Crossing a Rainbow

By Gerald Hickey

Readers have found Gerald Hickeys novel Crossing a Rainbow compelling and imaginative. The book chronicles a heart-rending tale of a family divided by a childs obsession with a past life.
--"A fascinating story that held my attention from cover to cover," commented Dan
Lehman of Trabuco Canyon, California. "The author
approaches the subject of reincarnation from a
unique perspective and does it with sensitivity and feeling. No parent can read this book without
becoming emotionally involved with the characters.
I look forward to reading the authors next book."
--"Kudos for your book Crossing a Rainbow," said Joan Gillett of Grand Rapids, Michigan. "You are a very good author, and my hat is off to you."
--Barbara Armenta of Mesa, Arizona, said she found the novel "a journey of intrigue and imagination...a true original."

The following is a synopsis of Crossing a
Rainbow:

Megan Albright, a Phoenix child of the 90s, longs to return to the mountain ranch where she claims that she once lived with her Indian mother. After she tries to run away to reach her mysterious other home, her parents wallow in angst and confusion.
While covering a conference at the Timberline Lodge in the high country, her father, newspaper reporter Stuart Albright, sees a portrait of a striking teen-age girl. Painted by artist and rancher Dawn Clovis, it depicts her daughter, Jani, who has been missing for several years.
Megan, who has been plagued with nightmares about a teen-age girls death, views the portrait in the presence of her parents and breaks down. She meets Dawn Clovis, a widowed Apache who married an Anglo rancher, and feels strong filial ties to her.
Megans divided loyalties distress her Anglo parents. They resent their daughters bond with the Indian woman and growing desire to live with her.
After a nightmare, Megan relates a horrifying account of Janis kidnapping, rape and murder. Hikers later discover the teenagers body in a remote mountain area.
Subsequently, Megan is also kidnapped, and her parents fear that she has met a fate similar to Janis.
When a mysterious illness strikes Megans mother, Laurel Albright, she believes that someone has placed a curse on her, and she suspects Dawn Clovis of doing it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 11, 2002
• ISBN: 9781469105871

Gerald Hickey

Gerald Hickey worked as a newspaper reporter for 22 years, nearly 16 of them with The Arizona Republic in Phoenix. He also worked for dailies in Colorado Springs and Las Vegas. He did copy editing for a Los Angeles suburban newspaper and served a stint with a Beverly Hills public relations firm. He grew up in the Columbus, Ohio, area, where his father was president of a bridge construction company. He attended Kansas City University and Northwestern University. After spending four quarters in dental school at Ohio State University, he earned a B.S. degree in business administration there.

Book preview

Chapter One

Stuart had almost dozed off when he heard mournful sounds coming from Megan’s room. Something about them struck him as eerie. He decided against waking Laurel, now fast asleep beside him. Megan had to stop her crying soon. . . . But she continued it interminably, her sounds as woeful as a coyote’s nocturnal wailing.

She normally slept as if comatose and didn’t awaken until morning. Stuart clambered out of bed and plodded to her room, where he discovered that she was crying in her sleep. The eerie sounds filled him with dread. He could imagine some primitive maiden wailing this way before being sacrificed to deities. But what horror had his three-month-old child faced?

He got her bottle from the refrigerator and held the nipple to her lips in the crib, but she turned her head away. She had stopped wanting to be fed at night after the first few weeks. Picking her up, he tried to comfort her by holding her. To no avail. He sat in a chair, rocking her in his arms and humming Brahms’ Lullaby repeatedly. When this failed to end the crying, exhausted, he put her back in the crib and returned to bed.

She continued to cry in her sleep most nights, and Stuart never became inured to it. Nor could he tune it out. He suffered with her vicariously and, at times, struggled with his own flagging spirit. Something seemed terribly wrong with his child’s psyche. Had he caused her anguish? It weighed on him like a cast-iron garment.

He’d had a foreboding when he first set eyes on her, shortly after her birth at the hospital in Phoenix. He would never forget her frightened look as the elderly nurse carried her toward him from the delivery room. As though she’d already seen the dark side of life and were gripped by some nameless terror.

Stuart shuddered at the time and had an urge to bolt from the hospital. The feeling passed, replaced by self-reproach. What in God’s name had come over him? Had he no fatherly pride? The child in the nurse’s arms resembled an exquisite porcelain doll. But behind her fragile appearance, he sensed a prematurely keen intelligence.

She’s a real work of art, the nurse said.

Gazing at her delicately chiseled features, Stuart agreed. He marveled that she’d survived intact after 14 hours of arduous labor. To a 37-year-old man with prematurely gray hair, becoming a father on his 15th wedding anniversary seemed truly wondrous.

