties, pushed her way through the mob fronting Stanford House, the Tudor Revival buildings in South West London that housed the offices, television studios, and residences that made up the St. John Ministries. It was ten to nine and Barbara was going to be late for the quarterly board meeting if she couldn’t get through the crowd. She hated to be late.

She wondered what in hell had brought out this crowd. There had always been the curious in front of Stanford House waiting to catch a glimpse of their messiah, but this morning was different. Something was going on.

Tall and thin, her close-cropped hair salted with white, Barbara was stronger than she looked. She elbowed aside someone trying to stop her by grabbing the strap of her Louis Vuitton bag. That act nearly choked her. She pulled the purse to her chest and then felt the jacket of her new suit rip as another person tried to keep her from getting to work. Cursing under her breath, she fought her way up to the steps of the gated entrance only to be stopped by a policeman.

“I’m Barbara Buchanan. I work here.”

“I’ll need some identification, ma’am.” The policeman crossed his arms and looked at Barbara skeptically.

Barbara reached into her bag for her wallet only to find it gone.

“It seems I’ve been pickpocketed. I’m missing my wallet.”

The policeman nodded but didn’t move.

Gary Howell stepped from the entrance to the stoop to get a sense of the crowd. He was tense, expecting the worst. In his mid-thirties, Gary wore a tailored suit, and stood with a military bearing. He had a Bluetooth earpiece in one ear, a mobile phone to the other ear, and a walkie-talkie in his hand. His muscles bulged under his suit as he twisted around, taking in the full scope of the hordes hoping to glimpse Jason St. John. Half of the crowd yelled, “Heal us!” while further back, separated by police barricade, protesters shouted “Antichrist.”

“Barbara! What are you doing down there?” Gary rushed down to the gate.

“I lost my wallet and this person won’t let me in.”

Howell tapped the policeman on his shoulder. “Let her in. She’s one of our directors.”

“She hasn’t any identification.”

“I’ll vouch for her.”

“And who are you?”

“I’m the bloody head of security and I’ll have your boss on the phone in two seconds if you don’t let her in.”

The bobby stepped aside, and Gary opened the gate.

Tony Bass, the dapper, fiftyish CEO of St. John Ministries, leaned over the shoulder of a young technician anxiously scanning the array of monitors in his cubical in the St. John Ministries security bunker. The numerous screens showed the crowds on the street, the entries and exists of Stanford House, and the hallways, public rooms and garages of the compound.

“There!” Bass pounded his pencil on the monitor showing a car pulling into the garage. “What time was that?”

“About six, I think. One of the kitchen staff.”

“This is serious, you know,” Bass said. “You have no idea of the threats we have against Mr. St. John’s life. I wish you people would get it through your heads that if the world loses Jason St. John, they have lost one of the great prophets of all time.”

Bass watched for a moment longer until another monitor drew his attention to the breaking news of ITV reporter Theodore Spencer.

“Oh fuck. Not him again.”

Spencer, Britain’s answer to Geraldo Rivera, had such a relationship with the camera that those watching him felt that he was their best friend and that whatever news he was delivering was drop-what-you-are-doing important. He had a rich baritone voice that made everything he said sound credible, and piercing eyes that assured his audience that he would get to the truth wherever it hid. He had perfect English, more hair than he deserved, and he looked no older than forty. He had probably looked that way for years.

Tony Bass walked over to the monitor and turned up the volume. “Four twelve-year-old girls, here at Royal Marsdan Hospital, all in the last stages of childhood leukemia, left the hospital this morning apparently no longer sick, but full of energy and joy.”

A grainy video from the hospital’s security camera popped on the screen showing the girls scurrying across the lobby with their parents running after them.

Spencer’s voice went on under the video; “The children claim that the world renown healing guru, Jason St. John, cured them of their disease. In fact, one of the girls told her doctor that she saw Jason St. John in the hospital room…”

The monitor went back to Spencer, filling the screen with his face.

“Are you recording this?” Bass was glued to Spencer’s image.

“What?” The security tech followed Bass’s gaze to the television. “No sir, that’s just the telly.”

“Record everything. And call me immediately when you find video of Mr. St. John.”

The television captured a shot of the mobs in front of Stanford House and then cut back to Spencer with school photos of the girls under his talking head. “Last night these girls were on their deathbeds. We are waiting to hear from the attending physicians as to whether or not the children were indeed cured, and that will take some time. There are many questions here. There is no record of anyone coming into the cancer ward. And yet one of the girls positively identified Jason St. John at the foot of her bed. Did she really see him, or was she hallucinating?”

