“I don’t want you to go, Jimmy,” he says, and hearing my name from Numi sounds almost foreign to me.

  “I know you don’t,” I say.

  He keeps his face behind his hand. “I tried so hard—”

  But he can’t finish his words, and I do something I’ve never done before. I sit up and reach my arms around him, and he wraps his around me and holds me tighter than any man has ever held me before, and I don’t care. I don’t care that Numi is a man, or a gay man.

  He is, I realize, the closest thing I have to pure love on this earth.

  And as Numi holds me tight, I realize I am having trouble breathing again. Also, I realize my burst of strength is fading.

  I release my hold on him and sit back, and the tears are streaming from his face freely. I feel them on mine, too. I do not let on I am having trouble breathing again. I definitely don’t let on that slow, swirling lights have appeared in the room. Numi’s hand is back on my chest and as the lights swirl faster and faster, I realize I am having a very, very hard time breathing. I reach for Numi’s hand, hold it.

  “Numi,” I say, the word coming out in a short burst of air.

  My friend has seen me like this before. He knows the drill. “Relax, kemosabe. It’s going to be okay. Relax, breathe.”

  “Numi,” I say again. My lungs aren’t working. In fact, they are nowhere close to working. “I can’t—”

  He’s patting my hand with his other hand, leaning over me. I feel something wet splash on my face and I know they are his tears. Complete and total panic grips me. I sit up, trying to get my lungs to work. The light in the room continues to swirl, and it seems to focus in the corner of the room, where the light is forming a shape. A small shape.

  “Numi...”

  “Breathe, brother. Relax. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

  Numi is holding me against him, holding me in this world. I feel his heart racing, pounding through him and into me.

  A small breath works its way into my lungs, and I suck it down, expanding my lungs. More air comes to me, and I can take a handful of small breaths.

  “Good, brother. Good. You’re going to be all right.”

  When I have calmed down enough, I press my lips into Numi’s ear and whisper, “I’m sorry I was a jerk.”

  “It’s okay, cowboy.”

  I take in another lungful of air. “I love you, brother.”

  Numi pauses before answering. “I know you do, Jimmy. I know you do.”

  And the swirling lights stop swirling, and I hear a strange, strangling sound coming from my lungs, and the small figure made of light steps out of the corner of my bedroom, holding out his little hands, and smiling that familiar smile...

  The End

  Next up in The Rain Collective is:

  Elvis Has Not Left the Building

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  Also available

  The Grail Quest

  A Tale of Magic

  by J.R. Rain

  (read on for a sample)

  “But Merlin warned the king covertly that Guinevere was not wholesome for him to take to wife, for he warned him that Lancelot should love her, and she him again; and so Arthur turned his tale to the adventures of the Holy Grail.”

  —Le Morte D’Arthur

  Chapter One

  The dream is always the same.

  I’m standing at the base of a cross. High above, jagged bolts of lightning streak the starless night sky. Rain angles down like slashing silver daggers. The crowd behind me is cheering, roaring, surging. A living animal. An enraged animal.

  Lightning flashes again, revealing three crosses rising straight out of the earth. They stand side by side along the crest of a steep hill.

  Three crosses. And three broken figures hanging upon them.

  In my dream, I’m standing before the middle cross, looking up into the rain, up toward what had once been a man. His hands have been hammered to either side of the cross, rusted nails jutting from his bloodied palms. His shoulders sag in such a way as to suggest his shoulders have been torn from their sockets. A third nail protrudes from his feet, hammered together on the lower center beam. He’s wearing a crown of thorns, thrust cruelly low on his face. Blood from his many wounds, lash marks reaching from behind his back and legs, pours down along the center beam, pooling briefly at the base of the cross.

  Behind me, the crowd is chanting.

  I do not understand their language, but I know what they want. They want these three men to die. In particular, the center man.

  Rain drives hard into my face. Lightning pierces the churning sky. Something supernatural is happening here.

  A hard object slams into my shoulder, slightly more painful than a punch. A fist-sized rock settles near the base of the cross. I’m about to turn around to see who threw it when another hits me. And another.

  The last rock hits me in the kidney and I stumble, gasping, and fall forward against the cross, which I hold onto for dear life. Why it’s so important I hold onto the cross, I do not know. But I refuse to let go.

  And while I wrap my arms tight around the wooden base, I realize a pair of bloody feet are now just inches from my face. The head of a rusted nail projects from them. I watch with fascination and horror as the toes curl in obvious pain. Blood seeps from around the protruding spike.

  I’m still being pelted with rocks. Some ricochet off me harmlessly. Others hit me with greater force. I’m certain it’s only a matter of time before one of them kills me.

  But it’s the man on the cross who takes the brunt of the rock throwing, and I realize the crowd isn’t throwing rocks at me. Indeed, they’re throwing rocks at him. As if he hasn’t suffered enough pain, now he must helplessly endure projectile after projectile, many of which hit home, plunking solidly into his chest and thighs.

  He winces with each impact.

