Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,35

pew as the congregation stood up to sing. I got to my feet and sang along, but I was spooked by the sensation of someone’s breath right beside my shoulder where there was no one standing. If it was a draft, why did it come and go? And it couldn’t really be someone singing—the breath would be hot, and this air was cool.

Then came a pressure on my hand, the one that held up the hymnal. I switched the book to my other hand and flexed those fingers. It was as if static electricity were running through my veins instead of blood. And for no good reason, the skin of that hand smelled like flowers, not lotion or perfume, but fresh flowers.

I wasn’t paying attention to the pastor when he invited the congregation to sit. My mother snapped her fingers and I dropped to the pew, the last one in the room to take a seat. She handed me my bulletin again and tapped the page—we were supposed to be reading along with the prayer, but I couldn’t act like everything was normal. Something unnatural was happening here even if I was the only one who recognized it.

I could see, from the corner of my eye, that there was someone sitting beside me just far back enough so that I couldn’t make out the face. I knew if I turned it would be gone.

Whatever it was, it was communicating without making sound. Maybe I was going crazy, but I was in church—people have had impossible things happen to them in churches for centuries. Maybe this was a miracle, an angel.

Or maybe there was something wrong with my brain—I had amnesia. Maybe now I was having hallucinations.

“What’s wrong?” my mother whispered.

I couldn’t say, “I’m delusional.” I glanced at her and smiled.

As I faced the front of the sanctuary, sure enough, I felt the visitor was still there. I took up the hymnal again, slowly, making sure I didn’t move too quickly. I didn’t want to scare it away. I found the song that the organ was playing in my hymnal. I ran my finger along the line of text I’d heard in my head. Then my eyes wandered to the upper corner of the page where the topics were listed.

Ghost, it said.

Actually the topic was Holy Ghost, but I felt as if someone was running an invisible finger under the second word.

I had the most bizarre sensations fighting in my chest. What if this wasn’t an angel but a ghost? My heart was going crazy and my stomach was cramping with fear. At the same time, I felt special for being chosen and clever to have figured out how to communicate with this whatever-it-was.

I flipped to the back of the hymnal where the topics were listed. If this was how we could talk, I had questions.

There were dozens of key words to choose from: comfort, praise, advent, forgiveness, heaven, grace, and (among others) the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit. I felt my gaze pulled to one of the hymns listed and started turning pages.

My mother frowned at me. “What are you doing?”

“Reading hymns,” I told her. How could she find fault in that?

I found the right page and ran my finger along the lines following that odd little static electricity buzz I’d felt before: Come, Holy Ghost, for moved by thee the prophets wrote and spoke; Unlock the truth, Thyself the key; unseal the sacred book.

Be moved by me, someone was saying. I unseal myself for you.

I was so excited, my face prickled, and my pulse was turning into a trill. On the topics page I chose another hymn that felt like it was chosen for me. I found the page and read the lines that buzzed: Word of God and inward light, wake my spirit, clear my sight . . . Kindle every high desire; perish self in thy pure fire.

Wake to me, it was saying. It almost seemed as if the word desire was being lit by a penlight. I could hardly sit still.

“Jennifer,” my mother hissed at me. “Where’s your bulletin?” The congregation read along with a Scripture lesson in the order of service. My mother lifted the hymnal right out of my hands and flipped it shut, setting it on the pew on the other side of her where I could not reach it.

How humiliating to be treated like a five-year-old, I thought, but as soon as she looked away, I gently slipped the Bible from the back of

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