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  Phoenix Fire

  By

  Billy Ray Chitwood

  3200 Lebanon Road

  Springfield, KY 40069

  This novel is a work of fiction. The names, certain place names, characters, incidents, locations are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead are coincidental.

  All rights to this book are reserved, including the right to reproduce portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Those seeking information as to film/media rights should contact Cinc at the address above.

  Copyright © 2016 by Billy Ray Chitwood

  Designed by JAC at Cinc. Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  ISBN-13: 978-1533622334

  ISBN-10: 1533622337

  DEDICATION

  Occasionally in life there will come an extraordinary event. For me, there were two extraordinary events, simultaneous and incredibly awesome --- the birth of twin granddaughters, Chase and Paige. PHOENIX FIRE is dedicated to them. Their cheerleading beauty has graced the sidelines at Baltimore Ravens home games, causing football players, fans, and even some grandfathers to drop their jaws. For whatever record any of us may keep, it is not only their physical beauty that attracts those who would know them but their gentle souls and the great goodness in their hearts. Chase got married in June, 2012. Paige got married August, 2013 With this dedication comes a deeply felt wish for lifetimes of happiness for these two pixies, the 'Chatty Chaser' and the 'Pickle Princess' and their wonderful husbands.

  Other books by Billy Ray Chitwood

  PHOENIX FIRE (A beautiful love story)

  Mama's Madness (Fiction inspired by true events)

  Stranger Abduction (Fiction inspired by true event)

  The Reluctant Savage (Fiction)

  The Cracked Mirror – Reflections of an Appalachian Son

  What Happens Next? A Life’s True Tale (Non-Fiction)

  Joe Public’s Political Perspective (Non-Fiction)

  'Bailey Crane' Mystery Series (Bks 1-6)

  An Arizona Tragedy – A Bailey Crane Mystery – Bk 1

  Satan's Song – A Bailey Crane Mystery – Bk 2

  The Brutus Gate – A Bailey Crane Mystery – Bk 3

  Murder in Pueblo del Mar – A Bailey Crane Mystery Bk 4

  A Soul Defiled – A Bailey Crane Mystery – Bk 5

  A Common Evil – A Bailey Crane Mystery - Bk 6

  Visit author'swebsite: http://www.goo.gl/nWMXm3

  Follow on: www.twitter.com/brchitwood

  Chapter One

  She was lost in the brightness, a magnificent static whiteness, alluring and warm. It was an easy place to be, if it was a place. Perhaps it was a state, a bright and new awareness, a safe and final destination.

  She only knew that her essence was etched in the great luminous energy and she did not wish to leave it. The light seemed to be transporting her outward, expanding some awesome truth, recently possessed, and she wanted only to remain and to become whatever the promising ecstasy.

  Then, there came a shimmer of interference, vaguely emanating from the mystic fringes, slowly fragmenting the weightless pool of white. There was a rippling which nudged her new awareness, gently precluding her anticipated oneness with the expanding light.

  Then came sound, soft and beckoning, like a bird chirping in slow motion, becoming stronger and more strident. She resisted the sound and the fragmenting but she could not pull herself onward into the radiant void. Like a swimmer urgently breast stroking against a strong noiseless tide, she felt herself dipping, sinking, then free-falling from the disintegrating brilliance.

  She became conscious of her head shaking in sidelong negation of the interference, her lips silently murmuring, ‘no, no, let me stay! Please let me stay!’

  Then she acknowledged the inevitable full immersion back to a solid, contoured reality. The bird chirps became loud concerned voices. The ripples became caring and caressing hands.

  The hard ground was cold. She began to shiver, felt the urge to rise, but was somehow constricted. Her mind made some adjustments and she suddenly knew where she was, how she had gotten there.

  Finally, she slowly opened her eyes with a fluttery acceptance of her immediate environment. A man’s face came into focus, hovering two feet above her own. She felt pinned down and quickly discovered that the man was astride her. There was a momentary sense of panic but something about the man’s face made her relax.