Bass returned to the young tech and his array of monitors. “Run back the CCTV from Mr. St. John’s apartment. I want to see what you’ve got from nine last night until six this morning.”

The technician queued up the video from the camera outside the St. John apartment, reversed it until the time code read twenty-one hundred. The picture that came up was the richly paneled hall with plush burgundy carpet from the top floor of the building, but no sign of life.

Bass waited, hoping Jason St. John would slip out the door and run down the hall. He tapped his pencil again on the monitor while he waited. “Are you fast-forwarding?”

“No, sir. It’s real time.”

“Then speed it up, you idiot. I don’t have all day.”

Spencer’s voice was still grating on Bass. “The St. John Ministries was established eight years ago to manage the worldwide rallies of Jason St. John. This latest appearance, if it’s true, a physical appearance of Jason St. John when there is no record of him coming or going from the hospital, is unprecedented. The St. John Ministries has yet to comment. Tony Bass, its CEO, has not returned our phone calls.”

Finally, Bass picked up his briefcase from the floor, gave the young tech a few taps on his head with his pencil before dropping it in his case, and took one last look at Spencer on the television. “I want to know the moment you have footage of Mr. St. John; you hear. The very moment!”

Bass turned and headed for the door.

“Mr. Bass,” Spencer continued in the background, “the Wall Street wunderkind was brought into the organization as the ministry’s first CEO. With his financial background, it’s apparent to this reporter that his primary purpose is to manage the vast sums of money that have made Mr. St. John a billionaire.”

“Friggin’ little pit bull,” Bass muttered under his breath as the door shut behind him.

He took the stairs two at a time up to the ground floor and entered the reception lobby. He loved this area. It held the short history of the St. John Ministries. There were citations and honors from hospitals and governments covering its walls. Recessed television monitors showed clips from The Healing Hour television program, and pictures of Jason with various heads of state, prominent religious leaders, and celebrities of all stripes—from entertainers to athletes to scientists and statesmen—filled the room. He pressed the call button for the elevator. Tony felt that he was responsible for much of Jason’s celebrity and success. He was the one who built the ministry into one of the great metaphysical organizations in the world.

He stepped into the waiting elevator—lift, he said to himself, and punched the button for the third floor.

Lillian St. John ambled into the parlor of her top floor apartment and moved her husband’s meditation chair back to its usual place next to the inlaid ivory side table. She had just awakened, and she stood in front of the tall leaded windows overlooking her garden to let the foggy light wash over her. Her youthful face denied her forty-three years—she was still a great beauty, and her auburn hair fell in loose curls to the middle of her back. Her English blue eyes showed the stress of living in a fishbowl prison. She shivered and sat in the wingchair next to her husband’s, wrapping herself in her Frette throw, kept there for mornings like this. The oaks and sycamores in the fog reminded her of a Turner painting. She closed her eyes and began to meditate. Just as she approached the stillness that would bring her into a state of bliss, the sound of her front door opening startled her.

“J.J.?” she called but heard no reply.

Her heart began to race. She jumped up, pulled her cashmere robe tight around her slender body, and ran into the foyer.

“What in bloody hell are you doing?” she yelled, blocking Tony Bass from entering her home. Her blue eyes turning to ice.

“Where’s your husband?”

She tried to push him out the door, but Tony wouldn’t budge. “It’s urgent,” he told her.

“Are you serious? Who on earth gave you a key to our flat?”

Again, Tony tried to get past her, but she blocked his way.

“Standard security precautions. We have keys to every room in the compound.”

“You will leave this instant!”

“He better be at the board meeting and I expect him to be on time. We all want to know where he’s been.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You tell me, Mrs. St. John.”

Thirteen-year-old Alex walked in from his bedroom. He had just awakened and was still in his boxers and T-shirt.

“Good morning, Alex. Your father still sleeping?” Tony’s voice masked his anger.

Alex looked puzzled. “I guess.”

Tony turned to Lillian; “Melanie arrived last night. You know how hard it is to get her to leave Kauai.”

That remark annoyed Lillian. Though she and Melanie had become close over the years, there were still rumors about Melanie and Jason and their South Seas voyage that Lillian didn’t like. For Tony to make a remark like that was insulting.

Tony ruffled Alex’s hair and walked out. Lillian slammed the door after him and leaned against it.

“Why are you so mad, Mom?”