Moving to Arizona two years ago had changed his and Laurel’s luck. Their lovemaking in three other Western states and their native Ohio apparently had lacked the right ingredients for conception.

But as the months passed, a vague uneasiness tempered Stuart’s joy at being a father.

Megan’s one physical flaw—a thin, horizontal light brown birthmark on her neck—did not mar her beauty. Yet it nagged at his mind.

I get the strangest feeling when I look at it, as if I can picture someone throttling her, he told Laurel one night in their bedroom.

Laurel, who had recently turned 35, pondered this, her attractive, slightly angular face twisting into a grimace. What nonsense. I don’t even notice the birthmark. She’s as close to perfection as a child can be.

Stuart said nothing, sorry that he had brought up the matter.

How could he make Laurel understand something that he didn’t understand himself?

He lay awake that night, feeling uneasy—for some reason still reading sinister implications into the birthmark. An irrational notion surely, yet. . . .

He’d wanted a girl, because he had no sisters and female children remained a mystery to him. As her father, he could watch her grow to maturity, nurturing her, sharing her dreams, her struggles, her victories. They would have a relationship based on mutual love and respect.

At nine months, to Stuart’s amazement, Megan walked unassisted and spoke many words clearly. Ensconced on the living room sofa, she spent hours gazing at pictures in National Geographic, Smithsonian and Arizona Highways magazines.

Sometimes Stuart would pop into her room and find her making crude little sketches of birds, ranch animals and sticklike figures resembling Indians. Once, he watched her array her stuffed toys on her bed and gesture cryptically to them. Then, oblivious of him, she began to circle and jabber, like a tiny aborigine dancing and chanting at a powwow. He observed her behavior in silence, struck by the solemn look on her face. He repressed an urge to laugh, sensing that she was pretending to conduct some kind of ritual.

On a cloudy evening, as he watched her manipulate a hand puppet on the patio, she suddenly cocked her ear, turned to him and said, Rainbird, Daddy. He heard what sounded like the cawing of a crow, and later that evening rain pounded the earth with a vengeance. Where had she heard of a rainbird—on TV perhaps?

In her frequent playful moods, she hid from him—behind a chair, under a bed or in a closet—and shrieked with laughter when he found her. She coaxed for rides on his back, and, as he indulged her, gleefully cried, Nice horsie! Nice horsie!

He observed her range of moods thoughtfully. In the daylight hours she seemed cheerful enough. Blessed with a harmonious nature, she got along well with other children. Especially older kids, who treated her like a beloved little sister. To a novice father, she seemed an enigma. Except for her nocturnal crying, now as habitual as an addiction, she exuded the spontaneous joy of a happy, well-adjusted child.

He tried to be positive. Perhaps his concern about her psyche would prove unwarranted. Compared with the typical toddler, aimlessly squandering energy and stumbling upon mischief, she behaved like the ideal child.

Shortly after her third birthday, two neighbors—Paul Bronski and Leo Gordon—had a bitter dispute over Gordon’s dog, General. Stuart had seen General, a reputedly vicious male German shepherd, attack Bronski’s shrewish wife when she tried to drive him from her front yard with a rake. The dog sank his teeth into her thick ankle, ripping open the flesh. Then, loping from her yard, he snarled at Stuart, who was passing by on the sidewalk.

Bronski claimed that, besides attacking his wife, General had mauled another neighbor’s cat and chased a frightened female letter carrier. A newspaper reporter accustomed to conflicts, Stuart tried to mediate the dispute to restore peace in the neighborhood. But his efforts failed when Gordon balked at Bronski’s demands that he part with General.

Bronski filed a complaint against Gordon with the police department. Police had General quarantined and, after finding him free of rabies, declined to pursue the complaint.

On a Saturday afternoon while Laurel shopped and Megan worked on a jigsaw puzzle in her bedroom, Stuart dozed on the living room sofa. After he awoke, he couldn’t find Megan. He plodded to the front window, peered out—and nearly panicked. General stood in the driveway, teeth bared, with Megan sidling up to him. Towering over her, the German shepherd had never looked more ferocious.

Stuart repressed an urge to dash outside and try to whisk Megan away. That would only startle General and he might attack her. Easing the front door open, Stuart stepped outside, his heart in his throat. To his astonishment, General—the canine terror of the neighborhood—now lay curled up at Megan’s feet, looking docile and content. Megan stroked his fur as if she were petting a hamster, and his normally wild, raging eyes actually twinkled.

Stuart stood transfixed. Somehow a child’s ingenuous display of warmth had melted General’s vicious temperament. But for how long?

