by Lisa Cach
But now there was doubt within him about his chosen profession, and that doubt festered like a cyst, threatening to burst and spread its infection throughout his system.
Maybe it wasn’t a hero that kids were tacking to their bedroom walls when they bought a poster of the Saint. Maybe it was a real-life villain—appealing in his silver Lycra pants and his white surcoat with the red cross of St. George, but a force of evil all the same.
Maybe he was what in the world of wrestling was called a “heel”: one of the bad guys.
He looked at his sister with her compassionate eyes, who, whatever foolish choices she had made, had always made them with a loving heart. She was, and always had been, part of the light.
“I worry I might be in the wrong,” he admitted to her. “Maybe I really am doing more harm than good. How can I continue wrestling if that’s true? What if …” He widened his eyes and lowered his voice to Darth Vader pitch, playing at melodrama to hide a fear he didn’t want to admit was real, “What if I’ve gone to the Dark Side?”
“George, you silly lug. No one who knows you could ever think you were a bad person.”
“But what if all along I’ve been doing wrong, and I just didn’t recognize it? Saint George is supposed to slay the dragon. He’s supposed to defeat evil, not be a part of it.”
Athena gave a growl of frustration. “I could just kick those women in Missouri for doing this to you. Making a person doubt himself: that is an evil thing. They are the monsters, not you.”
“But what if …” It pained him to voice the thought. “What if they’re right?”
Athena stared at him for a long moment, her hazel eyes focused with an intensity that made him uneasy. At times like this she seemed to have the ability to see into his soul.
“All right, that’s it,” she said, blinking and releasing him from her gaze. “After you’ve tucked in Gabby, come down to the great room.”
His uneasiness increased. “What are you going to do?”
“Fix you, of course. We can’t have the Saint thinking he’s a devil, now can we?”
Chapter Three
As a child, George had once stayed home from school with the chickenpox and spent his days on the couch, watching television and sipping 7-Up. Somewhere between Days of our Lives and black-and-white reruns of Perry Mason, he’d found the 1938 Errol Flynn movie The Adventures of Robin Hood. For two hours of bliss he’d forgotten that he was covered with maddening, itchy spots and lost himself in Sherwood Forest.
Since that day, he had been a lover of all things medieval. He had a library full of books and movies set in the middle ages, and used to think he would give his left nut to live back then. He’d since grown more protective of the family jewels, but when he’d built his house, he’d built it on his childhood fantasies. The result was 8000 square feet of pseudo-English manor, with towers at each end and a drawbridge, planted in the middle of fifty acres of field and forest land.
The local papers had poked fun at the house when it was built, but George had never had a problem accepting the cheesiness of his own taste. I’ll take the cheese, you can have the whine was his motto. He had figured what the hell, let the public giggle about the fake wrestler in his fake castle. At least it would give them something to talk about over their morning bran flakes and coffee.
Eight thousand square feet was too much house for one man who was rarely home, though. He had turned over a suite of rooms to his parents, to use when they were not heeding the call of the open road in their Winnebago or wintering in the house he had bought them in Hawaii. Another suite went to Athena and Gabrielle.
Athena, who was a single mother, supervised the maintenance of the house and grounds, and volunteered at Gabby’s kindergarten. They were two activities he thought inarguably useful to all concerned.
She also practiced hypno-and aromatherapy.
He was considerably less convinced of the usefulness of either of those two activities, but Athena had a growing circle of clients who were happy to pay for her services, so who was he, a man who shaved his chest as a part of his job, to make smart-ass comments about her chosen profession?
“Christ, Athena, what’s that smell?”
He had tucked in Gabrielle and read her Goodnight, Moon, a book he loved almost as much as she did. Now he had come down to the great room to find the lights off, logs crackling in the oversized fireplace, and the dim flickerings of a dozen squat candles scattered on the floor around the two wingback chairs in front of the fire.
And then there was the stink.
“I’m burning sage to ward off malevolent influences.”
“You aren’t going to try putting me in a trance again, are you? My butt goes numb and I fall asleep.” He went and sat in the chair facing her. On the coffee table between them was a quartz crystal six inches high, set upright in a wrought-gold base of fluid lines and swirls.
Athena blew on the embers of sage burning in a bowl in her hands, then set the bowl on the hearth to her right. “I sometimes think it’s an elaborate scam you’ve pulled on the family, convincing us that you graduated from college. You’re too good at playing the muscle-headed moron when it suits you.”
“You gotta problem wid morons?” he asked in his best New Jersey tough-guy voice.
She made a face. “Dad was right: You should have majored in business instead of theater.”
“So speaks the women’s-studies major, the voice of practicality.” He picked up the crystal, turning it to catch the firelight, the flames reflecting off its facets. “What’s this for?”
“Isn’t it amazing? I found it at that antique mall in McMinnville, of all places. The dealer said she bought it from a deeply religious woman, whose husband had inherited it from his Hungarian grandmother. The grandmother had used it for fortune-telling, and the lady didn’t want such trappings of witchcraft in her house.”
