What Scares A Ghost.

"Anybody remember the ghosts?"  Tim was huffing and puffing.

There's nothing quite like having your  own tornado dismantle the very church you were standing in, leaving nothing but your self intact.  That spurred a hasty retreat.  The kids grabbed Marcus who didn't know what had happened. They raced to the nearest cliff outside of town and hid behind an immense rock.

"Rocks, I understand,"  Marcus said.

Up strolled Omega, Petey, and John-John, calm as the dawn.

"Did that make you all nervous?"  John-John asked.

"Oh, yeah,"  Larry said.  "What happened to the ghosts? Did we leave them behind?"

"Nope," Harry said.  "We were right behind you the whole time.  It takes a lot to scare a ghost.  That did it."

"Is there some place we could hide?"  Buddy said.

"How about the football stadium?"  Larry said.  "It's big, there are lots of places to hide, and the whole thing is set in concrete."

Off they go.  Marcus is still completely confused.  But Tim and Rick keep everybody together, even the  ghosties that are not entirely visible.  In about half an hour, they had found an unlocked door and had squirmed their way into the heart of the stadium.

The kids, Omega and his team, and the ghosts found a place on the football  field, and sat down, knees to knees.  They all felt safer when they could see everybody.  Even the ghosts sat, or softly drifted, inside the circle of knees.

The low rumbles started slow, more of a vibration, than a song.  It kept building, and kept building, until the whole stadium was buzzing with electricity.  The energy coalecsed into a sound, a lovely, multi-harmony rhythm, a song.  Hosannah.  Hosannah.  Hosannah.  

A song of Praise.

"No ghost mocks Alpha,"  Jeremy whispered.  "We know better."

Hosannah.  Hosannah.  Hosannah.

"Doesn't sound like anybody is gettin' fried,"  Tim said.

"Alpha doesn't fry people.  He tries to save everybody.  If there is one shred of goodness, one hint of a soft heart,  one breath that expresses a cares for anybody else. . ."  Omega said.

"So do people get fried?  At all?"  Julie wanted to know.

"The Fallen Angel of Dark Justice fries some people, but those people have to be really, really evil for a long, long time,"  Petey explained.  "They have to know that they are wrong-headed, doing bad, bad things—and not care.  And then, if they figure out they've been on the wrong, dark, sinister side of things, and try to be better, well, it may go better for them.  If they are just pretending, because if there's thing Alpha is good at, it's reading the human heart, then the pretending goes against them."

Hosannah.  Hosannah.  Hosannah.

"But if there is a sliver of good within you,"  John-John said.  "Maybe a day when you were kind to a kitty-or a kid; maybe you had a life that was miserable but you tried really hard to get even a few things right; maybe your poor heart loved, even a little bit.  Then you stand a chance."

It was one o'clock in the morning, and the place, except where the street light lit up the interior was as black as the far side of the moon.  And then a strange thing started to occur; the objects inside the stadium began to glow, to shine a little bit.  After awhile, it looked like the interior of the stadium was consumed with fire, except for this:  Nothing burned up, nothing was harmed by the heat.  It flared into a stadium-wide flame, floor to ceiling.

"It's a purification,"  John-John murmured.  "I wonder what needed cleaned up in here?"

"What about us?"  asked Harry.  "We're still really nervous around fire and flames.  And this is coming too dang close for comfort."

Hosannah.  Hosannah.  Hosannah.

The Hosannahs made the concrete floor vibrate, in fact, the whole place felt alive with a non-earthly energy.  Big, big, big energy.