Degrees of Light: The Star Mappers, #1

By Hollin Stafford

When her best friend Nora disappears into the folds of a cult that believes that humankind must move into the 4th dimension or perish, Mel unexpectedly finds herself drifting between the present and the shadows of someone she use to be. Mel must find Nora and stop the cult before they open Earth's portals and unwittingly let in a destructive force that leaves a trail of decimated planets in its wake.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Falling Petal Press
• Release date: Apr 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732270404

Hollin Stafford

Hollin holds her degree in Sociology and was a flight attendant for United Airlines up until the time she had her son. She, her husband and son are now happily living with their three dogs in Portugal. Hollin home schools so they can explore the globe, and teach through experience. When not writing about travel, Hollin’s focus is on writing fiction. Her work has received rave reviews from critically acclaimed agents and editors. She has a unique voice embodied through rich descriptions of shared human condition. In 2017 she was listed on Glimmer Train's honorable mention list and considered for the Fulton Prize from The Adirondack Review. She is originally from California.

Book preview

Prologue

Mel

Everything used to be up in the air, a guess, a hope. Life held a sense of intrigue and wonder. I never knew what would happen next.

Now I do.

At least I know what the big next is, as in I know what will happen when I die. And once you know that, the nexts that come before aren’t all that important...at least not in the way they used to be.

Not for me.

Part of me wants to go back. Back to the not knowing. I hesitate to even tell you my story, because I don’t want to rob you of the guess, of the hope...

Here’s the thing. The person writing this now...me...will cease to exist when I die. Once I take my next form, my life here on Earth, my memories, all will be forgotten.

And so will yours.

Think about that.

Every friendship.

Every victory.

Every kiss. Every thing.

Erased.

My best friend, Nora, says I’m looking at it all wrong. That these memories become part of the whole, that they add to it, make it bigger, brighter. The way clouds can swallow the setting sun yet still make the sky more intriguing, more colorful, more likely to invite one to dream.

I guess I won’t know until I die again.

1

Mel

Ishould have stolen a nicer car. The rusted Honda sputtered down the dirt road with gumption, complaining but moving forward all the same. I pumped the gas pedal, concerned I might not make it all the way to the ranch.

Saving my best friend Nora on eighty seven dollars, a six pack of Diet Coke and a box of chocolate Pop Tarts would be impossible. I had packed my bag and was now headed for the DD Ranch. It was a dusty mess of a place situated on a few acres of thirsty dirt outside of Tucson. It was a gamble. The money might not be where Lucky said he buried it. He was my dad’s best friend but that didn’t mean I totally trusted him. Yet, here I was. Digging a flippin’ hole in the desert was not something I would have imagined doing a year ago. Then again, a year ago, I didn’t know my best friend would go crazy.

What if I couldn’t catch up to her?

"You have to try!"

The battered car swerved off the road and rolled to a stop in a ditch. Great! I’d been hearing the ghostly voice for months. I know what you’re thinking, but I am not crazy. I figure it must be my inner voice or something. Whatever it was, it was seriously getting on my nerves. Don’t do that! I yelled, eyeing the back seat as if a body to go with the voice would materialize right there on the tattered pleather seats of a stolen car. And what do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to get some capital together. If you’re so smart, why don’t you just tell me where she is? Huh?

Nothing.

I gripped the steering wheel and gritted my teeth, putting the car in reverse. I was sick and tired of receiving only partial instructions. The tires spun for a minute and I thought I might be stuck. Then it flew backwards and up the embankment. I started down the road again grumbling along with the car.

Five minutes later I’d reached my destination. I rolled to a stop well before the iron gate that led to the ranch, tried to calm down, got out and paused to scan my surroundings. I could see why Lucky would decide to bury his lotto winnings out here. It wasn’t much of a place. The bars of the rusty gate sat open like a tired welcome. A dilapidated barn faded to the color of a strawberry Sunburst leaned forward slightly, as if it was searching for the animals it once protected from the desert sun and angry storms.

I opened the trunk and pulled out the shovel. Glancing back at the road I checked for plumes of dust rising into the air, the telltale signs of a car. There were none. I slammed the trunk closed and headed toward what I hoped would be some luck.

A warped and splintered house sat at the end of the dirt drive. Ratty yellowed curtains flapped out of the half opened windows of the upper story like used handkerchiefs. If a house could cry, this is what it would look like. Passing through the gaping gate, I had the uncomfortable feeling it might close and gobble me up.

My mother would be wondering where I was by now. The sun started to fade in the West and everything had that iridescent glow that only occurred this time of day. But even bathed in this rich light the ranch looked poor.

