The Tapestry (6 page)

    She didn't like to think of herself as a “fortune teller” or a
“psychic”, as the majority of people that advertised these sorts of services were all scam artists preying on the vulnerable and weak to make a bit of cash. She had a real gift although more often than not it was like a curse. She could converse with the spirits of ones that had passed on but with so much more detail and accuracy than any of these gypsy funfair types that gave the same vague reading to everyone that passed through their curtains.

    She lived in a very affluent part of Manchester as her clients had always paid top dollar for her services because they knew they would only ever hear the truth from her, whether it be good or bad.

    This had also been her curse though. Her grandmother had also possessed the same gift and she had told Clara.

   
‘There will be times when the truth must never be spoken; no good can come of it my child. Sometimes the knowledge of the truth can do more damage than the truth itself’.

    Clara had never really grasped the true meaning of this until three years ago when she decided to stop giving readings. One of her younger clients came to her with suspicions that her husband had been cheating on her. She will always remember the look of hope on the young girls face. She wanted Clara to tell her that she was wrong, but lies were not what her clients paid her for. Clara had told her to come back to her in a week and she would have an answer for her. Clara had a number of gifts and one of them was the ability to astral travel. She would sit in her comfy chair by the fireplace without a sound to distract her. She would then begin to control her breathing and bring it down to the bare minimum. It was a
lmost a hypnotic state. What Clara did over the course of the next few days was to leave her body in the chair by the fireplace and visit her clients’ house. She had learned to do this through teachings from her spirit guide Joseph. There was always an astral cord which connected the physical body to the spirit which could not be broken by any earthly means. But if the cord was somehow snapped and the spirit didn't return to the body in time then it would surely mean death. And there are all sorts of entities on the astral plane, some good and a lot bad. She explained this to her clients beforehand, which is why she was able to charge such large sums for her services.

    She had watched the comings and goings at her client Valerie’s house for three nights now and followed her husband Jonathan to work and to the Golf club. Obviously he had no idea he was being trailed by a ghostly super detective. Clara was about to give up and report the good news that all her clients husband was guilty of was the occasional bit of harmless flirting at the club.

    Then on the fourth day of tagging along, he got a call on his cell whilst at work. He worked as a branch manager at a city based computer software company. Clara tried to hear the words which were being said but in the astral world it’s very much like a dream state that you enter into and there will be times when what is before you will be as clear as day, and there will be times when it is like looking through pebbled glass. It was like this at the time she heard the call. Call it her sixth sense or call it intuition but she knew from his lifted mood after the call that it was relevant to the investigation. She decided to wake herself up and tune in again in a short while, hopefully she would get a
better signal
, as she liked to put it, and more often than not it worked. All she had to do to wake up was to see herself going back into her body in the armchair and then she was there. She would wake up with a jolt as if she had just landed from a short fall. She knew this was just the soul re-entering the physical body it inhabited.

    When she had re-charged her batteries with a little rest she rejoined Jonathan later just as he was finishing work for the day. She was right in her earlier predictions. This time she had a much better signal and it was just as if she were a passenger in his car. Everything was as clear as day. He drove to a nearby hotel in the city.
He was obviously out to impress...as you entered the foyer the object that caught your attention before anything else was the great chandelier that hung from the ceiling. The hotel was six storeys high and the chandelier descended on a thick steel chain from the ceiling to within a few feet of the grand staircase that led up to the next floor. It was about eight feet in diameter and roughly five feet high.... the crystals that adorned it were a sight to behold, and yet it didn't seem to brighten the room as you would think as the carpets were of a dark blue mottled with spots of a lighter blue which was very unappealing to the eye. The grand staircase was probably forty steps high before you got to the first floor landing which led off in both directions. The banisters were a golden painted wood, which with the blue carpet and extravagant chandelier just added to the desperate attempt to be grandiose which had failed miserably Clara now thought after getting over her initial awe of the chandelier.    

    He passed under the great chandelier and booked himself in and then
called Valerie from his cell whilst he was stood next to the reception desk, close enough that she could hear general chatter and phones ringing but not close enough that she could make out what was being said or work out where he was and told her he had to work late as there were clients coming in to see the big boss tomorrow and he had been asked to stay behind and make preparations. Clara knew now he was lying to Valerie at least.

   
As he was stood at the bar of the residents’ lounge which was underneath the great staircase just past the bank of elevators, a tall slim blonde walked over to him as he stood at the bar and kissed him on the cheek as he squeezed her... Clara didn't know her name but recognised her to be the girl from the reception desk at his office. They had a few drinks and then retired to a room he had booked for them.

    She didn't see the point in following him up to the
room; she was wise enough and old enough to know what would be going on up there. She had all she needed now.

    The next day she called Valerie and told her she had the information she wan
ted and arranged a time for them to meet at Clara’s house to discuss the events which had taken place.

    Valerie had seemed to take the news quite well, it was as if she had known for sure anyway but just wanted it confirming. Clara offered her condolences and wished her the best.

    ‘If ever you need a chat just give me a call, I will always be here for you’. And she meant it too, she felt awful for having to confirm the poor girls fears, but better to know now than be played a fool for the rest of your life. That's how Clara had seen it at the time, and now so wishes she could turn back the clock. She gave Valerie a tight hug before she closed the door on her client for the last time.

    When she awoke the next day her heart missed a beat when she read the headline of the daily paper that had landed on her welcome mat.

