by Jamel Cato
“Maybe we can discuss those kind of challenges after this meeting. I would love to hear more about your professional journey.”
“Read my book,” she said. “It’s all in there.”
“Chapters ten through fourteen,” he said. “I especially liked the part when you were running Intel’s global chip business and you told that sultan what you thought about having multiple wives after he propositioned you in exchange for a multi-billion-dollar order. I purchased a hardback copy for all the female associates on my team.”
“Julia,” Elizabeth said while returning Mitchell’s eye contact, “why don’t you tell these gentlemen what you saw during your time at EnviroTech.”
Elizabeth made the request in a tone that indicated she fully believed what her daughter was about to say.
Julia shifted in her seat while giving us detailed descriptions of the Wru retinue that haunted EnviroTech after dark, except she didn’t know they were called the Wru. Her story matched the one I had heard from Dina Clovin.
“What can you tell us about the wave receivers?” I asked.
“They’re Danny Lin’s brainchild,” she said. “It sounds counterintuitive, but the receiver arrays collect and store solar energy without the Sun.”
“Come again?” I asked.
Julia went into PowerPoint mode. “So solar energy works by separating electrons from atoms, then sending those freed electrons through a circuit, which creates an electrical current. A normal solar panel triggers this separation by collecting photons from the Sun. EnviroTech’s wave receivers trigger the separation by collecting special quantum particles. These quantum particles achieve the same effect as photons, but are much more abundant, so they separate a lot more electrons, which generates a lot more energy.”
I was fascinated. “And these particles can only be captured at night?”
“Yes. We’re not sure why that is.”
“Where do they come from?”
“You’re asking the wrong one. I was just a marketing manager.”
“I can’t believe you’re allowed to discuss this technology in such detail,” Mitchell said. “EnviroTech’s lawyers should be fired.”
“EnviroTech has a ballroom full of lawyers just like you,” Elizabeth said. “But Kit Harrington is keenly aware who Julia is. His headhunters have been targeting her since her sophomore year at Stanford, the same way he allegedly bumped into Danny Lin at that Ted Talk. He was hoping that having Julia onboard would one day lead to an acquisition or major investment spearheaded by Mommy Dearest. They negotiated Jul’s NDA with kid gloves.”
“Ah,” Mitchell said.
“How many test sites does EnviroTech have for these receivers and where are they located?” I asked.
“Just two,” Julia said. “The main one in Mountain View and a Phase Three trial site in North Carolina.”
I sat forward. “Whereabout in North Carolina?”
“Sorry I don’t know. Danny and Kit kept that close to the vest. I remember hearing something about a golf course if that helps.”
“It helps a lot,” I said. “Tell me, do these wave receivers cause any adverse effects?”
“You mean besides what it did to Dina and me?”
“Yes, other than that.”
“Not that I’m aware of. But I was low on the totem pole.”
“Did you have a specific effect in mind?” Elizabeth asked me.
“You wouldn’t happen to have seen a Spanish Conquistador dressed in full armor would you?”
“No,” Julia said, laughing. “I would definitely remember that.”
When the meeting came to an end, Elizabeth sent Julia back to their hotel with her handlers.
Then she walked over to me. “Can you really communicate with the dead?”
“I can communicate with the ones who wish to be communicated with.”
“May I ask a favor?”
“Sure,” I said, guessing what that would be. It was always a variation of the same request.
“Will you tell my father what I’ve achieved in my life? You don’t need to go overboard, just tell him that no one controls my destiny but me, just like he taught me.”
“It will help him locate me if I had an item of unique sentimental value.”
She handed me a locket and a three-by-five photograph of Julia. “Please give him that message and show him that photo. It would mean a lot to me.”
“You have my word.”
“Thank you.”
She stepped over to Mitchell. “It seems I’m in need of a ride back to my hotel. Would you mind dropping me off?”
“You read my mind,” he said, ushering her out of the conference room.
* * *
A phone number with a California area code called my smartphone later that day.
“Hello?”
“I did it,” Danny Lin said excitedly on the other end.
“Did what?”
“I shutdown all the receivers.”
“All of them?”
“All of the ones in California.”
“What about the one in North Carolina?”
“How do you know about that? Never mind. I forgot who I was talking to. Kit is the only one with the codes to terminate the Carolina site. I have the codes for Mountain View and he has the codes for Carolina. It was part of our business continuity policy.”
“Got it.”
“I feel so relieved.”
“So you received our proof?” I asked carefully.
“Yes!” he exclaimed. “That was about the only thing in the world that would’ve changed my mind.”
“How did you feel when you got it?”
“I was like whoa, Mother Nature herself is standing in my office describing the damage that my technology is doing to the Environment. You can’t get more meta than that.”
I fell silent.
“Hello?” Danny asked after a few seconds. “Are you still there?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m here Danny. That’s fantastic. That’s wonderful. To be honest, we weren’t sure she would help.”
“Well, she did.”
“That’s awesome. So what are you going to do now?”
“What I should have been doing all along: saving the planet. I’m going to join the Viridi cell in the Pucallapa to see if I can help develop the genome for a tree that’s resistant to logging.”
“I’m sure they’ll do backflips when you show up.”
