by Morgana Best
I had hoped that after delivering the bad news, Skinny would leave me alone for the rest of the day, but that was not to be. She marched into the office and slammed a large form down on my desk, and then summoned Melissa. “You two girls, I need you to fill out time sheets each day. You need to fill in exactly what you’re doing, and the times you’re doing it, on these forms. For example, mark in any article you’re working on, the times you start and finish, and if you have to go out to interview someone, mark in the time for that. Mark in the time you’re at lunch, the time you arrive each day, and the time you leave. Hand the forms to me at the end of each day.”
At that point, Melissa looked at her watch and said, “Oh, speaking of time, I’m running late for that interview.”
Skinny barred her way. “Write in the time you leave and the reason that you’ll be out of the office, before you go.”
Melissa muttered to herself while filling out the form, and then left. I caught the words, ‘micromanaging troll’, as she hurried out the door. I looked at Skinny, but she appeared not to have heard.
I filled in Port Macquarie ghosts, article research on the form, and then spent over an hour on Twitter. I was supposed to be researching ghosts in the city of Port Macquarie for an article, but I had already finished not only the research, but also the whole article. I figured that since Skinny hadn’t asked for the article, she would assume I was still working on it. I unfollowed over a hundred Twitter followers who had inactive accounts, and then accidentally followed them all back again. I gave up and turned to Pinterest.
I went to the bathroom, then came back and wrote on the form, 11.05 - 11.10 a.m., peed in office bathroom. I poured a coffee, so wrote 11.16-11.18 a.m., poured myself a coffee in the staff room. Take that, Skinny!
As Melissa was still out of the office, I was alone in my misery. Despite the rain, I decided to go out for lunch at twelve, so duly filled in the form. I threw my lip gloss and what loose change I had into the knock-off Dolce & Gabbana bag that I’d bought for a song on eBay, and then left the office. I had an egg sandwich and a Pepsi sitting in the office refrigerator, but needed to get as far way from Skinny as possible.
I was so preoccupied that I hurried out the front door of the building and then straight into a man on the sidewalk. I mumbled an apology, but he seized my arm.
“Misty, it’s me.”
“Douglas!” To say I was shocked was something of an understatement.
“Misty, we need to talk.”
“You tried to kill me!” I must have said that too loudly, as people turned to stare at me.
Douglas took my arm and hurried me down the street, holding his umbrella over both of us. “Hush, Misty. I’ll explain everything. I actually didn’t try to kill you, if you recall.”
I thought back. True, he hadn’t exactly tried to kill me, but when Cassandra, the homicidal granny, had told him to call people to take me away and murder me, he hadn’t objected.
I wondered what to do. Scream for help? Pull away? “We need to talk in a public place,” was the best I could manage.
Douglas stopped and turned to me. “What do you mean?”
“On TV, they always meet dangerous people in a public place.”
Confusion spread for a moment across Douglas’s face. “Oh yes. Anyway, I was thinking of buying you lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Public enough for you? You really do need to hear what I have to say.”
I reluctantly agreed. I figured that I was not in any danger, and I was more than curious as to what he was going to tell me. Plus, given my new employment status, I needed every free meal I could get.
We were shown to a private corner facing the street on the upper floor of the Chinese restaurant. Douglas wasted no time in getting down to business. “Misty, I’ve been sent by the Society to fill you in.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “What! But you’re from the Black Lodge, and the Society’s a rival group. What on earth are you talking about?”
Douglas shook his head and leaned closer. “I’m a double agent. The Society got me to infiltrate the Black Lodge.”
It was getting stranger and stranger, but before I could speak, the waitress came to take our orders. I’d lost my appetite, but I had also just lost full time work. I’d have to get free meals wherever I could, just like I had in my student days. With that in mind, I ordered the Roasted Tofu with Cashew Nuts. To my frustration, Douglas took his time but finally decided on the Beef in Black Bean Sauce.
Douglas suggested Vegetarian Spring Rolls as well, and I agreed. I planned to eat as much as I could so that I’d have more money to pay the mortgage at the end of the month. Nevertheless, the suspense was killing me.
