The Blizzard of White Christmases

The next time Chaz came for me, I had been walking home from the bus stop.  We went to a place of lost…something-or-other.  It had something to do with music and my head pounded for hours after that.  Then he had come during breakfast.  He had given me a near heart when I had run out into the cold to fetch the paper.

I had figured that I was safe for the rest of the day after the breakfast incident, but I guess not.  I was trying to catch up on my late assignments when he came in with one of my little brothers who whined about not feeling well and having too much make-up work to do.  I sighed and left the middle schooler to bemoan his fate and went into the living room.

Wherever Chas had originally intended for us to go, we didn’t get very far.  Without warning a blizzard overwhelmed us.  I was dressed for the thermostat to be set at room temperature, not the next ice age.  I had at least put on shoes, but sneakers didn’t quite have the same protection as boots.  I grumbled a little and looked up, realizing all I could see was various shades of white and grey.

“Chaz?  Where are you?” I called out.

“I’m right in front of you,” he said.

“You expect me to see an invisible man in a snowstorm?” I hollered into the wind.

Suddenly I felt something warm drape over my shoulders.  I looked down and at first thought I had hallucinated the sensation through hypothermia.  Then I realized it was his jacket.  It was just as glass looking as he was, but felt like a big warm coat.  Chaz grabbed my arm and pulled me close as we trudge through the endless snowfall.

“Where are we now?” I ask.

“Well, we were in, but this storm is from White Christmases.”

“Ha ha.  Just what I’m dreaming of,” I say as I watch my breath freeze in the air.  “How long does it last?”

“Not sure.”  I can feel his shoulders shrug.

“How long have we been walking through it?”

“I’ve told you already, time is distorted here.”

I sigh.  He did explain it to me several times.  In the Realm is where you can find all of that time that passes by you.  Years could be spent here while only a moment goes by in the real world, so long as proper procedure was followed.  It was apparently all complicated and Chaz didn’t understand half of it.  He could just do it.  Apparently, as a Ghost, the knowledge was innate to him.

Chaz started shaking beside me, pulling me from my thoughts.  I’m wearing his coat, even though he did give it to me.  The poor guy is probably getting frost bite.  If glass can get frost bite.  I was about to offer his jacket back when I realize that he is actually laughing.  I was stuck in a blizzard in the Realm.  I could use a good laugh.

 “I admit, I’m lost,” he tells me.  “The latest Ghost of Lost is lost with the Finder.”

“Should we just leave and try again later?” I asked.

“I don’t know where the portal point is,” Chaz admitted.  When I gave him a blank look he re-explained it to me.  “The only way to reach the World from the Realm is through portal points.”

“Oh, yeah,” I nod.  “That’s why we keep starting at the same location and walking to our destinations.  But, wait, didn’t we just come from…”

I look behind us at a wall of white.  We could be going in circles and I wouldn’t be able to tell.  There was no landmarks, no nothing to distinguish any type of direction.  We stood there in silence, trying to get some warmth from each other as we tried to figure out the way to go.

With a sigh, I closed my eyes and replayed our journey.  It’s what I did whenever I was trying to remember where I parked the car.  When I thought about it, my feet would always go in the right direction, even if my eyes couldn’t spot what I was searching for right away.  My feet started moving and I grabbed Chaz and we headed further into the blizzard.