by Shea Meadows
The day before the Clark family was to come for an office visit and lunch, she was at the hospital until after ten. As she drove up the driveway thinking how wonderful it would be to go to bed, she remembered she hadn’t watered Nick Fasco’s jungle for at least a week. The guilt was so real she felt the plants dying. After she parked in the garage they shared, she went into his side door, expecting fading ficus plants and wilted ivy. She switched on the lights and filled the water jug full of oxygenated water. She dropped an ounce of fertilizer into the water and mixed well.
The plants started in the kitchen. They extended into the living room and occupied both bathrooms. The crowning glory, complete with special lighting, was on a table in his bedroom. She began upstairs, sighing with relief when she saw the orchids blooming unscathed. Nick was a brawny guy. His fans would never believe how much he loved orchids. She went from room to room, watering and removing dead leaves, then went downstairs to finish off.
The one room without a plant was Nick’s study, so she’d never gone there. The door was at the north end of the living room, and as Susan watered the ficus, a loud crash from within the room almost made her water the rug. She stopped and breathed and thought rationally about this. They shared a wall, and there was no way anyone could get into Nick’s study from the outside. The room had no window or outside door. She used its counterpart in her unit for a storage area. It was impossible for someone to be in there. Something must have fallen. If it was something that could damage his computer or stain the carpet, she’d best open the door and see what caused the crash.
Even with the surety that she remained the only one in both units, it was difficult to get her hand to stop trembling as she turned the knob and pulled the door open wide enough to reach the light switch. Her heart jumped; something flew past her and thumped into the bottom of the door. This was getting ridiculous. She stood for several minutes, breathing deeply to calm the fear, and opened the door wider. There wasn’t anyone visible and no place to hide in the small room but certainly signs of destruction.
The computer was knocked over and the printer on the floor. A chair lay on its side and a book shelf on its face with its contents crushed beneath. As she surveyed the mess, a box of cigars flew at her from a table in the corner.
“What the friggin’ crap is causing this?” she asked aloud, before a swish of energy flew by her arm and into the living room.
A voice in her ear said, “Get out of there now and call Ricky and David. They need to know.”
It sounded like Moon’s voice, so she followed the instructions. She left the watering tools in the living room and skittered out the side door. She left lights blazing throughout Nick’s half of the house, and ran through the dark garage into the side door of her unit.
“It’s almost eleven. They have a baby. It can wait until tomorrow,” she told Moon’s voice.
“Call them now. I already told Ricky. She’s getting dressed, and Bonta will watch the baby”.
With shaking hands, she dialed Ricky’s number.
Before she could get a word out, Ricky’s voice started the conversation. “Susan, stay calm, David and I are getting dressed. It will take us about a half-hour to get to your house. Moon says it’s another ghost from the cube. It’s attracted to something in your house. Stay in your side of the building and keep the lights on.”
“Okay,” Susan stammered. “My unit is the one with the red door.”
She staggered into the kitchen on trembling legs to brew some tea shipped monthly from Shanghai. It was silly to react like this. At work, she was the picture of courage, stability and stamina. She had been the principle MD in a trauma center when living in Germany. She had traveled through sixteen countries, almost always on her own. Why would she react like this to one ghost? Something was wrong. If she was her usual self, she’d go over to Nick’s unit and burn sage and chant one of the incantations for chasing out bad spirits she’d learned in China, but instead she cowered in her living room. She’d been thinking she’d be valuable to the Clarks but then had to call them to rescue her.
***
Ricky and David had just fallen asleep after teaching a Reiki class. They had settled Nory who had been over-excited with the energy flying around the house. Ricky had been having a dream of soothing clouds when an image of Moon with an anxious face had intruded.
“Susan Fry has an emergency. A ghost from the cube made its way to the twin home next to hers. It wants something in her house, and I think it may want her, too.”
