Earth (12 page)

Steven knelt down and started pulling out the
items I told him to get for me, setting the sage in front of the
candle and the jar of rainwater at the top edge of the cloth.

“Ok, angel, now what’s going on here?” I
looked into Alexis’ eyes as I talked to her. Most people don’t talk
to babies like this, but I found I got farther with her if I
treated her like an equal. She sniffled quietly, like she was ready
to cry, and pointed at the corner that her crib was near. I turned
and faced it and she buried her face into the hollow of my
shoulder, tangling one hand into my hair, clinging for dear life. I
reached out
and felt a sticky, hot void taking up the space
at the head of her crib in between it and the wall. I pulled back
and had the sense of an angry man staring back at me, radiating
hate. “Is that the boogie man, angel?” I used a term that most
children knew.

“Ba! Ba!” she said angrily pointed at the
black mass.

“That means bad,” Steven said, standing
beside me, staring at the corner.

“Is he bad, angel?” I asked her and she
nodded, tears welling up in her chocolate brown eyes. “Ok, angel,
don’t cry, Auntie Shay is going to make him go away.” I hugged her
close to me and then gave her back to Steven. “Take her back to her
mother and come back.”

While he was gone, I blessed the rainwater he
had gathered and settled into the lotus position to center myself.
Steven came in and I held the rainwater up over my head for him to
take. “Go around the entire inside of the house and flick the water
with your fingers at the walls, creating a circle and say our usual
banishing.” I didn’t need to give him any more instruction than
that. I was very grateful for his help; a two-hour ritual for one
person would now take less than an hour with both of us.

In the end I felt electric; static crackled
in my hair and I could almost see the tiny white sparks at the ends
of my fingertips. I took a deep breath, testing the air in the
room. It was clean and fresh as if it had just rained. I looked
into the corner and
reached out
. He was gone, gone for good.
As Steven created the circle around the house, I built the shields
on the outside after we banished the boogie man. We became linked
for the short period of time that we were working and I was able to
call to him mentally without touching him to bring Alexis in for
the final test. When I brought her back into the room she was tense
at first, but as I coaxed her to look around, she relaxed so
suddenly that I had to relax my hold on her. She giggled easily
like a bubbling spring and bounced in my arms.

Lunch was ridiculously wonderful; there
really is nothing like homemade Mexican food. I ate enough carnitas
tacos to last me a year and Alexis kept reaching for me over the
table so her mother and I passed her back and forth between
courses. Everyone seemed lighter, happier than they ever had when
in this house. Steven hugged me at one point, seeing the joy on his
aunt’s face and he was almost in tears. It was times like these
that I loved my work.

About three hours later, as the cold winds
were ripping up the neighborhood, Steven walked me out to my car;
his earlier joy was fading quickly. He had today’s paper in his
hands and he was clutching it tightly in his fist.

“What’s up?” I asked after tossing my gear
into the passenger seat.

“Did you see today’s paper?” His usually
bright eyes were cold and lifeless.

“No…” He handed me the paper without a word.
It was the local edition, catering to just our county. On the front
page, in bold letters, along the bottom of the page was the
caption: “County Sheriffs are at a Loss”. There was a small picture
of three goats lying on their sides, their throats split wide in
the black and gray. I scanned the story quickly, my stomach
knotting up instantly and threatening to revisit lunch. The story
detailed the findings of a ritual they were already labeling as
Satanic.

“You have got to be kidding,” I whispered
angrily.

“Nope,” Steven said looking past me down the
street at nothing. The story claimed that they had found stubs of
black candles spaced evenly apart and a chalk outline of what they
thought was a circle, but it had been haphazardly wiped away. The
goats were inside the ruined circle. It had taken place last night
in some remote part of Ojai in a wooded area of a park that was
usually off limits to hikers. The article went on to say that the
police believe that something or someone interrupted the ritual and
that was why it wasn’t properly cleaned up and all the evidence was
left behind. Unfortunately, not one fingerprint, partial or whole,
was found on anything.