Wishing I had paid more attention to Lucky’s description, I wandered around the back side of the barn, searching for a pig trough. There were bits of rusted metal, tubing that had bleached out to a stone grey, and a broken toilet bowl that had been used as an ashtray.

Locating what I assumed must be the trough, a dented stainless steel tub, I rolled up my sleeves and pushed my shovel into the hard dirt. I was careful to look out for snakes. Just in case. I didn’t want Nora to wind up dead just because I went and got myself killed by a rattlesnake like some idiot.

I kept digging. With every shovel full of empty dirt my worry intensified. If Nora was right, which of course she wasn’t, the end of civilization was in her and the other Connectors’ hands. I’d done my research. They were a cult.

Of course, the real danger was she could get herself killed. And even though I was pissed as hell that Nora pretended to be murdered then took off on her mission without bothering to tell me, the fact remained that she was the only true friend I’d ever had.

So, I dug. The salty taste of sweat invaded my mouth and I cursed at myself for not bringing enough water. It was dark and the headlamp did little. The stream of light was too narrow. It lit only the darkness directly in front of me.

I smelled the cigarette before I heard his voice.

Mel?

I ran. I ran past the house, past the barn and down the drive toward the old gate. Unfortunately, I was tired and he ran faster. I could hear his wheezy breathing getting closer with every footfall. I made it nearly all the way to the gate when he grabbed me from behind.

Resigned, I turned to face my dad’s best friend, Lucky Timmons. Lucky. I panted.

Mel, why’d you run? He was breathing heavily.

Exhausted, I leaned over and rested my forearms on my knees. Why did I run? I’d known Lucky for a long time. It wasn’t like he scared me. But I’d been extra jittery lately and I didn’t want him to tell my mom what I was doing. So I ran. Stupid.

I stood up, my headlamp finding and illuminating just the wrinkles on Lucky’s forehead. A series of sunburned wavy lines scrawled in the dark, like a cave drawing of a river.

What in tarnation are you up to? He asked.

Lucky, what are you doing here? Throwing a question back at him sometimes worked, he got confused easily. I shifted my chin down so I could see more of his face. His mouth was oddly curved like it didn’t know if it should smile or frown.

Uh-uh I asked you first, he said. He lit a cigarette and took a long calculated drag. He was trying to be casual. That was Lucky’s style. He had the idea that lighting up somehow put people, on both sides of the smoke, more at ease.

I hesitated and thought of Nora. Of how she made me feel like a cottonwood seed, all light and air and hope.

I need money. I can’t explain why. You just have to trust me, I spoke toward the ground, lowering the spotlight to his dirty cowboy boots, it’s a matter of life and death.

"You tell him!"

Really? I hollered at the night, even though I knew the voice came from somewhere inside me, my head, my ear? I couldn’t be sure.

What? Lucky looked around, Now Mel, are you in some sorta trouble?

In a way, yes. But please don’t talk to my family! They could jeopardize the whole thing if they try to stop me. I shook my head, The whole enchilada. It was a term my dad used. Before he was sent to prison.

What whole thing? What are you goin’ on about girl? I ain’t handin’ over any cash till I get some answers. Lucky took another enormous puff meant to impress and calm. A ‘nothing to worry about here folks!’ aura about him. He meant it. He wouldn’t give me a dime. I’d have to give up something, something big, to gain his trust.

I hesitated again, but Nora had plucked me from my ugly world shaded in grey and outlined in doubt. She’d transformed it through sharing her odd traditions with me like eating pink marshmallow sandwiches every Monday and giving the scraps to squirrels. And through her gift of seeing beyond what people wanted you to see —to their dreams, their souls and even their past lives. She’d changed my world from one long stormy day into a vivid Technicolor movie filled with magic and wonder, even if it was a little cheesy at times.

I needed her back. The original her. Not the her she’d been lately.

A vague memory had taken root deep inside, something about it made my need even stronger. The need to find out what happened. What made Nora trade her signature brightness for shadow? How could someone like her be taken in by a cult?

Lucky shuffled his feet and cleared his throat.

Nora isn’t dead. There I’d said it.

Lucky’s eyes bugged out of his scrawny head like a praying mantis. He threw the cigarette to the ground, where it laid smoking like it was angry it’d been tossed aside.

Alive? What! He ran a hand through his thin hair.

She faked it, it’s a long story...listen she’s on a mission to join a cult. Nora’s in danger of dying for real! I sounded like a moron, but it didn’t matter, this was Lucky.

