The Door To Forever E-Book

Doug Simpson

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

During his senior years, John - a retired high school English teacher - decided to finally write his memoirs. 

His story begins at a young age, with his first visit from a spirit playmate his own age. To John, Jason is just an ordinary child like him, and John never gave much thought to where Jason came from - or where he disappeared. 

As years passed by, more playmates followed, and as John got older, his playmates shared more and more information about the spirit world with him.

In The Door To Forever, John recounts the various encounters he, his family, and close friends experienced with spirits, spirit guides, earthbound spirits, haunted houses, and visits to Heaven, as well as soul groups and the purpose of their souls reincarnating together over many lifetimes to collectively advance their soul development in order to reacquire their original, perfect state when God created them.

Leseprobe

THE DOOR TO FOREVER

DOUG SIMPSON

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

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About the Author

Copyright (C) 2019 Doug Simpson

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

Published 2021 by Next Chapter

Edited by Elizabeth N. Love

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

The Door to Forever is dedicated to those rare parents who understand that their children’s invisible friends are not imaginary.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A big thank you goes out to the Next Chapter team for their dedication and support for The Door to Forever.

1

Hi! My name is John. Just John will do. I am an old man now. I should’ve sat down decades ago and started writing this story, but I didn’t. You know how life gets in the way of plans sometimes, right? Well, I am finally doing it even though this story never really ends because I am living it every time I wake up in the morning. If you are reading this, then you know I finished as much of the story as I could before I packed my bags for my final journey to Heaven.

It all began a long, long, long time ago. I think I was probably around four, maybe five. I had not started school yet. In my day, we did not have kindergarten, so we started school at age six.

My bedroom was also my playroom. Mom did not want my toys all over the house, so I spent a whole truckload of time in my bedroom, alone, or so I thought, anyway. One day this kid, a boy, showed up in my bedroom. Mom did not bring him in, I know that. At least I did not see her bring him in, and the way she acted later on when she found out about him pretty much confirmed that assertion. Of course, I cannot remember exact conversations from way back then, so I will simply create conversations based on the memories I have of those times. Some but not all of the names I do reveal are real, though.

“Hi, I’m Jason,” he said.

“Hi.”

“I came to play with you today. Is that okay?”

“Sure.” I did not have a lot of friends when I was young. We lived out in the country where neighbors were pretty scarce, so I sure as heck was not going to say no to this welcome visitor, wherever he came from. He was a little taller than me but seemed to be around my age. “What would you like to play?”

“This is your house. What would you like to play?”

“I like to play war. I have lots of toy soldiers and army trucks. We can have lots of battles.”

“Okay, let’s play war, then.”

We played war for a while and then I think we moved on to play farm. I also had lots of animals in my farm set, and I loved to put up fences to keep them from getting away. Jason and I enjoyed a great time playing together. It was wonderful to finally have a friend my age who liked the same toys that I did.

My mom startled me when she opened the bedroom door. “Lunchtime, John.”

“Okay, Mom. Is Jason staying for lunch?”

“Who is Jason?” my mother asked with a strange look on her face.

“Jason, here,” I replied and looked over to where I had last seen him, but he was gone. I looked all around the room to see where he was hiding.

“What are you doing now?” Mom asked, somewhat perturbed.

“Looking for Jason. He was right here.”

“Come on, John. The soup is getting cold. Let’s go. If Jason comes back, he can stay for lunch.”

“Good. I like him.”

Jason did not come back for lunch.

After lunch, I was eager to get back to my bedroom to see if Jason was hiding there somewhere. I did not see him at first and was disappointed, but then he reappeared behind me. “Where did you go?” I asked.

“I was here.”

“Why didn’t you come for lunch?”

“Your mom doesn’t know me.”

I found that a bit confusing, I think, but at the age of four or five, I did not really give it much thought. I was just thrilled that my new playmate was back or had not left. We had another great time playing for a couple of hours, and then Mom came into my room once again.

“Are you going to have an afternoon nap?”

“I am not tired, Mommy. I want to keep playing with Jason.”

Mom carefully looked around my room for Jason, who, unfortunately for me, disappeared again. She glared at me for a few seconds then walked over and picked me up. She plunked me unceremoniously down on my bed and sat beside me. “It is not nice when you make up stories. Mommy does not like that.”

“I am not making up stories, Mommy.”

“Oh! Then where is Jason?”

“I don’t know. He goes away when you come in the room.”

“I see.” Mom paused for a few moments as if she was uncertain what her next move should be. “Okay, listen to me carefully. I do not want to hear you talk any more about Jason. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mommy.”

“Good, now close your eyes and have a nap,” she ordered and left the room.