“Mr. Bass just totally overstepped his bounds.”

Tony Bass opened the door to the ministry’s boardroom a few minutes before nine o’clock and found Dorothy Delaney already there making corrections to the minutes from their last meeting and writing notes on the day’s agenda. She was a generation older than the rest of the board and her white hair was tied in a bun that bounced when she wrote.

Sensing Tony’s anger, she snapped her portfolio shut. “Good morning, Tony. Are you okay?”

“Tony, you mustn’t let ego rob you of your peace.” She closed her eyes to take a moment of silence. “Meditate with me.”

“Don’t preach to me, Dorothy, I’m not in the mood.”

Dorothy took a deep breath and went back to her notes.

Dorothy recognized Jason St. John—J.J. to his close friends—as an illumined soul the first time she met him when he was fifteen. She had been a student of the noted twentieth century mystic, Dr. Solomon Green, and was editing one of Dr. Green’s books when Jason had accompanied his mother to a party for Dr. Green that Dorothy had organized. What Dorothy saw was a young man radiating Spirit.

Prior to his passing twenty years before, Dr. Green had opened the way for the critical examination of the relationship between body, mind and spirit. In his heyday, he had invited scientists and theologians to redefine the nature of life. He took the esoteric from the custody of religion and put it into the general discussion about the nature of life and the universe. He envisioned a real-world mysticism that would lift people out of their limited concepts of life into the freedom of spiritual understanding. Now, Dorothy edited all of Jason’s work, and knew from experience how great his gift was, and how uncaring and selfish the world could be.

Dorothy continued to meditate while Tony sat at the head of the conference table and admired his cufflinks. The chill in the room was broken when Barbara Buchanan rushed in at precisely nine o’clock. She checked her watch, took her seat at the large polished table, and said, “Where is everybody?”

Without waiting for a response, she dropped her bag on the floor, took off her jacket, and examined it.

“Darn! They ripped my coat. And I lost my wallet! I’ve got to stop all my cards.” She looked at Tony and Dorothy and picked up on the tension in the room. “How long are we going to wait?”

Barbara was the Ministry’s Vice-President of Operations and Media Outreach. Seven years ago she had been a well-known fundraiser for a private foundation supporting educational opportunities for poor children of color. She had survived an abusive husband, had raised two kids in the roughest part of Oakland, California, and had managed to earn a master’s degree at Cal Berkley. She had first encountered Jason when he spoke to a group of young people suffering terminal illnesses at an Attitudinal Healing center in Tiburon, California. She left with a feeling of overwhelming love. Barbara hadn’t told anybody at that time about her breast cancer. Indeed, the renown that her work had brought her made her uncertain as to how she should inform her colleagues of her condition, and often she had wondered whether or not they even needed to know.

Barbara had gone to Jason’s talk in the hopes of obtaining guidance for her next step in dealing with her illness. She had received different opinions for treatment, but none gave her more than six months to live. After being in the presence of Jason, her doctors found no cancer at all. She credited the healing to Jason and within six months was working for him.

“What’s happening outside?” she asked.

“I’ll let you know when everyone gets here.” Tony leaned back in his large leather chair and studied the hammered beam ceiling. The boardroom was a copy of the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace. A carved stone fireplace dominated one wall and two Flemish tapestries of biblical scenes hung between paneled bookcases on another. This décor too, was Tony’s idea. He needed to set the proper tone for the importance of the St. John Ministry.

Gary walked in closing a conversation on one mobile phone and then another.

Tony stood. “Did you find him?”

Gary shook his head no.

Following on Gary’s heels was Melanie Graff, all six feet of her, perfectly coiffed and looking anxious. “What’s going on out there? Even the Pope doesn’t draw a crowd like this. People kept asking me if it’s true. What are they talking about?”

Melanie was one of the original trustees and in the early days managed the money. Her history with Jason went back to his life-changing voyage to the South Pacific. She had been on that voyage but never talked about it. The newer board members knew little about her except that she was athletic and tan, and that she flew in from the island of Kauai every quarter for the board meetings. “Where is J.J.?”

Tony ignored the question and began the meeting. “Please disregard the agenda in your portfolio. We will dispense with committee reports and begin with new business. I don’t know if you heard the news this morning, but it seems Mr. St. John appeared in a hospital ward last night around three a.m. and healed four little girls.”

