Soul Search: A Zackie Story

by Reyna Favis

  The spirit vehemently shook his head no and he conveyed the words, “God’s will.” Zackie laid her head on his shoulder and it looked like he took strength from her touch. The spirit sighed and leaned into her body, wrapping his arms around her.

  “Watch his hands,” Cam muttered to me. As the spirit of John Luckenbach seemed to calm and the tears ceased to flow, I saw a faint glow where the hands should be. We stood quietly and after a few minutes, the glow became brighter and hands emerged from the light.

  “You’re ready, then?” Cam looked closely at the spirit for confirmation. “Stand and follow Zackie. She will take you home.” I saw the spirit rise and take hold of Zackie’s collar. As the dog led the spirit away from the grave, Cam said to me, “They need to move quickly now, before he relapses back into his former state of mind. Shield your eyes. Do not look into the place Zackie goes.” Turning away towards the church, I remembered the last time this happened and I hoped not to be blinded again.

  A massive flash of light erupted behind me at the same time that I detected a red blinking light near the church wall. Squinting into the darkness, the shadow of a man was revealed holding what was probably a camera. “Cam! There’s someone here.” We both stared at the blinking red light and then began walking towards it.

  Cam bellowed as he advanced on the man. “Hoy! What are you doing there?”

  The camera lowered and I detected maybe a moment’s indecision on the part of the person filming. The man holding the camera stood his ground and did not move. “I saw everything you did. I have it on film.”

  As we got nearer, I recognized the idiot man. Cam folded his arms across his chest. “What exactly do you think you saw?”

  “You were talking to something out there. I saw the girl almost fall.”

  “We were only paying our respects to one of my ancestors,” Cam improvised. “The dog jumped on the girl and she almost fell. I’m afraid my dog is not as well behaved as she ought to be.” As if a demonstration were necessary, Zackie took that moment to appear out of the darkness and to jump on Cam. She then proceeded to stick her nose in the idiot man’s crotch. As I shook my head in disbelief, she turned to look at me with a grin that showed the tips of her canines. Cam had not lied about her sense of humor.

  The man backed away from Zackie. “No, I don’t believe you. I saw a light just now. It flashed on and then off. I can show it to you.” The man pressed some buttons on the camera and a replay of what we’d just done came up on the screen. The recording was infrared and showed shapes outlined in red, yellow and purple moving about on the screen. Fortunately, the recording lacked a clear sound. He had been too far away from the action and none of our words had been captured.

  Cam pointed to the screen just as the recording showed a dog shape jumping on a human shape. “What did I tell you?”

  The man narrowed his eyes. “Keep watching.” The film concluded with a small flash of white light and then reddish yellow shapes that must have been us approaching the camera. I wondered at the small flash of light, given my experiences with the real thing. Apparently, technology could not capture what I sensed.

  Cam snorted. “You saw a firefly. What of it?”

  “It’s too early in the season for fireflies. I know what I saw.” The man’s jaw set stubbornly as he flipped the camera closed. “You were talking to something out there. This is interesting footage and I’d like to use it for my show. I’m willing to pay you.”

  Cam shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no.”

  The man scrubbed at his face with his free hand and looked up tiredly at Cam and me. I stared at his smeared eyeliner. “I’m sorry. We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. My name is Lucas Tremaine. I’m not trying to embarrass anyone here. You can see from the footage that no one can tell who you are. Would you please allow me to use this clip? I promise, I won’t reveal your identities.”

  The last thing I wanted was publicity. “We won’t sign the release. You can’t use this recording.” He was right in saying that the infrared recording could not easily identify me, but this feeling was not rational. This was stark paranoia. What if they could augment images or voice on the clip and things became much clearer in the broadcast? My family was convinced I was a danger to myself and anything that had the potential of helping them to locate me was out of the question.

  Lucas’ face darkened at the rejection and I steeled myself for further arguments. Instead, he surprised me by just giving a curt nod, turning on his heel and walking away.

  I shook my head and kept my eye on the retreating figure. “That seemed too easy.”

  Cam put his hands on his hips and also watched the man. “I think we have to keep an eye out for that one.”

  I chewed on my cuticle and worried. “He seems way too interested in us, but I’m not sure what we can do about it.”

  “Let’s just be sure he’s not around when we’re out and about. We should go and find out what he drives.” Cam began walking towards the parking lot at the far side of the church and I followed mutely.

  Just as we rounded the corner of the building, a red Nissan pulled out of the parking lot and into the street. Zackie proceeded to chase the car a small way down the road.

  Cam threw his hands up in disgust. “Would you cut that out! Enough already with the bad dog behavior!” Returning to us from the road, Zackie again flashed the wolfish grin. “Honestly, I don’t know where she comes up with this stuff!”

  Cam’s huffing and irritation were interrupted by a vengeful growl from my stomach. I patted my belly to calm the beasts within. “What do you think of getting something to eat and doing a debrief?”

  To his credit, he only looked slightly put upon to endure another meal with me when I was so obviously ravenous. “I suppose we ought to.” I resolved to try to do better with my table manners this time.

