The Devil's Cowboy (3 page)

She sighed. “I loved this place when we first came to see it. Even though it needed a lot of work, we were thrilled to find such an affordable home in this neighborhood. Dave and I spent hours fixing it up before we ever moved in. I remember how excited we were when we realized there were hardwood floors under all that outdated carpeting. We sanded and stained and refinished every inch ourselves.”

She stared down at a gleaming oak floor, covered here and there with Oriental rugs. “I never sensed anything, never heard anything. But then we never do when Dave is around. It’s only when the children and I are alone that things happen.” Glancing at her watch, she jumped up.

“Oops, gotta get moving. Amy likes to be there in time to play on the playground for a few minutes before class starts. Do you want to come along?”

Ellen shook her head. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take advantage of the time to look around a little.”

“Good idea.” Melanie nodded. “Feel free to explore anywhere you want. I won’t be gone long. Make yourself comfortable. Your room is at the top of the stairs on the left.”

As soon as the front door clicked shut behind them, Ellen closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath. Despite the sun shining through the windows, she shivered. The banquette was definitely a cold spot.

She began wandering through the empty rooms, noting the sensations her body absorbed. A chill in the hallway, a heaviness in the formal living room. She didn’t know about other psychics, but in Ellen’s experience, evil didn’t feel hot, like coming into contact with lost souls burning for eternity in the fires of hell. Instead, negative energy was cold—a palpable drop in temperature that varied in intensity depending on the strength of the malevolent forces that were present.

This house had a definite chill that even the warmth of the October sun outside couldn’t dispel. She left her suitcase in the hall and headed upstairs empty-handed. There would be time to unpack later. Right now she wanted to experience whatever the house threw at her before her feelings were influenced by Melanie’s experiences.

Upstairs she was drawn to the second door on the left. Peeking inside, she found a cheerful room with white walls and decorative accents in primary colors. The small bed sported a Superman comforter and the bookshelves lining one wall were crammed with Legos and action figures.

But all the playful figurines couldn’t dispel the sense of doom she felt when she stepped into the room. She closed her eyes and it appeared clearly in her mind—a huge lurking shadow in the far corner, shrouded in a dark cloak, head bent to fit into the room. Adam was right. There were wings. But these weren’t delicate, feathery angel wings. Long and thin, with jagged black edges, they sprang from the shoulders of the creature and scraped the floor, even though the figure was easily nine feet tall.

Ellen called on her spirit guides for protection and backed out of the room. She wasn’t going to tackle a fight with the dark side until she had a better idea of what forces were at work here.

Turning away, she headed across the hall. Popping her head into the master bedroom, she breathed a bit easier. The heaviness was here too, but not as severe. She moved on. The room at the top of the stairs that Melanie said would be hers was a serene shade of turquoise, like the water in a tropical lagoon. The atmosphere was heavy here as well, but it felt more like sadness and despair than evil.

Ellen had no fear of spending a night in the room. She’d moved often over the years and knew how to set up a space to make it a sanctuary of peace and security in no time at all. Whenever she traveled, she brought along a handful of treasured objects, things that took up very little space but held great meaning to her. She always arranged them together, setting up a kind of makeshift altar. A tiny angel statue she’d had since she was a child, a couple of crystals, a white votive candle in a shallow ceramic bowl made by her grandmother… and in the center, her stone.
Her
center. Worn smooth from centuries of endless waves tumbling it against the sand, it was smooth and black and flat, fitting perfectly into the palm of her hand.

She’d found it on a solitary walk along the shores of Lake Michigan one blustery winter day when she had the beach all to herself. The stone spoke to her soul—spoke of timelessness and continuity. It had been here eons ago and would be here still when she was long gone. The stone reminded her that no matter what trials she might face along the way in this life, one truth was certain… that her
self
,
her essence, would endure, would go on to face another day, and each lifetime she lived was meant to smooth away the rough edges, leaving her soul stronger and more pure.