It is difficult for me to remember all of the details from that day many years ago. I know I could not understand why Mommy was so upset about my new playmate, why she could not see him, and why Jason up and disappeared when she entered my room. I was trying to process all of this through my young mind when Jason walked up beside my bed.

“Hi, Johnny.”

“Hi, Jason. Why do you go away when my mom comes into the room?”

“As you can see, she does not understand that I am really here.”

“How come?”

“It’s a bit hard for you to understand, I know. Just think of it as kind of like magic, okay.”

“Okay. Mommy does not want me to play with you anymore.”

“Johnny, she did not say that. She said she did not want you to talk to her about me anymore, right?”

I thought about that for a moment of two. “Yes, that’s right. So, does that mean you will still come to play with me?”

“Yes, if you want me to.”

“I want you to. I had lots of fun today playing with you.”

“I had lots of fun, too. Just try and remember not to tell your mother or father that you were playing with me so you do not get them upset with you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good. I am going to go away again and come back another day to play with you. You better take a nap like your mother told you so she is not upset with you again, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now close your eyes.”

I closed my eyes for a little while and then peeked a few minutes later. Jason was gone.

Jason came back to play with me often. Not every day, but often. I had a great time playing with him. A while later, it was probably months later, I can’t be sure, but I know it was not years later, he surprised me.

“Would it be okay if I bring some other friends along to play with us when I come back next time?”

“I guess so,” I replied.

By that time spring had arrived, and since we lived out in the country and our house was a long ways from the road, I was allowed to play outside by myself. Jason had already begun to come and play with me while I was outside, as well as other times while I was up in my room.

The next day, I think, or at least soon after, Jason arrived with another boy and two girls. They appeared to all be around my age. I did not see where they came from; they just were there while I was playing by myself. Jason introduced his friends to me. The boy was called Tommy and the girls were Crystal and Nancy.

Our property had an old barn on it, and we had lots of fun playing hide and seek, climbing around the different levels of the barn and playing in the loose straw. From that day on Tommy, Crystal and Nancy pretty much always came along with Jason when he visited me. It was the best summer of my short life, without a doubt.

Approximately a year later, I think, one day in the fall, Jason called me aside when the five of us were playing in the barn.

“Let’s go outside for a walk, just you and I. I have something I need to tell you.”

The others continued to play in the barn while Jason and I walked along the path that ran away from the barn and house towards the back of the farm property. Jason was quiet for a few minutes, and then he stopped suddenly.

“I need to tell you something,” he said after I stopped and faced him. “Pretty soon, probably in a month or so, I likely will not be able to come and play with you anymore, Johnny.”

I burst into tears. “Why?” I blubbered between sobs. You are my best friend.”

“I know, and I am sorry about this, but there is something else that I most likely will be required to do. If this event takes place, then I simply can’t come and play with you anymore. The others will still come to play with you, but I likely will not be able to come much longer. Please don’t cry.”

About a month later, my mother delivered a healthy baby boy. She called him Jason.

Baby Jason was a hoot! I adored him the first time I set eyes on him. Of course, he did not look at all like my playmate Jason, except when we looked into each other’s eyes. I was only six when he was born, but something in my heart told me that my two Jasons were really one. Baby Jason and I became best buddies immediately. Every time he saw me, his eyes lit up, and every time I saw him, my heart skipped a beat. Seventy-plus years later we are still good buddies, but unfortunately, after he grew up, he found his ideal job a couple hundred miles away from home, so we do not see each other often enough. The experiences I had in my later years, which you will hear about down the road, have left no doubt in my mind that my two Jasons are in fact one.

2

Tommy, Crystal and Nancy continued to visit me for play days, often. I missed having Jason to play with for sure, but the fact that I believed my two Jasons were really one made his loss easier to accept. As the weeks went by and winter approached, the four of us had many fun times together playing outside.

Before the first snowfall of the season, Crystal called me aside one day and pulled a Jason on me.

“I know it has only been a few months since Jason told you he would not likely be able to come and play with you much longer. Well, now it is my turn. Just like Jason, I must go off and do something else important in a month or so.”

I didn’t cry this time. It was not that I didn’t like Crystal. The truth is that she was now my favorite playmate of the three, and I hated to hear that she too was going to leave me. “Are you going to end up in a new baby like Jason did?”

“How do you know about that?”

“The first time I stared into the eyes of my baby brother, Jason, my heart told me that he was really my playmate, Jason. I have no way to prove it; I just feel it in my heart.”

Crystal smiled. “Your heart knows. You are still too young to understand how all of this works, but to answer your question, yes, I am going to end up in a new baby.”