  CHAPTER 5

  We met at the Blairstown Diner and as was becoming habit, Zackie was fed first and allowed to sleep off the day’s events in Cam’s truck. Once in the diner, I ordered the breakfast for dinner, since it appeared to have a fabulous amount of food. The plate came stacked high with eggs, hash browns and toast. I dug in with gusto, temporarily forgetting my resolution to improve my table manners. I was soon dabbing at my shirt, which had become stained with coffee and jam. Cam had a cheese steak with a garden salad on the side and managed to avoid looking embarrassed on my behalf.

  After the meal, Cam cast his gaze about the restaurant. “Did you know that they filmed a scene for Friday The 13th right here in this diner?”

  I slapped the table with my palm. “And the Moravian Cemetery! That’s why the gate looked so familiar to me.” My eyes drifted around the room as I thought over the day’s events. There was a lot I didn’t understand. “How come the bride did not make an appearance and why was there only one spirit in the cemetery? I would have thought that given the chance to get someone’s notice, every soul on the premises would be clamoring for attention.”

  “Who comes through depends largely on the sibyl present and his or her state of mind.”

  I cocked my head. “What’s a sibyl? I only know the term as a priestess and oracle in the Greek myths.”

  “I think that was the original meaning, but this term has been used in my family for generations to describe those with the gift. As a male in the lineage, I was always a little affronted with the sexism so blatantly displayed in this naming convention. We might be few, but there have always been males in my family who could sense the dead. I’d really much prefer a more gender-neutral term.”

  Obviously, this was a sore point for Cam, but I had too much on my mind to pursue this line of discussion right now. I tried to steer the conversation back to the lessons of the day. “Okay, back to what you were saying… Which one of us made it possible for John Luckenbach to come through? And also, you asked me to call out the bride. How was I supposed to do that? I don’t think I have anything in common with her.”

  “From what I can tell, t
here are both passive and active mechanisms to allowing spirits to come through. When I asked you to call to the bride, this would be actively seeking out a spirit. I gave you a short description of how she would appear and the general area where she tended to materialize. Even weak sibyls can call forth a spirit if he or she knows what to look for. John Luckenbach appeared, I think, because of your state of mind. You may have lingering guilt over how you interacted with the dead in the past and your emotions resonated with his.”

  I nodded my head. I could not disagree with this assessment. We sat in silence for a moment while I collected my thoughts.

  Cam pointed delicately at me. “Would you mind very much removing the ice cream from your hands? I find it distracting.”

  “Oh, sorry.” I dipped my napkin in the water and began scrubbing my hands. I didn’t recall eating the ice cream with my hands, but based on the evidence, something of the sort must have happened. “So, the dead boy appeared because…?”

  “His most prominent emotions were feelings of isolation and a longing to go home. Perhaps you were experiencing something similar.”

  “Home is the last place I would want to go. I’ll admit to feeling a little lonely out here in- the-middle-of-nowhere-New Jersey, but you know how it is. It’s impossible to have friends who won’t eventually think you’re crazy. It’s just easier not getting too close to people.”

  “Why did you join a SAR team? There is quite a bit of inter-dependency among team members in this work. You wouldn’t be able to remain anonymous for long.”

  “It was mostly an escape from New York. I made the deliberate choice to live in a more rural area because I thought I’d have fewer encounters compared to the city. I joined a wilderness response team because I thought this would make it easier to find friends if I were in the empty woods and there was nothing to draw out my more erratic behavior.” I smiled ruefully. “I didn’t realize there were mutual aid agreements and we’d be called out into the suburbs and cities. It’s also not like the woods were really empty, anyway.” Between murder victims who were heartlessly dumped in the woods and all the lost who would never find their way out, the woods were far from empty. The deeper I ventured into the woods, the more time I spent under the trees, the more dead I found waiting for me.

  Cam grunted an agreement. “So, what happened when you arrived here?”

  “At first, I thought I had finally found a solution. I was left alone for quite some time before it all started up again. God, that was depressing! ‘Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in....’” I smiled sadly, mimicking the line from The Godfather. Clearing my throat, I continued. “Some of the dead were people who got lost and were never found, like the boy. Others were suicides who were furious that I found them. There was also a murder victim. Someone dumped her body in the deep woods. She was the only one I did something for, but it was completely unintentional. She found me as I was hiding for a dog that was cross trained in human remains detection. The dog gave his handler the alert they use for HRD and the body was found.” I looked down at my hands and sighed. “Cam, I feel awful about these spirits now, what I did to make them leave me... They’re still out there.”

  His eyes were sympathetic as he tried to give me comfort. “You did the best you could. If you remember today, there are dangers to the sibyl during interactions. I think in the absence of proper training, your instincts for self-preservation kicked in. You understood the risks of interacting with them from hard experience. Fighting them off would seem the only natural response.” I looked at him gratefully as he continued. “We can maybe do something if you can recall where you encountered them. I’ll consider it part of your training.”

  My heart leaped as I realized that we would be able to help them. “I marked them all on my GPS, so I could avoid them in the future. I can find them again!” I thought a little and then a question struck me. “Why can’t we just summon them? Instead of going to where they are, why can’t they come to us?”

