Missing Years ( Part 10 )

Eddie Samuels was a fit and strong 74 year old man. His wife Edith had died five years ago and he now lived on his own.

His life revolved around his church. Eddie Samuels was a Baptist. He went to church every day and twice on Sunday. He raised money for the church through various means. He organised jumble sales, fetes, boot sales, in fact anything he could to help his beloved church.

In honour of his son, he’d run the London Marathon every year since 1983, in doing so he had raised well over one hundred thousand pounds in the process.

He had a regularity to his day, he would go to church at around 09.00am, spend an hour praying and reading the Bible. Then off to his local gym where he would do circuit training for an hour. Back to his house where he would cook himself a meal. He would then have an hour’s sleep after which he would go for a run. His route was always the same; it was the route that his son Ray was doing on the day he disappeared. Back home he would continue to read and maybe watch an hour or so of television before going to bed at around 21.30.

He was fanatical about the Bible; he had over one hundred copies of it. His favourite which he carried everywhere was an 1834 edition of the Polyglott Bible. He could practically recite it word for word. He loved the Old Testament, he loved the stories, his favourite was the book of Samuel, the first book of Kings. It is the story of a young boy called Samuel who is spoken to by the Lord and who eventually becomes a leader of the people.

In his mind Samuel was his son Ray. He remembered the night he had the vision. He had woken up at around 3.00am one morning and went downstairs to get a drink of water. When he went into the kitchen he thought he saw a shadow, he stopped and suddenly realised he couldn’t move. A voice spoke, neither male nor female, just a voice. It was very clear, he always remembered the words, the words had lived with him ever since “He will come, then be taken by the rain, he will come back after many years, the same. He will lead his people from destruction”

The voice only spoke once then was gone. He went back to bed and woke Edith, she was heavily pregnant, he told her about the vision, she thought he had dreamt it and told him to go back to sleep. But he knew the truth, he didn’t understand it but was certain whatever it meant, it had to do with his unborn child. He knew then that Edith would have a boy.

He loved his boy Ray, they were very close, they did everything together. He took him to the Baptist church and his proudest day was when Ray was baptised at the age of 15. Ray had excelled at everything he did, no matter what sport he did, he was the best. He got 10 “O” levels and 6 “A” levels. Went to University where he studied Advanced Mathematics, got his degree and started working for IBM. Within a couple of years he had gained a number of promotions and was their brightest star.

Then he got the phone call one day from Laura, all she said was “Rays gone missing”. He remembered looking out of the window and seeing it was raining.

When everyone around him was grieving Rays disappearance, he was always upbeat about it. He kept saying “He’ll be back” he just knew it!
He didn’t see much of Laura these days, not now she’d moved in with that other bloke. But Stacey came to see him once a week. He was very fond of his granddaughter, she reminded him of Ray.

He’d just returned from Church and was preparing himself some pasta, the phone rang.

“Eddie, it’s John”

John Wilson was an old friend; they worked together on the buses for twenty years.

“Hi John, how you doing?”

“Yeh great Eddie, listen mate. I’ve got to tell you something, it might be nothing but I thought you ought to know”

“Ok mate, go on”

“I’ve just had a call from my son Tom, he says he was in the Moby Dick pub yesterday afternoon having a pint and he saw two fellas in the corner, he didn’t recognise the older one but he recognised the younger one”

“Yeh, and?”

“Eddie, he reckons it was Ray, your boy Ray!”

Eddie didn’t say anything else. He put the phone down. Put his hands together and started to pray!