What kinda cult? She go all loony religious?

Lucky’s breath carried the nauseating remnants of a ham and cheese sandwich and smoke. I fanned the air in front of me with my hand and tried to focus on which details to leave in and which were better left out.

The cult believes that the human race is about to make an evolutionary jump into the 4th dimension. The chosen ones were supposedly sent here to help the rest of us idiots make the transition. And Nora thinks she’s one of them, not us idiots...one of the chosen ones. Jesus. It wasn’t all that surprising really, that Nora would be on such a mission. That she’d be sucked into some cult by the promise of a better world. She cared about people in a way most didn’t.

Lucky struck a match and with a puff lit his next cigarette.

A revolutionary what? he asked.

Shit. Shit. Shit. An evolutionary jump, as in human kind evolving into a different space.

Huh?

He wore the same face I did when I first read Nora’s letter. They believe that we can go from living here on Earth in the 3rd dimension, to the 4th. It’s got something to do with vibrations and light or something. It doesn't really matter anyhow. It's a load of crap. All you really need to know is this group is, uh, questionable. Several members have gone missing. They were girls, probably brainwashed like Nora. Most likely, they were killed when they realized it was a cult full of wackos and tried to leave. I need to find her before she finds The Connectors.

The Who?

The Connectors, that’s what they call themselves. They think it’s just a matter of finding some sort of portals, and that when they get them and combine them it’ll open up a doorway or something—connect us to a different dimension. It’s nutso. Look, are you gonna give me the money or not?

I don’t think you’re ma would want me to be aidin’ and abettin’ you in tryin’ to find a cult.

I’m not trying to find the cult. I’m trying to find Nora.

Yeah, well, how do you think your ma would feel if she knew you was lookin’ for a dead girl?

2

Nora

Outside it started to snow. Here, in my room at the Westin Hotel, surrounded by the downy softness of the bedding and the white etherealness of the falling snow was almost enough to make me forget why I was here in Seattle, so far away from home.

The paper said that they didn’t get a lot of snow here. The world was changing and so was I.

I could feel it. What’d started as a gentle nudge shifted to a shove and now that was all there was...this insistent propulsion, like I was nothing more than a toy boat being pulled by the tide.

Walking the line between life and death is one thing we all have in common. But the line is thinner than most people realize. That’s a downside of being born psychic. The ability to see both life and death coexisting was distracting and often disturbing. It was like my spirit never fully acclimated to this body.

I pulled the covers up and tried to ground myself, hoping to interrupt the floating sensation if only for a few minutes. Tracing the contours of my skin with my fingers, as if reading a map, I visualized it as a barrier holding my spirit safe inside. But as usual, a sense of detachment, of being lost, was all I could conjure. I was just borrowing this body. I frowned. Maybe that was why ghosts had a knack for finding me? They could see I was living outside of the physical—that in a way I was just like them.

The voice that started talking to me a few months ago was different than the others. It was less phantom than solid presence, as if the speaker and I shared a cheap hotel room wall. It possessed an urgency that the others didn’t and at times music could be heard in the background, a lilting twitter that left me pulsating.

There was a loud knock at my door and I jumped. Panic grabbed hold and I had to remind myself that the police wouldn’t be looking for me here in Seattle. They weren’t looking for me anyway, they were looking for a dead body.

Frowning, I walked to the door and peeked through the peep hole. I pulled back, confused. There was no one there. Clearing my throat, I asked, Who is it?

Nothing.

Opening the door slowly, I found a silver tray sitting on the ground. On it was an envelope with my name scrawled across it. No one knew I was here. As far as I could tell, nobody but Melody knew I was alive. I took the tray inside, sat on the bed and picked up the envelope. Running my finger under the back side, I carefully tore it open. Inside a small white card read,

"Welcome Nora.

We look forward to meeting you."

Below it was an address and it was signed S.O.C. -The Society Of The Connectors. I didn’t have to find them, they’d found me.

I set it on the bedside table then glanced at the newspaper that lay crumpled where I dropped it. Even here in Seattle the story made the news. The famous sheriff of Tucson, Wally Rain, had made the papers lots of times. Now it was his son’s turn. Suicides happened every day, but this was a murder-suicide combo. Served up by the son of a famous ‘do-gooder’. Super-sized by the fact that after two weeks the girl’s body had not yet been found.

My body.

I sighed. It hadn’t gone the way I had planned. I hadn’t meant for people to think Matt killed me. All I wanted was to slip away quietly. Finding The Connectors and moving into the 4th dimension was more important than anything, even threats to my family. The voice had persuaded me that Matt wouldn’t follow through on his threats and hurt my family. And the voice was right.

