“CONFESSION of a GHOST”
a novel by Alexandra Kryuchkova
in the "PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY" series
0/0. PROLOGUE
***
Somewhere in the Universe
How long did I sleep? We were ONE.
“Wake up, my soul, it’s time for you to go.”
I came back from my dream, not remembering what I had dreamed about. Perhaps it was a dreamless dream. We were quickly moving along the endless corridors of Eternity towards one of the most important buildings in the Universe – the Heavenly Office, where everything earthly used to begin and end. I still didn’t know what would await me on Earth, but he instantly read my thoughts,
“Life in earthly body is short enough, Rukh. I am always there, remember me more often, and everything will be fine.”
“Will I be able to see you there?”
“You can feel me. We’ll continue to communicate in the same way – mentally, without words. It’s much more important than seeing with earthly eyes and hearing with earthly ears.”
***
We arrived at the Heavenly Office, witness to the ceaseless flow of souls, accompanied to Earth by their spirits – Guardian Angels. One of the Guards greeted us at the entrance to the building. He scanned everyone who came there and encouraged me,
“Enjoy your journey, Rukh, and have a happy return!”
We followed the corridors until my Guardian Angel stopped me at the door to the Astral Body Formation Hall, and he disappeared inside. In front of me in the queue, there was another Rukh, similar to me, like two peas in a pod – all incarnating ones before the formation of the astral body looked like white and fluffy lumps of pure energy of Light. Only the Guardians could tell us apart. The servants of the Chancellery in white robes were rushing past, busy as bees, paying no attention to us, the newcomers.
“Once upon a time they were incarnated on Earth too,” my neighbor whispered to me, “I wonder who they were.”
“Do you already know your destiny?” I asked.
“The Guardian does. The soul learns it descending the Stairs, reading the Creator’s plans for the incarnation, reflected in the Tablets and the heavenly passport. At the last step the passport is stamped and sealed. After returning to the Hall of Judges, the plan-fact reconciliation takes place, the verdicts are announced. That’s what the Guardian told me. However, the path is not predetermined rigidly, it can be changed within the Space of Options, limited by the records in one’s passport. Though, it’s a challenge to remember your plans on Earth! Everything is different there! Imagine having some arms, legs, a head, a torso! You’ll get inside the body and have to learn to control it! You’ll be forced to walk with your feet instead of moving in space with the power of thought. The earthly body constantly demands earthly food, not Light! And how many languages do they have? Almost every country has its own one, you can no longer communicate on Earth mentally!”
I was about to ask a couple of questions concerning the mysterious earthly body, but my neighbor was called to get formed, and my Guardian returned.
“Do you already know, Angel?”
“The Matrix of your Space of Options? Yes, but the actual path largely depends on your choice. Everyone has own cross, my soul. Life in the body is full of pain and suffering. Some have more, some have less.”
“Are you talking abstractly because you don’t want to upset me? I’ll find out for myself soon.”
“Undoubtedly. I promise to do my best to make your journey on Earth the best possible scenario. Try to remember the existence of me, the Heavenly World and its laws.”
***
We entered the twilight of the Astral Body Formation Hall, illuminated only by the light of stars, in the center of which there was a round stage with holographic signs, mathematical formulas and geometric drawings projected upon it.
“Now the Guardian of Time will announce the place and moment of your incarnation on Earth,” said my Angel. “The holograms will stop moving and display the initial location – the coordinates of the Cosmic Bodies in the 12 Spheres of your future life. Planetary spirits the formers will come upon the stage. You’ll perform with them your Dance of Destiny to the Music of the Spheres.”
“Dance? For what?”
“Each of the planetary spirits will provide you with the appropriate elements-atoms having their inherent characteristics for the formation of your astral body. The atoms don’t line up randomly, they form certain bonds with each other, depending on the aspects of the planets and stars at the moment of your incarnation. They create a unique pattern of the soul according to the Creator’s plan. The astral body — emotions and feelings — helps to communicate with the Subtle World on Earth and influences the physical body. During the dance, the chroniclers fix the celestial coordinates in the Tablets, the starting points of your Matrix of Destiny, and deduce mathematical formulas of possible scenarios in the Space of Options.”