He snorted. “Or the dealer ordered it from a wholesaler’s New Age catalog.”
She took the crystal back from him, holding it cradled in her hands. “No, it’s old. Very old.”
“All rocks are.”
“But not all rocks have a history. I can feel the past when I hold this. This crystal has been used by sensitives for centuries, I’m sure of it.”
And George was sure that his sister had a spectacular imagination.
Still, he had nothing else to do tonight, so he might as well humor her and let her try whatever mumbo jumbo she had in mind. Sometimes, in the midst of the rest of the nonsense, Athena came up with words that made a person stop and think about his situation in a new way. It was those rare gems of wisdom, and her personal warmth, that he thought accounted for her popularity with her clients.
“So, how is that crystal going to help me?”
“You’re going to focus on it while I guide you through a creative visualization exercise.”
“I knew it! You’re going to try to hypnotize me again. Get me an extra cushion for my butt.”
She set the crystal back on the coffee table, gave him a considering look, then reached down and took a plastic spray bottle from a compartmented tray beside her chair. She leaned forward and spritzed him.
He coughed as the scent of lavender filled the air.
“That’s to calm you,” Athena said. “As I’ve told you before, all hypnosis is actually self-hypnosis. It’s a focused state of concentration, that’s all.”
“Hell, I can concentrate. So, why is it that you can never hypnotize me?”
“Because it’s self-hypnosis, as I said. Look, you’re in a state akin to hypnosis a half-dozen times a day and you don’t even notice it. When you’re driving and suddenly realize you’ve gone ten miles and can’t remember a single one of them; when you’re engrossed in your reading and don’t hear someone speaking to you; when you’re in the ring, for heaven’s sake, and can shut out the noise and flashing lights well enough to focus on what you’re doing, that’s all self-hypnosis. Focused concentration. You’ve got to get rid o
f the idea that I’m taking control of you, and then you can do it.”
“And doing so is supposed to help me how?”
“I’m going to guide you into a waking dream where everything seems real, however strange, and yet where you are able to direct your own actions. During this visualization you will confront the issues that are troubling you, and will work through them. When you ‘wake up,’ you’ll have perfect recall of the experience.”
Athena had once given him a copy of Carl Jung’s Man and His Symbols for his birthday. He had put it in his bathroom to read during contemplative moments, and to his surprise he had been fascinated by Jung’s theories. His legs had fallen asleep on several thoughtful occasions as he had become engrossed in the book.
Jung had suggested, among other things, that people and events in dreams are symbolic of aspects of the dreamer, both good and bad, known and unacknowledged. To understand a dream was to understand oneself, and the issues with which one was struggling.
Or so Jung would have one believe.
“So if I do this, then I’ll wake up happy and sure of what’s right?”
“The answers to all our questions are already inside us. Sometimes we just need a little help in finding them.” His sister took out another bottle and spritzed him again. “Rosemary. For concentration.”
He wiped a bit of mist off his cheek. “You’re not going to do that while I’m in a trance, are you? I don’t want to wake up smelling like one of those froufrou soap shops you like so much.”
“I’m done for the moment.” She folded her hands in her lap, smiling with gentle innocence.
He eyed the tray. There were many more bottles.
He sighed, acting put-upon, although he was actually growing curious about the experiment. “Let’s get going, then. I don’t want to miss Letterman.”
“Heaven forbid! Now put your feet flat on the floor and let your hands rest palms up at your sides.”
He obeyed, then shifted in the chair a few times until he was sure he was comfortable, and as free as he could be from the threat of butt-numbness.
“Look into the crystal, into the center of it. Let the rest of the room fade away.” Her voice took on the low monotone of television hypnotists, and a laugh choked in his throat. He took a deep breath and tried to relax the grin that was pulling at his cheeks. This was serious.
“The room is fading away. The candles are fading away. Keep your eyes focused on the heart of the crystal, and hear only my voice.”
His smirk relaxed as the darkness of the room, the warmth of the fire, and the scents of lavender and rosemary soothed him along with her voice. He focused on the heart of the crystal, where the stone held traces of milky flaws and the deep flames of refracted firelight.
Athena went through a standard hypnotic induction, repeatedly suggesting that he was going deeper and deeper into his trance. He had heard it all from her before, but this time his mind didn’t shy away from the commands. He didn’t hold tight to the control of his thoughts, but instead, gazing at the crystal, allowed Athena to guide him.
The room faded away, and the crystal on which he focused became a screen for the images of his mind.
“You are standing on the ground,” Athena said. “Look down at your feet. Do you see them?”
“Yes,” he answered, the single word an effort to push past his lips.
“Tell me what you see.”
“My silver boots.” They were the ones he wore while in the ring, as part of his costume. He could feel now the soft embrace of his Lycra pants and the tighter pressure of his black knee and elbow pads. Across his bare shoulders he felt the coolness of his silk surcoat—a loose, sleeveless garment like that which knights of the past had worn over their armor to proclaim their colors. His reached to mid-thigh and had a slit center front and center back, as if to allow him to ride a horse. He usually tore it off over his head shortly after entering the ring.