  As rocks continue to hail down around me, I look up into the falling rain. I want to see the face of the man on the cross. Perhaps there’s something I can do for him. Perhaps there’s some way I can help him or ease his pain. But his face is hidden in the late evening shadows.

  More rocks, more shouting from behind. Palpable waves of hate emanate from the crowd. Their anger and fear becomes a living monster, crushing down on me in waves of pulsing fury.

  Lightning suddenly explodes across the heavens, illuminating everything, including the man.

  The broken man, the badly beaten man.

  I think he had been handsome at one time, but it’s nearly impossible to tell now. His jaw is clearly broken, and the bones in his face appear pulverized. Blood drips from his many open wounds, most obviously from where the vicious-looking crown of thorns digs into his scalp. His body hangs grotesquely upon the cross. But perhaps most shocking of all is that he’s returning my gaze.

  I gasp and step back. I realize he’d been watching me this entire time.

  He holds my gaze and then smiles. As he does, more blood bubbles out from his broken mouth. How much blood can a body hold? A single drop of it falls free from his swollen lips, and I watch in fascination as it twists and turns in the driving wind.

  Falling toward me.

  I find myself abruptly holding an ancient wooden chalice in one hand and a glowing sword in the other. I catch the falling drop of blood in the chalice, then turn and face the angry crowd, raising my sword. As they charge, I hold my ground.

  And that’s usually when I wake up.

  Weeping...

  Chapter Two

  Glastonbury, UK

  Present Day

  It’s almost evening by the time my taxi arrives at the Number Three Hotel in Glastonbury, England, legendary home to King Arthur’s Camelot—that is, if my travel brochures are to be believed.

  I want to believe.

  We park at an ivy-covered archway leading to an ivy-covered courtyard. Beyond is a Georgian townhouse doubling as a bed and breakfast.

  The driver hops out and dashes around to the trunk—or the boot, as they call it here—and begins energetically stacking my bags on the curb. Once done, he tips his cap and I tip him in return... with cash. As I watch the vehicle’s tires bounce and wobble over the cobblestone driveway, an inescapable sense of doom comes over me. Impending, no less.

  Okay, maybe I am being melodramatic, but say that to my damn dreams. The dreams have been plaguing me for the past three months or so.

  Dreams centered around a goblet. A chalice.

  A grail.

  The Holy Grail, in fact.

  James, you do realize you’re crazy, right?

  I nod in response to my own thought. I am highly aware all of this sounds beyond crazy. Still, the dreams have nearly become nightmares. That said, only after I began making actual plans to come here to Glastonbury did my nightmares finally cease.

  Relieved, I was about to cancel the trip when the nightmares returned twofold, stronger than ever, rocking my world and my life, consuming me completely. Needless to say, I put the trip back in my schedule.

  I take in some air as a light rain starts to fall.

  Welcome to England.

  Well, I’m here. What now?

  Officially, I am on a research trip for my next novel. After all, I had to justify the trip: to myself, to others, and to the tax man. Unofficially, I came here for something else entirely. Unofficially, I traveled here to put an end to my dreams.

  As the rain picks up, pelting my upturned face, I think of the Holy Grail, a simple wooden goblet filled with Christ’s blood. I had been holding it in my dreams.

  Holding it triumphantly, in fact.

  If anything, I’ve come here to save my sanity; that is, if it’s not too late.

  Calling this a research trip—rather than, say, a fool’s errand—seemed the safest route to take, even if the trip had confused the hell out of my editor, Rita. My next novel is supposed to be a supernatural thriller about ghosts, set in Los Angeles, tentatively titled L.A. Ghosts. What does a trip to Glastonbury have to do with a ghost story set in L.A.? my editor had asked. It was a good question, one I couldn’t answer immediately without revealing the depth of my psychosis, and, so, I’d mostly avoided the question.

  Interestingly, I began the ghost story months before the dreams of the Holy Grail started; in fact, I had gotten quite a bit into it when something unusual happened: I’d hit a wall. More accurately, I’d concluded I was tired of writing about murder and mayhem, tired of making up new and creative ways of killing people.

  I had just decided to take a break from L.A. Ghosts when the dreams began.

  Yeah, you’re losing your mind, James, I think again, looking at the old-world bed & breakfast before me.

  With the rain coming in sideways now, I turn my head, take hold of my two suitcases, and hurry for the ivy-covered courtyard door.

  What awaits me within, I don’t know.

  But I am about to find out.

  Chapter Three

  The old hotel is haunted.

  I am sure of it. Then again, I have ghosts on the brain these days.

  Actually, the hotel looks haunted. There’s a difference. The long entry hall consists of an ornate marble floor, wingback chairs, antique bureaus, and elaborate wallpaper. Fresh-cut flowers are everywhere, and the hotel has a decidedly turn-of-the-century feel to it. Heck, it has a decidedly turn-of-the-millennium feel to it. As in, one thousand years ago.

  Then again, I grew up in Southern California, so any building older than, say, fifty years was deemed an important historic monument.

  Anyway, an old man behind an older front desk smiles at me warmly, his teeth surprisingly straight. I give him my name. He punches it in, finds my reservation, confirms my credit card info, and tells me where to find my room.