  “From my experience, there are three factors involved: time, distance and emotion. The longer someone is dead, the less chance that a sibyl can detect them. They seem to fade in time. If you think about it, you hear about the occasional Roman soldier in Britain, but it’s really rare that anyone sees one of our Paleolithic ancestors.” Cam began ticking off the points he was making on his fingers. “Also, the spirits are often emotionally tied to the area where they died. They can sometimes be fearful of losing contact with what remains of their bodies. So the farther away you can get, the less likely that they will follow. Also, the less likely they’ll hear you if you summon them. The exception to this is if there are high emotions involved, emotions that can overcome their bonds of place. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of being followed. They can be awfully persistent about having their needs met and desperation can give them energy that they wouldn’t otherwise have.”

  I was starting to fade. This was a lot of information to take in, I had a full belly and it had been a long day. Tomorrow was Monday and I had to go to work. I asked Cam how we would manage my training during a working week.

  “This will be kind of like SAR at times, except employers are going to be even less forgiving for any time taken. Just like SAR volunteers, you might have to take vacation days or call in sick when you’re called out. Think about it… If you tell your employer that you need to find a lost child, in general, they will tell you to find the kid on your own time. If you tell them you need to free an earthbound spirit, I think that will go over even less well. For the planned work, we can try to schedule things during your off hours.”

  I bit my lip. “What about your job? Our hours may not coincide. I have a bunch of part-time jobs that I have to work to make ends meet. Sometimes, I have to show up on the spur of the moment when they need someone to work some hours.”

  “That’s one of the benefits of being a genealogist. I, of course, have to be responsive to my clients, but my hours are my own.”

  “Wow, don’t break a nail or anything.” After thinking about it for a minute, I sighed dramatically. “Sucks to be me, I guess.”

  Cam mimicked an upper crusty accent. “The benefits of education, my dear.”

  I bristled a little at that. “I am educated. I went to college. The problem is that the world does not need another history major at the moment.”

  He looked thoughtful for an instant. “Well, we’ll see what we can do about that.”

  # # #

  The day started off as you’d expect for a Monday. It was cool and raining and I desperately needed coffee. In truth, it was barely Monday. Getting up at 3 AM every day to prep for and deliver my newspaper route was a pill, but aside from the sleep deprivation this sometimes caused, this was not a difficult job. The upside was that it almost paid about half my rent every month. Since the other job was waitressing in a small family restaurant, I could sort of make ends meet most months. The downside was SAR equipment. This, along with gas money to get me to training and call outs, really cut into my discretionary funds. I had no illusions about saving for retirement.

  I thought about the meals I’d taken with Cam and what a splurge that was for me. If we eat out again, I decided that I would have to convince him to pay by the ounce for ready hot food from a supermarket. We could eat it in his truck or go to a park with picnic benches. An alternative might be to actually cook, but I shuddered at the thought of my own cooking. This probably accounted in a large part for my near constant state of starvation.

  Going through the motions of my day, I picked up and assembled my papers, delivered them by 6:30 AM and then went back home to shower, change and eat a peanut butter sandwich. My route was relatively small, so it didn’t take me nearly as long as the folks who have several hundred papers to deliver in a morning. I was at the waitressing job in time to start the breakfast shift and just kept going through lunch. I hated split shift work. I would much rather work straight through rather than split up my hours between breakfast an
d dinner, but I don’t always get what I want and I need the hours. When I didn’t get enough hours, the paper route helped fill the gap. By 3 PM, I was done for the day and feeling a bit ragged. Could be worse, could have had a call out, I thought. I grabbed some leftovers from the lunch special that the restaurant was about to chuck and headed home.

  After eating a quick lunch, I put the leftovers in the refrigerator and then washed my face of the debris from the meal. I next went to see the yellow and black labs named Heckle and Jeckle. Joel Armstrong, the landlord, gave me a break in rent for walking his dogs, but in addition to the monetary incentive, I also felt kind of sorry for the dogs. The guy was a contractor and worked pretty long hours. By the time the dogs see me, they really need to get outside to pee. Just as Heckle and Jeckle finished dragging me around the block, I saw Joel’s red pickup truck pull into his driveway.

  I gasped out a greeting as the dogs hauled me to the truck. “You’re home early today.” Joel clambered out of the truck, not bothering to close the door. He looked at me with wide eyes and ran shaking hands through his graying hair. He was pale and his dark eyes were sunken. I thought that he looked like he might throw up. “Joel, are you all right?” The dogs could sense something was wrong and scrambled to be close to him, pushing the tops of their heads against his legs and whining. He finally squatted down and pulled the dogs to him, hugging them tightly and breathing heavily. I dropped the leads and just stood there uncertainly.

  “I’m not all right.” His voice was muffled as he pressed his face into his dog’s fur. “I may never be all right again after that…”

  “What’s happened? Did someone on your crew get hurt?” Joel was a big man and usually pretty easy going. He was not someone who was easily shaken or intimidated. Seeing his reaction, I was starting to get really concerned.