At length, the dog stretched, shook off his lethargy and rose to his full height. He offered his head to Megan for a final pat, then turned and loped away.

Megan bounced toward Stuart. People shouldn’t say General’s mean, she said.

They say it because it’s true, Megan. I’ve never seen him that gentle with anyone before.

He picked her up and carried her into the house, relieved that she had escaped harm. But a vicious dog like General couldn’t be trusted. He might turn on her the next time.

Promise me you won’t play with General anymore, Stuart said, setting her down in the living room. He’s dangerous. He could attack you at any time.

Megan pondered this, then shook her head. General’s my friend. She smiled and padded toward her room, humming.

A mean dog has no friends, Stuart retorted.

He remembered that day, mainly because it marked a turning point in General’s behavior. The dog no longer showed any sign of viciousness and soon became the favorite pet of neighborhood children, often accompanying them to school.

One afternoon, while perusing wire service stories in The Phoenix Post newsroom, Stuart found one about General. A neighborhood jogger had seen the dog rescue a crippled boy whose wheelchair had tipped over on the bank of a rain-swollen irrigation ditch, propelling him into the water. Dozing under a nearby salt cedar, General heard the boy’s cries for help and sprang into action. The dog plunged into the water, gripped the boy’s shirt collar with powerful jaws and dragged him to safety.

The jogger reported the incident to the police. Media accounts of the life-saving act culminated in a police department ceremony honoring the dog.

Two days after the ceremony, a garbage truck plowed into General on the street in front of Gordon’s house, killing the dog instantly. Gordon called Stuart, who wrote a poignant feature story for the Post about the death of the recently acclaimed German shepherd.

When Stuart mentioned the accident to Megan, she burst into tears, then secluded herself in her room and cried for several hours. Stuart later helped her make a small white wooden cross, which, with Gordon’s permission, they pounded into his yard in memory of the dog. Megan adorned the cross with a wreath that Stuart had bought, then plodded home ahead of him. She never spoke of General again.

Laurel had quit her teaching job at an elementary school to devote more time to Megan. With Laurel’s help, she was reading magazines and books well before her fourth birthday.

But Stuart perceived that Megan found nature as intriguing as printed words. Every animal, plant and rock seemed to fascinate her. During the family’s trips to the mountains, she would frolic among the pines like a tiny wood nymph. Birds and ground squirrels hovered around her as though attracted to a kindred spirit.

On the return trips to Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun, she would sit in wistful silence, gazing out a window. It appeared to Stuart as though she had left part of herself in the mountains.

Her parents enrolled her in a pre-school with an accelerated learning program. Sylvia Orland, a retired elementary school principal and the pre-school’s executive director, took a special interest in her. Occasionally, Orland sent home notes complimenting Megan for her progress and cooperative attitude.

Mr. and Mrs. Albright, I’m pleased to report that your daughter shows concern and empathy for her peers rarely seen in children her age, Orland said in one note.

Megan’s behavior had a harmonious influence at the school, according to Orland. The woman’s notes pleased Stuart, but left him puzzled. Why did a child who behaved in an exemplary manner and had a positive influence on her peers continue to cry in her sleep at night like a lost soul?

Laurel was attending a jazzercise class. Stuart lulled Megan to sleep by reading portions of The Song of Hiawatha, her favorite literary work.

The telephone rang, and he went to the den to answer it.

This is Sylvia Orland, Mr. Albright, a resonant female voice said. I don’t ordinarily call parents at night, but something happened at the school today that seemed rather strange. I thought you and your wife should know about it.

This involves Megan?

Yes. You see, she told one of our teachers there would be a fire at the school today—and there was.

Megan predicted the fire?

So it appears. The fire didn’t amount to much—some papers burned in our trash dumpster. We discovered it right away and put it out with a fire extinguisher. But I’m puzzled how Megan could have known about it beforehand.

Stuart tensed. Did she think that Megan might have started the fire?

Maybe we have a little clairvoyant on our hands, he said, and laughed to hide his uneasiness.

Sylvia Orland laughed, too. Well, I’ve never taken much stock in so-called extrasensory perception. But I’d welcome a rational explanation for what happened today.

Stuart pondered the matter after she hung up. He’d wanted a normal child, but it appeared that Megan was anything but one. A child cut from different fabric than her parents. He had no special powers, neither did Laurel. What would be expected of them?

He noticed that Megan’s sketches—mainly of Indians and various domestic animals—were becoming more lifelike. When he asked her what had inspired them, she looked blank. As if they symbolized a part of her personality that she didn’t understand.

The evening started out like any other. Stuart lulled Megan to sleep with a story, then left her bedroom. Later, remembering that he had forgotten to switch off her light, he returned to her room. He found her