Somewhere In-Between ~ An Adventure in the Afterlife

CHAPTER 4 - THE MURAL

After Lizzie's car disappeared, Max stood in the center of Five Points, deciding it was time to just head home. He needed to get to the hospital, but without someone to help point the way, how would he even find it? Maybe mom and dad would be home, he hoped. He longed for a welcoming familiar face. He could feel fear and sadness taking over him and he needed to stop it.

Although Cleveland Avenue was normally his route to get home, he decided to take an alternate route. The last thing he needed was to run into that old cranky guy again. Max walked down Park Avenue, through downtown Amherst. It was so strange. Although Amherst was a small town, there was normally a lot going on in the little downtown area. There were restaurants and shops, business offices, a little barber shop, a coffee shop, bars, a tattoo parlor, yoga studio, and even a little movie theater that only showed one film at a time. Downtown Amherst was always busy, but now it looked emptier than a Sunday morning. As he approached the edge of downtown, something caught his eye in the parking lot, on the side of the last building. Normally on this wall would be the Veteran's Mural. This mural wall was the pride of Amherst, honoring the memories of local heroes. It was a four-part mural, remembering the wars of World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East. The faces of the departed were incorporated in that mural, and every Veteran's Day the town performed a ceremony in front of that mural to honor local veterans.

He looked at the wall now. The mural images were all gone, and replaced by one large mural. It was completely different. On the left, there was a painting of what looked like the sun. In the middle, there was the earth, half in light, half in shadow. The right side faded into blackness. As he looked closer, he could faintly see figures in the blackness. Some looked like people, wailing. And some figures in the darkness looked more like creatures. They looked like the kind of creatures you'd see in a horror movie, demon-like with vicious teeth and claws. Their bodies were dark, crooked and boney. These beings were holding the people down into the blackness as they reached hopelessly toward the earth and the light. Some, he could see, were coming out of the dark side and leaping toward the earth, claws extended, jaws open. Some had their claws into the earth, and some had people riding on their backs from earth, into the blackness. The image gave Max the creeps, and he had to look away.

He walked closer to the sunny end of the mural instead, turning his back to the other side. There, he could see people from earth riding the backs of what looked like angels as they flew from the earth into the light. The people in the light were not what he expected. He expected to see dancing, singing, rejoicing. Instead there was a giant hand in the center of the sun, pointing a commanding finger toward the earth. The figures coming out of the light looked much like the angel Max first met after the accident. There were so many of them, and they were moving toward earth with such determination, they resembled an army.

As he looked closer, he walked to the center of the mural, getting a final good look at the earth itself. The first half, toward the light, had illustrations of people doing normal things: walking dogs, carrying shopping bags, driving cars. The people painted on the bright side of earth seemed pretty oblivious to what else was going on in the mural. The people painted on the dark half of the earth, however, were all facing the bright side, arms outstretched, as if trying to take them over to he dark side with them. Some were reaching for the light side of the earth while one of the creatures from the blackness grabbed them by the feet. Max felt he understood what this mural was telling him. It was an illustration of heaven and hell, with earth in the middle. He imagined the bright side of earth must be the side with the living, and the dark side of earth must be where he was stuck right now. But there was one aspect of the mural he couldn't understand. On the dark side of earth, there was one small person painted with arms outstretched, painted in white and yellows. He couldn't see anything to help him understand the significance of who this person was supposed to be, but it was painted with the same colors as used in the heavenly side of the painting.