Doubt (14 page)

Something inside him made him pause
and reach for his phone. When he swiped the screen to unlock his phone, he saw that he had a text message waiting for him.

He wondered if his mother was trying to communicate with him.

Text message received.

Graphix
: Update: We picked up Lioness from airport. Mist and Shadow are here in Akko. Sending you video of Shadow talking to Raffe. Looks intense but u need to translate. Awaiting your orders.

There was no time to psychoanalyze the situation.
He shoved the gear stick into the Drive position and pressed the gas pedal to the floor.

In the distance,
the sound of the sirens from the fire trucks was approaching fast. He breathed a sigh of relief
. Whatever was after him, if there was anything, was gone.

He
aring a “wooshing” noise again behind his head, he glanced into his rearview mirror to see what it was. His heart started pounding fast and hard; fear surged through his veins.

S
omething was staring back at him in the mirror—it resembled Dr. Saeed’s face, but from the yellow glow in its eyes, Harry was definitely sure it wasn’t human.

THE SALTY KISS OF THE
balmy sea breeze caressed Cristal’s cheeks while the evening sun was setting on the horizon, producing a fiery orange emblem against an angry red sky.

Will we ever see blue skies
again?
She wondered to herself. Since the earthquake, the sky remained a shade of red. Some countries reported a blood-red color, while others described the sky as being red with pockets of blue peeking through the orange and white clouds.

Experts claimed
it was simply due to the refraction of light related to the sun’s position and the scattering of electromagnetic radiation through the atmosphere. Basically, it was mankind’s fault for using the Earth as its toilet.

Global Nation,
founders of the group, “A Sustainable Planet,” blamed the red color on global warming caused by environmental pollution destroying the Earth’s ozone layer.

S
cientists countered this theory proving global warming could not be the cause, due to the fact that the planet was becoming colder, not warmer. If the scientists were correct, then what was really causing the sky to turn red? Deep down inside, she feared that she was the cause of it.

Kerim and Cristal
sat on a four-foot high wall of sandstone blocks, which stretched for miles along the shoreline. Over the wall was a steep drop to the crashing waves of the Mediterranean Sea below.

Her
senses were captivated by everything around her. The breeze from the water tickled her skin while the vibrant smells filled her nose with a combination of scents—salt from the sea, seaweed, kelp entwining their leaves across the seabed, and families of fish inhabiting the warm water.

When th
ey had first arrived in Akko, Kerim had seemed edgier than usual.

“
Can’t believe I forgot my smokes,” he had mumbled over and over as they walked down the streets of the ancient town looking for a shop that sold Lucky Strike, the only brand of cigarettes he smoked.

Despite being an anti-smoker
herself, the fact that Kerim was a smoker never bothered her. It seemed to be a natural part of his makeup.

She glanced over
at Kerim, and it looked as if he was deep in thought. The scene reminded her of Apollo, the Greek god—handsome, confident, and strong.

“
Are you feeling better?” he asked quietly, taking one last drag from his cigarette before tossing it on the ground.

“
What’s taking Gabriel so long?” she asked.

“
He probably stopped to get something to eat. I heard Rinaldo saying he wanted to grab a baguette.”

“
I see…” she said, and looked off into the distance.

How do I tell him about what happened at the hotel?

“I know what you’re thinking,” Kerim said softly.

“
You do?”
Are you reading my thoughts again?

He gave her a smug grin
.

“
Yeah, actually, I could hear you the whole time. I didn’t realize that I resembled a Greek god.”

Cristal felt her cheek
s grow hot with embarrassment.

She took a breath to regain her composure
, and said, “The lady from the plane, the one you switched seats with, she’s a National Security Agent.”

Kerim
’s eyebrow rose up slightly. “You mean Ms. Full-Bodied Mama? You’re joking.”

She shook her head
, and answered, “No, she’s for real. She showed us some photos she had taken while you were sleeping on the plane.”

Kerim
clenched his hand, and then said, “And?”

“
There was this weird glow around your head in all the photos,” she said quietly. “And she also had a video clip to prove to Harry that it wasn’t a Photoshop job.”