Ellen glanced around, picturing the altar she’d set up on the tall chest across from the bed, where she could see it when she opened her eyes each morning. Then she left the room to continue her tour of the house.

Across the hall from the turquoise room was another bright child’s space, cheerful yellow walls decorated with drawings in crayon and a poster from the latest Disney princess movie. Ellen moved closer to study the drawings. Stick figures obviously meant to represent mommy and daddy, always with two smaller stick figures, one male and one female. In one they were playing ball in the yard, in another they sat at a dinner table. Yet another depicted the family walking in a garden that was a riot of color.

Sure enough, Amy had faithfully reproduced what she’d been experiencing. Every drawing set in the house had a shapeless dark huddled mass in it somewhere. Only in the outdoor pictures was the figure missing. Ellen shook her head. No wonder the child was withdrawn, timid. Facing spirits alone was terrifying for anyone, especially when you were just a child and had no experience dealing with them.

Ellen stood in the center of the room, eyes closed once again, and breathed slowly in and out, emptying her mind. Images poured in—a jumbled mass. She heard screaming, arguing, felt punching and kicking… then pitiful, heart-wrenching sobs and the unmistakable click of a door locking her in. Trapped. She was trapped in here forever. Ellen felt the rising panic. Her breath quickened, her heart raced.

She forced herself to stay calm.
I can open my eyes at any time,
she reminded herself,
and it will all go away
.
This spirit’s reality is not my reality
. She murmured a prayer for the soul in distress and disconnected herself from the images. Still, it took all her powers of concentration to wrench herself away, back to the present moment.

She moved out of the room, deeply worried. Contrary to what some New Age practitioners preached, this wouldn’t be a simple matter of burning a little sage, thinking happy thoughts, then clapping her hands three times and saying “Be gone.” And even after the entities departed, the children were going to need someone who understood what had happened here to talk them through the trauma they’d experienced.

There were at least two distinct presences in the house, maybe more. Were they all related by some event in the past? Ellen knew she’d have to delve further into why the entities were here. Whether they felt their souls were trapped or they were choosing to remain here, past experience taught her that freeing a spirit from earthly ties sometimes meant becoming a therapist to the departed.

She heard the door open downstairs and Melanie’s voice rang out.

“I’ll be right down,” she replied. She left the room, her mood lightening as soon as she was on the stairs.

Melanie was animated, looking far more cheerful than she had when she left.

“We’re having coffee in an hour with someone who was recommended by a member of my church,” Melanie announced. “You know, Dallas is very big on faith-based groups. We’ve started attending a church here that one of my neighbors recommended. I finally told several friends in my prayer circle about the goings-on here a few days ago, right around the time that I contacted you. They told a few friends… and things just kind of mushroomed from there. Anyway, one of the girls told me this morning about a man who may be able to help. According to her, he’s been called in on other situations. She didn’t really say what kind, just hinted around about ghosts and demonic possession and such. His name is Rafe—Rafe Cummings. Sheryl spoke to him last night and gave me his number when I ran into her at the preschool Amy goes to. I called him right away and he agreed to meet with us.”

She must have seen the look of surprise on Ellen’s face because she hurried on. “I hope you don’t mind? It’s not as though I don’t think you can handle this whole thing. I just thought maybe another…” Her voice trailed away, as though realizing that despite her urgent plea for help, she had just shown how little she believed in the abilities of her childhood friend.

Ellen swallowed a pang of disappointment. Honestly, she didn’t blame Melanie for bringing in an ‘expert.’ The woman was grasping at anything she could find to ease the pain her babies were going through. And it was easier sometimes to believe that a stranger could have psychic powers that it was to accept those abilities in a friend you’d known since childhood.

“It’s fine, Melanie. I’d be happy to meet with him. You know, I’ve worked with a fellow psychic medium before.”

“Is that what you are… a psychic medium?” Melanie sounded curious. “Psychics talk to dead people and see the future, right?”

