A Song of Forgiveness

by Lillian I Wolfe

  I started to object but then had to concede she could be right. “Well, it’s possible that's how it played out in her mind. Have you seen his fiancée?”

  Hernandez snorted a laugh. “Yeah. Close resemblance to you.”

  “Until she actually saw me, I don't think she realized how close,” I said, thinking about how her features and hair color were like mine, and Roger was trying to mold her into a duplicate of me.

  “Anyway, I am sorry for the inconvenience,” Moss said. “And for letting the Incline deputy know how I got the tip. I shouldn't have said anything. I tried to make it sound less hocus-pocus, but he leaped on it.”

  “Sure, I get it,” I said. “Are you talking to my bandmates also?”

  “Can't tell you that,” but he raised an eyebrow and tilted his head a little to the room next door.

  I rolled my eyes. He was going to interview one of them now?

  “Can I at least get a ride back to my job this time?” I asked as Moss rose to his feet. “That is if you're not arresting me.”

  “Of course,” Hernandez answered. “I'll take you back.”

  I followed him out, lingered a moment, wondering whether it was Ferris or Digby in the room next door. I felt infuriated and saddened that they had to endure this because we happened to find the darn snowmobile and had a small history with the victim. Now the dream from the previous night annoyed me even more.

  As promised, Hernandez dropped me at the shop and I got back to work after I smoothed things over with Heeni as best I could. She'd been worried about me but also concerned with detectives snatching me from her place of business. I wished I could promise her it would never happen again, but I didn't feel too confident about that assertion.

  THE DAY HAD BEEN LOUSY enough that I figured I might as well call the woman who wanted me to sing and get it over with. In the mood I was in, I would be less likely to be moved by her request.

  I identified myself and thanked her for contacting my agent, then explained that I wasn't singing at funerals anymore.

  “But you have to,” she protested. “My son was in love with you and he requested that you be there and sing for him. He put it in his will and specified the song, 'I Believe in Angels'.” Her voice broke with emotion and I knew she was crying.

  But something more disturbing had occurred to me. “Your son was in love with me... Who was he?”

  “Why, Roger. Didn't you know? I mean, he has your photos plastered all over his house and he talked about you all the time. I kept waiting to meet you, so I could get to know my future daughter-in-law.” She broke into more sobs.

  Oh, shit! I took a couple of deep, calming breaths, trying to soften my reply, but there was no easy way to say it. “I'm very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Halprin, but your son and I were never together. His fiancée was another woman. As much as I realize how important this is to you, I simply cannot do it.”

  She wailed into the phone again, “Wait! I don't understand.”

  “Neither do I,” I said, sympathizing. “But I can't do it.”

  I hung up, reflecting on what I'd just told Roger's mother, and looked at my cat. “I can't do it, Nygard. It's too risky.”

  He blinked and ran to the kitchen, obviously unconcerned with my dilemma.

  Still, I couldn’t help but question if the chance of encountering shades was the real reason.

  The only good part of the day happened when I checked my computer and found a recent message from my new, I hoped, Japanese friend. He seemed more open to talking and wanted to know if I was available to chat.

  ::Of course.:: I replied, noting that he was still online.

  ::I think about what you say last time. I have some experience with dark figures in the garden. Most of time, they not bother me or come close. Not long ago, one come almost up to me, but say nothing. It has red eyes that look at me, very disturbing. You know what I say?::

  ::Yes. I know. I have encountered them also. Several times now they have been in my graveyard, and they do come to where I am. I call them shades, but I understand they are called pacura yiaiwa. They are evil.::

  ::Yes! Evil. I can feel it.::

  Bingo! We were talking about the same demons. I asked him to tell me more about his encounters and he did. He told me how he first noticed them. Unlike me, he didn't actually see the departed in the garden, but he sensed their presence when he visited to read the poetry he'd composed. But, the yiaiwa started watching him.

  I told him part of my story, although not so much about my fight with them. I didn't want to scare him off, but I tried to find out if he'd noticed any unusual ability since he'd been visiting the garden.

  That appeared to puzzle him and he asked if I meant more unusual than transporting to a garden on the astral plane. At this point, I wasn't going to suggest he hadn't reached the astral plane although he may have and I was wrong. What if he was right and the shades had reached that level? I made a note to discuss it with Gavin and Orielle.

  I asked him more questions about the garden and if there was an exit, like the gate, that led to a light tunnel. He told me there wasn't. His garden was a beautiful, tranquil space where he could meditate on the poetry he created and commune with the spirits that he honored.

  More and more, I began to think that we might not be functioning in the same way. After I finished chatting with Toshi, as he called himself, I copied the conversation and printed it out.

  As I glanced back at my inbox, I spotted an email from Ferris. With a sense of dread, I opened it and read through the message. He had sent it to both Digby and me and he spoke about the interrogation, asking if we'd experienced the same unexpected event. I could tell he shared my indignation at being pulled in.

  I answered him cautiously, not wanting to set off a flame war. Yes, I told him. The detectives had come to my work and taken me into the office where they'd asked all the same questions. That was the entire gist of it. I told him I was shocked, but not much else. Then added I would talk to him on Saturday.