    “LOCAL WOMAN KILLS HERSELF AND HUSBAND IN FIT OF RAGE”

    She didn't need to read the rest of the article to know who the story was about. There was something in Valerie's eyes when she left that should have warned Clara. But she had done her
job; it was now down to Valerie what she did with the information. She sat down at the kitchen table with a heavy heart, she read through the rest of the article as if it were a family obituary. She should have known that hearing the truth could have worse consequences than her lying to a client... but no, she was so adamant that she would always tell her clients the truth that she never even thought of their safety and their well being. She thought that what she did was like a public service and she would never tarnish her reputation by not telling the truth...no matter who got hurt in the process,
damn her ethics
. The article went on to say how neighbours had heard shouting and screaming for an hour or so and then there were two loud reports. Which could only have been gunshots? There was an interval of roughly three minutes between the two gunshots and Clara could not imagine what was going through Valerie's head between killing her husband and then deciding to end her own life. She often wondered if Valerie thought of her in those last minutes, and if so, what her thoughts were. Did she wish she had never met her? Clara could bet that she did. She would never be able to forgive herself for what she had been a part of.

                                                      
CHAPTER TEN

    That had been three years ago now, and whilst she still had the nightmares and the self hate for what had happened, she had started to believe that she had no control over the events of that night. She hadn’t seen a client since. She had no need to, she had saved enough money to see her through to the end of her days, her house was paid for and seeing as she had never bore any children, she had no other financial ties. Not that she and Stan hadn’t tried, she had begged for IVF but that meant determining whether the problem lay with him or her. Not something Stan was ever willing to find out,
“A man who shoots blanks may as well be called Mary
” he had always said.

   
So she had decided three years ago that never again would she meddle in another person’s life. She still visited the astral plane as it was like an addiction. Once you have seen the wonders of the astral world and also some of the terrible, terrible things that go on. You can’t seem to pull yourself away. It would have been like living a half life. Plus her spirit guide Joseph was always there to comfort her. Joseph has been trapped on the astral plane for what to him seemed like an eternity, although I guess a hundred years is an eternity to most people.

    Joseph’s wife and newborn son had died f
rom complications in childbirth, and he had found the pain too much to bear. On the very same night he had taken a deadly cocktail of pills and never woken up. He had done so in the hope that he would be with them on the other side. To this day he is still searching for his beloved and his newly born son. He had roamed the astral planes for years, searching and searching for his two loves when he came across Clara. She had been visiting the astral plane but had come across a soul snatcher. These creatures had scissors made from the rock of Agartha which could cut the cord between a person and its travelling spirit. He knew she would be dead and used for food if he didn't act fast. So he hurtled towards the soul snatcher, which in its very nature is a cowardly being. It is small and gray in colour. The yellow eyes bulge from tentacle like protrusions on its head, It preys on the defenceless. Joseph rose up to three times his height and projected flames from his mouth. He didn't know if the soul snatcher would be feared of flames or not but it did the trick. The little monster dropped the scissors and fled, probably back to Agartha. He then advised Clara of the dangers of astral travelling and that if she ever wanted to visit his planes again, to seek him out and he would be her spirit guide whenever she ventured there again.

    He was true to his
word; he looked after Clara just as he would look after his beloved Annabelle if ever he found her. He always warned her of any coming dangers or major happenings on the astral plane. He could not have known what was going to happen on the night of Valerie's death as his senses were now finely tuned to the astral world and not of the earthly world... But this night he was roaming the astral plane, still in wonder after a hundred years at the many strange and weird spectacles before him. Although he presumed he was now one of them, when the sky above and around him changed from a deep purple to an empty black. There was nothing before him. The sky was gone and in its place was just emptiness. Then came the sound, the sound was that of an insane beast cackling and it was heard throughout the planes...the creatures that inhabited the planes stood stock still, fear injected into their hearts much like his own
. What was this sound and where was it coming from?
The very ethereal ground beneath his shadowy form reverberated with each cackle. It was a sound that would rip your very soul in two. Lightning began to flash up ahead, he could see clouds turn to red and explode in defiance of the noise itself. There were tears in the sky and it seemed like the very fabric between the two worlds was weakening. There were drops of the liquidy substance that they walked upon in the astral plane breaking free and falling upwards to actually fall out of the sky. And then it began to rain, something which has never happened in the astral plane, it was coming from the tear in the sky. The creatures all around him began to run, fly or aimlessly scuttle away from whatever was coming... for something terrible was definitely coming.

                                  
              
CHAPTER ELEVEN

    It was a big old house and Clara had been rattling round inside on her own since Clara’s husband “Stanley” had passed away of stomach cancer over five years ago and yet sometimes she could still feel his presence in the house. Clara had tried on many occasions to contact her deceased husband and even searched for him on the astral planes but she never once got the slight hint that he had waited around to see her. She felt cheated at this as he knew what she did for a living and he knew that she would come looking for him. But then there were days when she worried for his soul as,
what if he wasn’t able to contact her? What if he was being kept from contacting her?
And why?
The implications of that thought were too horrendous to consider. But she couldn’t keep her mind from wandering as she sat in the comfy chair by the fire as just to her right was a small occasional table with a picture taken of her and Stanley on their last holiday together. The picture was in a gilded metal frame and as she picked it up she ran one loving finger over his face. They were in Mallorca at the time; they had gone every year since their marriage. She was only twenty six when they married and he was four years her senior. He called her his little button as he had always thought she had a little button nose. He used it to jibe her sometimes but secretly she loved it. In the picture he had just leant in for a kiss and told his little button how much he loved her.