And then there was darkness, clean and silent. There was no fear or apprehension—just black all around her. Was this death? If so, where was that light she’d read about in books that was supposed to be there to greet her? To be conscious of the darkness and waiting for something or someone to come for her was very odd to Jane. She tried to turn her head, but felt a calloused hand gently prevent the movement. Jane attempted to speak, but all she could manage was a low moan. Hell? Was this hell? With that thought, fear gripped her for the first time and she felt herself hyperventilating. Almost simultaneously, a sharp pinprick of pain emanated from her scalp. She let out a scream. The aroma of burning beeswax filled her nostrils. On her tongue, a sweet, pungent taste stung. She swallowed and another trickle of liquid with the same flavor fell into her mouth. She swallowed again, this time taking more of it into her body. Four more times, she drank the mysterious brew. With each sip, the pain in her scalp subsided and she floated more freely on a wave of consciousness that lived just beneath the only reality she knew.
Heavy footsteps moved away from her, walking across a creaking wooden floor. Moments later, the footsteps approached her and the sound of a man clearing his throat. She opened her eyes. The room was filled with shadows. It was hard to focus, but as the room came into view, the first thing she saw were candles—tall, honey-colored beeswax pillars of different heights
and widths—illuminating the darkened room and releasing a warm, comforting light. The taste of sweetness lingered on her tongue accompanied by the feeling she used to get by downing a fifth of Jack Daniels. A large figure sat in a chair near the bed where she lay. The face was hidden in a slice of darkness where the candles didn’t touch.
“Where am I?” Jane whispered to the figure.
“Safe,” the voice replied.
Her astral body hovered closer to her physical body. She looked around the room. There was a round wooden kitchen table that held stacks of books, four chairs, a kitchen sink and sideboard and windows covered in brown cotton curtains. To her left, there was a small table that held a smaller candle and a bowl of water along with a washcloth. The water was tinged red and thin fragments of glass were next to the bowl. The realization hit her as her physical body received the full impact of her etheric and slammed hard into the host. “Jordan?!”
Jordan drew a beeswax candle toward him from the kitchen table and held it between himself and Jane. “Did you touch the other side, Jane?” Jane felt trapped. She tried to sit up, but Jordan gently held her back. “Don’t,” Jordan calmly said. “You hit hard. Let yourself come back slowly.”
Jane’s memory trickled back. “My car?”
“I drove it behind the cabin. You busted the side window, a little front-end damage, but that’s all. You’re lucky. The tire tracks showed you heading for the river and then you turned and went the other way before you skidded to a stop. I don’t know how you managed that.”
Jane clearly remembered the sound of squealing tires and the unknown hand that covered her own and turned the wheel. “I didn’t.”
Jordan leaned closer. “Spirit?” Jane looked at him with guarded eyes. Jordan smiled a knowing grin. “Yes…I knew from the moment I saw you on the bridge that we were two halves of the same whole.” Jane felt queasy. She suddenly remembered her
gun and started to reach toward her jacket when Jordan quickly spoke up. “Your gun is still in the holster, Jane.” She felt the butt of the Glock bite into her side. “I’m not allowed near a firearm. You know that. And don’t worry. I didn’t look at anything else I shouldn’t have…” His eyes showed that he was telling the truth, along with a slightly unnerving mischievous wink.
Jane turned to look outside, hoping to see light, but it was clear from the crease between the brown curtains that night had fallen. “What time is it?”
“Past seven.”
“Shit! I’ve got to get back to Midas.” She sat up, but the room spun. “Fuck!” She grabbed her head. “What did you give me? Did you give me alcohol?”
“Of course, not. You’re an alcoholic.”
“How did you know that?”
“I told you before. I feel and understand things that I can’t comprehend, but that I know to be truth. I’ve done it since I was a boy. I can see a person just once, either in the flesh or in a photograph, and I can know them instantly as if we’d spent decades together. It’s in my blood.”
Jane was dubious. The peculiar taste on her tongue resurfaced. “So, what did you give me?”