  One thing after another kept piling up. Ever since I'd gained this ability, my life kept growing more complicated. I worried that it would get worse after the meeting on Saturday at Gavin's.

  FIFTEEN

  “...then you made that reckless dash to the curator’s office at the Louvre to explain why you had set the alarm off,” Orielle was saying as I walked into the dining room. “I laughed so hard, cherie.”

  Gavin’s warm chuckle followed the little anecdote his guest had recounted. Awareness of their long friendship as colleagues did nothing for my jealous feelings. Of course, Gavin had many people he knew in the field and some of them were probably quite close friends. Still, I suspected that Orielle had been, and possibly still was, something more than a friend.

  “Hi, am I early?” I asked since neither of them had noticed me come in.

  Turning his eyes my direction, Gavin grinned. “No, not at all. Come on in and grab a seat. We have a little leftover quiche that Orielle made from her family’s secret recipe, which she refuses to share with me.” He’d shifted his eyes to her and actually stuck his tongue out in a pout.

  “It wouldn’t be secret if I did that, would it?” she purred. Why did almost everything she said seem to have a sexy undertone? Perhaps it was the accent.

  “Anyway, have a piece. It is beyond delicious,” he added.

  A spare plate sat on the table suggesting they at least planned for me to have some when I arrived. Even though I’d had a bagel before I left my house, I figured I might as well do the polite thing and try it.

  As I thanked them, I put the piece on my plate and sat down to eat it as we talked. “I found a gentleman in Japan who seems to go to a transitory garden rather than a cemetery.”

  Gavin’s eyebrows lifted as he turned his gaze to me. “A garden? Does he have the same kind of encounters as you?”

  I shook my head as I chewed. “Wow, this really is fantastic, Orielle. I can see why he wants the recipe. To answer you, Gavin, not ex
actly. He doesn’t see the departed when he travels there. His words. He’s a poet and he communes with the spirits there. So I got the impression that he’s actually reciting his poems to the souls that he can sense are with him. He mentioned being on the astral plane.”

  Orielle caught her breath with a soft gasp. “Surely not. That would be above your interim cemetery. Has he seen any yiaiwa there?”

  I nodded. “He says he’s seen a couple, but not interacted with them in any way. When I asked him about the gate or the light tunnel, he said he’d never seen them in his garden.” I paused and reached for my purse, pulling out the folded notes I’d printed. “But here, you can read it yourself. This is the conversation we had in the private chat.”

  As I held them out toward her, Gavin snatched them out of my hand, flipped them open, and began reading.

  Orielle made a face, bringing her lips down in a pouty frown at him. Then she shrugged. “I’m going to pour another glass of iced coffee. Would you like one, Gillian?” She put the emphasis on the second syllable, so it came out sounding more like zi-lee-awn.

  “Yes, thanks,” I replied and finished off the piece of quiche while keeping one eye on Gavin’s expressions while reading the notes.

  She set a large glass beside me and paused to peer over Gavin’s shoulder as he read. His left hand came up, shooing her away.

  “You’ll get your turn in a minute,” he growled and kept reading. A couple of minutes later, he lifted his head up, then handed the papers to Oreille before saying, “That sounds a bit different. He doesn’t seem to be a guide, but a praise chanter, or a variation of it.”

  I raised my eyebrows in question.

  “Praise singer or chanter. Sort of the singing the good qualities part that you’ve done when you’ve created your songs. Only he doesn’t actually face the deceased prior to their transition to the next plane. So, it’s very possible that he might be on the astral plane.”

  “His words suggest that he is doing astral travel,” Orielle agreed. “The garden, too, is a more serene place than the cemetery that Gillian visits. And the souls do not seem to need any assistance.” She flipped through the pages quickly. A speed reader as well.

  “That’s what I noticed also,” I said.

  “But this not good,” she went on. “If this man is seeing the yiaiwa on that level, then they have breached the astral plane and no soul is safe.” She shook her head and her eyes darkened as she frowned.

  “Well, we have to figure a way to stop them,” Gavin said. He looked at me, then Orielle. “There has to be a way.”

  For me, that wasn’t the most reassuring statement the professor had made. In fact, it sounded a tad desperate. Or maybe I was the one feeling that way.

  Gavin rose, picked up his drink, and started toward the living room. “Get your things,” he told Orielle as he passed her.

  Nodding, she also picked up her drink, then went the same direction, veering off at the hallway toward the guest room.

  Alone now, I puffed out a little humph of air, then cleaned up my plate and utensils, putting them in the dishwasher, before I joined them, as I assumed they expected me to do.

  Gavin already had a thick book spread out on the coffee table and was thumbing through the pages. Judging by the brownish-yellow pages, I thought it looked like an old volume, perhaps the eighteenth century or older. A glance at the printing in it told me it wasn’t English, although I couldn’t be sure which language it was. I thought maybe a dialect of French, but the little I knew of that language was no help. But since it was a print volume, it meant it dated to after the sixteenth century.

