Radiant - By Christina Daley Page 0,14

"Is he a friend of yours, Mary?"

Mary hesitated. She suddenly wished that Mom hadn't brought Carter up. "No, I'm not friends with him. He just goes to my school and everyone was talking about how he was in a bad accident. But he seems fine now."

Mary and Mom exchanged glances.

"Sounds like a miracle from the good Lord," Emma said. "God Almighty preserved that boy for great things. Amen."

"Amen nothin'," George said. He wasn't wearing his teeth, since the bánh cuốn were slippery and didn't need much chewing. "Did I e'er tell y'all 'bout the time I was workin' my granddaddy's farm and I nearly sliced off my left leg at the knee?"

"Yes," they answered in unison.

"Please don't tell it again, George. We're eating," Julia said.

He ignored her. "They thought I was gonna die from all the blood I lost. Already started makin' funeral arrangements. I'm tellin' ya, I lost more blood that day than I e'er did in all my time in Korea."

"You were a cook on a base, George," Julia reminded him.

"And dangerous work it was, woman!" he snapped. "Like ta see you try and feed a mess of men with rifles everyday for three years on powdered taters and condensed milk."

Mary set down her chopsticks. "Mom? Have you ever heard of someone…changing? Like, after a traumatic experience?"

"Sure, honey," she said. "Trauma can do a lot of things to people's minds and bodies."

"Did I e'er tell y'all 'bout how I had post-trauma after Korea?" George chimed in. "One time, I was dreamin' I was fightin' a buncha North Koreans, and I kicked my sweet Betty—may her soul rest in peace—"

"Amen," Emma added.

"—kicked her right outta bed. The woman couldn't sit straight for days."

"I've heard of things like that," Mary said. "But I was wondering if a traumatic experience can change someone for better. What if they were suddenly really, really, really nice when being nice is unusual for them?"

"I've heard many a time when people were snatched out of the jaws of death, and they turned from their wicked ways and confessed the Lord Jesus their savior," Emma said. "Amen!"

Mom smiled. "To answer your question, Sweetie, yes. Trauma can bring good out in people, too. Sometimes they realize how precious life is, and they don't want to waste anymore time not appreciating it."

Mary thought for a moment. Then she asked, "Has there ever been times when they changed back? You know, to the way they were before the trauma?"

"Look at me! I'm proof!" George said.

"There are treatments," Mom answered. "And sometimes people just decide to go back to the way things were. But that doesn't mean the trauma never happened."

"If you don't mind me, dear," Mrs. Penny said, "why do you ask? Do you know someone like that?"

Mary shrugged. "I was just wondering."

After dinner, they played Scrabble. George insisted that "cu" was a word, which sent Mary on a hunt through the Agape game room for a dictionary. Some of the residents were watching a movie on the TV in there.

Mary was about to go back to the others when a terrific crash! caught her attention. She turned just in time to see a guy in the movie get creamed by a bus. She lingered for a while and watched as an ancient ghost possessed his body. Mary had seen this movie before. Unlike the pre-bus guy, who was rather clumsy and light-hearted, the possessed one spoke clearly, directly, and politely.

Politely.

Mary dropped the dictionary. She didn't really believe in paranormal and supernatural stuff. But Carter's polite speech and his miraculous, for lack of a better word, recovery just didn't make sense in the natural world.

And then there were his eyes.

Mary never forgot how his eyes opened for a split second while he was hunched over in the wrecked car. And she didn't forget the tear she saw in the emergency room, which only came after the doctors were ready to pronounce him dead.

What if Carter wasn't suffering from brain damage? What if that wasn't him who had looked at her? Or had shed that tear? What if something, like a soul from that Italian hell she read about in English, had taken hold of his body like this guy in this movie? Was it possible outside of the movies?

Was Carter Maxwell possessed?

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- 9 -

Convinced

Mary couldn't sleep that night. The ideas kept racing through her head. And just when she was about to slip into slumber, a new slew of thoughts would arise and stir things