John Frum The Reluctant Messiah

Second Time's The Charm

John found his way back to the place where he first entered the interior. He had forgotten how much it had reminded him of Stonehenge and shook his head in disbelief just as he had when he first saw it of finding such an iconic structure in the middle of the South Pacific. He paused trying to remember the exact spot he was standing in when he disappeared. The vegetation had grown so fast that it was hard to pinpoint it. 

He was trying to recreate in his mind the exact circumstances under which he was whisked away. It dawned on him that he was not entirely sure just how this whole thing worked. Was the tribes' presence required to succeed? Was that weird hissing sound made by the tribe some sort of critical component in gaining access? Did they have anything to do with it at all? And there was the Kava. The Kava! He hadn't brought any with him. All these questions began creating a bit of angst in him but then just as quickly remembered what Sam had told him.

"You no need Kava," he mouthed the words as he remembered. He even went so far as to tap his own forehead just as Sam had done to him. 

"Your Kava here,"  he would say.

A wave of peaceful tranquility washed over him. His believing would carry him through, just as it always had. It had to. John closed his eyes, centered himself with a deep, cleansing breath and exhaled. Suddenly he was 

gone.

He stood motionless and abruptly opened his eyes. They darted side to side without moving a muscle at first. Slowly raising his head up, he began to look around. It was the exact same spot he had arrived at during his first visit, but he was noticeably calmer this time. The first time he didn't know what to expect, everything was new. Now things were a bit more familiar. At first glance it was a place that was no different than the jungle he had just come from. But under closer examination, there was a difference. There were no blemishes. Everything was brand new, pristine. The colors were more intense and saturated. Every single leaf, every nugget of bark was perfect and perfectly placed. It was quiet, the same type of quiet one would experience during a winter snowfall where every sound is immediately absorbed by a thousand falling flakes. But the abundance of soft, green moss that carpeted most of the jungle floor and everything else for that matter was more likely the reason- even the animals remained quiet. It was cooler with no humidity, leaving the air fresh and clean like an ocean beach after a heavy rain. The most striking and pleasant difference was the lack of bugs. There were none as far as John could tell.

He raised his arm to brush his brow and was taken aback by what he saw. His arm's movement blurred slightly. He waved his arm around to reconfirm what he had just seen. Sure enough, his movements would blur ever so slightly, looking almost as if it were vibrating. He realized that he had seen this before but had no memory of it when he returned to the other side. He took off in the direction he had taken in his first trip hoping to encounter once again some of the elders. He remembered that it was quite a distance, so he began to pick up the pace and jog. As he did, the trail ahead of him and the surrounding jungle blurred as well, not unlike moving about in street view on Google Earth. Time was certainly altered. He found he could travel great distances in a short amount of time with relative ease.He noticed that there were patches of the trail where he could see through the jungle floor down to a mirror image of his surroundings.  It was as if there were sections of the trail made of glass allowing him to peer down to the world below. It occurred to him that all those times in his life he felt as if he was being watched that perhaps he was. 

He stopped to study it and found the jungle below him was identical to the jungle around him. Just that the one below was rife with the normal flaws one would typically find in nature. He wondered if he was traveling through reality just on a different plane, a different level. He questioned which reality was the real, intended reality and was it possible he had been living in the wrong one all this time? At this point anything seemed possible, and nothing seemed impossible. 

He reached the point where he had encountered the elders before. It was a place where the dense canopy broke open to the sky above allowing filtered sunlight to make its way all the way down to the jungle floor. Surrounded on three sides by a single giant, "U" shaped granite boulder some 100 feet long and 50 feet high. Near the top were three nautilus symbols carved into the it's cliff face. One nearly worn away and two others distinct and fresh. In the center of the back wall was a keyhole opening just large enough for a single, small man to fit through. Not unlike the many online games John had played, the lighting behind it was different, almost pulsating, drawing the player to what was the obvious, intended route. He looked around for the elders or any sign of life but there was no one to be found. Still there was an overwhelming sense that he was being directed to a yet unknown destination.

"Hello?" he called. "Hellooo?" he shouted a bit louder this time. Silence. He looked over towards the doorway. He would have loved to have had the advantage of some tangible guidance at this point, but he knew in his gut that once he entered that opening, he would be in uncharted territory and on his own. He also knew that once he got near enough to it to peer into the hole, that it would be a point of no return and he would be transported into whatever ethos was waiting for him on the other side. This was a lot like a video game except the risks were real. There would be no respawning if he chose wrong. 

 He could put it off no longer. He would have to go through that Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole if there was to be any hope of recovering his mom and Heylia. He approached it slowly and instinctively held his breath with each step forward fearing it could be his last. To his surprise he was close enough to touch the walls of the opening and still no change. He had to turn to the side and squeeze his way through. In a sudden moment of panic, he stepped back, back into the light of the court of the Elders. He gathered himself, breathed a sigh of relief and realized the doorway worked both ways. The realization that he could return the same way gave him a newfound confidence and he once again squeezed himself into the tight space, this time pushing himself all the way through.