A Sister's Sacrifice Read online

  A Sister’s Sacrifice

  by Chris B. Porter

  Copyright © 2017 by Chris B. Porter

  All rights reserved.

  http://www.chrisbporter.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without expressed written permission from the author. To contact the author, visit www.chrisbporter.com.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read his work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it.

  A Sister’s Sacrifice by Chris B. Porter – 1st ed

  Contents

  Prologue

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  Epilogue

  Get More Stuff

  About the Author

  Prologue

  So, we’re starting a story. Stories have three parts: Beginning, middle, and end. Most people say the end of a story is the best, the biggest bang, the exciting part. That’s not true! It’s the beginning that’s the most fabulous part of a story.

  This story begins with a visit from two girls in Atlanta, USA, while I was touring. Of course, I knew I’d run across them eventually. That day, once I gave them a special boost to their memories, all they felt was love, joy and happiness for all eternity. Isn’t that a lovely beginning? Now, I’ll let my dear friend, Megan, take over with the story. I tend to ramble, and she’s a better storyteller. I guarantee that the end will not in any way be better than this beginning.

  -Ava

  1.

  They say when you die and go to heaven, your whole family is there waiting for you. There are many songs, books, and works of art about heaven, but I had no idea what was in store for me when I arrived. The only thing I absolutely expected to find was my family, especially Ashley. My older sister. She always watched out for me growing up—we were three years apart in age—and even in adulthood she was on my side. “Megan,” she’d say, “you are so beautiful and sweet. Keep your head up. Don’t walk staring at the sidewalk all the time. You’ll get a neck crick.” A quick grin. So encouraging, so loving, and a great sense of humor.

  Everybody loved Ashley, but I loved her most of all. We got each other. We seemed to read each other’s minds.

  Oh yeah, back to heaven. I guess you’re more interested in that.

  Before I get into what happened to me when I arrived, I want to explain something about heaven. You get this fuzzy-headed kind of perception when you’re there, like you can’t remember things right and time has no real meaning. Some people see clouds and nothing else. Others see green pastures. And then others still see a myriad of types of imagery and landscapes. I figured out that it has to do with what you want heaven to be.

  For me, well, I wasn’t too unusual. I saw clouds. White, fluffy clouds going off in all directions infinitely. On the clouds were white castles, with turrets and everything. Right out of a child’s picture book of where a beautiful and beloved princess might live.

  How did I die? I didn’t know. I simply couldn’t remember. And a little thing about heaven memory and human Earth-living memory—you just forget more and more about your time on Earth as you’re in heaven.

  I didn’t recall my first moments in heaven or even getting there. So that’s where I’ll start my story, when I did figure out what was happening to me.

  First it was Uncle Larry. He was actually my Great Uncle on my Dad’s side, and Dad was with him. It’s just that I noticed Uncle Larry first because he was wearing a gold silk toga and he had the first halo I saw in heaven. He wrapped me up in a big hug, and that’s when Dad sandwiched me between them. Dad wore his fishing gear, waders and all.

  There were other relatives. Mom was still alive, so she wasn’t there, of course, but so many family members, friends, and the like greeted me, just like they say. They all had halos of shining white light above their heads, suspended in the air about four inches up. I asked if I had one, and they told me I did. I reached up to feel it, but my hands passed through empty air. “Are there mirrors in heaven?”

  The group of loved ones surrounding me disagreed on this. Some said there were, and some said there weren’t.

  Somewhere in my hazy, dazed mind, it occurred to me. Ashley. Where was Ashley, my sister, my best friend who had died a few years before me? I couldn’t even recall how she went…. “Where’s Ashley?” I asked Dad.

  “Ashley?” he repeated. “Haven’t seen her in some time. Not quite sure…any of you know where Ashley is?”

  The others looked slightly confused and heads shook back and forth.

  “Nobody knows where Ashley is?” I asked, frustrated and anxious.

  They glanced among each other and the general consensus was that Ashley’s whereabouts were unknown.

  I didn’t want my group of loved ones to think I didn’t care about them just so I could run off asking every soul in heaven where my sister was, so I decided to put it in the back of my mind and spend time with my people. And another thing about heaven, or it maybe it’s just being so super grateful that something did happen when you died that you did carry on…It was a joy, the greatest mood of peace and happiness I’ve yet to have matched.

  2.

  I really wanted to see an angel, but so far I hadn’t. I’d been told they only reveal themselves when they are truly needed. Well, I needed one. Ashley was nowhere to be found in heaven, which led me to the only conclusion possible, and it was a nightmare to think of. She was in hell.

  I asked souls about hell, and why certain souls would end up there, what was it like, could my sister be there? The souls of my loved ones and the random people I asked didn’t know much and changed the subject rather quickly. And when I asked anyone if there was a god, they all said god had to be in heaven, but none of them had ever seen or heard god. Only a couple I talked to had associated with an angel.

