by Harper Lin
She looked to all of us for answers that we didn’t have.
“And with only half of its face exposed, how could it see me? Because it did! It stared at me with one eye that looked milky with cataracts! Almost pure white compared to the sickly color of the skin, which reminded me of the underside of a frog! Pale, greenish, and almost translucent!”
Aunt Astrid took Tamara’s hands in hers. It calmed her enough so she could continue.
“I hit the gas, but my tires wouldn’t grip on the slick pavement. The wheels spun and spun, and I barely moved an inch. Meanwhile, that thing was getting closer.” Tamara’s body began to shake. “I didn’t want to, but I had to ease up off the gas so the tires could grab the road. When I did that, it was like a flash, and the thing was directly in front of my car! I honked the horn! But it wouldn’t get out of the way!”
Tamara pulled her hands away from Aunt Astrid’s and covered her eyes. This was where I was sure she was going to say she accelerated and drove right over the person, thing, whatever it was. But I was wrong.
“I put the car in reverse and began backing away from the thing. I watched it for a second then turned around to watch where I was driving, and it appeared behind me, clomping and hobbling at a furious pace to keep up. It had to be a second one, right?”
Not that a second cloven-hooved hunchback in a white sack with its head on backward was in any way more comforting. I kept this thought to myself.
“I slammed on the brakes. The entire car lurched. I couldn’t tell if the pounding I was hearing was the rain or my own heart or the sound of those hooves shaking the ground. When I spun around, there was nothing in front of me but the headlights and the pavement. I looked in the rearview mirror and turned my head to look out the back, and nothing was there either.”
“So you hit the gas and got out of dodge?” I asked.
“I was about to.” Tamara looked up at me with a pitiful smile on her face. “But as I went to shift from reverse to drive, I felt it. Before I saw it at the driver’s-side window, I felt its eye staring at me. Into me. It was grinning insanely, staring in at me before it started to claw at the window. Like a dog digging in dirt, it scraped its hands and nails furiously at the glass.”
Bea gasped. Aunt Astrid leaned back in her chair. I just stood there like a dolt.
She put her hands up to her ears. “It kept asking me to let it in. In a child’s voice, it kept asking me to let it in. Then it stopped. It was like it just noticed there was a handle for the door. It stared at me and then at the handle and then at me again as it reached its deformed hand out then licked its lips with a black tongue. I screamed.”
“Yes, I’d say that was the proper response,” I mumbled.
Tamara managed to let out a tiny chuckle then shook her head.
“I hit the gas and tore out of there as fast as I could.” She was panting slightly, as if retelling the whole incident included sprinting for five hundred yards. “I forgot about going to my sister’s. I got back on the expressway and wanted to get somewhere, anywhere where there were people. You guys were the only place lit up and open.” She wiped her eyes and looked at the tea on the table. “I’m sorry, Bea. I don’t know what you put in it, but I can’t drink it.”
“That’s okay, Tamara.” Bea looked at her mother, who gave her a knowing glance back. I could sense something was wrong, but my specialty was talking to animals, and Treacle had left. He knew something was up and skedaddled. So I watched my cousin and aunt closely.
“You just rest for a few minutes, honey.” Aunt Astrid patted Tamara’s hands. “I think you are in shock.”
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Tamara whined as she rubbed her stomach.
“On the contrary. I do believe you. I believe there are things on this planet that are here to help us, and there are definitely things here to do us harm.” Aunt Astrid pushed herself up from her seat. “Angels. Devils. Creatures we don’t understand. Monsters we don’t want to. But none of that changes the fact that we are human and sometimes need help from other places.”
“I don’t know what you put in that tea, Bea, but it isn’t agreeing with me at all.” Tamara winced.
“That’s okay. I just thought it might help calm your nerves.”
“By calming do you mean make it feel like there is a snake writhing around in my gut?”
“No. That would be her lentil meatloaf.” I couldn’t help myself. When an opportunity like that presents itself, I have to take it, no matter how inappropriate.
“I’m serious.” Tamara clutched her stomach. “I don’t like this.”