“Look at the ground. What type is it?”
“Dirt. And straw,” he said, surprised. “Like a barn.” Why would his mind choose such a place? He must think of himself as an animal, as less than human.
“Now I want you to raise your eyes, slowly, and tell me what you see.”
He obeyed. Instead of the emptiness he expected, he saw a small rough wooden table, melting candles set in a neat circle around the same crystal he had been staring at all along. A slight movement behind the table caught his attention, and he raised his eyes farther.
He met the hazel gaze of a woman whom he had never seen before.
“Christ!” he cried out, startled. She looked real enough to touch. She was wearing a dark, featureless dress and her hair was completely concealed by a white, wimplelike cloth.
“What do you see?” he heard Athena ask, faintly, as if from a great distance.
The woman’s eyes were wide with terror, her lips moving rapidly, and then it wasn’t Athena’s voice he heard, but this woman’s, frantically chanting words he couldn’t understand.
Suddenly he could smell the barn: the sweet, dusty scent of hay; the fuggy odor of animals; the mustiness of mice and pigeons.
Athena must have spritzed him again.
He felt a chill draft on his bare arms, and the weight of his body on the soles of his feet. He lifted his hand and stared at it, rubbing his fingers together, then touching them to his face. The illusion stayed with him, and he was no longer aware of sitting in his house or staring at the crystal.
The sense of hypnotized lethargy was gone, and if Athena was still talking, he couldn’t hear her.
He had disappeared into his own mind.
Chapter Four
He had never expected the visualization to work so well. Who needed movies or amusement parks when you could do this inside your own head? This was a degree of authenticity that virtual-reality developers could only dream of.
“Un-be-frickin’-lievable!”
The woman made the sign of the cross and stopped chanting. She gaped up at him, her lips parted with an incredulity to match his own.
He stared back.
Seconds passed.
Now what?
This was his visualization, so the first move must be up to him. He decided to do what he always did when making an entrance as the Saint.
He spread his legs and planted his fists on his hips in the classic Superman pose. “The Saint has come!” he bellowed. “And he shall deliver you from evil!”
The crowd usually roared its approval at this point.
The woman flinched and trembled. Animals gave frightened bleats from the shadows.
He held his pose a moment longer, chin raised and head turned to the side to show off his profile; then, when the woman continued to cower, he grimaced and relaxed, feeling like a clod. “Sorry.” He smiled sheepishly and stepped forward, holding out his hand to her. “I’m George.”
“George?” she asked in a whisper. “Artou Saint George? Verily?”
She had a heavy accent, and he could barely make out what she was saying, but his own name and the questioning tone were clear enough. “Yes, George.”
She sank into a low curtsy, head bowed, her plain dark dress pooling in the straw and dirt.
“Hey, no need for that!”
She peeped up at him from under her white headcloth, and he gestured with his hands for her to get up. This was embarrassing, seeing played out his unconscious need for adoration. Athena would laugh her ass off when he told her.
The woman rose, and a smile started to tremble on her lips. She came slowly toward him, her hand slightly reaching out, as if she wanted to touch him but was afraid to try.
“I won’t bite. Here,” he said, holding out his hand as he might to an unfamiliar dog.
Her glance went from his hand to his eyes, then back and forth again, then suddenly her hand flashed forward and retreated, withdrawn almost before he had felt the featherlike touch of her fingertips on his skin.
They stood and stared at each other, and th
en she giggled and started patting her hands together in front of her like a pleased child. “Saint George. Ich trow Ich haav dewn mahgic!”
He screwed up his face and tilted his head to one side, as if either action could help him to decipher her words. He had heard his name again, and perhaps the word magic. She seemed to be speaking English, and if he could only listen closely enough he was sure he could understand what she was saying.
It was a sensation he often had while talking with women. He rarely figured out what they really meant, so it was no wonder his unconscious had chosen to make this female all but unintelligible.
“Who are you?” he asked, enunciating carefully.
She squinted, as he had. “Yewr pahrdewn?”
“Who? You?” he said, pointing at her.
“Ahh. Emoni.”
“Eh-moe-nee?”
She nodded. It was hard to tell in the flickering candlelight, but she looked to be a few years older than him, her face showing the wear of a hard life.
He pointed to the crystal. “Magic?”
She clasped her hands together and smiled, nodding. “Yea, mahgic! Ich cahlled you toe kill thay drahgahn.”
“To kill the dragon?” He crouched, with claws out. “Drahgahn?”
“Yea!”
Now this was just too cool. He was going to get to play out his one major fantasy since childhood: to truly be St. George the Dragonslayer!
It made perfect sense. If he could kill the dastardly dragon and rescue the virgin—there was always a virgin fainting in terror somewhere, wearing a filmy white dress and flowers in her hair—then he would wake up without any doubts about either himself or his career. That seeping blackness in his heart would be gone, and life could go on exactly as it had for the past eight years.
This was going to be a blast. He wished he had a way of recording it all for someone else to see. What a pay-per-view special this would make! Maybe he could write a movie script based on it. Maybe star in the film himself.