“An herbal tea made from the sacred blue lily. The uneducated call it
blue lotus
.” He stood up, crossed to the kitchen windowsill and returned with a fluted glass container a foot tall and eight inches wide. Inside was five inches of dirt saturated and covered in water, which rose to the top of the container. Growing out of the water were three aromatic flowers with vibrant blue petals that were nearly closed and sinking beneath the water. The scent was magnificent and intoxicating. “The ancient texts of Egypt wrote about this powerful flower. Egyptians used it as a bridge between realities. With the blue lily, the veil between the worlds was lifted and they could communicate with the dead, in the same manner that you and I are talking right now. All the dark secrets are answered on the other side of that veil. There’s
no more need to hide. No more need for absolution.”
Jane worried that Jordan seemed preoccupied with the dead. “You talk to the dead, Jordan?”
He softly touched one of the blue lily petals with his ragged finger. “All the time. When you light a candle for the dead, their spirit is present in the light. When the dead have their place, only then are they peaceful and can be experienced by mortals as a pure, loving energy.” He leaned closer to Jane. “You talk to the dead, Jane?”
Jane was leery of Jordan’s question. “I don’t make a habit of it.”
He sat back. “Oh, you should. The dead have a lot to offer if you have the balls to listen to them. Their ego is stripped and they can freely speak the truth for the first time.”
Jane weighed her next question carefully. “Should I be talking to Jake?”
There was a heavy pause. Jordan sat forward, his dirty face fully illuminated in the honeyed light. “I told you. He’s not dead…yet.”
“How would you know that?”
“All I have to do is see someone in person or in a photograph once and I understand everything about them, then and now. I saw Jake’s photograph in the newspaper. The local rag and
The Denver Post
. That’s all I needed to make that assessment.” Jordan held the flowers closer to Jane. “Did you really look at the flowers, Jane? The Egyptians saw the blue lily as the symbol of the sun and of creation and rebirth. The system of death and rebirth are consecrated in this flower. When you make a tea from these sacred leaves, you are offered that same chance to move from the darkness and into the light of transformation.”
“You gave me an hallucinogenic?”
“
No
,” he said emphatically. “It’s also used for pain and to calm the mind. You had shards of glass in your head.” He carefully set the glass container on the kitchen table. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to grow these flowers? They told
me it couldn’t be done in a container, but no one told the sacred lily that.”
Jane recalled Jordan commenting the first time they met that his cabin was “sacred territory.” Maybe it was the blue lily that gave it that moniker. Either way, for whatever reason, he must have trusted Jane enough to carry her all the way from the highway back to his cabin. Even though her scalp ached from the accident, she felt surprisingly alert the more she conversed with Jordan. “I wouldn’t have labeled you as a plant buff, Jordan.”
“I’m not a plant
buff
,” he replied, slightly irritated. “Using plants for medicine is in my bloodline, just like my ability to connect with others on a higher plane.”
“The Copelands of Short Hills were into picking leaves and flowers and making poultices? Interesting. I didn’t catch that vibe from their photos when they were walking down the courthouse steps back in ’68.”
Jordan sat back, his face half-shadowed in the darkness. “Tell me, Jane. Do you believe in evil because you believe in the Devil or because you’ve seen evil with your own eyes?”
A cold shiver slid down Jane’s back. “Because I’ve seen evil with my own eyes.”
“Are you sure it was evil? Or were you just taught to fear it from someone else? Do you believe in something because you’ve felt it in your sinew, or do you believe in something because you’ve been taught to believe it? Think about it, Jane! Do you fear because of what it does to your gut or because someone told you should fear? How much of what you believe and act on is purely an illusion? How many necessary illusions exist in order to keep us all paralyzed?” Jordan eyed Jane with an intense glare.
“I suppose I fall into both categories. But mostly, I feel…”
“So what happens when you are told something by another that contradicts with what you’re feeling?”
Jane had experienced that identical situation too many times over the last two days. “It pisses me off.”
“But what if they keep telling you that you’re imagining it or making it up or any number of manipulations that rape whatever your heart is telling you?” His demeanor became aggressive. “Do you begin to doubt yourself, Jane? Do you decide to deny the truth you feel from within in order to pacify what the masses are selling you?”
“Where is this going, Jordan?”