“How do you and Jason know so much about all of this when you cannot tell me the whole story?”

“When Jason, Tommy, Nancy and I are here playing with you, we do not have bodies like yours. We are just able to make ourselves look like children your age. That is why your mother and father cannot see us when we are playing. When we do not have bodies like you, we know way more than children your age, who are in bodies, know. When you get older, you will be able to understand this better, okay?”

“Okay, I guess.”

About a month later, only Tommy and Nancy came to play.

For two years Tommy and Nancy were my regular playmates. They came more in the warmer months while I played outside than they did through the colder or stormy days when I spent more time indoors. They did occasionally join me in my bedroom/toy room, but we were careful to not play any noisy games where I might get excited and shout or say things that would cause my mother, in particular - as she was home most of the time – to investigate why I was causing a ruckus. After my mother had warned me back when I was four or five that she did not want to hear me talk about the disappearing Jason anymore, I obeyed her command and never, for a long time, mentioned my pop-in, pop-out playmates.

It would be approximately two years after Crystal disappeared from my playground that Nancy added herself to my missing playmates list. She did not do it when the two of us were alone but did it in front of Thomas as well.

“It is time for me to tell you that pretty soon I will no longer be coming around to play with you, Johnny.”

My mother had revealed to Jason and me a few weeks before that we were going to soon have a baby sister or brother, so Nancy’s news was not exactly unexpected. “Are you going to become my sister?”

Nancy smiled. “Yes, that is the plan.”

“Great. Will Mom call you Nancy?”

“That is up to your mother, but I know that Nancy is the name she has at the moment on the top of her list of names for this baby.”

“Oh, how do you know that?”

“Just like how Tommy and I pop in to play with you at times, we can also pop in and see what is taking place anywhere inside your house, not just your bedroom. When we do that, we do not let anyone see us, so no one knows we are there, not even you.”

“How does that work?”

“You are still not old enough to understand exactly what is going on. As you get older, Tommy will explain more and more about how this all works, trust me.”

I turned to Tommy. “You’re not going to disappear on me like the rest of them?”

“No. I am going to be with you for many, many years. I will be your guide, explaining, at the appropriate times, how all of our popping in and out works, as well as lots of other things that you have no idea about right now.”

“Cool. How do you know all this?”

“That is one of the other things I will explain when you are older, okay?”

“Okay.”

A few weeks later, our new sister arrived. Mom called her Nancy. As soon as we looked into each other’s eyes, I knew my two Nancys were one. I’m sure she did also.

3

The years rolled by. I made friends at school, and Tommy visited me often, but never when anyone else was around. As I grew older, my curiosity about Tommy increased, and I would pepper him with questions at times. His usual response was that I was still not old enough to understand how he could pop into my world in a second or two and pop out just as quickly.

I graduated from elementary school. That meant a longer bus ride for high school to a larger, neighboring town than our local village. I am not naming many names in my story because I am writing this incognito, and I do not think I will end up revealing my real name. I’ll just say that it is a writer’s right to change his mind on that subject, so we shall see what we shall see as time passes and the story develops. High school brought to me an expanded collection of new friends. I enjoyed that immensely because growing up in the country at a young age resulted in my best friends being invisible to apparently everybody but me. Tom regularly popped in when convenient to my activities at home, and I was certainly always glad to see him. As I neared my teens, we agreed we should be called Tom and John instead of Tommy and Johnny.

I learned to drive when I was sixteen. I did not have my own car, so I could not toot around very much on my own. High school graduation brought on a new challenge. I had absolutely no inkling what I wanted to do with my life. My parents encouraged me to go on to college anyway and figure out my future during the journey. That reasoning kind of made sense to me, so that is precisely the approach I took. I chose a very reputable college in Cincinnati. It was approximately a two-hour drive from home, but a long walk. I still did not have a car at my disposal.

College life was fun, well, for a little while anyway. New friends, new school, big city, lots of drinking; what more could a teenager ask for? Unfortunately, it came to a crashing halt. It was five weeks after classes started. My roommate in the residence had a car, and we quickly bonded. We were out cruising for babes on a Saturday evening. We had a couple of beers, but we made sure we were not drunk. I heard squealing tires at an intersection, and then my lights went out.

The next thing I remember, I was in this luscious, strange place, sitting there under a tree chatting with my deceased grandfather. We were having a grand time reminiscing about the fun times we spent together while we were fishing the local lakes and streams. There were others there around us, but I cannot recall actually knowing any of them. Suddenly my grandfather looked up in the air, somewhere, and said, “You’ve got to go back.” And then everything went blank.