  On the other hand, the three scrolls, a loose-leaf notebook, and a small box Orielle brought into the living room might be a whole different story. The scrolls looked like very old oilcloth or something similar, while the wooden box could be from almost any century except a modern one. The exterior bore the uneven look of a hand carved item and it was dark with aging.

  She set them on the other end of the table and sat next to Gavin. She motioned to me to pull a chair up close. I glanced around, saw the wooden chair with a cushion on it in the entryway and decided that would be easier to move than the armchairs.

  As I pulled it up across from them, almost in the middle so we made a triangle, Gavin glanced up. “There’s a possible report in Geishu’s Book of Life, an old handwritten book from a monk in the Middle Ages. Of course, this would all be hearsay as it was a passed-on story. But I can get a copy of the text in a few hours from the online archeological records site.”

  “If you think there’s something in it, then you should do it, right?” I said.

  Orielle’s head bobbed in agreement. “Truth. Anything might help us, even if it is a small clue.”

  Gavin opened his laptop and typed in a few words, then waited for the site to come up. “Where are we starting with your things?” he asked her.

  She opened the notebook, which I saw was filled with pages of copied records. Some were handwritten while others were typed. “These are some of the references I found while going through the archives in Tibet. While I found no mention of Geishu, the name sounds like he was Asian, I do have some other interesting reports to consider.”

  She flipped to the first printed page. “This is a translation of a priest’s diary, from Vienna, who visited Tibet in 1328. He had traveled across the continent to Asia via the Steppes. While on the journey, he encountered some strange stories and wrote them down. Most all the information I have is from stories that are passed down from one generation to another, so it is questionable.”

  While she read through the translation, I didn’t see too much of interest in it except for some of the tales the people of the Steppes related about dark men who came and took people away. They were never seen again and the assumption was that they devoured them. I thought that was a bit inconclusive since many tales of cannibals existed and this could be the same kind of thing. The only thing that might have made it different was the description of the men, who were said to have red eyes.

  Apparently, Gavin agreed with my thoughts. “Not much to go on there. But it could be a reference to the same demons.”

  “I think you are correct,” Orielle said, “but I brought any references I had that might relate. This next one is more impressive. You will see.”

  She flipped a couple of pages in the notebook. “This is a translation of a pre-Christian scroll found in Tibet. In it, the writer relates the story of a demon god who led a pack of others like him, although not as big and strong. They crossed the land and removed the souls from people as they went. They left the physical shells, but they were worthless, nothing more than a vegetable unable to function without assistance.”

  “Worse than a zombie,” I voiced my thoughts.

  “Exactly,” she said. “They had no actual thoughts even though the brain was in the body, but whatever links and controls the whole function seemed to be missing. That wasn’t the way the writer put it. He said, ‘The remaining hulk was without any guidance or sense. The body continued to live so long as it was fed like a baby and cared for, but it became a burden for the family. It could not communicate.’”

  A shiver of fear raced through me as I considered those words. Alive, but not functional or even aware of life. And what happened to the soul? Was it lost when these creatures took it? The picture this conjured was frightening. Was this what we had to stop?

  “Were these the big yiaiwa rather than the lesser ones?” I asked.

  “It sounds like it,” Gavin answered, rubbing his hand across his jaw. “I think the lesser use the bodies when they can get them. But eventually, they take the soul to use as their own. When I’ve encountered them, they’ve been in human form and they leave the body with the person confused but still there.”

  “You’ve talked to the victims afterward?” I asked, surprised he hadn’t mentioned this little detail earlier.

  “A few times. When I first saw one of yiaiwa zap into a body and r
ealized the transformation, I tried to communicate, but it wasn’t too chatty. After it pursued me around the excavation site for about ten minutes, I actually saw it withdraw and the body, another archeologist, collapsed to the ground. When I got to him, he was reviving, but he just thought he’d had a dizzy spell and passed out. He had no knowledge of the demon being in him.” Gavin pushed to his feet. “I need something stronger than coffee. Anyone else?”

  “I’ll take a Chablis, darling,” Orielle answered.

  “I’m fine,” I said. I still had plenty of coffee in my glass and didn’t need the fortification of alcohol. I had a show to do in–I glanced at my watch–three hours.

  “So, what did they do with the soulless bodies?” I asked, fearful I already knew.

  “After a time, they mourned their loss and terminated the shell,” she replied.

  “Killed them,” I muttered.

  “If the soul is not there, is it killing? Would it be better to let it exist with no function and eventually die because it could not take care of itself?”

  “Aren’t people still debating that?” I thought of people with serious brain injuries and other problems that made them little more than a vegetable, not even conscious, and kept alive by machines, but did they still have a soul? Would that be the difference between the right and wrong of taking the life?

  Gavin returned with drinks and set them down. “So, do we agree that at this time, the yiaiwas are not devouring souls, but are slowly stealing them?”

  “That’s how it sounds.”

  “But if they had access here on our plane, how do we know they haven’t stolen any souls? How many people go missing every year? Or maybe they’re just borrowing the bodies and keep them for a while? Would that explain the erratic behavior of some people? The sudden changes in personality?”

  “You are speculating again, Gavin,” Orielle said as she reached for her wine. “Without proof, it is just a possibility. Not even a theory.”