Amber

The Ushering:
Amber
By Dan-Dwayne


The Ushering: Amber Copyright © 2020 by Dan-Dwayne Spencer. All Rights Reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Cover designed by DSGA
Art elements provided by Pixabay, pixabay.com
No Attribution Required
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dan-Dwayne Spencer
Visit my blog at www.Dan-Dwayne.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: February 2021
DSGA Publishing
ISBN: 9798593355157


Thanks to Stacy, Taylor, Mathis, Tom, and especially Keith West and Mary Andrews of the WRCG. The people who keep the iron sharp.


…And you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit comes upon you…
—Acts 1:8
…Now, there are varieties of gifts … it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit, a gift for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.…
—Corinthians 12:4-8
…In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions … Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
—Acts 2:17-21


CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven


Chapter One
The Escape
Remorse is a formidable emotion. It’s almost as overpowering as guilt, and I should know I’m the one who started the whole mess. Then again, I sure as Hell wasn’t responsible for all the wrong either. The problem was, people like to judge. One big question weighed on my mind, does anyone have the right to judge when something so life-changing comes along? I suppose I’m lucky to be able to pinpoint when my life took a turn, probing me to be more—at least more than whatever my miserable childhood made me.
The events of August 15, 1969, changed my life, or should I say, it changed me into the person I have become. Like a Mustang GT spinning on ice, my life went out of control. My eyes were opened, and I started seeing the world differently; granted, I saw it all through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old boy. If only I could have seen it then through the eyes of wisdom only gained from life’s experience, it might have made a difference in the outcome, but then who knows—tragedy finds us no matter how we flee, and love has a way of enduring the most devastating of phenomenons. If I were to judge my own actions, I certainly couldn’t say I did everything right, but then, there was enough blame to share.
When I awoke on that fateful day, I’d like to say the first thing I noticed was the warm summer sun beaming through my bedroom window onto my face, but it wasn’t the first thing. This morning started like so many mornings. Good weather or bad, every day started the same. Loud shouting and swearing reverberated through the wall between my room and the kitchen. I should have been used to it, but it grated on my nerves. Covering my face with my pillow, I lay regretting my very existence. A reoccurring thought blitzed once more through my mind: the world would be better without me in it.
Dropping my pillow below my chin, I stared at the ceiling. Fifteen years of hearing the same shouts, arguing about the same things, and knowing that the shouting would never end. I could count on it just as I could expect summer to follow spring. My parents loved to hate each other. It seemed impossible how mom managed to cook breakfast between the slamming of cabinets and the banging of her skillet on the counter behind my wall—and those were the good days. The not-so-good days were when she used it to club my dad.
From the understandable bits coming through the wall, this sounded like a not-so-good day. It was certain, if I intended to get a ride with him to the Sea Shore Swimming Pool for my diving class, I would have to hurry. Any minute Mom would chase him out of the house, skillet in hand.
My summer strategy to escape the arduous fighting was my swimming and diving classes. Heck, the mental relief alone made them worth the class fee of fifty cents a day. It