Aunt Astrid quickly went to her back table where she usually did her tarot readings and grabbed a small basket full of what looked like trinkets.
“Tamara, honey, hold one of these in each hand.” My aunt gave her two smooth stones of pale-pink quartz. They were especially helpful with an upset stomach.
“Maybe I should just get home,” Tamara protested.
“You’re in no condition to drive.” Bea put her hand on Tamara’s shoulder but pulled it back as if she were scalding hot. Like I could talk to the animals telepathically, Bea was sort of an empath. She could see into a person’s aura and, like a doctor looking at an x-ray, could pinpoint the problem and hopefully do something to alleviate or even remove the trouble.
I could tell by the look on Bea’s face she felt something was very wrong with Tamara.
“I’m feeling much better,” Tamara lied. “I think I just need to get home and lie down. I still haven’t even called my sister.”
“Why don’t you call her from here, tell her…” My aunt looked up at the ceiling. “Tell her you aren’t feeling well and had to pull over and will be going home soon.”
Tamara looked at Aunt Astrid. My aunt was a kind person, and it radiated from her, in her flowing blouses, long, graying hair, and her crystal-blue eyes. There was confidence there that a person couldn’t help but rest in, and from the look on Tamara’s face, she desperately needed to.
Suddenly, the poor girl began to weep.
Psychic Assistance
“What’s the matter with me?” she sobbed pitifully, clenching her teeth as well as the pink stones in her hands.
“You’ve had a horrible shock, honey.” Aunt Astrid was firm in her diagnosis, like a doctor giving bad news but insisting there was hope. “Now, just listen to my voice. You are with friends in a safe place.” She pulled the little table away from Tamara and stood in front of her.
“Cath, lock the front door and draw the blinds,” Aunt Astrid ordered. “Bea, bring me some sage, my bowl, and a book of matches.”
Both of us did as we were told. The rain still pounded mercilessly outside, but inside the café, it was warm and calm, for the moment.
I shut off the lights, leaving just the candles on the table to give everything a warm, golden glow.
“I knew something was wrong with her when she wouldn’t drink the tea,” Bea whispered to me as she scooted past me to get the supplies her mother had asked for. “It had a few healing leaves in it. Mint. Chamomile. A few other things. It’s very sweet. But she wouldn’t touch it.”
Aunt Astrid nodded after hearing what Bea had said. She continued talking to Tamara in a low voice, and it was just a matter of minutes before Tamara was relaxed, her eyes drowsy slits and her breathing deep and calm.
Bea returned from the back of the café with everything her mother had requested.
Aunt Astrid took the sage, crumbled up some of it, and placed it in the little brass bowl that was “Aunt Astrid’s Bowl.” She had gotten it from a shaman friend of hers from New Mexico many years ago. Every year, she got a Christmas card from the fellow, but Bea and I had never met him. I always envisioned a dark-skinned man with jet-black hair that stretched down his entire back and was gray at the temples, and was wrapped in pelts. He was probably just some dude who wore blue jeans and flannel shirts, but I preferred the exotic qualities my imagination provided.
The
burning sage wafted in perfect smoky tendrils up into the air. Aunt Astrid was mumbling a few things, but I couldn’t make out the words. Then, suddenly, Tamara started to talk. But it wasn’t her. Her mouth snapped open and shut like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Words came out, but her throat didn’t produce them.
They were nonsense words, things a child might say, babblings and ramblings that might have been a spiritual language or maybe just something messing with us.
Whatever it was, it was freaking me out. I took Bea’s hand, and she squeezed mine in return. It was good to know she was terrified out of her skin as well. Misery loves company.
“…in the field where it lives. See the bottom. See the top. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in…”
Aunt Astrid spoke so quietly I couldn’t hear her at all. But her eyes were focused sharply on Tamara, whose jaw kept moving, but her lips didn’t match the sounds coming out.
“Bea, I need you to take the parasite from her stomach,” Aunt Astrid commanded.
“Oh no.” I groaned. “Astral spiders? I should have known. The poor girl. Hang on, Tamara. You’ll make it, girl.”
