Beluga by A. B. Lord. (little readers txt) 📕

Catherine had been upsetting the other children.


“Why, what did she do? There must be a misunderstanding, Catherine wouldn’t deliberately upset someone.”


“She’s been telling the other children that Jesus isn’t real and that God isn’t who we think he is. She’s talking about devils and talking animals. The Sunday School teacher is very worried about her.”


Frank had smirked and promised to deal with it. He never did. He thought it was hilarious.


The Church really irked him sometimes and he really struggled to contain his thoughts towards them and they way they would treat his family, mostly him and his daughter, sometimes. Frank hated to be negative. Negativity was the most powerful emotion in the world. Next to love. Negative could shut down spirituality in an instant. It was like a giant seagull coming along and shitting on your parade.


That phone with the extra wire would be ringing and he’d go to pick it up...


“Hello?”


And then they would talk. Him and the spirit. Was there a message? Who was the message for? Would they know he was coming?


And then out of nowhere, a slither of doubt would creep in. It was a rare occasion that Frank would doubt that he was actually gifted but occasionally society and “the norm” would creep in and suddenly he’d feel like an idiot. And that’s all it took.


The phone with the extra wire would go dead.


Frank would be left hanging.


Spirits don’t deal with negative people.


Negativity is something born out of earthly goods, not something for the afterlife.


But them. Those sneering, smug, hypocritical people at the Church. They had really tried to come between him and his daughter.


She’d once found an injured baby owl with its beak all smashed in. It didn’t stand a chance in the wild, and in true Catherine style made it her pet. Frank knew you shouldn’t keep owls as pets but what was he to do? Catherine loved the owl. The owl loved her. She’d bonded with it on planes that other people think only exist in Dr Dolittle.


One night when they had all been driving back from church, Frank, the Mother, Catherine, and the vicar who seemed to have made a really odd cameo appearance in the car part after the service. Th vicar e turned to Catherine in the back seat and said,


“Do you not think it’s wrong that your Daddy let you keep that owl?”


Catherine was too young to understand. But Frank understood.


He glanced over at this so called man of God in the passenger seat, decked out in his fancy suit and “Sunday Best.”


The negative thoughts ran through his head like a maniac voiced plague.


Who do you think you are? Using something as special as spirituality and religion to preach and lord it over people? Telling them God wants them in their best clothes, and that if my daughter doesn’t believe in God she’ll go to a place where she’ll burn forever. Who do you think you are? I know God, and believe me, if he was the smiting type, he’d bloody well smite you. But he doesn’t smite anyone. Your lot just bloody made that bit up!


But he said nothing and they drove. Jesus in the passenger seat smiling like a smug git. Frank reigned himself in and banished the negative thoughts. They weren’t worth it. He knew they talked about him at Church.


“And won’t Frank be joining you...?”


“Shouldn’t your husband be here...?”


And the big one, “So does Frank not believe in God?”


He couldn’t prove it, but he was sure the word “Pagan” had come up more than once.


It wasn’t that Catherine Mother was a bad person, they had just clashed. They were different. Frank could see more of him in Catherine than he could of her Mother, and after the divorce, they had barely spoke. But Catherine and him, they had stayed close.


She had funny wiring too, just like him.


But he never said anything. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to scare her, he just wanted it to happen naturally. She had to believe in it first. She had to realise what she could do wasn’t what everyone could do. And then she had to see that the fact she could do it was reason to have faith. And that faith, well... that faith would open doors for her. She would never be alone again. Not when she finally realised what she was and how much power she had in her little finger.


At times the excitement was too much to remain silent abot and he breached the code of conduct. One evening when they were walking in the woods, he watched her staring in to the dark spaces between the trees. She was looking in to the atmosphere with a look of concentration, as if she were watching a million tiny flies all around her.


“When you look in to the atmosphere, do you see little dots? Like atoms almost.”


Atoms, even that. She was ten but he knew she understood what an atom was. He had explained them to her very early on. He needed her to see life is just not matter. Everyone and everything is made up of tiny little things. We not just one mass. We are many things. He asked if she could see the little atom like dots all around her.


She had said she did. She said she saw them easier in the dark, but he knew in time she’d see them everywhere.


One day she’d look in to something as bright as the snow, and see millions of them.


But they were no atoms. Frank knew this.


For all his time as a medium, he was still not completely sure of everything on “the other side”, as he called it. There were rules about knowing everything and one of the main ones was you were not allowed to outright ask what came after life. You just put faith in what was around you and then you knew. But he knew something for sure. There was multiple different layers to after life; multiple planes. They all exist in the same place, a bit like a parallel universe running alongside ours. Like the ship on the horizon, they are with some of us, but not all of us. But believe me, they are there.


These atoms that Catherine and him could see, he was convinced, were particles and pieces of the other universes. And occasionally, out of these other universes would pop familiar faces, like his Grandmother, Hosung-Lee.


And that brings us up to the current day; Frank laying in his hospice bed. Hosung-Lee in the corner. Frank knew his time was coming and he’d known for a while. Before he’d been admitted to the hospice, he’d found the energy to carry out one last final task, and now the fruits of which were nestled in the palm of his hand.


The bone beads had grown warm from his flesh as he stroked them. They made up a necklace. The bone beads had little pictures carved in to them, like the Scrimshaw he had seen during his time at sea. He had taken Catherine to Castle Douglas when she was just a little girl and they had visited a little spiritual store that had beads. She had excitedly picked out beads to make a necklace for him and he had done the same for her. It was not lost on him the way in which a young girl had managed to find beads that looked like Scrimshaw to give to her Daddy, an ex-seaman.


He had worn his with pride for years until the suede twine that ran amongst them broke and he was forced to scoop all the beads up in his big hands and keep them in a little pouch, safe away from harm. Long after she’d gone to live with her Mother, and then gone and started her own life down in London, he’d occasionally been drawn to them. Her energy was all over them. It was like magic.


When the doctor had told him the cancer was terminal, he knew what he had to do.


Now he had taken them out of the pouch and found another bit of twine to lace through them all, tying it in a little knot at the top. They formed something like their original form


When the time was right, he would give it to Catherine. She would be on her way now. She would have this final reminder of her Dad and know that no matter where she was, no matter what happened, they were still connected. She would always have that extra wire and as soon as he could, he’d be picking up that phone and giving her a call.


All his life, he’s lived to see the day his daughter would realise just how unique she was. But things hadn’t worked out that way. At 19 she still didn’t know. And time had run out. When he got to the other side, he would have to make contact. Her life wasn’t going to be easy, that he knew. And he be damned if he was going to let them mold his daughter away from her original form and calling. She had a gift, perhaps even stronger than his.


He stroked the beads again and channelled his thought in to them. Only pure thoughts and bright white colours. He sent love and his blessings and asked the spirits to keep her safe. Never let anything happen to her. He thought the words in his head as strongly as he could.


One day Catherine, I’m going to ring. And you need to pick up that phone. Don’t be scared, just pick it up and just say “Hello.” I’ll be on the other line waiting. Always waiting...


Chapter 2. Let it Snow.

“Can I be gettin’ yae anything fae the cart, hen?”


It was a familiarly Scottish