Blank has no time, so it is difficult to say how long I was gone. Then, there I was back again, chatting with my beloved grandfather as if I had never left. It was a shorter chat this time, and then everything went blank again.

The next thing I remember, I was in a hospital room, surround by doctors, nurses, and my family. I was pretty much covered in bandages and medical tubes. My mother burst into happy tears when I opened my eyes and blankly stared around the room.

Before I continue with the story, I want to first go back and fill you in on the information I later discovered about the squealing tires and everything else that occurred before I woke up to the welcoming committee assembled in my hospital room.

My roommate and I were having a great time singing our hearts out to the song on the radio. I cannot remember what the song was anymore. We were going through an intersection with the right-of-way and another vehicle, driven by one of our own college students who apparently did not see his stop sign to the right of me, or our car, until the last second and slammed on his brakes. Unfortunately, not soon enough for me, and his car smashed into my door. That is when my lights went out, and I remember nothing until I was sitting up in the clouds enjoying my chat with my dearly departed grandfather.

I was in pretty bad shape. Actually, that is a bit of an understatement; I was in terrible shape. I had head injuries, internal injuries, a shattered right thigh bone, and a broken right arm below the elbow. Fortunately, the nearest hospital was only a couple of blocks away from our accident scene, so they had me in the emergency room within minutes. My roommate, as well as the driver of the other car and his passenger, only suffered minor injuries, so I was the top priority patient on arrival.

Because my lights were out, I cannot tell you everything that happened. I was told my heart stopped for seven minutes at one point in the operating room. That must have been when I paid my first visit to my grandfather. They got my heart going again, and obviously, my soul returned to my body, but I remember nothing from that time as my lights were still out. For some reason, my heart stopped another time, apparently for only a minute or two, and that was when I paid Grandpa a second but abbreviated visit.

I remember nothing from that point on until I woke up some thirty-six hours later in my hospital room. Even then, I was spaced out on pain killers and do not remember much. My mother told me many months later that the doctors had indicated that my chances of survival after they pieced me back together were a coin toss. Fortunately, the coin landed heads.

After the doctors assured my parents that I was out of danger and on my way to a slow recovery, my family returned back home but usually visited me on the weekends. My college roommate was my most common visitor, but a few other students that I became friendly with over my five weeks at college, as well as the driver of the car that smashed into us, dropped in occasionally. And let’s not forget Tom. He may not count as a person, but he counts as a visitor.

I was in a semi-private room and, at times, had a roommate, but more often than not, I was the only resident. I had understood a long time before the accident that Tom could pop in and not be seen, or he could pop in and be seen only by me. He told me he checked in on me many times each day, but only made himself visible when things were pretty quiet around there, and we were not likely to be disturbed by an unexpected visitor or nurse. Even though all or most other people could not see him, he figured it would not look too good if a nurse or doctor checked in on me and caught me talking away to nobody. It was difficult for me to disagree with Tom on that one.

When we had time to chat, I told Tom about my visits with my grandfather. He assured me that those visits were not imaginary but real. When my heart stopped pumping, my soul departed from my body and visited with the soul of my grandfather on the other side. This was not at all unusual, according to Tom, but most people, like even me, he mentioned, do not talk about it after it happens because they feel that others will think their head injuries rattled their sanity. Fortunately for me, I guess, my earlier experiences with Jason, Crystal, Nancy, and Tom prepared me to readily accept that I did indeed have an enjoyable but brief visit with my dearly departed Grandpa.

Now that I was more or less grown up and experienced my first trips to Heaven, Tom was ready to fill me in a little on how all of this worked. He explained that on the death of a body, the soul and spirit depart and travel to the other side, or Heaven if you prefer the term. Souls there can then assume a variety of responsibilities during their tenure on the other side, just like he was my guide through the previous ten years or so, and Jason, Crystal, and Nancy were my playmates for a shorter while, before their next incarnation in a new body. There were oodles of other responsibilities that souls on the other side could assume, but that chat would take place down the road sometime, Tom advised me.

I was not allowed to get out of bed for three months because of the condition of my shattered thigh bone. Then, they fitted me with a cast, but not a walking cast, for another month. It was wonderful to be able to just hobble around the hospital a bit on my crutches and see more of the world I desperately missed. I next got a walking cast for a couple of more months. When it was removed, I experienced the tortures of rehab therapy. Not fun, but necessary.

I, of course, missed the remainder of my first year of college. Five weeks of classes does not qualify for any credits. The good news was that I was allowed to return home to my parents for the summer as long as I promised to continue my therapy exercises. That was a pleasure, I assure you. Being home, I mean, not the therapy exercises.