Mindy and Russell parked their car at a designated spot a
short distance from the entrance to the JFK Prep grounds as per Doug’s
instructions. Doug and Izzy awaited them there, wearing serious expressions
that conveyed their concern. Together they walked a short way to the gates of
the site that had been the start of the town of St. Nazianz. Over a hundred and
fifty years of growth and change had made it something utterly different from
what it had started as, but some aspect of the vision remained. From its start
as a religious sect seeking a new way of life, it had been taken over by a
Catholic order that had used the place as a seminary. And when this had shut
down, it became a prep school. But it was decades since it had been used for
much of anything at all. Such places lend themselves to the creation of stories
and legends.
“We will attempt a séance,” said Doug. More for Mindy’s sake
than the others, he explained, “One cannot call a ghost into being. Either it
already exists or it does not. The dead have passed on to the undiscovered
country, or simply ceased to be. We’ll set aside any theological arguments
regarding where we go when we die because, frankly, they have no bearing. As
Johnny should have explained to Dave, a ghost is not the spirit of a dead
person. It is merely a creation of a psychic trauma, a ball of emotional energy
formed in the intensity of a person’s dying moments. Memories may be burned
into what we call a ghost. Typically they are rather simplistic creatures,
acting out a scene that is significant to someone who was once alive.
Occasionally, they can be a rather sophisticated facsimile of the person they
were formed from. Obviously, most people do not create ghosts at all when they
die. Ghosts are quite rare, the intensity of the event would need to be quite
profound.
“Johnny reported to me the events in Manitowoc. He informed
me that they had encountered two separate entities resulting from the death of
a single person. One was formed of grief at the betrayal of his wife and
friend, the other a desire for justice due to the same event. I’m afraid what
we have here is a similar dual or even multiple entities formed by an extreme
emotional occurrence.
“I’ve been aware of this site, heard rumors and
unsubstantiated stories. I knew the potential for trouble existed here, but I
had no real cause to pursue the matter. I knew enough about it to warn Johnny
to stay away, but perhaps I didn’t know enough about Johnny to appreciate the
temptation it would present. But in the end, I will not hold myself accountable
for the choices that others have made. We will however deal with this situation
as best we can. We have need of the abilities Johnny and Dave possess, and we
will not abandon them if there is something we can do. But be warned that there
are obvious risks.”
Doug looked around at the others. When Mindy had shown in
her gaze her obvious commitment, he turned to look at Izzy, and so did Mindy.
She was fairly convinced Izzy had a good heart. If there was anything he might
be lacking, it might be courage.In the event in the Apostle Islands, he didn’t
appear overly eager to confront such things. But perhaps that too might be an
act he put on for her benefit.
“I thought we were here for Bingo,” said Izzy. “Yeah, I’m
in. But I’m going to need a vacation after this.”
“Did you get something acceptable?” asked Russell.
Izzy reached into the pocket of his thick flannel jacket to
pull out what appeared to be a necklace. He placed it in Russell’s waiting
hand.
“A rosary. Where did you find it?”
“Where do you think we found it?” asked Izzy.
“We took them from the hands of Gregor Soeldner,” said Doug.
“You dug up a grave?” said Russell, looking horrified at the
idea of holding an item that had been in the clutch of a dead man for over a
century.
“It’s not as if we had much choice,” said Doug, “or much
time. You said you needed an item that was cherished by one of those in
question. Gregor Soeldner was in charge of The Association after the death of
Anton Oxner. There’s no guarantee he’s in any way a part of this, but I figured
he was our best chance of discovering something. And as far as finding an
article or relic from someone, I imagine that something that someone wanted to
be buried with must be pretty important to them.”
“What about Oxner? Couldn’t you find anything of his?”
“We thought about it. It turns out he was buried under the
altar in the chapel. Izzy couldn’t bring himself to go digging up an alter for
such purposes, and I have to say I was uneasy about it myself. Let’s give it a
go with this and if it doesn’t work, we’ll go from there.”