Tony loosened his tie and undid the top button of his immaculate white shirt, a gesture of stress in the usually cool and dapper CEO. He couldn’t hide his anxiety, which was caused as much by the sick girl’s claim that she had seen Jason at the hospital as it was by Theodore Spencer’s grabbing hold of the story.

“How wonderful,” Dorothy said.

“It’s not the healing that’s the problem. Our security shows that he didn’t leave the compound last night. And according to all the cameras at the hospital, Jason never entered the children’s ward. None of the nurses on the floor saw anyone enter or leave.” Tony looked at Gary for confirmation.

“As far as we can tell, he has not left his apartment since yesterday afternoon when he went for a stroll in the garden.” Gary spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully and giving the impression that English was not his mother tongue even though it was.

Gary was one of Jason’s more miraculous cures. Within hours of the Humvee explosion in Iraq that had made him a hero for having pulled his crew to safety, he had suffered a seizure and was flown back to the states with traumatic brain injury. He couldn’t speak. He had lost his motor skills and had resented his caregivers. He would rather have died than be dependent on others for the simple necessities of life.

His wife wouldn’t leave his side and had found Jason’s book, The Undiscovered Land, at the Walter Reed Army Hospital. Not long after reading it she took Gary to a St. John Healing Rally at the Verizon Center in D.C. The atmosphere of stillness in that stadium was so powerful that she felt the vise of physical limitations leave her husband. Soon thereafter Gary’s speech and motor skills came back, and he was released from the hospital.

“Jason St. John hasn’t left the compound since yesterday, yet he appeared at Marsdan and was seen by four witnesses who claimed that he healed them?” Tony informed his board.

“Actually, only one girl saw him.” Gary consulted his notes. “But they all seemed to be healed.”

“I don’t believe it,” Barbara interrupted.

“What don’t you believe?” Melanie said.

“Nobody can just up and disappear. We all had to seek out Jason and be in his presence for a healing. People have to come to his rallies…”

“That’s such a materialistic perspective, Barbara,” Dorothy said.

“I’m sorry Dorothy, but I’m a realist.” Turning to Tony, Barbara continued, “Why are we accepting that this actually happened without any investigation?”

“Because thousands of people out there believe it happened,” Tony told her. “And because it’s at the top of the news cycle. People believe what they are told by reporters like Theodore Spencer.”

“Come on, Tony, this is post-Christian London,” Melanie said. “People don’t care.”

“Then why are there thousands of people outside our ministry wanting answers?”

“Why not just tell them what happened?” Dorothy asked. “Because we don’t fucking know what happened.” Tony was embarrassed. He hated losing his cool. He continued more calmly; “Because Jason is doing something that will destroy us.”

“How do you figure?” Melanie asked almost hostilely.

“Reputation is everything in this kind of work,” Tony informed her rather condescendingly. “The St. John reputation is untarnished, up until now. Mr. St. John has been open to the public and the scientific community, and they have recognized the fact that people have been healed. Jason has never claimed it was because he was someone special, or that he had some kind of supernatural power. And, by the way, where is he? He knows there is a board meeting this morning.”

“You’re not reading this very well, Tony.” Dorothy stood and looked at her colleagues. “Jason is who he is. This is not about reputation, or how people perceive us. That’s your fear, Tony. You can’t stand in the way of Jason pushing the boundaries of perceived reality.”

“I have… we have a fiduciary duty to protect this ministry,” Tony said. “We can’t let him destroy the gift he’s given the world by performing some kind of magic trick.”

“You think he’s doing magic?” Melanie asked. She knew more about Jason than any of these people, except for perhaps Dorothy, and didn’t like where Tony was taking the meeting.

“I don’t care what you call it, but appearing out of thin air, in a hospital, and having four little girls cured of cancer who walk out full of energy, stretches the limits of credibility. If we aren’t credible, we are nothing,” Tony declared.

“How does pushing the bounds of physical limitation deny Jason’s work?” Dorothy leaned on the table and glared at Tony. “Isn’t omnipresence a core principle? Didn’t Dr. Green say that there are those who can step out of the mortal concept of body at will?”

“Omnipresence is a transcendent principle, not a physical fact,” Tony stated.

“Not for a master,” Dorothy replied.

Tony paused, seeming desperate, waiting for support from the other board members. He wasn’t getting it.

“What are you afraid of, Tony?” Melanie asked, shifting the focus. “Losing your job?”

“Don’t insult me, Melanie. I’m doing this to protect this ministry; to protect Jason.”