  A light rain fell, and she was conscious of wet hair matted to her face and forehead. The sky was a dull gray, and skinny treetops came to her peripherally as some surreal apparitions. The man’s concerned face gave her a final focus. She remembered what happened.

  The lightning! She recalled an awful clap of thunder, so jarring and harsh, so totally upon her, instantaneously enveloping her in its loud and splintered brightness. She remembered the searing, exquisite pain that so consummately wracked her body and mind.

  She was jogging and she must have been struck by lightning. As she blinked from the raindrops and the accounting of the lightning strike, she felt lethargic and without purpose. She was struck by lightning, yet there was no panic, no real sense of urgency.

  The man’s hands left her chest and he studied her with a tender and squinted concern. She felt the weight of his body leaving her, felt a great rush of air fill her chest. The man lifted himself from her but his soft blue eyes remained upon her face.

  They were beautiful eyes, shrouded by dark cavernous brows. Wisps of his black hair was pasted about his forehead, and he made odd movements with his lips as though making an adjustment.

  Her own lips felt strangely tender to the touch of her tongue, and, in a moment of clarity, she understood: the man had given her mouth to mouth resuscitation.

  The man then spoke, softly, his voice conveying a cultured refinement and pleasant resonance. “Can you move your arms and legs?”

  She understood the question and lifted her head tentatively, feeling her hands, arms, and legs slowly move to her inner commands. She nodded to the handsome stranger who knelt above and to her side. She managed a small, sad smile of gratitude.

  “And can you speak?” He returned her smile.

  “Yes, I think so,” came her weak reply.

  She noticed for the first time a small group of people standing off to her right, near a park utility shed. She heard a siren off in the distance, its sound increasing in volume. She attempted to rise from the ground.

  “Maybe you should stay where you are until you’ve been medically checked. Are you feeling much pain?” The man lightly touched her shoulder.

  As her powers of observation became more keen she noticed how the man was dressed. He wore faded red denim shorts, a powder blue sweat shirt which matched his eyes, white athletic socks, and Adidas jogging shoes. Her own ensemble of white shorts, blue top, white socks, and Nike shoes merged nicely with the man’s attire.

  She answered the question. “No, I don’t think so, not pain so much. It’s sort of dull aching almost everywhere about my body. I think I’m okay. You’re very kind to help me. Thank you.”

  “No ‘thanks’ necessary. It was kind of freaky the way that cloud exploded above us. You just got unlucky, and I suppose we could be faulted for jogging when a storm was brewing …”

  The man stopped talking as he saw the flashing lights and heard the diminishing siren whirr of an approaching ambulance.

  Uniformed EMTs rushed from the ambulance to the woman’s side, their faces intent and focused. She watched as they quickly set up equipment and prepared for various medical checks. She was beginning to feel confident that her body had not sustained any permanent damage, although some tingling sensations remained in her legs.

  After all the medical tests were run, she hear
d an attendant announce that her vital signs were normal, that she was stable.

  The visage of the handsome stranger stayed with her, after the ambulance attendants displaced him. The image of his dark hair wet against the brow stayed with her, even when he became a blur on the gray fringe of the rainy day crowd. His face stayed with her even beyond the hospital’s emergency room where she was pronounced hale, hearty, and lucky to be alive. His soft smile stayed even when she returned to her spacious Scottsdale condominium.

  Chapter Two

  Jenny Mason thought of the rainy day man like she never thought of a man. She was amused with herself, feeling a bit school girlish and silly. His image hovered in her mind as it had hours earlier on the hard wet pavement, his dark hair wet and glistening, dripping from the misting rain; his eyes wrinkling at the corners, the orbs a sapphire twinkle of soft penetrable warmth; his thick sensuous lips were set in a concerned, contemplative pout.

  She was unable to shake his image, and she did not wish to shake it. She was warmed and sustained by his seeming ethereal presence.

  She found herself silently shaking her head in bemusement, a wistful smile upon her lips, during her exercises, during the laundry routine, during her microwave meals.