“
Wow, and you both believed that crap?” he asked.

“
It looked very real.”

Kerim
wrapped his arms around her and pulled her towards him. She enjoyed the embrace.

Why did she feel
so safe in his arms?

“
Let’s say that this is true,” he began. “What do you think this light around my head could be?”

She stared deeply into
his eyes. “Yaffa called it a halo.”

“
Ah, Yaffa,” he mumbled. “She called it a halo.”

He repeated
the words as if trying to understand the full meaning behind them.

“
It did look like a halo, Kerim. But I also took a photo of you. Remember? You were doing the peace sign and there was no halo around you.”

“
Victory sign,” he interrupted.

She rolled her eyes.
“Yes, victory sign. My point is, when I took the photo of you, there was no light around your head. I don’t know how to explain why there was a light in Yaffa’s photos.”

“
It’s the music,” he murmured to himself.

“
What did you say?” Cristal asked.

“
When you and I were listening to the music, we were connected to each other in our minds. I could read your thoughts and you could read mine. It’s possible maybe that with the human eye, the light is not visible. But on digital photos, this light is visible.”

Cristal shook her head, trying to process what Kerim
had just said. “I don’t know. That sounds pretty far-fetched.”

Kerim looked at her then, his eyes probing into hers.

“
Isn’t everything that happened after the earthquake, as you say, ‘far-fetched?’ Like the fact we can communicate without words, and how about you seeing Harry’s mother’s image in the sky on the day of the earthquake? Isn’t that far-fetched? Something is happening with us. With the world.”

She was about to say something
, ready to argue his points, but instead, she fell silent. He was right. Right about everything.

He continued
talking to her while his fingers gently stroked her arms, waking the hidden passion inside her.

“
I’ve been having strange dreams and visions lately. And my headaches seem to be getting worse. I feel like my brain is trying to tell me that there is something I’m supposed to do. But I can’t remember what it is.”

She still didn
’t know what to think or what to say.

“
Do you know that being here could be dangerous?” he asked her quietly.

His expression of concern
was unnerving, but his caresses were numbing the anxiety in her mind.

“
Because of what happened in New York?” she asked.

“
We’re going to enter one of the black holes,” he said, very matter-of-factly as he stared straight into her eyes. “We don’t know what will happen. You do know that Harry didn’t want us to bring you, don’t you?”

“
If that’s the case, why did you?”

Kerim reached into his leather jacket
and took out his smart phone. “I want you to see something.”

He swiped
the phone’s surface, tapped a few buttons, and handed the phone to her.

On the screen, there w
as a photo of what looked like an open journal with handwritten notes.

She
glanced over at him, and asked, “What is this?”

H
e tipped his chin up slightly. It was his way of telling her to go check it out. She had hung around him long enough by now to understand the subtle meaning behind his mannerisms and gestures.

She swiped the
screen to zoom in on the photo until the words were legible.

The dreams are coming all the time now.
They used to scare me but now I welcome them. I am able to remember in detail the last one. The numbers keep repeating in my brain. 11132013, 56609, 14350109, 57740910, 17300304.

I
’m writing this before sleep steals me back into the darkness of my nightmares.

The darkness
enclosed around me, like it always did in my dreams. I was wandering the streets of an old city surrounded by walls that towered high above. Everything seemed familiar to me…the sights, the sounds the smells. The air was filled with a salty mugginess. Behind the walls, must be the sea, I thought as I stumbled down the street. I wanted to go towards the water but I could hear voices ahead of me. For some unexplainable reason, I felt drawn towards the sound.

By the wall, there was a young couple.
The woman was remarkably pretty; the man, dark and mysterious. Their voices sounded concerned but I couldn’t make out the words. I inched closer, wondering why I was here and why I was seeing this.

S
uddenly, someone grabbed me. I turned to see who it was but saw nothing. I tried to break free, to scream for help but I was paralyzed. I watched as a dark cloud descended onto the woman. It had tentacle-like arms wrapping around her, strangling and choking her. The man was trying to pull her free but he was no match for this thing. I could see the woman’s eyes wide with fright. The tentacles were literally squeezing the life out of her right before my eyes. It was then that the man lifted his arms and looked up to the heavens crying out in a language that sounded like Latin. A brilliant white light exploded across the sky. The earth began upheaving beneath my feet. I struggled to move and realized that I had been freed. I turned to run, to save my cowardly self.

