Under the Light

Chapter 14





Jenny


MY MOTHER REACHED OVER AND FLIPPED my bulletin open for me. The organ started up again: “Come Thou Font of Every Blessing.”

I had the feeling that someone was standing in the aisle watching and waiting for me to move over and make room for him or her to sit, but when I looked, there was no one there.

I sat frozen, trying to hold the bulletin still, but it was vibrating. The picture of the empty field meant something—I just hadn’t figured out what it was yet. The picture was vibrating to the rhythm of my heart pounding. It was stupid to feel like someone watching me was unusual—I was in church, so of course people would look at me.

Then the page I held stopped shaking as if an invisible hand had gripped it. The tension pulling gently on the paper from the top was unmistakable. When my mother handed me the hymnal, it ruined the moment. Whatever was holding my bulletin let go.

“Wake up,” my mother whispered, and slipped the order of worship out of my fingers, setting it on the pew as the congregation stood up to sing. I got to my feet and sang along, but I was spooked by the sensation of someone’s breath right beside my shoulder where there was no one standing. If it was a draft, why did it come and go? And it couldn’t really be someone singing—the breath would be hot, and this air was cool.

Then came a pressure on my hand, the one that held up the hymnal. I switched the book to my other hand and flexed those fingers. It was as if static electricity were running through my veins instead of blood. And for no good reason, the skin of that hand smelled like flowers, not lotion or perfume, but fresh flowers.

I wasn’t paying attention to the pastor when he invited the congregation to sit. My mother snapped her fingers and I dropped to the pew, the last one in the room to take a seat. She handed me my bulletin again and tapped the page—we were supposed to be reading along with the prayer, but I couldn’t act like everything was normal. Something unnatural was happening here even if I was the only one who recognized it.

I could see, from the corner of my eye, that there was someone sitting beside me just far back enough so that I couldn’t make out the face. I knew if I turned it would be gone.

Whatever it was, it was communicating without making sound. Maybe I was going crazy, but I was in church—people have had impossible things happen to them in churches for centuries. Maybe this was a miracle, an angel.

Or maybe there was something wrong with my brain—I had amnesia. Maybe now I was having hallucinations.

“What’s wrong?” my mother whispered.

I couldn’t say, “I’m delusional.” I glanced at her and smiled.

As I faced the front of the sanctuary, sure enough, I felt the visitor was still there. I took up the hymnal again, slowly, making sure I didn’t move too quickly. I didn’t want to scare it away. I found the song that the organ was playing in my hymnal. I ran my finger along the line of text I’d heard in my head. Then my eyes wandered to the upper corner of the page where the topics were listed.

Ghost, it said.

Actually the topic was Holy Ghost, but I felt as if someone was running an invisible finger under the second word.

I had the most bizarre sensations fighting in my chest. What if this wasn’t an angel but a ghost? My heart was going crazy and my stomach was cramping with fear. At the same time, I felt special for being chosen and clever to have figured out how to communicate with this whatever-it-was.

I flipped to the back of the hymnal where the topics were listed. If this was how we could talk, I had questions.

There were dozens of key words to choose from: comfort, praise, advent, forgiveness, heaven, grace, and (among others) the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit. I felt my gaze pulled to one of the hymns listed and started turning pages.

My mother frowned at me. “What are you doing?”

“Reading hymns,” I told her. How could she find fault in that?

I found the right page and ran my finger along the lines following that odd little static electricity buzz I’d felt before: Come, Holy Ghost, for moved by thee the prophets wrote and spoke; Unlock the truth, Thyself the key; unseal the sacred book.

Be moved by me, someone was saying. I unseal myself for you.

I was so excited, my face prickled, and my pulse was turning into a trill. On the topics page I chose another hymn that felt like it was chosen for me. I found the page and read the lines that buzzed: Word of God and inward light, wake my spirit, clear my sight . . . Kindle every high desire; perish self in thy pure fire.

Wake to me, it was saying. It almost seemed as if the word desire was being lit by a penlight. I could hardly sit still.

“Jennifer,” my mother hissed at me. “Where’s your bulletin?” The congregation read along with a Scripture lesson in the order of service. My mother lifted the hymnal right out of my hands and flipped it shut, setting it on the pew on the other side of her where I could not reach it.

How humiliating to be treated like a five-year-old, I thought, but as soon as she looked away, I gently slipped the Bible from the back of the pew in front of me and set it in my lap.

Part of my brain knew everyone had stood up for singing the Doxology, but it was a world away from what was happening to me. I turned to the back of the Bible and found the subject lists. Holding my breath I searched, waiting to be guided.

“What are you doing?” my mother snapped at me.

I didn’t mean to lie, exactly—I just said what I thought she wanted to hear. “I’m reveling in the word of God.”

The offering plates were being passed now, but I had plenty of time before I would have to hand a plate to anyone. This was more important. I was creating a new language with someone or something otherworldly.

I began by running her finger down the subject list, feeling for passages that vibrated—but all I felt was a pressure around my head. I stopped, shut the Bible. Still I felt squeezed. I let go of the Bible and it fell open naturally (or so it seemed) across my lap. The pressure was gone, so I looked into the two pages that had come to me by accident.

Hebrews. I dropped my hand on the page and read the line above my fingertips: Don’t forget to be kind to strangers. For some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it.

I didn’t know I’d made a sound, but my mother shot me a look. I passed the offering plate she handed me to the waiting usher.

I paused until my mother stopped glaring at me. So weird to be watching both her from the corner of my eye on the right while I still had that vague shadow on my left back in the edge of my vision. When it seemed safe, I slowly pressed the Bible closed between my palms and meant to let it open randomly, but it landed at my feet with a clunk.

“What’s got into you?” my mother whispered.

As I reached down to pick up the Bible, I noticed Mrs. Caine in a pew across the aisle watching me. I spread the Bible out on my lap just as it had fallen, open to the book of Ruth. My finger dropped onto the page:





Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.





I could hear the drone of the pastor beginning his sermon but not the words. My head was full of loud silence, like the running of a stream. My heart was full too—I was happy in a way that didn’t make sense. Like how the day before it made no sense that I felt more at home lying in the grass outside my house than I did in my own bedroom. Like how I fell apart during a stupid credit card commercial on TV. The night before I felt like I was missing someone I’d left behind, and now someone had come to see me.