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the house and Bradley turned to Mike.
“So, tell me what I need to know.”
    They settled in the living room, Bradley in the recliner and
Mike perched on the edge of the coffee table. Mike was quiet for a few moments,
contemplating what he was going to tell Bradley and how he was going to say
it.   Finally he took a deep breath and
met Bradley’s eyes. “Okay, I think this is weird coming from me,” he said.
“Especially me, because a year or so ago—well, let’s just say I’ve got a
totally different perspective now.”
    “Yeah, a lot has changed for you,” Bradley agreed. “You went
from a firefighter…” He paused, not sure how to go on.
    “You can say it,” Mike said with a smile, “to a dead guy, to
a ghost and now a guardian angel. Yeah, you could say things have been a little
crazy. But now that I’m here, on the other side, I can see things that you and
Mary can’t see.”
    “But Mary can see ghosts,” Bradley said. “What else is out
there?”
    Mike stood up and walked to the front window, glancing
outside, then turned back to Bradley. “Mary can see
some of the ghosts,” he said. “The ghosts who want help, the ghosts who need
help passing over.   But, there are some other…” He paused as he searched for the word, “spirits,
who have nothing to do with what Mary is trying to accomplish.”
    “Spirits?” Bradley asked. “What do
you mean?”
    “I don’t know that much about them myself,” he said. “Maybe
I skipped that class in Sunday School , but they are
dark entities.   It’s like they were never
human, always spirits.   And they aren’t
too fond of the human race.”
    “What? Like demons?” Bradley asked.
    Mike nodded. “Well, yeah, something like that,” he said. “They want to discourage us, want to pull us down.”
    Bradley looked nervously around the room. “Where are they?”
he asked.
    “That’s the thing,” Mike said, coming back across the room.
“They are here, all around us.   They are
outside, sometimes they’re inside.   They
are waiting for an opportunity to convince us to turn away from what’s right.”
    “How do you know about this?” Bradley asked.
    Mike took a deep breath and met Bradley’s eyes. “I can see
them,” he said. “And let me tell you, it’s pretty scary when you realize what’s
out there. It’s like an army.”
    “An army of evil spirits?” Bradley
asked. “So, how do we fight them?”
    “That’s the thing,” Mike said. “Unless we open ourselves to
them, they have no power against us.   They can’t force us to do anything we don’t want to do.   But, once we open the door, they’re in.”
    “Séances and Ouija boards,” Bradley said slowly. “That’s why
you don’t like them because they open a door.”
    “And you don’t know who is going to walk in from the other
side,” Mike said. “It could be perfectly harmless or…”
    “Yeah, or,” Bradley repeated. “Are there a lot of them?”
    Mike nodded. “Like I said, an army,” he replied. “And the
more potential you have to bless someone else’s life, the more operatives they
have trying to pull you down.”
    Bradley stood up, walked across the room to where Mike had
stood and looked out to see Mary chatting with the Brennan children.   She was laughing at their jokes and her face
was glowing with love.   Something tightened
in his gut as he thought about what Mike had just told him. “So, these evil
spirits,” Bradley said. “They wouldn’t be happy with what Mary’s doing, would
they?”
    “You mean the whole helping confused spirits make it to the
light to receive their eternal reward? Yeah, no they’re not too happy about
that,” he said. “But Mary’s smart. She doesn’t put herself in those kinds of
situations.   That’s why she generally
waits for the spirits to come to her and ask for help.”
    “I had no idea,” Bradley replied, still watching Mary.
    “Yeah, well, it’s not something we generally dwell on,”