I was on the stage, in the center of the circle. The audience froze in anticipation. The Guardian took a seat next to the chroniclers. The Guardian of Time announced to those present the coordinates of my incarnation, and the holographic images within the circle instantly changed, dividing it into 12 different-sized sectors – Spheres, or Houses. The four axes formed a cross so that I found myself in the central point of it. The planetary spirits took their places similarly unevenly and provide me with rays of energy, forming aspects still unknown to me among themselves. I no longer heard the verdicts of the chroniclers – the Music of the Spheres pierced me through pulsating in me with waves of a thousand shades of feelings, attracting many multi-colored atoms to their place strictly defined. Enlarging, I acquired contours, arms and legs appeared, I felt my own boundaries, and the planetary spirits in turn came up to me and circled with me in the whirlwind of the Dance of Destiny, spinning my body at a frantic speed, but in the rhythm of the Music, which was full of amazing depth and power.
The music faded. Everything was over. Ugh! I stood still on the stage, not yet realizing what had happened, but noticing a silver dress on my astral body – I’d incarnate as a woman. The Guardian took my hand and led me out. I felt the sadness in his thoughts and heard the sighs of the chroniclers.
“What does all that mean?” I asked as he opened the door to the Stairs. “Why are they sighing?”
The Guardian had no time to answer – a dark entity, from the witnesses of my dance in the Hall, chuckled smugly, looking into the Guardian’s eyes, and exclaimed,
“One more ours!”
“Don’t say hop until you’ve jumped over!” the Guardian answered, and we walked out the door into the Universe to the Stairs.
“Angel, why did the devil say that?”
“Never mind, everything is in our thoughts. So, the Staircase has 40 steps, but every soul descends to Earth along a personal corridor. Each step is a detail of your heavenly passport. Here it is, take it!” the Guardian handed me a little book with incomprehensible numbers, degrees, signs and formulas. “Everything becomes clear step by step as you descend!”
“Is there something bad? I want to fulfill my destiny and return to you here!” I exclaimed.
“You are a soul of Light, but not everyone on Earth remembers Heaven, and life sometimes puts one in a bind, and when there is a predisposition…”
“To what?” I kept on wondering from the frightening suspense, but the Guardian didn’t answer me.
***
At the House with the inscription “No. 1” on the front door, a girl in a white dress and a man in a purple robe were already waiting for us. They both had danced with me in the Hall.
“I’m Selene,” the girl smiled, “and he is Sirius. At the moment of your incarnation, we are right at the point of your first breath, above the door to House No. 1. Each House represents a Sphere of Life. You’ll pass through them all and get to know the planetary spirits with whom you’ve danced in the Hall to learn about your mission and destiny. The incarnated tend to forget everything, but the Astral Tablets remember everything about everyone and your Guardian will help or prompt you.”
“I’ll try to remember!”
“You have to,” Sirius clarified meaningfully, the Guardian sighed, and Selene stroked my head and said,
“In one of the scenarios, you’ll fail the test of life by violating the Heavenly law.”
“Am I going to kill someone?” I exclaimed in horror.
“You’ll return ahead of schedule,” the Guardian replied.
“No, this is impossible!” I exhaled in relief and laughed.
“It happens sometimes even to very bright and kind souls,” Selene stated. “Earth is full of temptations, not all thoughts are from the Guardian, and Heaven sometimes seems too distant and unfair. Before descending the Stairs, every soul has the right to move once to any fragment of any possible scenario of one’s future life, since all of them have already been fixed in the Space of Options. Think, Rukh, what’s there to see, what is worth getting known, or what important things can be done there now. After the incarnation, any information about such travel is unlikely to penetrate to the level of Consciousness, but in critical points you can remember a lot by connecting to the Astral Tablets through the Subconscious in order to correct the scenario.”