Having recently suffered a bout with astral spiders, I knew a thing or two about how they operate. First, they are spiders. Gross enough, I know. But they feed off your energy and make you depressed and exhausted and ultimately can lead to madness or even suicide.
When I had them, I was as depressed as any teenager on the planet. It was miserable. And the buggers were sunk in so deep on me that Aunt Astrid and Bea both had to yank the suckers free. It was as if I were some kind of buffet, all you can eat.
“No. Not astral spiders. This is more like a tapeworm,” my aunt replied.
“Eww.”
“Yeah, and it’s about the size of a ferret. Plus, it has a human face.”
“What?” I hissed.
“Cath, I need you to hold Tamara by her shoulders.” Aunt Astrid’s voice was calm but firm. She was tightly holding Tamara’s hands as Tamara continued to babble in the freakish childlike voice that wasn’t her own. “Do it now.”
Quickly, I went behind Tamara and put my hands on her shoulders and held her down. She wasn’t so much fighting me as she was twitching and jerking in strange spasms.
Bea rubbed her hands together and studied Tamara’s body. I could see her eyes searching for something. Her face relaxed when she zeroed in on the spot where the parasite was. With the precision and speed of a cobra, she lunged forward and placed her hands on Tamara’s stomach.
Tamara’s head swiveled and rotated like a bobblehead stuck to the dashboard of a jeep driving on a dirt path through the woods.
“Have you got it?” Aunt Astrid asked
“Almost.” Bea grunted. Her hands were trembling. Her movements made it look as if she were treading water or pushing covers aside until her eyes jumped wide open and she bit her lower lip.
“There you are.” She gritted her teeth. Aunt Astrid began to chant in a low and whispery voice. Bea braced one leg in front of her and the other behind her. As if she were in a tug-of-war game, she used her body to pull at the thing.
Tamara’s skin was getting hotter by the second. Finally, Bea had loosened whatever it was. As she pulled back, I saw what she was wrestling with.
Aunt Astrid was right. It was about as wide as a ferret, but it was a sickly white, almost translucent thing with a hideous head and face. A pointy tongue darted in and out of its mouth, and its eyes rolled up into its head.
Bea wouldn’t let it go. As she yanked and pulled at the creature, finally getting it almost all the way out of Tamara’s belly, Aunt Astrid blew the smoke of the sage into the creature’s face and began to mutter a binding spell to send the thing back to where it came from.
In a gross display, its skin split open, just like a real snake’s, and it writhed and wiggled itself out of Bea’s hands, screaming in a childlike voice.
“You don’t belong here!” Aunt Astrid shouted. “Go back where you came from, or forever be imprisoned in this dimension as a monster to be tortured, leered at, and hated.”
She moved the bowl of smoldering sage underneath the thing until it dissolved into the air. Bea was left holding an empty sheath of skin. Before she could move, it turned black, shriveled up, and disappeared.
“Is it dead?” I asked. “Did you kill it?”
I looked at Bea, who pulled her hands back to reveal they were now also black, as though she had been handling bricks of coal.
“It’s not dead.” Aunt Astrid slowly began to bring Tamara out of her trance. “It just shed its skin and went back to where it came from.” She studied Tamara, who already had a healthier color to her cheeks. “Tamara, I want you to listen to me. Everything is okay now. You don’t have any pain. Your fright was due to the weather.”
Tamara started to blink, and her eyes became wide and alert.
“What happened?” Tamara looked around nervously as if she were concerned that we took her wallet or snapshots of her while she was asleep.
“You just needed a little psychic assistance,” Aunt Astrid offered as I scooted back around the counter to check Bea as she washed her hands. I saw she had a few blisters on the palm by her thumb. Other than that, she was okay.
“Are you feeling better?” Bea asked over her shoulder.
“Yes.” Tamara rubbed her stomach but did it more out of habit than anything else. “Bea, can you make one of your famous detox teas for me? With all this rain and goofy driving, I think I could use something to help clear out the system.” She chuckled.
