This story takes a weird direction...I hope you're ready for it.
Shadows and Light Part One
Rated: PG
MacGyver never told anyone, but sometimes he saw his deceased relatives. They visited him in his dreams, and he spoke with them, telling them about his life and how much he missed them. Every time he awoke, the experience seemed real to him and much more substantial than a mere product of his sleeping brain, as if he were actually talking to them. He couldn’t explain it, but he was curious and wanted answers nonetheless. A part of him wanted to believe he could establish a connection with them from beyond the grave, that an afterlife indeed existed and it only required the opening of the subconscious mind to unlock its secrets. Another part of him remained skeptical, believing more in scientific inquiry than the supernatural, knowing that his lingering grief over their deaths and his strong desire to see them again could have been fueling his intense, vivid dreams of them.
He thought about this subject as he hiked Devil’s Bend, a hike known for its extreme physical challenges. The trail was narrow, rocky, and steep, winding around high canyons and sheer cliff faces. One slight misstep or slip could lead to a potentially fatal fall off the side, nothing to brace oneself or break the fall except the hard, bone crushing ground several feet below. MacGyver knew this as he ascended the trail, yet somehow his usual acrophobia did not deter him. He felt calmer on that perilous trail than he did while climbing. At least he had the knowledge that his feet were making contact with solid ground instead of dangling in the air. He had also hiked that trail many years earlier as a boy with his father, and somehow that reassured him as well, feeling as if his father’s calming, steadying presence was there with him, guiding him through the treacherous, winding bends in the trail as he had when he was alive, coaching and encouraging him to continue because the majestic, panoramic view of the canyons once he reached the top would be worth the risk. He knew his father would be proud of him if he could see him, once again conquering his fears and testing his limits. Perhaps he was watching, the hike feeling unusually effortless as he neared the summit at a record pace, each step feeling less strenuous than the last as if an invisible, powerful force was pulling him, compelling him to continue, the goal of reaching the summit and achieving something profound as well as its sweet promise of respite becoming more attainable and less distant.
When it happened, it seemed unreal, as if was happening to someone else and MacGyver was only an observer, feeling disconnected from his body as it tumbled and plummeted. A part of him was aware he was falling, that there was nothing he could do to stop it, and another part of him remained detached and calm, the usual panic and fear he might have expected to feel about his impending death strangely absent. It was as if he was resigned to the notion that he would die, that it was beyond his control, an almost Zen-like serenity enveloping him. It all happened so instantaneously and quickly that he hadn’t even had time to frantically scramble to attempt to prevent the fall, helplessly flail his limbs in a futile effort to grab onto something, or even release a startled cry. His body simply fell, his mass sinking with gravity, the air rushing past him, the scenery around him becoming a blur as the rate of his fall seemed to increase rapidly, leaving him with little time to wonder how it happened or what would happen to him once his body struck the ground and shattered.
A bare, twisted, gnarled, ancient tree trunk protruding sharply from the ground broke his fall abruptly, piercing his thigh, impaling it. The pain would have been excruciating for MacGyver had the base of his skull not struck a rock almost simultaneously, knocking him unconscious. What he experienced after that was absolute oblivion, total darkness. There was no soft, welcoming, warm light beckoning him to some otherworldly journey into the spiritual realm, nor did he encounter the relatives he saw so many times in his dreams. He was completely alone, lost and unaware in the blackness. Blood flowed from his leg wound and seeped from the cut he had received on the back of his head, and there was nothing he could do to stop it, nothing he could do to mend his injuries or even know how serious they were. For the moment, he was still alive, but if he couldn’t signal or cry out for help, his chances of survival would grow increasingly slim, each moment precious, his injuries requiring immediate, urgent tending and care. He had to let someone know how dire his situation was. He had to tell them what happened and where they could locate him. He had to communicate somehow, free himself from his badly damaged body…
***
MacGyver found himself in Pete’s bedroom, not knowing how he got there but knowing that he was still in a desperate situation. He couldn’t understand it, but somehow he realized that he had left his badly injured body back in the canyons, that it was his soul or whatever he wanted to refer to it as that had escaped and traveled the distance to send a distress call. Once again he felt disconnected from his body, airy, light, and floating, the unbearable pain he should have been feeling from the injuries he sustained in the fall gone. He tried to touch objects on Pete’s dresser and his hand passed right through them as if he wasn’t there, his body transparent and glowing in ethereal, unnatural light. He was standing directly in front of the mirror on the dresser, yet he didn’t see his reflection. He spent his life trying to debunk supernatural phenomena whenever it presented itself to him, no matter what form it took, hoping to find a rational explanation for it, telling people he didn’t believe in ghosts, and yet it seemed as if he now was one. Like the supernatural phenomena he had encountered, his current incorporeal state left him feeling partly terrified and partly fascinated.