He let out a hard sigh. There was a long, thoughtful pause that seemed filled with deep angst. It resonated to Jane with the same torment that criminals used right before they confessed their darkest crimes. Jane’s gut clenched down, not sure of what she was about to hear. “The Buddha said, ‘Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.’” He picked up the beeswax pillar and walked across to a small, three-drawer wooden dresser in a far corner of the room. The candle in his hand shed light on an unmade single bed, along with a small loft and two large bookcases that were jam-packed with books. Jane peered closer and noted that stacks of books littered the floor as well as the steps leading up to the loft. Jordan opened the top drawer of the dresser and reverently removed a small leather book, four by six inches in dimension. He stared at the book before closing the drawer and returning to Jane’s side. Sitting down, he opened the book and withdrew a black-and-white photo. He let out another breath, but the tension in his body was evident. He handed the photo to Jane and held the candle closer so she could clearly see the figures in the shot.
Jane saw a beautiful, light-skinned black woman who looked to be in her early twenties holding a two-year-old boy in her arms. They were in a backyard garden, and it was either spring or summer because she wore a short-sleeved dress and sandals. “That’s your nanny?”
Jordan’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s my mother.”
Jane stared at Jordan. “What?”
“Her name was Maureen Lafond. She was from St. Lucia. My father and Mrs. Copeland first met her when they spent the
fall of 1949 on the island. They rented a private villa where she worked as a cook. Her mother was a cook. Grandmother was a cook. Great-grandmother…so on and so on. They were all herbalists too…healers. Maureen was carrying on in that tradition too. She was twenty-one and beautiful. Eyes so sweet and a heart that dreamed of a better life with more opportunities.” Jordan took the photo from Jane and stared at it. “She could only speak a little English,
Patois
being her common tongue. It’s derived from French but it has no written history. Sort of a bastard tongue.” Jordan smiled at the unintended pun. “The strange thing was that Maureen and my father communicated better than he and Mrs. Copeland ever did. My mother could read his thoughts because she had the gift of sight just like
her
mother and grandmother. So, he would think something and she would respond to it with her actions. He was captivated. He may have worn the hat of the rigid, East Coast country club set when he was in Short Hills, but when he was on the island, I think he cast all worries to the wind and perhaps reveled in who he really was. I’m not sure if she seduced my father or if he seduced her, but they came together in St. Lucia. From what I feel in my mind’s heart, he was never as happy as he was that fall.”
“You have a pretty good take on their relationship,” Jane offered.
“Yeah, well, it’s easy to have perspective on relationships between others because when you stand outside of them, there’s no need to support illusions.”
Jane sat up. “Did Mrs. Copeland know what was going on between your dad and Maureen?”
“Yes…but she preferred to
pretend
away uncomfortable elements in her life. Sort of like, if I don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist.” Jordan shook his head in disgust. “That became a little difficult when Maureen told my father that she was pregnant. But Mrs. Copeland, the cold-hearted, frigid bitch that she was, decided it was certainly worth a try. And so, the pattern of ignoring me before I was even
born
was set in motion. My
father and Mrs. Copeland returned to Short Hills before Christmas of ’49 but my father was desperately unhappy. Around the New Year, he informed Mrs. Copeland that he wanted to bring Maureen to the States that summer and that she was to live with them and raise their child under their roof.”
“She didn’t fight him?”
“Sure. The same way Mrs. Copeland fought every battle. She disappeared. Hell, she could disappear in a house or a room. But
this
time, she disappeared to Florida under the ruse that she was not well and needed a better climate to recuperate. Since she always looked frail and ate just enough to fit into a size
0
Chanel suit, nobody argued. Her absence allowed my father free reign to travel back and forth to St. Lucia and spend time with my mother. His friends assumed he was involved in a new business in the Caribbean so everybody was taken care of.” Jordan’s tone was clearly sarcastic. “Over the next six months, my father and Mrs. Copeland, along with Maureen, built the foundations of the lie that my life would soon rest upon. In late June, my father brought Maureen to the States and hid her away in a New York hospital until she gave birth. My mother returned several weeks later, looking weak and peaked and explained her appearance to stunned friends by telling them that, at the age of forty-three, she had quietly given birth to her only child.”