  One of them was my grandmother, or Nana as I called her. She said once a hundred years ago in heaven time (whatever that was), she missed her living husband so much that she cried one single tear. Then an angel came to her and dried that tear with a pure white satin cloth, looked deep into her eyes, and she felt completely better about it. She said she couldn’t explain how it happened, or, for that matter, exactly what the angel had done. When I asked her to describe what the angel looked like, she said she couldn’t remember.

  I spent some time in my own personal white marble castle thinking. What could I do to get an angel to visit me? Truth was, I’d just felt happiness and a little buzzed since getting to heaven, like I’d had a couple stout margaritas with friends and was relaxing on a couch watching a beloved movie. Not caring much about anything.

  I hated to admit it, but sometimes I got so mixed up in my head that I forgot about Ashley and how she might be in hell. It just oddly would slip my mind, but I always ended up remembering, and then worrying. So much worrying. I thought for sure an angel would come to me with all the worrying about Ashley that I did, but I had no heavenly visitors to ease my mind and tell me what happened to her.

  The only clue I got was from Dad one day. He took me fishing. What he saw was a river lake and bass, and I just saw him casting lines into clouds and pulling out fluffy balls of white when he caught a biggun. I brought Ashley up to him yet again, and for the first time he remembered something about her.

  “Ashley…Ashley, wait. There is something. I remember something about her. Yes, what is it?” He stopped reeling his line in, deep in thought. “Oh! I know what it was. I took her fishing, too. I fished with her many times.”

  “You mean here, in heaven?” I asked, heavenly heart pumping with excitement.

  “Yes, right at this very lake. But I don’t know where she’s gone to. She was here, but now she’s not.”

  I grabbed his arm. “Is there anything else you can remember? Please, think hard, Dad.”

  He squinted up at something I didn’t see. “Yes, come to mention it. I fished with her the day before you came here. Or was it a week before?” He shook his head and looked at me. “She wasn’t here anymore by the time you came, but she had just…just been with us, all happy and as wonderful as ever. You know Ashley and her smile.”

  I did. “Dad…do you think she’s in hell?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. But can’t imagine why she’d be in hell. She had some plan, but my mind’s all hazy on it. Can’t remember her plans.”

  “Please, think!”

  He sighed and pulled his line all the way in. No catch this time. “You know how it is here. Thinks get mixed up and I just can’t remember.”

  3.

  I took to walking among the clouds and castles around heaven, and by then I’d quit bugging the other souls I saw hanging around here and there about god, angels, and hell. They either seemed not to know, or they didn’t want to talk abou
t it.

  People in heaven were different than people on Earth. There were similarities, of course, and the main one was that their personalities didn’t change. Just their behavior. Spaced out, forgetful. But I couldn’t forget Ashley until I found her.

  I don’t know why I did all that walking around without my usual questions. It felt right. I was also curious to know if I would see some landmark other than white castles and clouds until one day, I did.

  I found a cottage. A little cobblestone cottage on a small cloud, and it even had smoke coming from a stone chimney. It took me a while to get to it, but by the time I did, I couldn’t figure out how to get across an open space to the individual cloud holding the cottage. Below between us was empty, endless blue.

  “Hello!” I called, hoping that whomever burned the fire within would hear me and come outside.

  Nothing happened for a moment.

  I waited, and then yelled louder. Still nothing.

  I really thought I was on to something. I even tried to will myself to fly, but my gold-sandaled feet stayed planted on the swirly cloud beneath me.

  I sat down and stared at the cottage, full of longing. I knew there were answers in there. Why else would I conjure up a building so different than my castles? It was a sign, and I supposed if signs were anywhere at all, they were in heaven.

  You didn’t ever fall asleep here, and I stayed sitting there forever and a day, waiting for the soul inside to come out and see me, explain how to get across. Moment to moment felt like nothing, and as heaven’s clocks go, it really could have been a few years, or even centuries.

  And after all that waiting, I suddenly heard a loud honking sound. I looked up and saw a giant white goose circling above me, eying me carefully.

  Honk!

  It lowered in the air, getting closer to me. I waited, not wanting to scare it off. I didn’t see many animal spirits in heaven, another thing nobody could explain to me.

  The goose finally landed a few feet away from my left, and I turned my head and smiled at it. It was bigger than me! I noted it even had a halo.

  It held out a rough claw. Honk! Hopped all the way up to me and grabbed my knee. “Ouch!” I squealed, but more out of surprise. It didn’t hurt at all.

  “Well, you want to get across or not? Who said it would be comfortable?” The goose didn’t say the words, but I heard them in my head just the same.

  “Yes!” I said. “Please, help me! I have to get to that cottage.”