Matt committed suicide instead.

3

Mel

"H ow do you know Nora’s alive?" Lucky asked.

She sent me a letter. That was it. She let me think she was dead. Let me go to the horrible funeral that her mother, Susan, had decorated apparently while drunk...where Nora’s signature color had been splashed everywhere like a bottle of Pepto Bismol had exploded. And balloons, inadequately filled with helium, floated slowly downward mimicking the lips of the women from Susan’s church...and I sat there barely breathing.

Eh em. Lucky cleared his throat.

He didn’t need to know the whole truth. I wasn’t about to tell him I was hearing a voice. Then he’d really freak out, probably call my mom and she’d haul me off to some palm reader or mumbo jumbo voodoo Dr...

Fine. The letter explained that she faked her own death to get away from her mother. So she could follow her destiny. No ‘sorry’, just a note written hurriedly on a pink sticky note shaped like a cat. Look Lucky, I don’t mean to be rude but I’m sort of in a time crunch here. The night pressed in on me like a tourniquet as if trying to hold in the last bit of blood that flowed from my wound. Why hadn’t she said she was sorry? Why had she kept me in the dark?

Well, if you don’t have time to talk, then I guess I can’t let you take my money.

Lucky this isn’t a game. Like I said, Nora is in danger. I leaned over slightly and spit, an exclamation point of sorts. Lucky needed to know I meant business and he understood this sort of punctuation.

A subtle rumbling sound was what finally broke the silence.

At first I thought my stomach was growling, I had only had half a pop tart and that was hours ago. Then the rumbling got louder. It came from deep down, somewhere underground. I grabbed the flashlight from Lucky’s hand, turned it on and shined it downward. Though it was loud, the tremor was slight, just enough to send tiny bits of rock into a jig like dance around our feet.

Earthquake, Lucky said matter-of-factly, taking a drag off a cigarette.

The rumbling sound stopped, but the ground still moved. This was a weird earthquake. Then out of nowhere came a thunderous crack from the sky followed by a tearing sound. It was as if someone was ripping a gigantic sheet.

Whaaaat the heeelll is that? Lucky yelled and pointed a long bony finger toward the sky. I followed it with the flashlight. I couldn’t breathe. Neither of us moved, caught in a pause between the seconds and minutes that made up time. In a space that didn’t make sense.

Alongside the ghostly white familiar sphere that was the moon, sat something else. Something at least three times as big. Something that was deep purple and looked like a planet, but sparkled like a star.

"Oh no!"

The ghostly voice was nearly drowned out by a bold gust of hot air that blew upward, as if it sprang from the center of the earth. I had the strange sensation that my cells were being rearranged, like the wind worked with some ancient magic that had lain dormant, and was stacking and re-stacking the building blocks that made up me. A DNA do over.

My eyes were glued to the bewildering planet. It sat quietly, pulsing with an indigo light. There was a humming inside my head, a vibration that was vaguely recognizable. A song I’d forgotten. It got louder and it felt like my whole body was smiling. There was no fear. No worry.

Then, without warning, without sound, it evaporated. No encore. No trace. The giant planet, the colors, the joy. Vanished.

The sky was left diminished. The moon a mere smudge of chalk on a blackboard, alone amongst the stars. The spot that had been briefly occupied by brilliance left a bleak hole. A focal point of longing in a black wistful sky. I felt robbed, as if someone had rifled through me and stolen something irreplaceable.

Time is running out! They found a portal. There are only two more!

The voice startled me.

What? What’s going on?

No answer.

Lucky thought I was talking to him. His voice was shaky. How should I know? He walked closer to me and touched my shoulder. Mel? You think this is it?

Is what? I asked.

The um, apocalypse? You know the end of days?

Don’t be ridiculous. I tried to say it with conviction, but I had no idea what was really going on. Suspicions started filling my head as if someone had tipped the universe on its side and poured whole buckets of possibilities that I’d never imagined feasible into my mind...they sauntered about, disrupting the dust in the corners and on shelves I desperately wanted to leave untouched. They overflowed onto the walls and floor of my brain, strange ‘what-if’ proclamations drowning out the ‘what is’ I’d known up to now.

4

Nora

The end of the world was coming. That is if you believed a birdwatcher named Bob Finkelton out in Scottsdale, AZ. I had read the story on one of my favorite but more obscure websites over coffee that morning. He reported seeing a large purple planet. There was no other