“Great!” I yelled, letting my temper have
sway for a moment and throwing the paper on the sidewalk. “We won’t
be able to do anything for who knows how long!” Whenever selfish
bastards like these ones got it into their heads to dabble in the
black arts, it always loused things up for those of us who took
this stuff seriously. If they were serious they wouldn’t have left
this stuff behind to be found.

“Good thing we didn’t have anything planned,”
Steven said still in that cold voice that didn’t sound like
himself.

“Do you realize all the work we’ll have to do
to clean up their messes when they’re finally caught?! This is my
town, damn it!” I wasn’t yelling anymore, but I did kick the paper
insolently, huffing and puffing.

“You’ll need to tell Deb.”

“She’ll know.”

“We should talk to her anyway.”

“I know,” I slumped against my car, covering
my eyes with my right hand.

“Hey,” Steven suddenly sounded like himself
again. “Don’t forget, we have dinner plans with Jodi tonight.” I
thought about my stomach and how I had stretched it beyond all
recognition over lunch. Dinner did not sound appetizing at all.

“Yeah, yeah,” I pushed off of my car, gave
Steven a hug, and walked over to the driver’s side. “Listen; work
on your shields before dinner. Maybe it is amateurs and maybe it’s
not. I don’t want to take any chances.” I took off down the street,
making my way home, gripping the steering wheel tight enough to
make my knuckles white, lined with red blood vessels.

Even if they were amateurs, this close to
Halloween, they were dabbling with things no one should even
contemplate. I just needed to know if we were dealing with kids or
adults? Satanists or Voodoo worshipers?

Chapter 7

I tried not to dwell on the newspaper
article. Until I had some real information there wasn’t anything I
could do. It was Deb’s day off, so my main source for real
information was out of reach. It was difficult though; I couldn’t
understand how the discovery had been made so quickly. If the
ritual took place last night, then how did it make this morning’s
paper? Could they have been tipped off? If it wasn’t important
enough to be the big story, then why stop the presses over it?
Maybe it was on the border of some star’s property. There were a
few hidden movie stars living up there that wouldn’t want that kind
of thing going on around them.

I was so angry about it that I was willing to
go out
–letting my spiritual self leave my body to gather
information from the other planes – in the middle of the day
without Steven and Jodi to watch out. I knew better than to cast or
got out
when I was angry. The volatile energy you could tap
into was so much more accessible and tempting than the cool
controlled energy that took discipline to command. But angry energy
was eager to be used and could potentially use you instead.

I drove north, past Ojai and past Santa
Barbara and Goleta, taking the San Marcos Pass into the mountains,
leaving the freeway far behind me. I turned on to the winding,
unpredictable Painted Cave road and found a turn-off I was sure I
wasn’t supposed to drive on but it meant I was able to leave any
wandering cars behind me.

After I parked I started climbing. The rock
surfaces broke away under my fingers occasionally with the
consistency of sand, but I kept going. I had once found a grassy
ledge when Steven, Jodi, and I had come out here on a fieldtrip to
see the Painted Caves and I had wandered off on my own. The
residual magic here permeated everything. No matter what the
weather, it always seemed like a mild summer’s day. I was still
aware of the wind and the biting cold, but it just didn’t affect me
like it did outside of this place.

I felt cool soft grass under my fingers
finally and pulled myself up onto the ledge, turning to sit with my
legs dangling over the edge and took in the breathtaking view. I
was able to center myself without even thinking about it. Smiling
to myself, I brushed my hands over the grass, letting the blades
tickle my palms. Finally, knowing I was already going to be late
for my dinner plans, I brought my legs up and crawled to the middle
of the ledge and lay down in the soft cushion of grass.

I relaxed my spine with deep, slow breaths
and reached up to fan my hair out away from my head. I kicked my
shoes off and worked off my socks with my toes, pushing them away
with my feet. I rested my arms just away from my body with my palms
down on the grass and my legs straight out and slightly apart. I
could feel the warmth of the sun on my bare face trying to break
through the overcast sky. I took another breath and closed my
eyes.