Ricky sat upright, breathing hard and shook her husband, repeating Moon’s message. David looked at her blurry-eyed. “We’re going there tomorrow. Can’t this wait? What time is it?”
“Eleven. And no, it can’t wait. It’s another ghost from the cube. Susan is in danger,” Ricky answered as she started dressing. “Moon made it sound like it wasn’t just about property; the ghost knows Susan or someone she used to be.”
Ricky’s cell rang, and they talked to Susan and assured her they were on the way over. They asked Bonta, who was drawing in her sketchpad, to keep an eye on Nory. “Make sure she doesn’t follow us out-of-body. It sounds like something violent is going on.”
Bonta ripped the newest drawing from the pad and handed it to Ricky. “You’ll want this. It will help explain things.”
As David drove to Susan’s house, using the doctor’s directions, Ricky looked at Bonta’s sketch. In it were a man and woman in a court that echoed the structure of a Han-designed building. The man appeared to be a shaman working with what she recognized from Sima Qian’s Akashic Record was the Bi Mo Chu. The woman had long fingernails, a soft expression and very stern eyes. She stood at attention but whispered in the man’s ear. Ricky remembered the scene Sima Qian had shown them. This was the witch Lee Gee, and he was the sorcerer Ta Yi. This was the man now in charge of the community in the cube.
In the drawing, Lee Gee held something behind her back: it was a cube, as well, but smaller. This was only repeating what they knew before about the creation of the Bi Mo Chu, with the addition of the inference that Lee Gee was more to Ta Yi than his assistant. If memory served her, the witch had been the Emperor’s chief concubine. So, the woman might have played one man against the other, appearing dedicated to both.
How did this have anything to do with the ghost crashing around Susan’s neighbor’s unit? Unless… but that was too bizarre. Could Susan Fry have been Lee Gee in a former life? Why hadn’t she gotten caught up in the cube with the rest of Emperor Jingdi’s court? Had either Ricky or Moon examined Susan’s Akashic Record? Moon had known Susan would be an understanding pediatrician for Nory and had invited her to join the team. Did her sister know about this past life persona? Was Susan tied into the story of the Bi Mo Chu?
David pulled up in front of the twin home. They saw the lights ablaze in the unit with the green door and Susan’s anxious face at the window of the unit with the red. She opened the door for them and described in detail what she had seen in her neighbor Nick’s unit when watering plants.
“I thought I was going crazy. There’s no way something could be in there, but things were being flung around in his office. I don’t know how I got the nerve up to open the door. Then it threw something at me and burst past me into the living room. That’s when I heard Moon telling me to get out and call you. Believe me, I don’t usually call people this late, but Moon was insistent,” Susan said, breathless by the end of her recitation.
“My first instinct would be to charge over to Nick’s unit and confront the ghost, but Moon said something to me that warrants another approach. She said it has to do with something in your house and maybe a personal connection with you. Does that make any sense?” Ricky asked.
Susan nodded. “I have all sorts of Chinese treasures. Some might be considered more valuable than the usual tourist items. I have a friend who worked in the historical museum in Shanghai. He has a collection in his home started by his grandfather. I got to see what we’d call the archi
ves, which he called the treasure cave. It had boxes of small artifacts that weren’t special enough to go on display but too valuable to throw out. I was particularly drawn to a box from the Han Dynasty. Let me show you.”
She led them to a closed door off the end of her living room that was neatly organized for storage. On a top shelf was a flat wooden chest that reminded Ricky of the mahogany box belonging to William Reston. The two looked so close in design they could have been from the same set. Susan carried it to the kitchen table.
There was a faint hint of incense when Susan opened the lid, along with a cloud of dust. Inside was part of an ebony brush with letters carved into its handle and what looked like hogs’ hair bristles. Next to it was a comb that might have been meant to hold a bun in place on the top of a woman’s head. A small mirror with a shiny glazed ceramic surface, triangular in shape, with a backing of what Sima Qian had told them was called Chinese purple, half of its edging broken, sat next to the hair tools. Last was a small square cube, also Chinese purple, with characters engraved into its surface. There were no visible seams or latches but there was a spiral formation on one of its sides. It had a faint odor of resin surrounding it.