The second the waitress left, I addressed Douglas. “What do you mean, you’re a double agent? I didn’t come down in the last shower of rain. Do you expect me to believe that? How gullible do I look?”
For a moment, I thought Douglas was going to say something rude, but instead he let out a long sigh and leaned back in his chair. He ran his hands through his hair.
I kept talking. “And you tried to kill me!”
Douglas sighed again and then leaned forward. “Misty, I’m never going to hear the end of that, am I? I actually didn’t try to kill you. Cassandra suggested that I arrange it, but I didn’t.”
I interrupted. “Only because Jamie came to save me.”
“Good old Jamie.” Douglas spat the words out vehemently. “No, of course I wasn’t going to call anyone to kill you. I was playing along with Cassandra.”
I supposed he could be telling the truth, and he had returned my necklace. Still, I didn’t trust the guy.
Douglas must have taken my silence as a sign that I was coming around, so he pressed on. “I’m your contact at the Society, which by the way, is called ‘The Orpheans’.”
Despite my rather enormous interest, I was puzzled. “What, the Society itself is called ‘The Orpheans’? Or is it just the members who are called ‘The Orpheans’?”
Douglas was clearly irritated. “What does it matter?”
I kept on. “I suppose the Freemasons are called Freemasons, as they are members of what, Freemasonry? Okay then, I suppose it isn’t so strange that the Society doesn’t have an actual name, but the members are called ‘The Orpheans’.”
“Thank you.” Douglas’s tone couldn’t have been more sarcastic if he’d tried. “May I continue?”
I waved him on.
“‘The Orpheans’ are a hereditary group. That is, most people are born into it. There are some new members, but the Keepers are from a long line of ancient Welsh Druids.”
I was the newest Keeper, having inherited that position when my aunt, the last Keeper, was murdered. “What do Keepers do?” I was on the edge of my seat. This was the first time I had heard from the Society, err, ‘The Orpheans’, since I had learned of their existence on my recent trip to England.
Before Douglas could answer, I posed another question. “Druids, you say? I knew my family was of Welsh ancestry of course, but no one ever said anything about Druids.” Douglas opened his mouth, but I kept speaking. “Hmm. So why are they called ‘The Orpheans’? That’s ancient Greek. You’d think they’d have a Welsh name, like, um...” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t for the life of me think of a single Welsh name.
Douglas took the opportunity to open his mouth again, but then I thought of something else. “What do Druids do anyway? Do they make human sacrifices? I’m sure not comfortable with that!”
I looked up to see that Douglas’s face was bright red. He stood up abruptly. I’m sure he would even have left the restaurant, but at that moment, the waitress returned with the spring rolls. Douglas sat back down, and when the waitress had left, he leaned over close to me. “Misty, please stop playing twenty questions,” he said through clenched teeth. “If you can possibly keep quiet for a few minutes, I’ll tell you everything I know. Deal?”
I nodded, somewhat subdued, and took a bite of a spring roll.
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br /> With a stern warning glance at me, Douglas began. “‘The Orpheans’ are a secret society, centuries old in fact, beginning with the ancient Druids, and continuing until this day. The Keepers are descended from the Welsh goddess, Morgane, also known as Morgane Le Fey, which means Morgane the Faerie.”
I squirmed in my seat. I was dying to speak.
“What is it?” Douglas almost spat the words.
“Isn’t Morgane a person, not a faerie? Keith, my boss, has me researching the faerie for an article. I haven’t come across any Morgane before.”
Thankfully, Douglas didn’t appear angry with my question. “According to Irish mythology, faeries are those who can go between worlds, ours and the Otherworld. They were the same size as we are. It was only in Victorian times that the idea of the faerie as miniature winged entities came about. Now I’m not saying that these winged creatures don’t exist, mind you, but those faerie are nothing to do with the ancient Irish faerie. In fact, faeries were originally said to be the Tuatha Dé Danann of Ireland who were able to travel between worlds.”