  After following his directions and fumbling a bit with the key card, I soon find myself standing in an ornately decorated room on the second floor, complete with a fireplace, loveseat and a massive, decorative curtain hanging behind the headboard. I’m not sure what the curtain is all about, but it looks nice enough. I happen to know the hotel refers to this as the Winston Room. As in Winston Churchill, who not only stayed here but even lived here for a brief period.

  Yeah, I feel special.

  I generally don’t immediately unpack and hang my clothes on hangars. I’m on vacation, after all, right? Granted, an alleged research vacation, but a vacation nonetheless. And when I’m on vacation, wrinkled clothing is acceptable.

  Vacation, yeah right. Who am I kidding? I’m here to see what the dreams are about. Plain and simple.

  And then it hits me all over again, harder than ever, perhaps because I am finally here:

  I have traveled halfway around the world because of a few crazy dreams.

  No. Not a few crazy dreams.

  Wildly incessant dreams. Persistently haunting dreams.

  Sighing, I drop my bags and do what I have been itching to do since first touching down in England. I jack in my laptop, go online, and check my email. No, getting onto hotel Wi-Fi is no easier in the UK than it is back in the States. It takes three calls to the front desk and a bit of threatening doom in the general direction of the hallway, where a wireless access point hangs.

  My inbox contains a few dozen Facebook notifications (someday I’ll figure out how to stop those from blasting my emails). Another email is from a publisher in Turkey interested in buying the Turkish rights to one of my vampire books. I try to remember if the book has been published there, but for the life of me, I can’t. I forward the email to my agent. He will deal with it. Next is an email from an up-and-coming writer wanting to work with me on a project. I politely decline. I have more books to write than I have time.

  Next, an email from Rita, my editor, asking if I arrived safely. I reply I had not; that, in fact, the plane is currently spiraling out-of-control and I expect to meet my demise momentarily upon impact with the North Sea. This would be my last email ever, and does she feel privileged?

  Rita likes me. I like her, too. We have a nice working author-editor relationship, probably because I mostly stay on deadline and she doesn’t need to edit the crap out of my books. I also make my publisher a lot of money, and that reflects positively on her, as well as damn positively on my bank account. Making lots of money smooths out a lot of wrinkles.

  With the advent of the persistent dreams, something interesting happened to me creatively. I started losing my taste for mystery novels. In particular, for death and destruction. So much so, it affected my writing output and I had to stop work on my ghost thriller.

  Rita hasn’t been pleased. Especially when I informed her I was thinking of writing a different kind of book, one featuring a decidedly lower body count. Now, the book idea has been brewing since the dreams began plaguing me. No surprise there. Any writer who suddenly starts dreaming of Christ, King Arthur and the Holy Grail is bound to start thinking about plot, structure, and theme.

  Yeah, I was contemplating writing a King Arthur novel.

  “King Arthur?” said Rita, mild hysteria in her voice.

  “But not just any King Arthur book,” I replied. “A spiritual King Arthur book.”

  “Spiritual?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “A sort of spiritual adventure.”

  “What, exactly, do you mean by spiritual adventure?” she asked, enunciating each word carefully.

  “You know, something in the tradition of The Alchemist or The Celestine Prophecy.”

  “Those books were flukes.”

  “The authors would beg to differ.”

  “I mean publishing flukes. It’s like hitting the lottery.”

  “I’m not looking to hit the lottery,” I said. “I’m looking to write something that heals, rather than hurts.”

  Rita snorted. I didn’t blame her. This was a lot to absorb, especially coming from a guy whose last book featured a machete-wielding psychotic high school teacher and his cult of honor roll student followers.

  “Your audience will never go for it,” she said. “They want murder mysteries, James. They want a thriller. They don’t want God on Harley, or whatever the hell you’re thinking of writing about.”

  “The Holy Grail.”

  “Oh, Lord.”

  “Deep breaths, Rita.”

  “Will you at least consider putting some sort of murder mystery in it?” she asked, nearly pleading.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Please, James. One corpse.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus....”

  “Keep breathing, Rita.”

  And it had gone on like that for some time: her begging for bodies and hyperventilating and me holding my ground. She finally hung up when I promised to at least add some blood.

  But before she hung up, she asked, “Any chance King Arthur can be a vampire?”

  “No.”

  “Damn.”

  I chuckle thinking about the phone call we had before my flight, then finish my email to Rita by telling her the plane miraculously pulled out of its dive and, after this near-death experience, I received a vision of me writing historical romance novels. I type a winkie face and can almost see her fainting. Poor thing.

  I dash off a few more emails, snap my laptop shut, and lay down for a brief nap.

  Big surprise, I dream of Christ hanging from the cross, a bloody goblet, and, just to mix things up a little, a surging black river cloaked in glowing fog. Upon waking, I check the time on my cell phone. I had been asleep for just under twenty minutes.

  A lot of dreaming for only twenty minutes.

  Surprisingly rested, I pocket the hotel room key and head downstairs to the dining room for some dinner.

  A surging river of black water?

  Lord help me.

  The Grail Quest

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