  The great white goose rose into the air with massive flapping wings, and gripped my shoulders in its claws so tightly I thought my heavenly skin would be scratched off. But, as things go in heaven, I felt no pain as we sailed into the air and the goose carried me over the vast blue below to the cloud with the cottage. It dropped me right by the wooden front door, and I swore it winked at me before it flew away.

  It occurred to me then that I didn’t know how I’d get back off the cloud and to my usual massive clouds, but I was too excited to be consumed with worry about it.

  I knocked on the door. Waited a moment.

  The door opened and a man with a long, black beard and a tuft of black hair stood there staring at me, his green and brown monkish robe hanging a little too big on his frail frame. He didn’t look surprised to see me. “Well, come in, then. It’s a nasty day outside. I have tea.” He turned and walked inside. I followed.

  The cottage held a cot, a chair, a table holding a steaming teapot with two cups, and a flowerpot with irises blooming within. That was it.

  “Have a seat,” he said. He sounded so very tired, like he’d been working in a cotton field from dawn till dusk.

  “I’m Megan,” I said, feeling timid. Now that I was here, everything I’d been thinking of asking about while sitting across from the cottage flew out of my mind.

  He sat in the chair and gestured for me to sit on the floor across from him, which I did. “I’m Jude,” he said as he poured two cups of tea. He handed me one and sipped from his own.

  I took a little drink. The tea was bitter and smelled like death. I coughed. “What kind of tea is this?”

  “They call it valerian tea on Earth, at least that’s the closest name to what it is here.” He stared into his cup. “It relaxes you, helps you sleep.”

  “But people don’t sleep in heaven,” I said, putting the cup on the floor by my knee.

  “I sleep,” he said, and yawned. “Anyway, what did you come to see me about? What lost cause have you?”

  “Lost cause?”

  “Yes, you came for your lost cause. Nobody finds my cottage unless they have a lost cause.” He smiled, but it was a weak twitch of his lips, not reaching his eyes.

  I gasped. “Jude! You’re Saint Jude?”

  “Some call me that.”

  “You’re the patron saint of lost causes! I wasn’t even raised catholic, but I know that much. Everybody does. Wow!” I beamed at him. “I didn’t know saints were real. Do you have access to all the secrets of heaven? I have to know everything. All the souls here, well, they aren’t quite with it all the time, you know what I mean?”

  He raised a black eyebrow at me. “Yes, I certainly do.” He sipped the rest of his tea and refilled. “Tell me about your lost cause.”

  I paused, wondering if that raised eyebrow insinuated he thought I was just another not-with-it soul, and then blurted out, “My sister, Ashley. She’s not here, but my father said he remembers her being in heaven. I can’t find her and I’m afraid she’s in hell. But I can’t figure out how she could be in heaven and then go to hell! And why? She is a wonderful person, and I bet the powers that be even wanted to make her an angel or something. That’s how good-hearted she is. Do you know? Do you know if she’s in hell, or can you tell me a way I can get there to look for her?”

  He gazed into the fire. “Do you love your sister very much?”

  “She’s always been my best friend, never even put me in a headlock as kids. Shared all her clothes with me. Helped me with money in college. She did that kind of thing for everyone. But it’s more than that. We were connected on a deeper level. Like a psychic level.”

  “Your souls are connected.”

  “That’s what it feels like. I have to see her, know what happened to her.”

  “Tell me, do you remember your death?”

  I looked at my hands. “No, I don’t know how I died. I can’t even remember much about what was happening in my life when I did die, and I can’t remember how Ashley died, either. Not exactly. I think it was an accident of some kind.”

  “Hmm.” He sipped tea after blowing on the liquid surface. “This isn’t a lost cause anymore because I can help you. And that’s what I do. You see, every once in a while, the barrier between heaven and hell dissipates, and the heavenly and hellish souls can mingle. They do it in purgatory.”

  “So the Catholics were wrong about purgatory being a place to wait to get prayed into heaven?”

  He smiled sadly and slumped his shoulders. “Has anything you’ve seen since you left your human body been at all like they say it is on Earth?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Purgatory is the name souls started giving it after the Catholics made up the place and name, but it’s as old as the time when the angels who defied were cast out.”

  “To…hell?” I said quietly.

  “Yes, to hell.”

  “And there is a god who cast them out?”

  He shook his head, looking even more tired. “That’s for another time. Your cause is the issue. The barrier between heaven and hell will be broken in half an eon from now. Every eon it does this. Be ready for it and go. You’ll end up in purgatory, but you may even have to travel deeper, right into hell itself. It’s quite different than heaven, and be prepared to see some…tasteless things.”

  I sat up straight, excited. I realized heaven kind of bored me, but shoved the thought aside. “Where do I go when the barrier comes down? How do I get there? What do I do?”

  He reached in a pocket of his robes and pulled out a ring unlike any I’d ever seen. It was made of shining white light, like the halos, and he said, “Hold out your right hand.”