I risked another question. “So you’re saying that basically, the faerie were simply people or entities from the Otherworld, which was another realm of some sort.” I ate two spring rolls in one go.
Douglas nodded.
I tried to take it all in. I was more than excited to be finding out about the Society; I’d been kept in the dark for far too long.
“Now I’m getting to your role in all this.”
I was on the edge of my seat, hanging on Douglas’s every word.
“It’s not just the Irish, Scottish, and Welsh that had this idea. The Europeans in general believed that certain people could cross between worlds. The Keeper of the Society is someone who can see into other worlds. That’s why you can see ghosts.”
I sat there, my jaw hanging open. “What? Are you telling me that I can see into another world, another realm? What’s in the other world? Is it like another dimension? Or what? Or like a parallel universe?”
Douglas simply shrugged. “How would I know?”
“But the Society sent you here to tell me,” I interrupted. “And what do faeries have to do with Druids?”
“How would I know?” Douglas said again, this time more forcefully. “You’re the researcher. That knowledge is passed down from Keeper to Keeper, and since the last Keeper, your aunt, was, well, murdered, she wasn’t able to pass the knowledge on to you. I suppose you have to figure it out for yourself.”
I sighed, and looked out the window, at the little droplets of rain coagulating against the glass, and then onto the street below. The rain cleared for a moment, and I saw a man who looked like Jamie ducking into a store. I did a double take. Was I seeing things? Why would Jamie be in town and not tell me? Was he following me, or Douglas?
“Misty!” Douglas’s tone was insistent.
“Sorry, Douglas, I zoned out. I just thought I saw someone who liked like, oh, never mind.”
“Looked like Jamie?”
I nearly leaped out of my chair. “Yes! How did you know? Did you see him too?” I looked out the window again, but the rain had cut visibility to a minimum.
“I’ve thought I’ve seen Jamie around here recently, but didn’t know if it was him or not. After all, I don’t know him as well as you do.” The sneer in Douglas’s tone was all too obvious. “Anyway, I took this photo on my phone the other day. Is this him?”
Douglas slid his phone across the table to me. I caught my breath. It was Jamie all right, sitting in a local café with a woman whose back was partly to the screen, but who nonetheless looked attractive even from that angle. Jamie was smiling broadly. My stomach immediately knotted. “Where was this taken?”
“Only a few blocks from here.”
“When?” My voice came out high pitched.
“Two days ago.”
Why would Jamie be here of all places? I lived in a small country town; nothing ever happened here. The most exciting thing was the weather warning of a sheep farmers alert, which did not mean that residents needed to beware of sheep farmers; simply that the weather was going to be very cold. Still, I was uncomfortable that Jamie was in Australia and hadn’t let me know. I didn’t want Douglas to see my discomfort, so changed the subject. “What were you saying?”
“I asked if you’d had any experience at all of seeing into another realm. It might be insignificant, something you didn’t quite realize at the time.”
I scoffed at him, rather rudely. “Hardly, I think I’d notice if I’d seen into another realm, even accidentally.” Then, out of the blue, I remembered when I’d been poisoned by a voodoo priest and had felt that I’d slipped into another dimension or some sort of other world. I had thought at the time that it had been a side effect of the poison.
I looked up to see Douglas staring at me. “You have been, haven’t you? What did you see?” His voice betrayed his eagerness.
I felt a warning chill right through my bones. Why was he quite so interested? Something just wasn’t right.
Chapter 6
I hadn’t told Douglas anything, and in turn, he hadn’t told me any more about ‘The Orpheans’. I doubted I could trust him. Just trying to figure out any possible agendas that he might have had sent me into a headspin. The rainy day matched my gloomy mood, and I trudged back to the office with my doggy bag. I was going to eat the leftovers for dinner.
Melissa had not returned to the office, so I scurried past Skinny’s open door and hurried to my storage cupboard which doubled as my office. I booted up the computer and googled ‘Druids’. It wasn’t my day. The first site I opened played loud Celtic music. I looked for the sound icon as fast as I could and muted it. Too late.
