by Jim Johnson
He looked into my eyes and, after a long look, shook his head. “I can’t explain it.” He glanced down the hallway and then back to me. “I’m hearing voices in my head, and seeing things that aren’t there—shouldn’t be there, you know?”
I frowned. My heart picked up the pace. Was Malcolm a Weaver too? “Like what?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, like whispered voices that sound far away, and flashes of images, but nothing clear enough to really see or remember. I just know that it’s stuff that I’m not making up myself. It’s definitely outside me, if that makes sense. And a lot of it has that same strange blue energy glow around it.”
My frown deepened. “I don’t get it, Malcolm. Some hard-to-explain stuff has happened to me too, but…” I shook my head. “I can’t get into it now. I barely believe it myself. I need to talk to a couple people and see if I can get some answers.”
He bit his lip. “Can I come with you?”
I shook my head after a moment’s thought. “No, not yet.” I rested a hand on his jacketed chest. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I barely know you.”
He frowned and took a step away from me. “Hey, I’m not like that…”
I nodded emphatically, hoping I hadn’t offended him. “I know! I know you’re not, Malcolm. It’s just…I’m not ready to bring you to my friends to talk about…whatever has happened to us. If anything.”
I shook my head and then focused on his face square-on. “But I promise I’ll talk to you as soon as I get some of those answers, all right?”
He studied my face, and apparently came to some sort of decision about me. “All right, yeah. Okay.” He nodded and then awkwardly reached out and patted my shoulder. “Thanks, Rachel. It’ll mean a lot to me. When do you think we can meet?”
I considered my schedule. “It can be as early as tomorrow. How does ten tomorrow morning sound?” I hadn’t checked with Abbie, but tomorrow was Saturday and I didn’t remember any joint plans being talked about.
His eyes got distant for a moment and then he nodded. “That’d be cool, thanks, Rachel.”
“All right.” I led him back to the visitor’s desk, where we returned our badges and then walked out of the entrance with him.
He glanced at me. “Can I at least give you a ride to your job?”
I grinned. “Nah. Thanks, Malcolm. The bus ride will help me think things through.” I reached over and gave his nearest elbow a squeeze. “Thanks for the offer, though. That was really kind of you.”
He gave me a sort of weak smile and then shrugged into his oversized Ravens parka, and then produced a keychain out of his pocket and headed toward the parking lot. “Talk with you soon, Rachel. Say hey to your friends for me.”
I called out, “Will do. I’ll text you tomorrow.” I turned and worked my way through the parking lot toward the distant bus stop. A black Mustang, a newer model, pulled out of a spot and drove past me. The windows were tinted as dark as possible so I couldn’t see in, but I guessed that had to be Malcolm. I made a mental note to myself to try and remember to ask him what he did for a living. Must be doing okay to afford a Mustang, whatever it was.
I got to the bus stop and grabbed the next bus for Del Ray, and even found a seat for my weary feet. I tried hard to not think about Bello and what he might have been looking for in the stairwell, but found I couldn’t think of anything else.
Chapter 21
WHAT WAS THAT?
THE SPINNER ROCKED back as if he had been physically struck, and took a few precious moments to regroup, to re-center and take stock of his surroundings.
The construct he had built for himself, the safe shell he had created within the woven world that no one could breach without his knowing or his approval, was secure.
He reached out with tendrils of thought and energy, taking the time to be sure that his piece of the world was safe and unassailable.
Once assured of his security, he centered himself and allowed his avatar within the woven world to appear to float over the floor of his enclave, and gathered within himself to consider what had just happened.
Someone had breached the woven world at his locus within the nursing home. That someone had made the breach was not what concerned him; there were hundreds of people all around the world who had the capability to pierce the Veil and slide into the woven world.
But how many of those could have known about his entrance within this particular nursing home in a little town in Virginia? He considered the question, calculated the variables, and frowned.
The answer was so close to nil as to be inconclusive. None of the Veil-cutters he knew of could have possibly known about his actions at the nursing home, not even those with a home base nearby. No, this had to be someone new.
He reached a tendril of thought, a spear of yellow-gold energy toward the virtual knowledge bank he had built in the woven world, and accessed what he knew of the Veil-cutters within the D.C. metro area.
None of them should have been aware of his actions, and yet...someone had pierced the Veil at the same place he had set up shop. It could not possibly be a coincidence.
He collected the tendril of thought and mused on the question for some time. Images of those two children came to mind, and he called both of them up out of memory and displayed their faces on his inner Eye.
Yes, some possibilities here. He had sent a powerful current of energy toward them when they had gotten too close to his conduit. It’s possible that if either of them had any potential, they might have become Awakened by his actions.
His virtual form started to shimmer as he grew excited at that possibility. That he could have been responsible for the Awakening of two new Veil-cutters was an intriguing thought. So much potential there to consider.
The Spinner sent out tendrils of energy to the nexus point he had created in the nursing home and willed the point to open from its invisible, closed state. If he was quick and efficient and focused, he might be able to detect any residual energy from the person who had opened the nexus and perhaps make a match...