I had the sensation of falling through the
ground, my body an anchor in the earth and my sense of self melting
away. My body sank a few inches into the ground; my hair, hands and
feet merged with the grass and disappeared into it, becoming part
of it. I could taste the dry earth in my mouth; I breathed it into
myself, becoming the earth, returning to it. My heartbeat slowed
and reality changed in one fluid wave of the ocean.

I was standing in a circle of trees, grown so
close together they were almost one hollow tree. I reached out and
touched one with the flat of my hand, asking silently for passage.
Suddenly the ground trembled beneath my feet and the circle
expanded, a break growing between two of the trees, just large
enough for me to pass through. I stepped out into the mossy forest
floor, aware of the sound of the ocean crashing against the beach
in the distance.

Following the sound, answering its call, I
found my way out of the forest, stepping out onto a twilit beach.
The sand was cool between my toes and the sea salted air wafted
gently around me. The sun had just passed beyond the horizon. I
turned, searching the beach for the source of the pull still
tugging at me. I could see the glow of silver coming towards me at
a steady pace; instinctively I started towards it to meet it in the
middle.

Sooner than I thought possible the light
began to take shape as we neared each other and the painfully
beautiful face of my guardian angel was smiling at me, just yards
away. His black and silver wings opened around him in a deafening
crack of thunder, but I didn’t flinch; somehow I had known it was
going to happen. He stopped and reached out for me, the tide rose
and was lapping at our ankles, soaking the hem of my jeans. I
closed the distance between us and he pulled me in close, enfolding
us both with his wings and we were one.

I felt the weak sunlight on my face again and
opened my eyes to the white and gray expanse of sky. I came back to
myself, blinking rapidly to clear my vision and slowly extracted my
fingers and feet from the ground. My hair tangled with the roots of
the grass, but, with a little effort, they released me. I shivered
as a breeze found its way up the mountain and wrapped around me,
pressing the wet cuffs of my jeans to my ankles.

I reached for my socks and shoes to pull them
back on. My angel didn’t know who had done the casting last night,
but knew that it was damaging the delicate fabric of good energy
people like me had been creating over the years. When I couldn’t
understand how he couldn’t know who it was, he explained that
something was blocking them from sensing their identity. That alone
was enough to scare me.

As I drove down the mountain back into the
real world I could hear my cell phone beeping at me as it went in
and out of service. I knew I probably had half a dozen voicemails
from both Steven and Jodi wanting to know where I was. I chose to
ignore the phone and make my way back into the county before
calling them back, knowing that with my service cutting in and out
it would just be too frustrating to try and figure out their
messages.

I tried not to race down the freeway, but the
sun had already set and I knew I was even later than I realized. We
were supposed to meet for dinner at Jodi’s favorite Italian
restaurant around eight o’clock and, by the looks of things, I was
gonna be at least a half hour late. I sped off of the freeway at an
exit I knew most people wouldn’t have taken, but it would help me
miss street traffic and get me to the restaurant quicker. I parked
behind the building and went running in. People were standing
outside waiting for tables in little clusters, almost hugging the
building to escape the cold. I knew the inside would be even more
packed, having pushed these poor people out. But that’s what the
city’s best garlic bread will do to people.

I pulled open the door to a wave of heat and
press of bodies. People shuffled out of my way as I maneuvered
between them, trying to look over their heads to see if I could see
Jodi or Steven at a table. This was a small, family run restaurant
with no more than twenty tables and booths set tightly together.
The couple that owned it had started out as mom and dad but now,
over twenty years later they were more like grandma and grandpa.
Grandma saw me and smiled, (we were regulars here) coming around
the bar and cash register to hug me.

“Hi,” I said with a smile over the noise of a
dozen conversations. “I’m meeting Jodi and Steven, but I don’t see
them?”