“All it would take to destroy us would be a little negative press,” Tony responded. “Reporters will make snide remarks, and comedians will tell jokes about Jason, and soon his detractors will dismiss us… Jason as another quack in a long history of snake oil salesmen. We can’t let that happen.”

“What do you mean by that?” Dorothy demanded. “Comparing Jason to a snake oil salesman is disgusting. Jason follows a long tradition of revealing the truth. Enlightened people all over the world have seen the links between Jason and Dr. Green and Shankara. We are here because we all love The Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East…”

“I don’t know where Mr. St. John is,” Tony interrupted her, “and it has me worried. That’s why we have to stop this nonsense right now.”

“How do you plan to do that? Lock him up in the basement?” Melanie and Tony locked eyes.

“Jason is stretching his wings, Tony,” Dorothy said, breaking the tension. She started to walk around the table like a schoolteacher in a classroom. “It’s been done in the East for centuries, but it’s also part of our tradition. The Roman Church has many saints who have defied physical laws…”

“Is this relevant, Dorothy?” Barbara interrupted.

Dorothy stopped opposite Barbara and raised her hand like a traffic cop. “This is an interesting story and something you should all hear.”

Lots of eye-rolling went on around the table. Dorothy ignored it.

“It took place during World War II. A Japanese fighter attacked an American bomber preparing to land on a small Pacific island, and one airman made it out of the bomber before it exploded. He tried to open his parachute and the ripcord broke. He was plunging to his death when a grey-haired man with a long beard appeared next to him—falling just like the airman. Before they hit the ground, the saint grabbed hold of the flyer and guided him to the ground. He landed without breaking a bone. Nobody could believe it, but he was alive, and the rest of his crew died when the plane crashed. When he went home on leave, he saw a picture of the man who saved his life. It was Padre Pio. His mother had prayed to him to watch over her son.”

“If he were doing remote healing, like Dorothy’s suggesting,” Melanie piped in, “he’d still be in his apartment and that would have only been his image that the girls saw. But if he appeared in some supernatural way at the hospital,” looking at Tony, “well, that’s a different story.”

“Why would that be a problem?” Dorothy asked. “Isn’t it our goal in this study to realize that we are not localized or confined? Didn’t Jesus appear to the apostles after the Crucifixion?”

“It is a problem if he can just appear like some alien,” Tony insisted. “I went up to his apartment and Lillian wouldn’t let me in. And she seemed strange to me. People are afraid of aliens, and Far Eastern masters, or any other title you want to put on him. We cannot allow this to happen, Dorothy. We’ll lose our audience.”

Lillian still leaned against the front door of the apartment as if she were waiting for Tony’s scent to vanish before doing anything else.

“Where is Dad?” Alex was almost as tall as his mom with long hair and the same green eyes as his father. Lillian gave her son a good-morning kiss and tousled his hair, which he hated.

“What do you want for breakfast?” Lillian took his hand and pulled him toward the kitchen / family room. Alex pulled away and ran ahead, sat at the counter. He took out his Game Boy and started playing.

The family room was Lillian’s space. The furniture was soft and overstuffed. Meals were served on the large country table, which was also used for Alex’s art projects. The adjoining kitchen was state-of-the-art with a professional range and copper cookware hanging over a granite-topped island. Lillian grabbed a French porcelain mixing bowl from the cupboard and took a dozen eggs from the fridge.

“How about scrambled eggs?”

“I thought you were giving me a choice?”

“Not this morning. And don’t take an attitude with me.”

“What’s going on around here?”

Tony had upset Lillian more than she was willing to let on, especially to Alex. She had never liked their living arrangements, which had been set up by the board, and still got aggravated with Jason for letting the organization control their lives to the extent that it did. Everything the board did, so they said, was for Jason’s protection. Lillian had preferred to live in the country, but the board had insisted on the city. Lillian had thought the organization would be completely separate from their personal lives, but the board argued that was impossible. Jason was the ministry, they’d say, and without him in the midst of dayto-day operations they would not have the spark to keep the organization spiritually centered.

Now she worried that the board, Tony specifically, wanted to intrude even more into their personal lives.

Lillian broke eggs into the bowl. “Grab a frying pan for me, will you?”

Alex reached for a pan on the rack above him. “Why was Uncle Tony so angry?”

“I don’t know. I thought your dad would be out here when I got up. He wasn’t in bed. Go see if he’s in his office.”

Lillian took the pan from her son and put it on the stove. “What were you playing?”

“Tony Hawk. Underground.”