He closed his virtual eyes along with his physical eyes and focused, frustrated with his physical body’s limitations but supported by his superior mental strength and intellect.
He reached out to the nexus point and willed the etheric tunnel into being, reaching down into the ley grid pulsing deep below his physical body and helping himself to the near-limitless energy contained within it.
The Spinner traveled his soul into and through the conduit and then settled in the stairwell at the nursing home. He took his time to scan and study the small stairwell, reaching out with energy feelers to arc along the metal bannister and the concrete walls and floor, seeking out any trace of the person who had delved into the Veil and who had managed to push his presence away, if only for a moment.
It took some time, but he soon found what he was looking for—the faintest traces of an energy source, bright silver in color as opposed to his own yellow-gold. He tasted the energy of this being, and compared it to what he had sensed when he had pushed back those two children from his conduit.
A possible match? He focused his energies to confirm it. Sure enough, after some hard study that taxed his physical reserves even further, he had his match.
The person who had pierced the Veil was the same girl who had checked out the stairwell the other day. Medium height, average build leaning toward athletic, long brown hair pulled back into an unruly tail, casually dressed. Attractive enough on the outside with no clue of the power she possessed.
He tasted of her energy residue, and felt excitement and elation course back to his physical form through the conduit. This one had so much potential. If she could learn how to harness and control her power, she could be a powerful Veil-cutter and woven world manipulator, like him.
In fact...his mind raced through a dozen possibilities one after another, and he forced his mind to file them away for later review. Now was not the time to get that excited.
F
or now, though, he had to figure out how to reach out to her, to gently impress upon her the need to be trained, and the need to seek him out for that training. Newly Awakened children rarely came around in any given generation, and to be able to lay claim to one before another Veil-cutter could do so would be a useful thing for him to have. Better to get them into his control than to have them potentially used against him later.
Satisfied with his thoughts, he settled in and...wait. Curious, and still holding onto some strength left from his physical form, he recalled the initial contact with the girl and focused instead on the boy who had been with her.
His recollection was weak, but it was possible that his energy surge had Awakened him as well. If he had, there would have been a change in his energy signature, and...
He reached down within himself and risked tapping into his reserves of strength, and tweaked his memory of the events a little more, attempting to enhance the last few moments of contact with those two.
He played and replayed the scene several times, focusing closely on what he was sensing as the two forms pushed away from his conduit. The girl’s pattern definitely changed; she had clearly Awakened.
But the boy...initially he was disappointed to not sense anything, but then, he saw it...an aberration, a cloud between the boy and his senses. He focused on that, feeling the drain and the tug back toward his physical body, but he was determined to finish this—he just had to know.
The boy had a shadow on his soul that made detecting things tricky, but...Yes! There it was. He found the tell-tale change in the boy’s soul-signature, the one that moved him from a mundane to an Awakened soul. It was hard to tell what power he might have, but that he had also Awakened was not in question.
Interesting, most interesting indeed. The Spinner closed down his analytical efforts and rushed down the conduit and back to his own mortal shell, and forced his mind to relax.
He needed rest to regroup, and then soon he would feed again on another soul from the nursing home. And then...then he would focus his efforts to try and reach out to that strange young girl he had Awakened, and attempt to pull her over to his side of the cause.
And if she didn’t come willingly, he’d encourage her to do so, or he’d simply kill her and feed on her ample resources of power. And then try to entice the boy over to his side.
But first, his own pathetic mortal body needed rest, and, along with it, his mind. He shut down his connection to the woven world, closed his eyes, and planned his next moves.
Chapter 22
I TEXTED BONITA WHILE I RODE the bus to Del Ray, just to warn her that I was heading over to talk weird stuff with her, and asked if she wanted anything from BeanTown, one of the new coffee shops that had popped up in the area.
Bonita texted back before I got off the bus. If there’s anyone who’s into coffee more than any one of my friends, it’s Bonita. She’d drink that stuff all day and all night if she could.
And I’d never want to be around her if she did. She gets, like, really super hyper when she’s had a lot of caffeine, which is why she was trying to supplement with non-caffeinated tea. It was a hard go, but today I didn’t mind being an enabler. I wanted her up and running at full brain blast so that I could pick her mind and try to figure out what the heck was going on with my crystal pendant and the retirement home and Miss Chin.
I got off the bus, walked the few blocks to BeanTown, made the order, then headed for her shop in a no-nonsense manner. It was early afternoon and yet the foot traffic in and around Del Ray was pretty steady. The weather was decent, low forties.
I pushed my way into the shop, caught Bonita’s eye and lifted the two coffee containers and the bag of sweets I’d scored for us to share, and then made a straight line for the back room.
There were a couple customers in the store, but heck, I wasn’t working that day and wasn’t about to try and push into Bonita’s thing and poach any of her hard-earned sales.
Besides, I was still kinda wigged out from what had happened at the nursing home, and the strange meeting with Bello had left me confused and anxious. The more I thought about him the more I suspected that he suspected.
