by Jamel Cato
There was no point lying to a mind reader. “That’s exactly what will happen if you do not return to your own realm and destroy the gate behind you. Do it before it’s too late. By now, you must have seen what happens when my species makes war.”
Every member of Naaru’s retinue made nervous gestures.
“We came through the gates to recover the pieces of our Star that had been stolen, but when we arrived our ears and minds were filled with the weeping of your kulara.”
“I do not know this word.”
“Your species calls her Environment, or sometimes Mother Nature. It is one thing to make war with another tribe, it is another to make war with the World herself, to destroy She who gives and sustains life.”
“We are changing,” I said.
“In two or perhaps three generations, your environment will be so weakened that this realm will be unlivable. Then you will invade our world seeking a new home. We cannot allow this.”
“Destroy the gates,” I suggested again. “Leave us to our own fate. Protect your world.”
“I wish it were so simple,” Naaru said. “But as they say, a wish along with a strong command to your Xantu will push a stone off your shell.”
“Help me understand why it’s not, Naaru.”
“Your environment’s cries have traveled through the gates and reached the ears of our Kulara. She is horrified and frightened that such a fate will befall her, either by humans invading our realm or the idea of such mistreatment invading the minds of the Wru.”
I doubted an ecosystem could have such nuanced emotions. “How can you be sure how she feels?”
“Because she tells us.”
“Like literally?”
“Yes, literally. Our world is not like yours. We communicate with thoughts, not by moving air. And our Kulara is a sentient entity with her own thoughts, just as yours is.”
“And Jaaru sent you here to protect her from us?”
“Not initially. In the beginning, when there was a single gate, I and several others were sent forth to learn human languages and thoughts so that we might establish a peaceful dialogue. Your world introduced us to technological marvels we had never imagined--jet travel, radio telephony, computers. We dreamed of using electrons to command servants located on the other side of the world, freeing us from the short range of our telepathic abilities. But then you built more gates, and each one began to steal our Sun. It happened slowly at first. But within a tenth of a cycle, your gates were consuming so much of our light that the lands directly adjacent to the gates remained in darkness continuously, even at midday. Seeing that Kulara’s fears were justified, Jaaru changed my mission from one of exploration to one of preparation.”
“Preparation for what?”
The Krykin wolf emitted a warning growl.
It dawned on me then that Naaru’s new guardians were there to keep an eye on him, not me.
They departed the playground without another word.
I made the short drive over to Pat’s house. Alan’s car was parked in the driveway because I had asked him to come by.
The three of us gathered in Pat’s sitting room, where I told them most of what I had learned about EnviroTech and the Wru, including the things Naaru had just conveyed to me.
“What does he mean when he says we’re stealing their Sun?” Alan asked.
“I think Pat can shed some light on that,” I said. “Pun intended.”
“Me?” Pat asked in genuine surprise. “What light can I shed?”
“Do you remember signing a resolution authorizing testing of an experimental solar technology at the golf course? It was in your capacity as a board member of the Hillside HOA.”
“No, I don’t.”
I handed her a copy of the document.
She reviewed it. “Oh, this. It was really Bobby’s and Christine’s project. I just signed where Bobby told me to sign.”
“That’s never smart,” Alan said.
Pat glared at her brother. “We can’t all be astrophysicists.”
“You know I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know you’re always implying that I’m an idiot. Just because I devoted myself to a family instead of a career doesn’t mean you’re any smarter than me. Remember who had the higher SAT scores.”
Ouch.
“What else can you tell us about the project?” I asked before their spat escalated.
“Not much,” she said. “Bobby kept saying it was solar power that didn’t rely on the Sun. He was convinced it was the next big thing. He invested in it and let them put the test unit in his home office.”
“His home office?” I asked. “I thought it was approved for the golf course?”
“It was, but it turned out that conducting the test in a public facility required a lot more paperwork than doing it in your own house, which required almost none. So Bobby let them put it in his office. I almost forgot it was there. Is that what’s attracting those things to our house?”
“I’m almost sure of it. Can you show it to us?”
“Yes and no.”
A few minutes later we were crowded into Bobby’s home office staring at a gray rectangular box about the size of a central air unit that had more security than Fort Knox. It had digital locks, mechanical locks, biometric locks and timer locks. Red and yellow stickers on each of its sides warned in six languages that any attempt to gain entry would be prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law. And it was bolted to the floor.
“So a bobby pin probably won’t do the trick,” Alan quipped.
Pat frowned at his poor attempt at a double entendre.
“I don’t think we need to get inside,” I said, pointing to a thick black cable snaking away from the device. “We can just cut the conduit to the junction box.”
“We can’t do that,” Pat said.
Alan and I looked at her quizzically.
“Before he moved out, Bobby made it crystal clear that doing that would trigger an alert in California that would violate his contract and risk our whole investment. And we would be without power indefinitely.”