Alex noticed a half a dozen eggs in the bowl, and his mother was ready to crack another. “Hey, I’m not that hungry.”

Lillian put the egg back, poured some milk into the bowl, and started beating the mixture with a wire whisk. “I thought I asked you to see if your father was in his office?”

Alex got up and ran to the other side of the apartment. Lillian switched on the small television on the counter while vigorously beating the eggs when a news commentator came on-screen speculating about Jason’s alleged appearance at the hospital the previous evening. She switched to another channel and saw another version of the same report.

“Oh my god,” Lillian put her hand to her mouth as Irma, the housekeeper, entered the kitchen carrying two armloads of groceries.

“I beg your pardon,” she said.

Lillian quickly turned off the TV. Irma squeezed by, out of breath and out of shape.

“Sorry for being so late. I thought I’d be back before you folks got up. It’s a zoo outside.”

Irma put her packages down and took the bowl from Lillian. “I’ll take over.”

She shooed Lillian from the narrow space between the island and the cooktop and dropped a cube of butter into the skillet. She gave the eggs a few more beats before pouring them into the pan. She whistled tunelessly.

Lillian sat at the counter, mindlessly watching Irma and trying to make sense of the news that was on television when her attention was drawn to the back door and the blood drained from her face.

Irma reacted to Lillian and stopped scrambling the eggs. “Come now, missus, this is my job, you know,” she said, thinking Lillian was somehow displeased with her.

Lillian saw Jason St. John, her beloved husband, his long blondish hair disheveled as if he had just stepped out of a strong wind, materialize a few paces behind Irma. He stepped out of a pale blue light like he was emerging from a cocoon! He motioned for Lillian to be quiet. His face was flushed, his clothes clung to his slender, thirty-nine-year-old body like iron to a magnet, and he stood there for a moment letting the energy drain from him, like it would after surfing an exceptional wave. Reaching back, he opened the door to make it look like he had entered normally.

Alex came running back into the room just as his father pretended to close the kitchen door. He had seen the last remnants of a crystal-like aura dissolve around his father’s body. “Sick!”

“Are there enough eggs for me?” Jason asked.

Startled, Irma turned around. “Isn’t that a bit childish for a grown man to sneak up on an old lady like that?”

“Dad, how did you do that?” Alex said, running up to him.

Lillian slipped by Irma and ushered Jason and Alex out of the kitchen. “What the hell is going on?” she whispered.

“That was awesome!” Alex exclaimed.

“Okay. Okay. Sorry I startled you. Family meeting in ten minutes; I’ve got to take a shower.”

“I think I ruined the eggs,” Irma said, watching the family retreat. She dumped them in the sink and began to put away the groceries, whistling again tunelessly.

“Here’s what I think,” Melanie announced to the rest of the board. “That girl thought she saw Jason. Maybe she thought of him before she went to sleep and dreamed he was there. It could have been Jesus Christ or some saint.”

“That’s our angle,” injected Barbara. “Since there’s no video record of Jason being at the hospital, we’ll credit him for the healing but not for being there.”

“I didn’t know we were keeping score in the healing department,” Dorothy said dryly, taking her seat.

Ignoring her, Barbara continued, “I just want to understand this because if I get it, everyone else will. That girl saw an apparition, and her belief in Jason’s power to heal had a positive result. It’s no different than if someone saw an image of the Virgin Mary in a moment of illumination and everyone with that person was healed. People will understand that, even if they don’t necessarily believe it.”

Barbara looked at each board member for a response. Dorothy and Melanie shook their heads.

“Why do we need to say anything?” Dorothy interjected. “We’ll never control world opinion about Jason so why try?”

“You’re losing me here, Barbara,” Melanie said, talking over Dorothy. “Apparitions are just someone’s fantasy. They aren’t real. Jason can heal. That’s real. I’ve seen it. But this other crap… I don’t know. We’re a foundation, not a religion.”

“You’re wrong, Melanie,” Tony said. “People look to us for a lot more than healing. They want principles to live by. They want guidance. They want to believe that there is more to life than mundane human existence.”

“You need to reread our charter,” Melanie insisted. She got up, walked around the table, stretching her legs. She was formidable presence. “Tony, we are here to explore the mystical nature of reality. We are more scientists than theologians, and I’m very skeptical of secondhand information.”

“Then we need to find out if in fact Jason is remotely healing or manifesting himself through thin air. If he is doing either of these things, we need to stop him,” Tony emphasized.

