Amber by Dan-Dwayne Spencer (e book reader .TXT) 📕

get here first, silly. Why else would I leave without any of you?” Rose replied.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “Why would you?” My brain felt foggy. Something felt wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

Roger greeted Rose with a bear hug before he set his sights on the stage and ran through the crowd to get as close to the musicians as possible.

Rose pulled a blanket from an oversized purse she carried and spread it on the ground. Jimmy plopped down on it and she gracefully sat beside him. Arms locked around his neck, she wasted no time before showering him with kisses.

Flower’s bearded hippie danced up the hill, took her hand, and they danced back to where his friends were sitting.

Stoney raised his eyebrow at Flower’s departure before turning to me and saying, “Since we’re here, you want to explore a little?”

I had no reason not to, and besides, I felt like a third wheel while Jimmy and Rose sat on their blanket giggling and kissing between taking bites of the picnic lunch she produced from her oversized purse.

Stoney led the way through the crowd. We ended up some forty yards from the stage, and under one of the massive scaffolding towers supporting an amazing number of McIntosh speakers. People had climbed up onto the tower to see the stage acts better. In front of me, the dense crowd gathered around a security fence separating the rock-gods from their screaming fans.

By this time, Joan Baez had taken the stage and was singing about her Sweet Sir Galahad. The haunting melody echoed in my head and crowded out all thoughts except one—lose myself here and forget my troubled home life.

Enjoy this day. The voice in my mind commanded. It was a strange voice I’d never heard before. It sounded sweet and innocent, like the voice of a child at play.

I closed my eyes and let the music flow over me. It bathed me in warmth. The rain clouds began rolling away. It promised to be a beautiful, cloudless day. The song kept going, Joan sang the first verse again and then another chorus. On and on, the melody lulled me into a relaxing state of mind.

To my surprise, when I glanced around, the crowd had thinned out. In only a few moments, blankets and trash had replaced the excessive mob of hippies. I must admit I felt somewhat relieved. The massive number of people made me claustrophobic. At least a part of the hillside behind me remained visible, although the crowd in front of the stage was still too dense to maneuver through. I scanned where we had walked in from—back to where Jimmy and Rose sat having their picnic.

The sunshine beamed down onto my face. I leaned my neck back to get more of the warmth from the brilliant rays. I felt odd; there was no warmth in the sunlight. The music didn’t sound right either. It was the echo. In an open field with rolling hills, there shouldn’t be an echo. I opened my eyes and reached my hands to the sky to better feel the wind and sun. The August wind should have been warm, but I felt nothing.

I glanced across the crowd, the hippies around me were clapping and singing along with the music. At the edge of the stage stood my parents, Norman and Irene Loveless. I grimaced. They were smiling and waving at me. I awkwardly waved back. On the stage, the announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to Country Joe and the Fish.” They sang about love being like a rainbow. I didn’t remember when Joan Baez left the stage. What happened to those few minutes in between? Surely this band wouldn’t have had time to set up. Where did all those instruments come from?

“Arland. Arland, can you hear me?” I could barely hear the gravelly voice of Mr. Dark over the screaming music.

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Dark. What do you want? Can’t you see I’m trying to enjoy myself? This is what we started out to do. This is what—”

“Shut up. Listen to me.”

“Why should I? Phoenix told me you were everything bad in me and you lie.”

“That’s not exactly what he said. But what’s most important right now is for you to understand—if you die, I die. You need to listen to me because if you don’t this will be the end of your life and mine.”

“We finally made it here. Even Stoney, Flower, and Rose came along.”

“No. You’re not where you think you are. I would have been here earlier but for that hag, Calypso. Wrestling with a Nymph is not as much fun as it’s made out to be. By the time I escaped, they had taken you away to this unholy place. I almost didn’t find you.”

“Looks like the beautiful meadow I saw in the newspaper photo,” I replied.

“Don’t be so gullible. You’re far from New York. In fact, our connection became so thin it looked like a thread as it spanned the distance of space and time. Dude, you’re in an alternate spiritual plain. This is not Woodstock.”

“Sure it is. Jimmy and Rose are up on the hill having lunch. Stoney climbed up this Public Address scaffold to see the bands better and Roger is here somewhere.”

“Oh no, there’s a storm coming.”

Sure enough, in the distance brewed a violent wall cloud of ferocious, angry wind and blazing lightning.

“I see it. It won’t get here for a while.” I glanced up to where Stoney held onto the P.A. scaffolding, There, sitting beside him was Kelly Carter. I waved. He smiled at me and waved back.

“How could Kelly be here? How could you have gotten here so fast?” There was no mistaking the urgency in Mr. Dark’s voice, and what he said registered in