“There’s no backup connection to Duke Power?” Bobby asked. “What if this device malfunctions in the middle of a heat wave?”
“There’s no backup connection,” she confirmed. “The EnviroTech people said it was a technical requirement for a Phase III field test. If we lose power, we’ll have to go to a hotel.”
“I think you should go to a hotel even if you don’t lose power,” Alan said.
“I’ll forward the hotel bills to you,” Pat snapped.
“If it means you and Ronnie will be away from these things, I’ll accept them.”
“Since when did you become so concerned about my welfare?”
“Since you were born.”
“You didn’t show up when I really needed a big brother, so do us all a favor and don’t try to be one now.”
“What’s your deal? I’m only trying to help, which is more than I can say for the man of the house.”
“Even out of the house, Bobby is more of a man than you. I would have been safer with a G.I. Joe doll outside my door.”
“Maybe I should step outside,” I said.
“Take him with you!” Pat said as she stomped away toward the stairs.
Chapter 16
Alan and I went to a local bar called The Flying Dutchman to have a few beers and give Pat some time to cool off.
“You have any siblings?” he asked me.
“Only child,” I said.
“Lucky you.”
“Lonely me.”
“Normally I would agree with you, but Pat’s been giving me such a hard time that I’m starting to wonder if we would all be better off if I stayed away.”
“How long has she been like this?”
“Since Bobby moved out. I mean she’s always had an emotional streak, but lately she’s been off the launch pad. I want to blame it on the stress of dealing with those things—”
&nbs
p; “The Wru,” I said.
“What?”
“The beings in Pat’s house are called the Wru. You keep referring to them as things.”
“Okay. I want to blame it on the Wru, but truth be told she got like this after Bobby packed his bags.”
“How’s your relationship with Bobby?”
“What relationship? He’s a self-important jerkoff. And he treats Pat like a trophy. Even though I hate the idea of Pat and Ronnie being alone, I’m glad he’s gone.”
“Does Pat know you feel this way?”
“They both know.”
“Uncomfortable cookout?”
“Several. But mostly he and I keep our distance. He’s lucky my Dad is not still around.”
“Why is that?”
“He didn’t take any crap off anybody. He would have dragged Pat out of that house as soon as he heard it was haunted, Bobby or no Bobby.”
“Why haven’t you done that?”
He turned to me. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t mean any offense, but why haven’t you insisted that Pat and Ronnie leave that house until you can ensure it’s safe.”
“Does it sound like she would respond well to that? She doesn’t want to leave.”
“What about Ronnie?”
“What about him?”
“Aren’t you concerned about him being in an environment like that?”
“Of course I’m concerned.”
“You could go to Court.”
“Go to Court for what?”
“To protect Ronnie’s welfare.”
“What standing do I have to do that?”
I retrieved a folded sheet of paper from my pocket and pushed it across the bar toward him.
“What’s this?”
I took a deep swig of my Heineken.
It was a copy of the DNA Test I’d had performed on biological samples from Alan and Ronnie. The two of them had enough matching DNA to establish a seventy percent probability of paternity.
Bobby crumpled the paper and stood over me with balled fists.
I’m six-foot-two and over two hundred pounds. And I work out religiously.
Remembering this, Bobby threw the test results on the ground and angrily stalked away.
The bartender, a heavyset white man in his fifties, made his way over to my stool with his hand pressed to the number 9 key on his cellphone’s lit keypad.
“Is your friend okay?” he asked me.
I looked at him, then down at his phone. His question had carried an entirely different implication than if he had asked, “Is everything okay here?” or, “You alright, Buddy?”
“He’ll be back,” I said.
“Somebody going to pay for those beers?”
I put my American Express Black Card on the counter, making my own implication.
Bobby walked back up to my bar stool less than ten minutes later.
“I don’t owe you any goddamn explanations,” he said.
Yet there he was, about to explain.
The bartender hovered nearby pretending he wasn’t hovering.
“Bobby is not my kid.”
“Maybe we should grab a table,” I suggested.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” I told Bobby from a table in the back of the bar. “But I had to ask.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Bobby has several of the common physical signs of inbreeding and his resemblance to you can’t be missed. And it doesn’t seem like Pat will be giving you one of those Best Big Brother Ever mugs anytime soon.”
“None of that gave you the right to invade our privacy and judge our morality.”
“Poltergeists,” I said.
“What?”
“I was looking for evidence of a Type Three Poltergeist. Everything I’ve seen so far points to the presence of one.”
“You mean like a movie poltergeist? I thought we had already established that Pat is dealing with the Wu. I saw one of the things with my own eyes.”
“Wru, not wu,” I corrected. “They’re clearly the primary invaders here, but I would be willing to bet all of Darlene’s money that there is a poltergeist in the house too. All the signs are there.”