“No, this can’t be real,” he said aloud, whispering, his voice also sounding strange, echoing and distant. “This has to be some dream or hallucination, a product of my mind. I want to be rescued, so my mind is projecting all this. It isn’t real. I’m not really here. I’m back in that canyon floor, slowly dying with no chance or hope of being discovered…”
Pete released a loud snore, stirring and grunting in his sleep, taking a rare and probably well deserved mid-afternoon nap away from the office for a change. MacGyver turned toward him, watching him sadly, knowing how distraught he would be when he learned that he was missing.
“Unless I tell him…”
He dismissed the idea as absurd. Pete wouldn’t hear him. He was a figment of his imagination, just as being there in that room was, all a construction of his dying brain. Still, if it worked for his dead relatives to speak to him while he was asleep, if there was anything real about that experience, perhaps he could try it with Pete. It might work, and he decided it was worth a try. It was the only chance he had at that point. He approached the bed quietly, leaning over and whispering in Pete’s ear.
“Pete,” he said. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but this is Mac. I need your help…”
***
Pete felt cold, a sudden chill in the air that felt like a draft from a cracked open window causing him to pull his sheets closer and tighter around his body for warmth, shivering in his semi-conscious state. A rush of air brushed past his ear, a faint voice carried along with it.
“Pete…” it said. “Pete…”
As he listened, the voice became more distinct and recognizable. “Mac? Mac, is that you?” He mumbled, his eyes half open, groggy and still half asleep.
“Pete, I’m in trouble. I need your help…”
Pete struggled to wake himself, feeling a presence beside his bed, as if someone was standing over him. When at last he did open his eyes fully, he gasped in surprise at the ghostly appearance of his friend, aglow with an unearthly light, able to clearly see through him, his body in a faint outline, not fully realized. He sat up in fright and surprise, pushing himself away from the apparition.
“No…w-what is this?” He asked. “This can’t be real. It has to be a dream…”
“You can see me?” MacGyver asked.
“Yes,” Pete said, still staring at him, examining him, “but how are you here? This doesn’t make any sense. You’re not supposed to be here. You’re on a hike. You can’t be real…”
“I was on a hike—I mean, I am—and I don’t know what this is, if it’s a dream or not, but somehow I’m here, too, and I need your help.”
“MacGyver, tell me, what’s going on?”
MacGyver shrugged, an expression of anguish and confusion on his face. “I wish I knew,” he said.
“How can you be in two places at once? Why am I seeing you?”
“I don’t know, Pete, but something’s wrong. Something happened to me on that hike, and now it’s as if I was sent here in this form to tell you, as ridiculous and improbable as that sounds.”
“MacGyver, you know I don’t believe in ghosts,” Pete said.
“I don’t, either…yet here I am,” he said, a lopsided, awkward grin on his face, struggling to accept what was happening, as unusual as it was.
“No,” Pete said, shaking his head. “I don’t believe it,” he said to himself. “Something else is going on, here—probably too much stress at the office. It looks like I needed this afternoon off more than I realized. I’m talking to visions like a senile old man. I’m seeing things.”
“I’m seeing things, too,” MacGyver said. “It’s physically impossible for me to be here if I’m back in those canyons, but yet I am. Don’t you think this is strange for me, too? Look, this may not be real for either of us, but I’m asking you to try to help me, anyway. It’s the only hope I have.”
“What happened?” Pete asked, studying MacGyver’s vaporous form in disbelief and fascination. A shudder ran through him when he understood the only possible reason for seeing MacGyver as a ghost, tears stinging his eyes. “My God,” he said. “You are, aren’t you? You’re dead, and you’ve come to tell me, to say goodbye. I’ve read about stuff like this before, but of course I never believed it until now, and here you are…”
“No Pete, listen to me,” MacGyver said. “I’m not dead…yet…I mean…I don’t think I am, anyway. I am dying, though, and you have to help me.”
“What happened?”
“I fell. I-I don’t remember much after that, but I fell, and it must’ve been pretty bad. I’m lost out there somewhere, and no one is going to find me unless you start to believe that I’m also here somehow and listen to me. I think I know where I am. I can show you. You can rescue me.”
Pete stared blankly, stunned and in a daze, struggling to comprehend the surreal, eerie phantasm he was seeing.
“Pete, I know it’s hard, but you have to help me. There is no other way,” MacGyver said.
Pete looked back at the spirit of his friend. “All right,” he said, sighing. “I’ll help you. God knows I don’t want to lose you for real.”
“Good. We have to hurry, though. We don’t have much time. I can…sense it somehow. I feel it. I’m dying, Pete. We have to go now.”
Nodding, Pete got out of bed and quickly dressed. When he was finished, he followed the ghost of his friend out the door, both men never feeling more odd and disconnected from reality before in their lives, but both of them knew they had to open their minds and learn to accept what they couldn’t explain or understand if one of them was to live.
To be continued…
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
--Henry David Thoreau
brains+brawn+beauty+personality=MacGyver