“How?” Melanie asked.

“You let me handle that.”

“We will be voting on everything you intend to do,” Melanie insisted.

“What we need,” Barbara said, “is for Jason to go on television and explain to the world what happened. People trust him. He can put this whole incident in terms that reflect current popular thinking.”

“That’s good, Barbara.” Melanie agreed; “Jason could go on television and make what the girl saw a point of discussion about what constitutes reality. Isn’t that our main question?”

“That is a dangerous idea, Melanie.” Tony wanted to squash it before it took hold. “First of all, for Mr. St. John to go out into the public at this time could endanger his life.”

“That’s a fact.” Gary rarely said anything at the board meetings but had to now. “He has a lot of enemies and I don’t have the resources to guarantee his safety in public.”

“I like Melanie’s idea,” Barbara said. “Jason wouldn’t be going out in public. We could film it right here and broadcast it live. We’d gain a huge audience and I’m sure Jason can explain what those girls saw with a lot more authority than any of us could.”

“I move that we organize a televised symposium with Jason and the heads of the Anglican, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim communities to discuss apparitions—their meaning and historical relevance,” Melanie said.

Barbara seconded the motion. “What about some scientists?”

“I doubt they’d come; they don’t mix well with religious leaders,” Gary remarked.

“We need a quantum physicist, someone like Alain Aspect.” Melanie ignored Gary’s opinion.

“This is a bad idea,” Tony warned. “If I call a vote and you two prevail, this ministry will implode.”

“You must call for a vote, Tony. It’s been moved and seconded,” Dorothy said.

“Obviously, Mr. St. John will have to agree,” Barbara stated.

Tony called the vote and the motion for the televised symposium passed with Dorothy, Barbara, and Melanie voting for it and Tony and Gary against.

Jason, his hair still wet from the shower, walked into the kitchen and sat across from Lillian and Alex at the country table. He wore his favorite sweats—long sleeves as always, and his shoulder length hair soaked his sweatshirt. Lillian had sent Irma home and was on her third latte. They all stared at each other not knowing what to think or where to begin.

“What can I say? I’ve been having these experiences for a few months now when I get up to meditate. They scare me, but something keeps pushing me to go further. I don’t really understand it, and I’m not sure I can stop, having gone this far.” Jason sat up straight, closed his eyes, and rested his hands lightly on top of the table. “Indian fakirs have been practicing this for centuries.”

The room grew extremely quiet and Lillian closed her eyes too. Alex, knowing the drill when his parents meditated, sat up straight and tried to let his mind grow still. He attempted to find the spaces between his thoughts but failed. His mind was running too fast.

But Jason wasn’t meditating. “Don’t close your eyes,” he said.

Alex and Lillian opened their eyes. They watched Jason’s hands and arms slowly slipped through the table onto his lap.

“That is so unreal!” Alex shouted.

“This scares the shit out of me, Jason.”

Jason and Alex looked at each other and started to laugh. Lillian never cussed. But her fear was palpable, so father and son stopped short.

“I mean this will shatter everyone’s concept of reality.”

“Is that so bad?” Jason understood Lillian’s reaction. “Even in the physical world there is more space than matter in what we see and feel. This first happened about six months ago. I was so at one in the Spirit that I opened my eyes to see if the world was still there and I noticed that my arms had blended in with the chair. Then a gentle voice said to me, just like in scripture, ‘Fear not.’ So, I just observed my situation and when I felt myself completely here, I lifted my arms out of the chair and everything was normal.”

“It’s horrible. Don’t you see what will happen? Tony Bass is already wanting to dominate and control you.”

“Did you really heal those girls?” Alex asked his father.

“Not like you think, Alex. Our ministry is about revealing the essential nature of life, and when that is experienced …”

“For God’s sake, J.J., get serious. This is not the time for a lecture.”

“Do you have magical powers?” Alex asked.

“Last night was the first time I’ve actually gone anywhere. Before that it was just like I showed you.”

“Jason! Enough! Now let’s get practical about this. You can’t tell anyone on the board.”

“I thought Dorothy should know.”

“Absolutely not! Jason, you don’t realize how dangerous this is. Put the brakes on your impulses and think this through. Think about us. You already have half the world thinking you’re Satan, so please …”

Alex looked lovingly at his dad. “That’s no big deal.”

“I would think that you would want to keep this secret,” Lillian said.

“I don’t know. I can’t stop, Lillian. Whatever it is that is giving me these experiences won’t let me go back. When a new reality is realized, it can’t be undone. And if I can experience it fully, I can teach others to do the same.”

