What Happened in Hallandale Chapter one by McCollonough Ceili (best books for 8th graders .TXT) 📕

Cast of Characters

Laurie – who Lorraine becomes when she dies. The head of a group of angels called Guardians.

Lorraine – AKA Laurie’s alter ego; a lifeguard captain and doctor

Tom - Lorraine’s husband, who is a lifeguard.

Christina – Lorraine's best friend who became my guardian.  Even though she is only mentioned briefly she is a big part of the story.

Andy – The man Christina was engaged to before she left her earthly body.  Another small but important character.

Shawn Malone -- Piper's father.  Like Piper he can travel to the world of the angels and back again.

Piper -- your heroine. AKA Me. The one who is about to take you on a wild ride you won’t soon forget!

Author's Note

Writing this book was a lot like making a stew with the ingredients being facts and fun things from my imagination.  Tom, Lorraine, Christina, and Andy were real people who worked as lifeguards or doctors in the 1930s and the 1940s. Not all of them lived in Hallandale, but they all lived in parts of Southern Florida.  I came across the name Hallandale while doing my research and was really taken by the name and the photos of the town. At first I started to write the true story I had learned about them, but I was not quite satisfied with the results, so I combined their stories with the stories I had heard from a friend who is Christian, about Guardian angels and how they come back to earth to help those souls who are in need of guidance during their earthly journey.

Being Druid, I have also learned about how some people are magic and can leave their bodies at will. I was also a big fan of Charmed and loved how they would go back in time with a simple spell. I combined all of this information and let it simmer in my imagination for a couple of years -- maybe four.

The following story is the literary stew that I created.  I hope you will enjoy it.

Prologue

My name is Piper Malone. I am a twelve-year-old, half-Catholic, half-Pagan, and I can travel to the world of the angels, and back in time. I did not know I could do the latter until it was necessary for me to try. This is how it happened.

It was winter 2008, and my body was very sick with food poisoning. I wanted to leave it so I could go visit the angels in their world -- just until my body could heal.  I started focusing my mind on the world of the angels.  I felt myself spinning slowly at first and then faster and faster. I spun though a field of white and blue light till I felt my soul drift away from my body.  

And then I went looking for the head angel. Her name is Laurie.  She is the head angel for a group of angels who help those on earth who need guidance and companionship. They are called Guardians.  The reason I went to see her is that she is my guardian, and she has been a second mother to me for my entire life. My birth mother died when I was quite young, and ever since then Laurie has come to check on me at least once a week. She has also sent other Guardians, such as her best friend Christina, to stay with me during the times when I was missing my mother so hard I thought I was going to die.

There is a headquarters where Guardian angels gather when they are not with a charge.    This is usually a very busy place with angels going here and there and talking about this and that.  And, no, they do not have wings or wear long white dresses. They wear the clothes of the country in which the soul they are helping lives. There are both girl and boy Guardians, and they are of all ages. They can make themselves look however they feel is the best appearance for the souls they are helping. The building itself reflects the type of work place the Head Guardian worked in, during their last life on earth. So this one looks like the inside of an ocean rescue headquarters building, for Laurie had been an ocean lifeguard during her last life on earth.

This night at headquarters it was dark except for the wee light that was coming out from the space between the closed door of Laurie's office and the main room. I could feel a dark cloud of pain envelop me as I started to get closer to her office door. It got stronger the closer I got, and by the time I placed my hand on the door knob, it was so strong that I could scarcely breathe.

So this is what it feels like to drown, I thought to myself. I decided not to go in to her office, but the pull was so strong that I had to know what was causing Laurie so much pain. Yes, Guardians feel pain just like we do. After all, they are souls like us, just with a lot more knowledge on how things in the universe work. I focused all my powers on her and was soon able to read her mind.  I learned this mind reading trick early in my childhood and it has come in handy on numerous occasions. It did not take me long to learn what the matter was.

I used my powers to “see” what Laurie was doing. She was sitting at her desk crying. I wanted to stop my reading of her mind and not think of her being so upset. I care so much for Laurie, that it hurt me deeply to know that she was so distressed. Even though her being in pain made me hurt, I could not stop reading her mind and soon learned what it was that was causing her so much pain.