“Well… Let’s suppose there is a worst-case scenario, in an unknown segment of which something happens as a cause that leads me to an erroneous action-effect. Neither the cause itself, nor the moment of its occurrence can be guessed by me. So, I need to talk to myself a minute before the action-effect to find out the cause, in order to remember it on Earth beforehand and either prevent its occurrence or react to it differently in order to avoid the effect. Right?”
The Guardian sighed, Selene glanced at Sirius, and he said,
“We have no right to prompt you now, and if you formulate it wrong…”
“I don’t see any other options!”
***
Sometime in the Future
A rainy night. Me in the Future was sitting on the windowsill by the open window in a black hoodie with a rosary in hand. Noticing Me the Rukh, she turned around, stood up at full height on the windowsill and breathed a sigh of relief,
“Oh, finally! I’ve been waiting for you for so long!”
“But why?!” I asked.
“Why what?” she asked me calmly.
“Why don’t you want to live?”
“Everything about everyone is known there, especially to the Angel of my death!”
“I’m not an angel! I just need to understand what has happened!”
“In this case, you’ve got the wrong address, and we have nothing to talk about,” she said with annoyance and turned to face the rain.
“I beg you, by all the Saints, tell me why!”
She turned around, holding on to the window handle with her right hand, and with her left, still fingering the rosary.
“I don’t remember anything. It hurts remembering. The pain would have killed me, one of us had to die – either me or the pain. I prayed asking to erase my memory so as not to exit life, but it was only an illusion of choice! God heard me and erased my memory. Since then, I wake up in the morning remembering nothing, not even the day before. Such life is worse than any death. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. You can’t escape your destiny! I tried to avoid what I ended up with. However, I’m not afraid, since I died at the same time as my memory.”
The Guardian hovered in the air in front of the window, and the same devil who had whispered to me in front of the door, “One more ours!”, appeared next to him. The drenched devil was rubbing his disgusting hooves and impatiently beating his tail on the slippery ledge.
Me in the Future noticed my gaze, turned to face the rain and, seeing the Guardian, cried out,
“It’s you!”
She was about to take a step towards the Guardian, whom she had clearly mistaken for an angel of death, as I rushed towards her, trying to grab her by the black hoodie in order to… but – what a horror! – it seemed to me, it happened precisely because of me, because of that movement of mine, the wave of energy, – she suddenly slipped on the wet windowsill and… with the window handle, that couldn’t withstand the load, in one hand, and with the rosary in the other, instantly collapsed into the darkness!
“No!” I screamed.
The happy devil disappeared, the Guardian sighed heavily and hugged me.
“Why didn’t you do anything? Why didn’t you save her? She remembered nothing! She had a rosary; she prayed, you see! And you didn’t listen to her! You knew that I wouldn’t be able to find out the cause and change anything, since you had taken her memory away!”
“Calm down, Rukh! Everything will be fine. We have to go.”
“Wait. Perhaps there is some hint here.”
I looked around. It was the kitchen. There was a table by the window with a candlestick in wax, some icons on the left wall, a stove and a sink on the right. The scanned fridge turned out to be almost empty – half a lemon and cottage cheese.
I left the kitchen for the hallway and went further into the room: again the icons on the walls, a fireplace, a rocking chair, a bed and a wardrobe. There was a prayer book on the bedside table. The contents of the wardrobe, in terms of the number of things inside, resembled the fridge.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “Was she a nun?”
The Guardian shook his head negatively. I returned to the corridor. As everywhere, there were icons on the walls. Suddenly, I noticed another door with a rusty lock and found a hidden room behind it, where – wow! – there were bags with miscellaneous stuff, covered with cobwebs and dust. Apparently, Me in the Future had locked our Past there.
“We have to go, Rukh!” the Guardian called out to me.
“Give me a second!” I said, for some reason rushing to the bookcase in the far corner, and began to scan the titles at lightning speed until my gaze settled on “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“I need this book. I want to take it with me!”
“Leave it. All books are stored in the Library of the Universe. You can read it going down the Stairs. Are you satisfied with such option?”
“At least something,” I muttered in response, and in a moment we were back at the mysterious House No. 1.