But I could see the woman was also freed from the arms of the dark cloud.
She was screaming, or seemed to be. I could not hear over the thunderous roar. I could see why she was overwrought. The man was being torn apart by the rays of the white light that had snaked its way down from the sky.  I saw him explode into a white light, a transparent being. It was then that he rose up, as if a force were pulling him. He reached out to the woman, she reaching out to him. But their hands never touched. He was pulled away, almost violently, like a rag doll, up into the sky.

And then I awoke.

Bina Schwartz

CRISTAL LOOKED UP FROM
the phone, meeting Kerim’s gaze.

“
Where did you get a hold of the journal?” she managed to say.

Her mind was reeling, her brain still trying to process the information.

“I broke into Harry’s office this morning and found it in a hidden safe under his desk,” he said.

She handed the phone back to him.
“Was this all that was in it?”

“No, there’s a lot more.”

“
I noticed the numbers. I thought they looked familiar. They are the same ones Harry asked us to find out what the correlation between them were.”

“
And?” He raised one eyebrow.

“
He never told us what the numbers were or where they came from. So we thought they were secret codes and we tried to break them. But now, it is so obvious.”

She
couldn’t believe how simple it was.

Kerim was watching
, waiting for her to continue.

“
11132013, 56609, 14350109, 57740910, 17300304. It’s a date, not a code. It’s today’s date formatted by the different calendars—Gregorian, Julian, Islamic, Hebrew, Coptic.”

His eyes widened.

“Today’s date? November 13, 2013. Did Harry know?”

She shook her head
, giving him a wry smile. “I don’t think so. One weakness about Harry, once he’s got his mind focused on something, he gets stuck on that theory for a long time until he figures out that there are other options. He makes the simplest things so complicated sometimes.”

Th
ey fell into an awkward silence—both of them avoiding the real discussion they should be having. What Bina had written could have been a premonition about what was about to happen. Cristal trembled at the thought.

Kerim
reached out and pulled her towards him. “Cristal, I don’t want to lose you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “But it seems that time is running out.”

“
No,” she said, pulling away. “Don’t say that. Nothing’s going to happen. We’re all going to be okay. I don’t want to think too far ahead. Let’s just enjoy the moment we have right now.”

Hot tears burned her cheeks
, but she refused to brush them away.

Kerim
reached up and held her face, kissing her cheeks. He gently wiped the tears from her eyes.

“
Okay, okay. Let’s stop talking about this.”

She
was relieved that he had closed the topic.

“
Come on, smile for me. You know I hate to see you cry,” he whispered.

She
gave him a small smile—happy to be in his arms, to be in love, and to be loved back.

The sound of a blaring car horn
interrupted her thoughts. Cristal glanced at the street and saw a silver-grey minivan pulling into an empty space behind Kerim’s motorcycle.

“
Kerim, Cristal, let’s go!”

Gabriel
hollered at them as he stuck his head out of the passenger window, his arm waving frantically for them to come.

Kerim
waved his hand back at him. “Come on,” he said to her, placing his arm around her shoulder.

She
laced hers around his waist. A part of her was worried that Kerim was right about the fact that time was running out. Stubbornly, she pushed the thought far back in her mind.

Everything is going to be okay.
Dear God, help us.

A group of young
men who had been sitting on a bench nearby was now standing around the van. There were four of them—one large guy in a blue T-shirt and black jeans, two of medium build in polo shirts and blue jeans, and the last one was the smallest in a white shirt and black pants. They seemed to be glaring at Kerim warily.

Cristal felt Kerim
’s hand tighten around her shoulder.

“
Don’t worry,” he said in a hushed tone.

He let go of her shoulder and
walked cautiously towards the men.

“
Marhaba,” he said.

She knew this meant
hello
in Arabic.

“
Ah-layne,” the large one responded, which was a way to say hello or welcome.