  She thought of him constantly amid the practical chores which kept her busy and amid the gauzy recall of her strange ‘white light’ experience. While she knew that her life resumed along its predictable paths, she nonetheless felt some inner sense of displacement. She was changed in some magical way by the lightning strike, by the resulting soulful aberration, and, yes, by the darkly beautiful stranger.

  Jenny sensed an altering essence about her. She felt more alive than before the jogging strike. She felt more stoic about the pattern and shape of her world. She was not afraid anymore; at least, the weight of fear was lightened. It did not pursue her movements as it had for so many years. Yes, it was strange but it was also a natural sublimation. She accepted it and she was somehow revitalized by it.

  She was convinced that the beckoning ‘white light’ was more than just a physical response to the lightning strike. It was much more than that, and, while she could not, while she felt she need not, attempt an explanation of this rather significant transformation, it was as real for her as the air she breathed and the tangible habits of her life. It was as though she had lived her entire twenty-seven years with this awesome acknowledgment. She would live each day in celebration of life and all its elements. She was no longer unsettled by the prospects of tomorrow or the years ahead. She knew with some odd lucidity that tomorrows were but brief zephyrs of relevance against the infinite landscape of eternity.

  She was given the gift of light, a rare and enormous glimpse into forever and she was not afraid. It was a knowledge perhaps few could ever know, and she felt the ephemeral wisps of sorrow from the knowing. With this gift borne of light she never again need fear the future or linger too long in confusion and doubt. The gift would always lead her ultimately out of traps laid by the mind.

  The incredible oddity that came with the gift was how manifest was this new found knowledge. It was as though the gift had always been there, somewhere deep in her subliminal recesses. It was awesome but it was natural. She caught herself at times with a wide grin on her face, but it was good and she knew that life could never be quite the same.

  On Sunday, Jenny’s parents called.

  The loving parents built much of their lives around Jenny. They served as a seeming metronomic pulse in sync with Jenny’s every movement, yet, carefully, unobtrusively. They called because they sensed something amiss in their daughter’s life, a psychic fear for her welfare.

  “Dad’s on the other line, honey.” Margaret Mason spoke so softly she was barely audible. “We’ve been getting some of those paranormal signals.” She paused to lightly giggle. “At least, I have. Just thought we better check up on you.”

  Jenny’s father broke in, his voice a gentle roar. “It’s called ‘lonesome detachment,’ Margaret, not ‘paranormal signals.’ How are you, Jenny-girl? We haven’t talked to you for almost two weeks.”

  “I’m fine, daddy.” Jenny felt a rush of tender memories, moments of love that had always been there for her in abundance. She debated whether or not to tell her parents about the lightning accident and decided against it. “In fact, I can honestly tell you both that I’ve never felt better in my entire life.”

  “You have another fella, Jenny Anne?” her mother asked gaily, but remembering Jenny’s lone bad relationship that ended a year ago.

  “No, mom, I don’t have another fella. I’m just in love with life, ‘eating jellybeans and chasing butterflies.’” She laughed as she remembered her father’s famous lines, a stock answer he always used throughout her life to respond to the question, ‘how are you?’

  The father was pleased with her response. “That Ad Agency make you a vice president yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet, daddy, but it will be there someday if I want it. How’s the weather in Lawrence?” She could picture her beloved Lawrence, Kansas, the old two-story house in which she was born, the high school, her Cheerleading chums, the boys she dated, the fun times.

  “It’s bottling weather, sweetheart, just a few thin clouds in a big blue sky. The temperature is about seventy-four degrees and the air smells like a fat old greenhouse. You had a little rain out there in the desert, according to the weather reports?”

  “On Thursday and Friday there were storms, but it’s beautiful today, in the mid-eighties, early nineties, and the orange blossoms are narcotic. Yeah, you two, I’m just fine and the weather’s fine. Is that the only reason you called, to check up on me?”

  “Well, I did think about hitting you up for a loan, but your mother wouldn’t permit me.”

  “Oh, daddy, you big teaser!”

  “Your father should be on a golf course today but he claims the courses are getting too crowded. He stayed home to pester me all day: ‘Get me this, get me that.’ You know he’s spoiled rotten.” Jenny’s mother loved every minute of the spoiling.