“It’s mediums who connect with those who have passed. All mediums are psychic but not all psychics are mediums. Psychics
perceive,
mediums
receive
. That’s a simple way to explain it. Actually, we all have different abilities, different ways to connect with the world outside commonly accepted reality. Some people see entities, others hear voices. Some have flashes of intuition, others see visions of past or future events. Many have what they call a spirit guide, who appears to them either in dreams or while they’re awake, and answers questions or makes them aware of a situation where their help is needed.”

“How do you do whatever it is you do?” It was the first time Melanie had ever asked a direct question about Ellen’s gift since the night she’d confessed her abilities.

“I close my eyes, call upon my angels for protection and guidance, empty my mind… and spirits appear. They communicate with me by injecting their thoughts and feelings, their special knowledge, directly into my mind, either with sights and sounds or with symbols. Sometimes they are spirits from the past; sometimes they bring me glimpses of what my client’s future holds. I don’t hear voices anymore. I did when I was a child. I could see them clearly then and hear their voices too. But I couldn’t control when they came to me and it was a very difficult way to live—always being bombarded with souls needing something from me, whether it be acknowledgment of their existence or help in leaving this world and moving on to the next.”

Memories poured in, painful memories of a childhood spent being torn between two worlds and feeling as though she didn’t truly belong in either one. She stopped for a moment, took a deep breath to center herself, and went on. “Over the years, I learned how to shut them out, only allowing them into my mind when I was ready. Moving to Asheville was the best thing I ever did. I’ve been able to connect with others like myself and learn how to harness and hone my gifts.”

Melanie was speechless. Ellen could see that her friend was surprised at the depth of her knowledge and abilities. Clearly she hadn’t expected her childhood pal to possess such strange skills. It was as though Ellen had suddenly shown Melanie she could take flight.

It was time to lighten the mood. She put her arm around Melanie’s shoulders and laughed. “Come on. Let’s go meet this ghost buster of yours,” she said, leading her friend out the door.

Chapter Three

Rafe Cummings sauntered into Starbucks. He paused a moment, surveying the crowded room and drawing the attention of half a dozen women of varying ages who suffered a pang of regret that they were no longer free.

He wasn’t oblivious to the attention. Standing six foot two—not counting the stacked heels of his hand-tooled leather boots—wearing faded jeans that fit him like a second skin and a battered Stetson that could have come right from the wardrobe department of a Hollywood Western, Rafe was used to having women throw themselves at him. From jailbait teenagers who swore they were ‘almost twenty,’ which usually meant ‘barely fifteen but wearing loads of makeup,’ to bored soccer moms who slipped him their phone numbers at church socials, Rafe drew women to him like a sci-fi tractor beam.

Maybe it was the old-fashioned courtly manners, the ‘yes, ma’am’ in a drawl as sweet and smooth as wild honey. Maybe it was the crooked smile or the way his deep brown eyes radiated warmth when he looked at them. Having the strong, lean body of an athlete sure didn’t hurt.

Whatever it was, Rafe enjoyed the attention without abusing it. He winked at one gray-haired granny he caught sizing him up shamelessly. She giggled, blushing like a schoolgirl. He gazed around, zeroing in on two women sitting alone at a table in a corner of the room. There was a palpable air of distress coming from the slim blonde.

The woman’s dark-haired companion had her back to the room, but Rafe felt himself drawn to her aura. Tightly controlled, but brimming with repressed sensuality. He could feel the power vibrating in her like the strings of a Stradivarius being tuned by a maestro. Rafe instantly recognized another gifted soul.

She turned her head as if she, too, sensed the presence of a fellow practitioner. Her face was oval, framed by a cloud of dark hair that fell in waves to her shoulders. A smooth forehead, slightly arched brows… he met her eyes and suddenly time flowed backwards. He saw those deep brown eyes over and over in lightning quick flashes—peering out from behind the filmy veil of an Arabian princess, framed by a sleek black Egyptian wig, staring boldly at him through the feathered mask of a Renaissance reveler. Although he’d never seen this woman before, he
knew
those eyes. During his endless loop of lifetimes, those eyes had gazed at him again and again, drawn him in, warmed his heart.