“Alright,” said Russell. “Let’s find a proper spot and we’ll
do this. Any ideas?”
They eyed the grounds from their spot in the empty space
surrounded by buildings.
“I wouldn’t mind doing it indoors, if we could,” said Mindy,
feeling the chill of the evening.
“Where?” asked Izzy. “Somehow a church doesn’t seem to be a
proper place for a séance. And the other buildings seem a little too new to be
related to whatever it is that haunts this place.”
“The cemetery,” said Russell, a degree of authority in his
voice. This was an area where his knowledge exceeded the others’ and he needed
to assert the fact.
They walked towards the gravestones that cast shadows from a
full moon that shown behind them. The chill in the air seemed to cut past
Mindy’s clothes, penetrate her skin and take residence in her bones, making her
feel older than she was. It felt as if her innermost self was not protected the
way she was used to feeling, the soft hidden aspects of her were being exposed
to a chilling and unfriendly outside force.
They followed Russell until he reached the center of the
graveyard of perhaps two hundred graves. He stood before them and turned, his
body blocking the rays of the moon that was sinking towards the horizon. It
made him appear like a radiant saint, but the rays were all behind him, his
form a blackness within the light. Whatever discomfort he normally showed was
missing now: he now appeared as the scientist making sure the elements of his
experiment were accounted for.
“Form a circle,” he said. They did, with Russell to Mindy’s
left, Doug to her right, Izzy in front of her. I occurred to Mindy at that
moment that she really didn’t know these people. Izzy was no longer the joking
person he was, Russell had lost his discomfort, even Doug had abandoned his
always-on stage persona.
“We’re going to have to hold hands for the duration of the
séance. We must maintain the circle throughout the séance, this is most
important. For that reason, we might as well sit down, make ourselves
comfortable. If one of us were to slip and break the connection, we would be
unleashing God knows what on the world.”
There was not much space between graves, so that when they
sat down, Mindy realized she must be sitting on top of some long-dead soul.
Several graves down she noticed the freshly dug grave from which Izzy and Doug
had claimed their relic. When she joined hands with Doug, she could still feel
bits of dirt on his hands. She had hoped in vain that the hand that Russell
offered her was not the one that gripped the rosary beads. The feeling of the
beads that Russell gripped hard against her hand felt to her like teeth ripped
from a corpse.
“Now what?” asked Mindy.
“Now we wait for Russell to make a connection to the object
in his hand,” said Doug. “And if there is a living entity, or reasonable
facsimile of same, perhaps it will provide a link to said entity.”
“You all must be receptive to whatever thoughts my pop into
your head,” said Russell, “because perhaps those thoughts will not be your own.
If all goes well, we will soon be experiencing a blending of selves, so that we
will be very much aware at the same time of things that we are not perceiving
with our ordinary senses. We must all be both open to such perceptions and yet
retain our personal integrity. This is not a matter of life or death, but a
matter of success or failure, as well as just plain good manners. You’ll
understand as we go.”
Mindy tried to silence her thoughts, tired to block out the
outside world. She was acutely aware of the hands that held hers, that she
held. She was both holder and holdee, she though, a link in a chain that was
more than the accumulated links.
Gahhh! I’m thinking. I should be emptying my mind of
thoughts, allow myself to be receptive. Now I’m thinking of thinking. And the
cold ground, I can’t sit like this for long.
She tried to shift herself slightly, all the while being
acutely aware of the hands she was holding, realizing that as she held on to
them that they held on to her. She was holding hands of people who were
probably busy trying to silence their thoughts in order to be open to something
outside or inside of them. Four individuals joined together, and she couldn’t
help thinking their minds should be no more distant or unreachable than their
hands were. And all at once she had the feeling that her consciousness was not
in her body but somewhere in the middle of the four of them. No, it wasn’t her
consciousness! It was theirs. It was hers, but they were all sharing the same
thoughts in the same way that people sitting around a fire were all sharing the
same warmth and light. Except that she was the fire. Sort of. It wasn’t really
so important to try to explain it as it was to just experience it.