“Misty!” The sound was screeching and grating.
Oh no.
Why do some websites have music anyway? Don’t they know that some people are secretly accessing websites at work, for goodness’ sake?
I hurried to Skinny’s office. Her face was bright red, and she was clearly in a rage. She pointed to the chair opposite her desk and barked, “Sit!”
I sat, thinking that even a dog would have gotten a treat. Skinny waved the form in my face. “What’s this?” she yelled.
“Err, the form that you made me fill out.”
“Don’t be smart with me, Misty.” Her voice rose even higher. “You know very well that you weren’t supposed to fill in the times that you went to the toilet or made coffee. This is ridiculous. Well, it just shows that I made the right decision in choosing you from the other journalists to have your hours cut, with this type of behavior.” She thrust the form at me. “Make sure that you fill in the time you got back from lunch, and I want the Port Macquarie ghost article by first thing tomorrow morning. Do a good job on that article, Misty! Take it to the next level. Go!” With that, Skinny pointed to the door.
I walked back to the storage cupboard that doubled as my office with my nerves on edge. Skinny sure knew how to rub me the wrong way. I quickly proofed the Port Macquarie ghost article, and then checked to see if the computer was on mute. I opened a window on a website about Port Macquarie, just in case Skinny turned up, and then opened another tab to google ancient Welsh Druids.
An hour later, and I’d pretty much learned that no one these days knew anything much about ancient Druids, due to the fact that they wrote nothing down, and the accounts that we do have were written hundreds of years after their time. Great.
I was about to give up when I stumbled across a web page which had every ancient account on the subject of Druids. The first was written by Julius Caesar. I had seen the remake of the film The Wicker Man with Nicolas Cage, so found the passage intriguing. Caesar said that some tribes of the Gauls had huge figures made of wicker work, specifically wood and straw. They filled the figures with live people and then set the wicker figures on fire, people and all. Caesar said that the people thought that their gods preferred thieves to be sacrificed this way, but that if they ran out of thieves, th
ey didn’t hesitate to use innocent people.
Yikes! I had thought that human sacrifice had something to do with the Druids, although Caesar didn’t directly blame the Druids for it, but just the Gauls in general.
I read on, hoping that other ancient dudes wouldn’t agree with Caesar on the subject of Druids and human sacrifices. I was to be disappointed.
The next ancient writer was a Greek man by the name of Strabo. He had been a famous geographer and historian about two thousand years ago. It started off well, with Strabo saying that the Druids had a better sense of justice than anyone else, but then it deteriorated rapidly. I read with some concern that the Gauls used to stab a person through the back with a saber, and then do divinations from the way he thrashed around when he was dying. Strabo also said that the Druids had to be present at all sacrifices.
I shuddered, and tried to take small comfort from the fact that Strabo didn’t actually say that the Druids themselves did the sacrificing. Strabo also mentioned the wicker man: a huge figure made from straw and wood, into which the Gauls placed wild animals and cattle as well as human beings. They then burned them all to death. He also said that they killed victims with arrows, and impaled them in the Druid temples.
What had I gotten myself into? I hardly dared read any more, but I forced myself to go on. There actually wasn’t much else. I found that less than two thousand words had been written by ancient authors, and that of these, Caesar was the earliest. Some historians even considered that Strabo had copied Caesar. That cheered me up. If Caesar was the only actual account of the alleged human sacrifices, perhaps they hadn’t happened after all. I didn’t fancy being the Keeper of a society that was into human sacrifices.
I got up and peered around the door of my cupboard-office. No sign of Skinny. I couldn’t hear her yelling at anyone, so I figured she was out. I hurriedly walked to the staff room and poured a coffee, and then quickly walked back to my desk. I sat at the computer and stared at the screen for inspiration.
By the time I got home that afternoon, I was pretty miserable, even though on the way home I’d bought three tubs of caramel and butterscotch ice cream and a large amount of chocolate. Comfort food works for me. I could always diet, or perhaps even exercise if I got really desperate, later.