I sat down in the back room and took the lid off my coffee to help it cool. I liked the taste of it well enough, but if I drank it when it was too hot, I’d sear my tongue and not be able to taste anything for a week. No fun at all.
So I blew across the surface of my coffee cup to cool the scented nectar inside, and then realized that Bello hadn’t told me what department or agency he was with. Lots of detectives and cops are former military personnel, and I was sure Bello had served somewhere at some point. I just couldn’t shake the professional demeanor he had pouring out of every inch of his stature. Pretty intense.
After a few minutes, my coffee had cooled enough to sip without burning my lips or tongue. I heard the front door of the shop open and close a few times, the little bell announcing entrances and exits without distinction.
The door to the back room opened, and Bonita walked in.
I smiled at her. “Just in time. I was thinking about helping myself to the snacks I picked up.”
She echoed my smile, and picked up her coffee and sipped it after sniffing the contents. “Peppermint mocha with a shot of caramel? Ray, you’re treating me too good.” She grinned as she helped herself to the treats. “You either want more hours, or something is really bothering you.”
I sipped at my own coffee. “It’s the last one, actually.”
She glanced at me as she licked cinnamon crusties off her fingers. “So what’s got you so hyper that you’re buying coffee and snacks for us to share?”
I stared at her, opened my mouth, closed it. “I...I don’t know where to start.”
“Is there a lot?”
I considered that, then nodded. “Loads.”
She sipped her coffee then put it back down on the table and stared at me with her arms folded and resting on her knees. She leaned forward in expectation.
I stared into her eyes and took some steadying breaths. Was I even ready for this? A sudden lump formed in my throat, but I forced myself to calm down and even squeezed my crystal pendant for strength.
I was about as ready as I was ever going to be. Deep down I knew that Bonita and I were on the same wavelength of weirdness. I suspected nothing I told her would freak her out. I stared into Bonita’s open, giving eyes, and spilled it all out. I didn’t hold anything back, and didn’t even stop for a coffee break. I told her everything.
The first encounter with Malcolm, all the strange stuff that happened in the stairwell, the electric tube, the faces, getting blasted back into the wall. Everything.
I told her about the crystal that seemed to talk to me, the ghost I encountered in the alleyway at night, and even the chats I’d had with Miss Chin.
Breathless, I also plowed into what had happened today—the second trip to Branchwood, the little blot of light that I had ripped open, the surge of protective power from the crystal that had protected me from the strange yellow energies and had helped me to collapse the electric tube.
After a moment’s hesitation, I even told her about my conversation with Bello, though I didn’t really attribute that to any strange goings-on other than him giving me a strange look and poking around the same areas I had poked around.
I told Bonita all of it in what must have been one of our most epic one-sided gut-spilling sessions ever.
Bonita stared at me for a long, long time after I finished babbling, and then opened her mouth and uttered just one word. “Fuck.”
I stared at her with big eyes, and then burst out laughing. She joined me after a couple heartbeats, and we must have spent a solid minute laughing ourselves to tears. Someone wandering into the shop would have thought the place was haunted by hyenas.
Soon enough, we both calmed down and gulped for air. She gave me a big smile, one I easily returned.
I said, “And here I was thinking you’d have something profou
nd to say.”
She returned the smile. “I have to admit that was the most profound ‘fuck’ I have ever offered, even more so that the ones I give to Steven.”
Steven was her boyfriend of several years’ standing. A nice guy, essentially a big brain on a beanpole body. He was matter-of-fact, logical, not at all spiritual, and one of the better cooks around. In many ways an opposite of Bonita, but they were just so right for each other.
Bonita took a bite of long-forgotten coffee cake and washed it down with a gulp of coffee that had to be cool by now.
She reached out and took both my hands in hers. “That was a hell of a story, Rachel, and I thank you so much for sharing it with me.” She added, “I know how hard it is to share strange things with someone else, even a close friend.”
I nodded, my appreciation and love for her swelling my heart with hope and joy. “So…you don’t think I’m crazy?” The thought had crossed my mind that maybe I was hallucinating all this and heading for that short trip into my own sort of special home.
She shook her head and her face dropped into a serious expression. “No, my dear.” Her eyes misted over and she appeared to be on the verge of tears. “You’re not crazy at all. I think you’ve simply Awakened.”
I stared into her eyes, sensing that the word had meaning for her beyond just the obvious. My eyes widened. “Awakened? What do you mean?”
Bonita whispered a phrase to herself in Spanish that sounded suspiciously like a prayer or a chant. It lasted for only a few seconds, and then she gently squeezed my hands and stared into my eyes with warmth.
“This is incredible, Rachel. I knew you were curious about things—the crystals, yoga, the mysteries of my role as a midwife and a doula. I never really thought you’d open up to the deeper possibilities, the shadow reality behind the world you see every day.”
I squeezed her hands and pulled away. “You mean you really believe all this stuff? I’m not just seeing all of this out of some messed-up mind?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s all phenomena I’ve heard about before, either in research or from folks who experience pieces of it here and there.”