Kerim
continued talking in Arabic with them. She could see Gabriel getting out of the van to join them. The conversation sounded tense, their body language strained.

Although she hated politics,
Cristal had been tracking the news about President Roshenbaum’s involvement with the Israeli and Palestinian peace talks. The State of Palestine would finally become a reality at the end of the month when the peace agreement was signed. That was good news for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; not so good news for the Israeli-Arab population, sometimes referred to as “the Arabs of `48.” These were the Palestinians who, as Wikipedia described, were the Palestinians “standing fast, not fleeing during the War of 1948, unlike those who left and became refugees in neighboring countries.”

Now
, generations later, the “Arabs of ‘48” and their children had become Israeli citizens. Facing racism as a minority population within Israel while at the same time considered traitors by Arab countries and other Palestinians outside of Israel, “the Arabs of ‘48” could not embrace their own identity as Palestinians or as Israelis. To the outside world, they were neither Palestinian nor Jew.

Now w
ith the peace talks, rumors that right wing government parties were going to pass a law to force Israeli-Arabs to transfer to the State of Palestine, thereby losing their Israeli citizenship brought uneasiness between Israeli-Arabs and Israeli-Jews. Although Cristal hated the politics of it all, she understood their uneasiness. As an American-Mexican, the idea of being forced to transfer to Mexico and then stripping her American citizenship was incomprehensible.

The
back door of the van on the passenger’s side opened, and Rinaldo stepped out onto the street. He was followed by a smaller person. When she squinted her eyes, she recognized who it was. Serena.

Why was she here?
Harry probably sent for her without telling me.

Rinaldo
walked towards the larger man, motioning to Gabriel with his head, who moved behind the other three.

The larger
man looked over his shoulder at Rinaldo before saying something to Kerim.

From the driver side of the van, the door
opened and Raffe came out. The look of annoyance on his face was intimidating; revealing a fury she sensed was larger than the situation at hand.

He advanced tow
ards them in confident strides causing the young men to step back.

Raffe spoke to t
hem, and his Arabic sounded rougher than Kerim’s and the young men, probably due to his Hebrew accent. They spoke back and forth for a few minutes.

Cristal held her breath
, wondering what the conversation was about. Kerim came up alongside Raffe, and they both continued speaking to the four of them.

The lar
ge man suddenly cracked a smile. He turned to the others whose grave expressions thawed into playful grins.

Kerim looked over his shoulder at her and
signaled with his eyes for her to come to him. He gave her the thumbs up, letting her know that everything was fine.

She
walked over and stood beside him.

“
Hello, nice lady,” the larger one said with a grin.

“
Hello,” she said.

Kerim reached over and squeezed her h
and reassuringly.

“
I study Engleesh in Canada. My name is Walid,” he said, his smile growing wider. “You like Akko? It is very, very, old city.”

“
I’m Cristal. Yes, it is very beautiful.”

From the corner of her eye,
she noticed that Rinaldo and Gabriel were having a side conversation of their own, whispering to each other.

What was going on?

She shifte
d her focus back.

Walid
announced, “I see you before.”

Cristal
’s eyes widened. “Me? No, I don’t think so.”

Walid took a step closer,
unable to hide his excitement. “Yes, yes…it is you. The day the big earthquake, it happen in Megiddo. My town. I see you in my dream.”

Kerim
’s hand tightened over hers. “It’s okay, Cristal. Remember. Nothing is far-fetched.”

She gulped.
Walid was waving his arm like an excited fan asking a famous celebrity for an autograph.

“
I do not forget you. You very pretty. I not forget.” He turned around and translated what he said to his friends.

Kerim said,
“It’s time to go.” He turned to Walid and said something in Arabic.

Walid
said, “Tammam. Y’alla!”

She knew this meant,
Okay, let’s go
.

He
waved to the others to follow him as he walked towards the red VW Golf hatchback that was parked in the space in front of Kerim’s motorcycle.

Kerim
glanced over, and said, “We’re going to the wall.”

“
We?” she asked.

He
grabbed her hand and led her to the motorcycle.

“
Yeah, Walid and his friends are coming with us.”