  “You just might be putting your dinner at the ‘Steak House’ in jeopardy, Maggie-girl. Best watch what you say … Anyway, sweetheart, we were just calling to see how you’re doing and to find out if you’re still planning to come home in July?”

  Jenny assured her parents that she was still coming home for part of her vacation in early July. They talked of sundry things until Jenny’s ‘call waiting’ tone interrupted their call. They agreed that it was a good time to hang up.

  When Jenny switched to the other call and she heard his voice, there came an adrenaline rush and a tingling sensation.

  “Is this Jennifer Anne Mason?” the strong male voice asked.

  She could hardly contain her excitement. “Yes, this is Jenny.”

  “Jenny, this is Jason Prince. There’s no reason for you to know me, but I was jogging just behind you in the park early Friday when the lightning struck. Hope you don’t mind my calling.”

  “Oh, no, not at all!” She hoped she was not sounding too excited. “You’re the nice man who very likely saved my life. Thank you so much for calling, and, for saving me. In truth, I hoped you would call.” She closed her eyes, saw his image there in her mind’s eye.

  “I didn’t do a whole lot. It just wasn’t your time, I guess. How are you feeling? Any lingering aches and pains?” His voice had a velvety quality.

  “You’re too modest, Mr. Prince. You …”

  “Please, call me Jay or Jason. Mister is not allowed.”

  “Okay, Jason, thank you. I’m feeling fine. It’s really weird in a way. I’ve never felt better in my life. Maybe a little lightning hit purges the body of bad elements. It’s crazy but I do feel wonderful.”

  “I’m delighted. You sound in good spirits.” Jason hesitated briefly before continuing. “This might be very inappropriate of me, bad timing and all, but I was wondering if we might do lunch or dinner sometime? That is, if you’re not encumbered or otherwise d
isinclined.”

  “I’m not encumbered, Jason,” conscious that she might be sounding too eager, “and I’m not disinclined. I would love to have lunch or dinner with you.”

  “Well, since I’ve encountered such an encouraging response, let’s make it dinner. Would Tuesday night be good for you?”

  “Tuesday night is good.”

  “Shall I pick you up at 7:00 PM?”

  “That should be fine. Do you have my address?”

  When the phone conversation ended, Jenny felt an overwhelming elation, an excitement and anticipation she had not felt since her first high school date in Lawrence, Kansas.

  As she busied herself that evening with ad layouts strewn about her living room floor, that rainy day image of Jason was there in the art work and copy pages. Jason Prince was no longer a stranger in her life.

  Still later, as she soaked in her bath, she thought of a lightning strike, of her ‘white light’ experience, and of the man who straddled her unconscious body there in the park on the hard wet ground. She thought of her mother and her father, of an old boyfriend she could not clearly bring into focus, of the inner knowledge and immense joy that had arrived in her life.

  She cautioned herself time and again that evening against the rushing optimism and the growing hope of a new relationship. She could honestly say to herself that she never had such an illuminating and transforming occurrence as the ‘white light.’ The handsome Jason Prince was a very substantive part of that total experience.

  She went to bed that Sunday evening too keyed up to sleep, her mind hopping here and there in happy disarray, coming back always to Tuesday next, back to that handsome image, hovering just above her face.

  She finally slept, the image caressing her last fading thoughts.

  Chapter Three

  Without religious fervor or zeal, Jason Prince believed in fate and serendipity. He felt simply there were fateful events in every life.

  At age thirty-three he was the recipient of some good genetic tailoring: a strong Roman angularity to his attractive face and full black hair, minus the imperious and defiant set; a well-built body without flab; intelligent, solid business acumen, with a penchant for fairness and mild aggressiveness. Jason suffered no swollen and insufferable ego problems in his stable environment. He was lucky, and, not so lucky. He carried with him a pleasant humility, no doubt the result of his grandmother, whose doting was subtle but pure. There was also no doubt that the death of his parents when Jason was eleven years old factored into whatever essence was uniquely his.