“What if they don’t want to go there?”

“Dad, can you teach me?”

“Alex, I don’t want you to tell anyone what you saw,” Lillian ordered.

“I’m serious. Tell no one! This is the biggest secret you’ll ever have to keep.”

“She did not, and you didn’t either.”

“I did, too! I saw that blue stuff around Dad and he pretending to come in the back door. And we just saw what Dad did!”

“Your mom is right, Alex. If you mention this to any of your friends, they’ll think you’re nuts.”

“Most of my friends already think you’re a freak.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason reached across the table and took his son’s hand. Alex couldn’t look his dad in the eyes. Jason was his hero and he didn’t mean to make him feel bad. But it was true.

“Okay, here’s what happens, Alex. I don’t disappear. When I’m in that invisible state I’m pure energy. There are laws of attraction in this world, and when I have no physical limitations I go where I’m needed. At least that’s my current rationale. I think there must be some receptivity to Spirit to draw me, some longing for peace. And love. Love always brings me back to you.”

Lillian burst into tears and reached for Jason. “This whole idea of moving in and out of the material world like some kind of ghost challenges everything I believe. Is it spiritual? How can it further human understanding?”

Alex pulled his hands away from his father and moved closer to his mother.

Jason looked across the table at Lillian and Alex, their anxious faces wanting answers. “You need to understand this, please, both of you. I’m drawn into that energy as naturally as being drawn into the ocean. But like I said, I can’t resist it. After you’ve surfed your first wave, it’s hard not to ride another and another. If I could take the two of you along I would. It’s the ultimate freedom. I’d love to teach you how to do it, Alex, but I’m not sure how it’s done. I’m still a beginner. What I do know is that we all have an incorporeal body that is not restricted by time and space. I can be anywhere, not as a ghost, but as me. Those girls saw me at the hospital.”

“Then you were at Marsdan,” Lillian stated. “When?”

“About two or three in the morning, I guess.”

“And how long were you there?”

“I don’t know. Time isn’t a factor.”

“A minute? An hour?”

“Maybe a minute. Otherwise I’d have been there when the nurses came in.”

“So where were you the rest of the night?”

Jason didn’t want to tell her the deepest part of his experience. He thought of explaining the time factor with an analogy of space. One minute in another dimension could be like hours on Earth. But his wife and son, the dearest things in the world to him, needed the truth, even if it might upset them.

“Lillian, do you remember that dream you had a few nights ago where you said that you were with Dr. Green?”

Lillian got up and made another latte. She had told Jason that she had dreamed of Dr. Green, but that was all. Why would he bring that up?

“I don’t think that was a dream,” he continued. “I went there. I entered this wonderful room, filled with light, and all these people were milling about the edges. In the center was a circle of people sitting on simple stools. I was invited to sit in the circle. The Presence was indescribable. If beauty could be put into words, that’s what I felt. And Dr. Green was in the circle. And you were there too.” He hesitated a moment and then continued, “There is a greater purpose to us being together than we know. All of us.”

Lillian sat back down at the table. Jason had described her dream perfectly, but she didn’t want to give his actions any credibility—not with Alex present. What if she, too, had entered this other dimension, but thought it was only a dream? What if something had happened to both her and Jason in that dimension, leaving Alex alone? “We’ve all got to be in this together,” she said.

Tears streamed down Jason’s face as he got up and embraced his family. “You two are what I love most in this life and I would never want to leave you alone. I don’t know where this new—whatever you want to call it—will take me, but I’ll never hide it from you. We are together; we’ll always be together. But I agree. We have to keep this secret. Alex, you’re as much a part of this adventure as your mother and me.”

Alex nodded. He’d never felt so close to his parents as at that moment, but he didn’t want to cry even though tears filled his eyes.

“I want to call Dave. He’s the only one we can trust,” Lillian abruptly brought them back to the problem at hand.

Jason looked at his wife, weighing her suggestion. Jason and David grew up together. David knew all there was to know about Jason. He’d seen him do things no one else had seen, and when Jason and David Walker went their separate ways, all those who had wanted to exploit what David knew about Jason got nothing. “Okay, if you can get him to come, he’ll be our buffer between what we are doing and the rest of the world.”

They all sat there for a moment, and then Jason got up. “Let’s keep our routine as normal as possible.” He looked at his watch. “Looks like I missed the board meeting. What about you? What about school?”