When Tamara was getting ready to leave, she wasn’t sure she had seen exactly what she thought she had seen on County Line Road 63.
“It was like a tsunami had hit out there.” She shook her head. “I don’t really know what I saw, but it was pretty wild. It was probably just some dorks out there trying a prank on the first car to come by in months. But either way, I think I’ll call my sister and tell her I’ll come by next weekend when the weather is better.”
“Well, you’re all right now, and the next time you’re driving and you see Big Foot or the Slenderman, give us a shout,” I teased, handing her the large tea that Bea had prepared for her. All of us waved it off as being on the house, making Tamara smile even more, and she promised to stop in again soon for a tarot reading.
“That was a weird one,” Bea said.
I watched through the slits in the blinds as Tamara ran for her car, climbed in, revved it up, and pulled away. She drove off as if it were just another rainy night and she was out getting some tea.
“Yeah,” I concurred. “How about I give everyone a lift home tonight? No need to walk in this rain if you can help it. An umbrella won’t do you any good.”
“Have you cleaned out the backseat yet? I would rather not sit waist deep in empty fast food bags.” Bea knew my weakness was a good greasy burger from just about any fast food place.
“Well, if you’d rather walk,” I teased.
After closing the café for the night, we all piled into my beater and headed for home. First, we dropped off Bea, who lived just three doors down from my aunt, who lived almost directly across the street from me. If you were to look at our houses from space, the distance made an almost perfect triangle.
Once I was inside my house, I went directly to the kitchen and saw my favorite green eyes staring at me from the kitchen window.
“Well, you sure took off in a hurry,” I scolded Treacle as I opened the window for him to slink in like a wet, furry specter.
“I didn’t like the shift in the mojo in there,” he said. I grabbed a towel and proceeded to conduct our drying ritual all over again, starting with the top of his head and working my way down to the base of his tail. He shook his fur wildly then proceeded to lick his legs and tail, stopping to watch me as I opened the fridge for a glass of milk. “There was something wrong with that woman.”
“Yes,” I answered telepathically. “You’re lucky you missed it. It was pretty gross.” I wrinkled
my nose. “I was going to burn some candles and enjoy the light show from the bedroom. You ready to relax?”
“I think you may want to wash up first.”
I looked at my hands and the front of my shirt. Sure, I knew I wasn’t as neat as Bea was, but I didn’t think I had gotten dirty at work. I quickly sniffed my armpit but detected no offensive odor.
“What’s the matter?”
He focused his eyes on my stomach. I looked down and only saw the fabric of my black T-shirt. But as I watched Treacle, his tail began to whip back and forth.
Now, as I mentioned before, I had a bout with astral spiders, and I wasn’t about to go through that again. So I quickly grabbed a wad of dried sage, my white candles that happened to smell like fresh linen, and some salt and performed a quick purification spell.
Once all the sage was burned and the candles were burnt out, I sat down on the edge of my bed and looked at Treacle.
“Are we good? Do you see anything else? Do I need to call Aunt Astrid? Please tell me you don’t see any astral spiders.”
“I didn’t see any of those to begin with.” He hopped up on my lap, his motor purring loudly. “I just thought something might have been trying to stow away on you. But I don’t sense it now.” He walked around on my lap, making three circles, until he finally snuggled down.
I wanted to get comfortable myself. I looked down at the big bundle of fur in my lap. He looked up at me and made no attempt to move. So I scooped him up like a baby in my arms, went into my small living room, and took a seat in my comfy chair facing the window that faced my tiny backyard. The rain fell in a steady rhythm, and the lightning flashed.
While I stroked Treacle’s fur and enjoyed the soothing sound, I gave very little thought to what had happened at the café. Maybe I was too tired to focus, or maybe I just chalked it up as one of those weird examples of nature’s mysteries. I don’t know. But within a few minutes, Treacle and I were both sound asleep, and I kept rerunning the same odd dream.
There was a collapsed bridge, and I was digging through the rubble with my bare hands. They were dirty and bloody from pulling at rocks, but just as I was inches away from reaching what I was digging for, I’d wake up, only to return there again.