“Are these original pieces from the Han Dynasty?” David asked.
“Like I said, bits and pieces, shoved away in a corner of the basement in the Shanghai historical museum. My friend said that every twenty years or so the government did a cleansing and tossed things that were thousands of years old. His grandfather took them home and archived them. He had no qualms about giving them to me, so I had no qualms taking them,” Susan said.
“Do you have any idea what the small cube was for?” Ricky asked.
Susan shrugged. “Sung Ho, my buddy, guessed it was a stamp. They would put it in a shallow bowl of ink and press it to the parchment as their signature. He thought it might have belonged to a woman of prominence who ordered things to be accomplished, then would use the name stamp to make it official after a scholar wrote the order.”
Ricky held it under a light, rubbing her fingers over the surface. “There’s no sign of ink on it. Either someone valued it highly and cleaned it, or it was never used. Did he choose this for you, or did you pick it out yourself?”
“This sounds ridiculous but it was buried under a whole box full of stuff, but I could feel it there, calling to me. Sort of like when you go to your childhood home and see a stuffed animal you loved as a kid; you go to the exact spot where you saw it last, and it feels wonderful when you find it,” Susan answered, as she held the small cube in her hand.
“What else did you bring back from China?” David asked.
“The rest is over here on the bookshelf, but they are all pieces of local art, many created while I watched, and some jewelry as well. We went to Xian where the terracotta warriors were. They were in the process of excavating and everything was pretty raw, but the locals had already started mass producing tourist replicas of what had been discovered. That’s a big area for gold and jade, so I splurged on some real gemstones rather than the paste or plastic variety.”
She picked up a case with a scarab made of jade with a gold design and chain that she kept in a clear display case. “I had it appraised four years ago. They said it was worth fifteen thousand dollars. There was some speculation from the man who examined it that it might be from the time of the Han. He suggested I send it for carbon dating, but that price tag was around two hundred. By that time, I was afraid to wear it anyway even if it was a replica.”
“So you don’t wear it, but you have it sitting in your living room? Shouldn’t it be in a vault somewhere?” David asked.
Susan shrugged. “I seldom have people over, so no one has seen it. You two are the first people I’ve told that story. Again, I like the feel of its energy.”
“So we are looking at two possible objects the ghost might be drawn to: the small cube and the pendant. I want to show you a sketch Bonta drew about the time you were making contact with the ghost. Does this mean anything to you?” Ricky asked.
Susan examined the drawing. “It’s the sorcerer and the witch in the story Sima Qian told us when we were out-of-body. So they would be from the Han court.”
Ricky nodded. “Notice what the woman is holding in the hand she has behind her back.”
Susan eyebrows raised in surprise. “It looks like my cube. Why would Bonta draw this?”
“She is able to see things in a person’s record when she connects to their energy. Sometimes it’s something in the past, sometimes in former lives, sometimes probabilities in the future. She has a remarkable talent,” Ricky answered.
“Susan, may I have permission to look into your Akashic Record? I have a suspicion about what might be happening.”
Susan sighed. “You have to do this before you go check out Nick’s house and see if it really is a ghost and if it’s managed to destroy all his plants?”
“I won’t do a deep overall read. I’m looking to see if you had a past life in the era that seems to be at the root of the problem. If you were in the Han court, for instance, or maybe in the Qin. It might explain some of what’s happening,” Ricky answered.
“Okay, I guess,” Susan answered.
“David will be reading along with me,” Ricky said. “We will make the intention that you will remember the life as well.”
“What do I need to do?”
“Give your permission, say something like: “Ricky and David Clark may open my Akashic Record and use information that will help solve the current problem. And I wish to remember any relevant life,’” Ricky told her.
