Chapter 14

My Christmas vacation in Las Vegas was horrible that year. I just told my family that I couldn't divulge national security secrets as a Navy physicist. I did tell them about Dyos, the apparition. My mother said that the name Dyos is Tagalog for God. Now since my mother was a spiritual woman, I thought she would be supportive of my vision. Instead she said, "You need to see a psychiatrist."

I refused. I knew I saw something in my apartment on Duke Street in Virginia. My mother, father, and Helen all insisted that the stress of my job was making me see things that weren't there. I wondered then what was all this talk about all those stories in the Bible about men and women coming face to face with the Almighty, like Job did. My mother and father forced me to attend Mass all through my childhood and young adulthood. I became a model Catholic, even receiving the sacrament of reconciliation every week, unlike most other Catholics.

When I returned to my apartment in Virginia, the weirdness didn't stop. On a sunny winter day, I just decided to open the blinds to my balcony. The voice in my mind said, "There has been a struggle from the beginning of time, the Greatest Story Ever Told!" I walked out onto the balcony, and I saw the most amazing sight in the sky.

The whole sky turned into a movie screen. In the sky outside my apartment, I saw a large clearing in a forest, with trees at two ends of an immense grassy field. Two armies on horseback prepared for battle. The army closer to me rode white horses while the opposing army rode on black horses. Each army formed a triangle, with a lead rider at the point of the army.

The white horse at the point of the white triangle roared like a lion and jumped onto its hind legs. The lead rider of the white army wore red academic regalia, consisting of a red gown and a red cap with a golden tassle. His eyes blazed like fiery diamonds. Each time the lead horse would leap onto its hind legs, the rider in red would swing his sword and blue lightning would shoot forth from it. Thunder would explode as the lead horse rider swung his sword. The sight was glorious.

"Michael," said a voice behind me, "are you okay?"

I turned around and saw David. I thought he had gone to NRL that Saturday morning to catch up on his work. "What are you doing here? I thought you went to the lab."

"No, I didn't. And you just opened the blinds and walked out onto the balcony for no reason."

"I did?" I didn't want to tell David what I had just seen, even as awe inspiring as the vision had been.

"You need a woman, Michael."

"Believe me, I've tried." My rosary bracelet still sat in my nightstand without a good woman to wear it.