“What signs?”
“The clocks, the ARE readings, the overprotectiveness toward Ronnie and the hostility toward you.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Over sixty-five percent of recorded poltergeist encounters involve the deceased child of an unwanted pregnancy. Instead of moving on to one of the permanent planes of existence, their souls remain on the Astral Plane to torment the person who initiated the pregnancy or the person who caused their early death.” I paused before my next statement. “The worst attacks are usually directed at people who could’ve done something to stop the pregnancies from occurring, but chose not to. I ordered that DNA test to find out which one of those people you were.”
Alan turned away from me and stared at the back wall of the bar for several long minutes.
“It was my Dad,” he said eventually. “I wish I could blame it on his drinking, but sometimes he would force his way into Pat’s room when he was sober. After our Mom died, he changed. He had some kind of psychological breakdown.”
He told me all the sordid details, including the times he had stood outside Pat’s door with a hammer or a baseball bat before his fear of their abusive father overpowered his instinct to protect his sister. He recounted the letters he had written and then never delivered to the Police and their aunt. He explained how he would quietly knock on the wall he shared with Pat when it was over to make sure she was okay and how it made him feel when she knocked back—and when she didn’t. Both he and his sister had somehow remained stellar students throughout this ordeal and he thought they would be okay if they could make it to college. Their father impregnated Pat twice before that happened. Ronnie was the product of the second pregnancy.
I quietly nursed my beer, trying to decide if I considered Alan a friend worthy of understanding or an acquaintance worthy of judgment.
Before I had reached a conclusion, he said, “Thanks, Preston.”
“For what?”
“For continuing to help Pat even after you got those DNA results. You’re a good friend.”
I recalled Alan telling me that his father had been killed in an auto accident. I wondered how much of an accident it had been.
“We’ll get through this,” I said, speaking as much to myself as I was to him.
After Alan left, I went back to my stool at the bar. An African American man in his sixties who was dressed in clothing from the Nineteen Thirties materialized on the empty stool next to mine.
Billy Ray Humphries had been a Memphis-based iron worker and Blues musician when he was alive. He only visited me when I looked like I could use some company and there was music playing. That usually meant a bar.
I asked him for his thoughts about Alan.
“Bird don’t know nuthin’ about being a lion,” he said in his gravely voice. “But they both on the hunt.”
“Hmm,” I said, rubbing my chin. “Is Alan the lion or the bird?”
“Alan a white man. He the whole forest, but the bird and the lion don’t know it. They think two trees make up da world.”
“You really droppin’ science tonight,” I exclaimed.
The bartender looked over at me with a puzzled expression, wondering who I was talking to. I didn’t care.
I turned to Billy Ray. “You ever find yourself in a spot where you didn’t know which way to go?”
The ghost raised his glass and softly bellowed a bar from a Blues tune.
“I got a little brown liquor in my left,
a pretty brown dame in my right.
Life done gave me the blues,
but Heaven gonna make it alright.”
I grinned wider than the Mississippi, suddenly sure what I needed to do next.
The jazz man tipped his head in my direction before fading away.
I was still h
umming Billy Ray’s tune when I left the bar and got into my rental car. I put my key in the lock cylinder and started the engine.
Then the car exploded.
Chapter 17
The force of the explosion sent my body crashing through the windshield and onto the asphalt of the bar’s parking lot.
For a brief time, I was racked by sanity-shattering pain from third degree burns and ripped flesh.
Then the pain abruptly ceased and I found myself floating in the air, looking down on my own body. My soul was on the Astral Plane.
The Astral Plane, also known as the Spirit World, is a celestial dimension that all souls visit before moving on to the permanent plane of their particular belief system. It is the closest plane to the physical world and some souls linger there until they find a resolution to the issue keeping them from moving on. We call such souls ghosts. My gift allows me to perceive and interact with the Astral Plane, but not to see my own body back in the physical world unless…unless I was dying.
Given the dangers of my chosen life, I harbored no delusions of reaching old age and dying peacefully in a hospice. I’ve been to my fair share of hospices and they are the saddest places in the world, full of those whose bodies and hopes have abandoned them. I did not want a pathetic death, but neither did I wish to die like this—alone on an asphalt parking lot where the warmest thing I could reach was my own charred skin. But wishing for an impossible thing is like a falling snowflake believing it is pulling the world toward itself instead of the other way around. There are many things I regret not experiencing in the thirty-seven years I was allowed, but none are strong enough to moor me to our cold reality. I decided, right there on the spot, that I would willingly move on to the Plane of Souls to see Mom and Dad again.
My journey was over.
“Focus, Preston Tiptree,” I suddenly heard Naaru’s voice say. It sounded far away. “Focus on this hashiki...this plane. Give me more time. Focus and breathe slowly.”