Susan lay down on the couch and made that intention, and Ricky and David raised their energy to the level of the Akashic Record frequency. “We are looking for a life lived by the entity that now goes by the name of Susan Fry which took place in the country of China between 200 years before the Christian era and 220 years after the reported birth of Christ.”
A stream of information started appearing that was visible to all three. They saw a young girl sitting with a group of girls and several women old enough to be their grandmothers. They were in a ramshackle building some miles away from the Han palace. The person heading the group was an accomplished shaman and was demonstrating the use of herbs for divination. As the grandmothers watched, the girls took turns duplicating what they’d been taught. Some failed over and over; others succeeded on the first try. The girl who was called ‘Gee Ku’ did it perfectly.
Time moved quickly and they watched the girl becoming more accomplished in sorcery. She became attractive as she grew and now looked like the woman they had seen working as Ta Yi’s assistant. When she looked to be about fourteen she was bound in marriage to an influential man in the village, but the marriage failed. The man was cruel, beating her if she resisted. She returned to her family who disowned her. But her shamanic teacher took her in. Another year passed and Gee Ku and another girl were brought to the palace where she demonstrated her skills to the head of the witches employed by Emperor Jingdi.
Quickly the Akashic Record moved through her indoctrination to palace life. Soon she caught the eye of Ta Yi, who was astounded at one so young working spells so easily. He asked Ging De, his principle witch and a member of the Emperor’s harem, to train the girl in the ways of satisfying men. Ta Yi knew if Emperor Jingdi took her to his bed, the girl would be an important tool for the sorcerer’s agenda.
The record went on to the girl’s time in the harem where she was now called Lee Gee and became a favorite of Jingdi’s. She worked with Ta Yi on the creation of the Bi Mo Chu. As he worked on the ghost trap, she is secretly built a key that allowed release of the ghosts assimilated by it. Her project was the little Chinese purple cube which used the incantations on the purple mirror to activate it.
Years went by as Jingdi allowed the capture of the essence of the people in his court into the Bi Mo Chu. At a certain point in the process, Emperor Jingdi became paranoid that Ta Yi had aspirations of his own to ascend onto the Ho
ly Throne. Jingdi worked with Lee Gee, his favorite concubine, and promised their son would become the emperor after he set aside his wife. All she had to do was kill Ta Yi and trap his ghost in the Bi Mo Chu. This she did gladly, because who didn’t want to be the Dowager Empress?
Ta Yi went into the ghost trap, and Lee Gee became the wife of Emperor Jingdi and took the new name of Empress Wang Zhi. Jingdi’s former wife was sent away to her own palace outside the reach of the court. Soon, Jingdi’s mind began to warp into madness, and he was poisoned by Ging De who was working with the new Empress.
Wang Zhi remained as the Dowager until she died at fifty. Since she was the last person alive in court who knew how to trap souls in the Bi Mo Chu she was not trapped herself; she went to the Celestial Gates of the Han heaven. She dwelled there until she worked through all that had kept her chained to her status. She then reemerged as a child living in the Himalayas, and Ricky stopped the reading.
Susan sat up from the couch and touched the little cube and the mirror. “These are the keys to release the ghosts in the cube, and they’ve been in my house for ten years. You never know what you’ll run into in the suburbs.”
“We have the Bi Mo Chu in our house, so I don’t see that as a gigantic surprise,” David said with a smile. “Should we call you Dowager Empress from now on?”
Susan laughed then turned to Ricky. “I can see why you wanted to do this before you talked to the ghost. If he’s from the big cube, he might be looking for the little cube and the mirror since Ta Yi knows about them. He must have figured out where his former assistant lives. I wonder if it’s him next door.”
“I don’t think so,” Ricky said. “Luan Du said he was the top dog in the Bi Mo Chu. He’d be taking a risk to leave it unattended. I imagine he sent one of his underlings but got the address wrong. He probably has been trying to get through the wall, but the energy of your artifact is shielding you.”