I discovered that she had been searching on a computer for the whereabouts of the soul that was her husband in her last life on earth. Because she thought he was still alive, Laurie had not tried to search for him.  I wonder what made her check it now after all this time. She discovered that her husband, Tom, had committed suicide after he found Laurie dead in her bed one morning.

I understood why Laurie was feeling a lot of pain after learning this, but I did not know where her feelings of guilt where coming from. I mean, I highly doubt that her death was her fault. If it had been she would not have been ready to become a Guardian.

While I was contemplating on that question, I found myself so completely immersed in Laurie's emotions that soon I was swimming in my own sea of tears and pain. I felt like Alice from Alice in Wonderland when she gets small after crying so much and is soon floating in a sea created by her own tears. This sea had a surreal look about it. I could see it, and I felt it take my breath away. I could taste the saltiness of the water and feel its coldness soak me to the bone when I went underneath the waves. But when I looked down, the nightdress I was wearing was completely dry. I did not know what was going on. All I knew was that I had to do something to make this pain disappear for the sanity of all the souls involved.

As soon as I had decided to fix this problem, the waves vanished, my breath returned, and nothing around me showed even the slightest trace of having been wet. I had heard of souls that were powerful enough to go back in time and watch events of the past, but I knew that would not be enough. I had to not only go back and watch but to go back and fix the problem that had caused Laurie so much pain. I had to keep Tom from taking his life.

Still traveling via astral projection*, I went to my favorite spot -- an island off the coast of Ireland that was long ago abandoned by people. Now only wild things such as seals and gulls lived there. I sat down on a rock to think among the seals. I knew where an old book of spells was hidden, deep inside a tomb that was older than Christ himself. In that book was a spell that would let me go back in time. But how was I going to modify the spell, so that I could be seen, heard, and change things that needed to be changed?

All of a sudden, as if he was reading my mind, one of the seals started barking then walking (if you could call it walking) up the beach towards the ancient tomb. “Is what I need in there?” I asked him. He barked and nodded his head. I am not kidding. He really nodded his head.

I stood and walked to the tomb.  There I jumped in, for there was no ladder. The next thing I knew I landed on the hard packed earth that made up the bottom of the tomb. I smelled dust, mold and dirt. Once my eyes got used to the dim light, I saw that I was in the tomb of the first three queens of Ireland and their husbands. I knew they were the queens of Ireland, for their bodies had been laid out on stone slabs covered with Celtic knots and symbols, all saying that these bodies were of royal blood. Between the first two queens was a pedestal.  On that pedestal I found, after wiping off centuries of dust, cobwebs and other things I do not care to remember, a book called “The Book of Secrets”.

The book and cover were written in Gaelic. I was really glad that I lived in Ireland and knew the native language of Gaelic. Though this form was so old, I had trouble understanding parts of it. Still, I knew enough to know that this was the book I was looking for -- the one I knew would have the spell I needed.  It did not take me long to find the spell (“take me back to a certain time and place so I may see my ancestor's race”).  It took a while, but soon I had a modified spell that I hoped would do what I wanted.

The spell required a bit of my own blood.  Looking around I found that each of the queens was laid out with her own ceremonial knife and chalice, taking the high queen’s knife along with his chalice, I made a cut on my right arm. The blade was so rusty that I had to use a lot of force to cut my arm. It hurt a lot, but this was important -- so important that I did not mind breaking the rule that states no soul shall go back in time with the desire to bend another’s will.  

I also knew that I had to think hard of the city where Laurie had lived with her love.  It was called Hallandale, Florida, and it was right by the ocean. That was all I knew of it, though.  Taking a deep breath, I started to speak the modified spell while my blood dripped in to the chalice. “Take me back to 1945 where Laurie and Tom did once reside. Give me flesh and give me bone for all to see and all to know.”

*That is what you call what I did earlier that lead me to the world of the Guardians. It is a way to travel where you leave your body behind and just your souls