She was aware of her body a few feet away, felt that she
could return to it anytime she wished. It wasn’t effort that kept her where she
was now, just a state of mind. She only hoped that she would continue holding
the others’ hands, detached as she now felt from that body.
And as she looked upon her own body, she now looked upon the
others in the same fashion. She felt that she was able to return to any of
those as easily as she could her own, that they were just houses that could be
entered as easily as opening a door. And it seemed that each house was as empty
as her was.
Curious, she attempted to peer into the person that was Doug
Slattery, magician, collector, man of wealth. She wondered what lay beneath the
artifice and façade he showed to the world.
It shouldn’t have been surprising that she witnessed in him
the same trepidation and concern that she felt, being in the same position as
she was. But she realized that was only the concerns of the moment. There were
great depths of experience and memory there to be delved into. Not thinking of
the consequences, she delved in a little deeper.
And there she felt lust. Not merely physical urges but the
frustration at withholding from acting upon such urges. And behind the lust and
the frustration were deeper emotions, fear of being dislike by someone he had
loved, fear of rejection and betrayal. And even beyond that was a deeper fear,
a fear of being wrong, of believing he knew who he was and what the world was
and the crushing pain it caused him to realize that he had been living in a
fantasy world. All these emotions and sensations existed in him at once and
were stacked upon each other, showing to her the complexity of a person and the
myriad influences working upon even the simplest decisions. And anger welled up
in him, akin to the sense of betrayal she had seen. She quickly retreated from
the house that Doug’s life force had built about him, sneaking out through a side
exit, careful not to slam the door.
She was again in the middle of the circle, again aware of
the openness, even vulnerability, of the others. She was not sure what she
should be focusing her awareness on, but knew it was Russell who was the
driving force behind whatever it was that was going on. She suddenly became
quite attuned to him, felt the concentration towards another awareness that
allowed him no time to be aware of the others. She tried to align her awareness
with his, to see what it was that he saw, aid him in his search. Again she
found herself entering the house of another, so to speak, permitted herself to
step past set boundaries.
She felt herself quickly swept up as a leaf in a breeze. It
was thrilling until the realization of her helplessness set in Her psyche was
in the grip of forces more powerful than she’d ever experienced, lifting her to
tremendous heights, separating her from the rootedness she was familiar with.
But the fear of falling quickly accompanied the thrill, until she dared to look
down. She felt herself falling, prepared herself for a drop that would crush
her against a rocky bottom.
But there was no bottom. Whatever ground she had been
standing on had been swept away, leaving a deep dark pit into which she was
speedily descending.
Again, her presence had been detected by the residence of
the domain. Russell understood what she was doing, pulled himself back from his
search. Within his mind he constructed for her a floor for her to land safely
on. But even as her feet reached the ground, she felt herself opening up.
Russell was probing into her as she had done to him. She experienced moments of
her childhood popping open from long closed boxes. The unwelcome attention of
her older brother’s friend, the humiliation of a boyfriend’s betrayal. She felt
helpless before Rusell’s probing, couldn’t understand the cruelty of it. And
then in an instant he retreated, leaving her psyche to herself.
It was then that she realized what to her felt like an
assault was no different than the innocent probing she had been engaging in.
She understood now what Russsell had meant when he talked about good manners.
Learning proper boundaries was a matter of social etiquette whether or not one
was talking about physical space.
She was back in the cold, dark cemetery again, but she still
felt as if she were in the middle of the group rather than her own body. Until
she looked in between the ring of hands and saw a bluish glow arising from the
ground between them. She was then aware that she was back in her body, still
holding hands with Russell and Doug. She noticed Doug Squeezing her hand hard
and didn’t know why until she realized she was trying to tear away from the
circle, trying to get away from whatever it was that was rising in their midst.
She forced herself to stillness as best she could, tried to look at the others
to gain strength from them. Each of them reflected the bluish light that came
from the center of the circle.
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