“We’ll see. Half the Movement seems to think I switched sides.”
“Best of luck to you, Danny. You did the right thing.”
I ended the call and rubbed at the coarse hairs of my goatee.
Then I called Danny back.
“Dr. Tiptree?”
“Call me Tree. Listen, Danny, if you have a second, would you mind describing what she looked like? I was part of the op, but I never actually saw her.”
“Oh man, she was so beautiful. Long black hair, four strong arms and skin that actually glowed. She was wearing a dress made of vegetation that had a live river running across it. It was mind blowing.”
“She sounds incredible.”
“She was.”
“Thanks a million, Danny.”
I hung up, telling myself the end almost always justified the means.
One gate down, two to go.
* * *
On our return trip to the airport, Vanessa asked, “Is everything okay? It’s a little quiet over there.”
“Everything is everything,” I assured her. “Just working through some work stuff in my mind.”
“You don’t have any more funny stories about your Life of Paranormal Adventure?”
I told her about the time I skipped out on an exorcism early because the Eagles were playing the Cowboys on Monday Night Football.”
“You did not.”
“I did.”
“Well did they win at least?”
“I don’t know, a lightning bolt struck my TV and I went back to finish the job.�
��
She laughed out loud. “Did that really happen?”
“The scorch marks are still on the wall behind my new TV. I’ll show them to you the next time you come up.”
“You should write a book.”
“You think so?”
“Definitely. You can call it, The Piercer of Shrouds: My Life of Paranormal Adventure.”
“I love that title! Wait, would I have to pay you royalties for that?”
“It’ll probably be cheaper to just wife me.”
There was an awkward silence.
“Relax,” she said. “You still have plenty of time to enjoy your panty-dropping penthouse and take advantage of helpless receptionists who miss their grandparents.”
“You make me sound like a chronic flirt when you put it like that.”
“Whatever you say Mr. Honey-In-or-On-It. I’m sure Darlene has an opinion on that. I saw how many calls you let go to voicemail the last couple days.”
“You don’t miss much do you?”
“You know that’s a survival skill for folks like us.”
“True dat. So, what’s plenty of time?”
“What do you mean?”
“A minute ago you said I still had plenty of time. I was wondering if you could give me some clarity on that.”
“Years at least. We would have to be together for a while before I made you put your toys away. I’m old fashioned like my Nana taught me to be.”
Now I relaxed. “She taught you well.”
“She did, but if I were you, I would start breaking hearts now.”
“Why is that?”
She gave the hands-down, no-question best answer that a real-life ghost hunter could hear. “Because when the things you see in the light scare you more than the things you see in the dark, Who you gonna call?”
The left side of my brain encouraged me to pull to the side of the road and propose to her right there, but it was shouted down by the right side, which reminded me that I needed to stop Jaaru the Devourer or the wedding reception would be short.
Chapter 23
It rained that night. I remember because I spent the evening in my study reading Marianna’s encrypted file about the Balzano disappearance and the raindrops rolling down my glass walls reminded me of Emala Castillo’s tears.
Tammy Balzano was a nine-year-old girl who had been abducted from Hillside Country Club’s private playground. The last known sighting of her was a security camera recording. On the video, Tammy vacillates in and out of the camera’s field of view as she passionately rode a swing. Her nanny diligently watches over her from ten feet away. Then the nanny briefly turns from her charge to retrieve a juice box from a beach bag on the ground. When she turns back, Tammy’s swing seat is still swinging, but Tammy wasn’t on it. The nanny, Emala Castillo, can be seen frantically searching the area, frequently leaving the field of view. The recording had no sound, but it was not needed to tell the woman was shouting the word Tammy over and over. Emala eventually collapses to the ground and sobs, one hand regretfully clutching the unoccupied swing seat.
In the eight months that had elapsed since that recording, a task force composed of law enforcement officials from every level of government had been searching for Tammy. The bulk of the task force’s personnel had been quietly reassigned to other duties after the three month anniversary of its formation came and went with no progress in the case.
After being fired by Tammy’s parents, Emala endured an intensive barrage of interrogations, investigations and public shaming that failed to prove she or anyone she had ever known had any involvement in Tammy’s abduction. She was physically assaulted multiple times by strangers who never saw the photos, videos and birthday cards evidencing the palpable love and emotional bond that Tammy shared with her nanny. I had only seen this evidence because Marianna had skillfully pilfered it from the Police Department’s computer network.
Emala Castillo committed suicide a hundred days after Tammy disappeared. Her body had been found in the tiny studio apartment in Charlotte that she shared with three others after being evicted from her spacious guest house behind the Balzano home. There was a suicide note written in Spanish that reaffirmed her innocence and grief. The note, considered evidence, was never divulged to the public or the family.
Chapter 24
After seeing Napoleon off on a trip across town to purchase organic vegetables from a food co-op, Marianna flipped on her kitchen light.
She jumped when she spotted me sitting at her kitchen table. “Tree! You frightened me. What are you doing here?”
“Why are you hacking into my files and calendar?” I asked.
She opened her mouth to recite the lie she had ready for this scenario, but I held up a hand. “If I wanted to hurt you,” I said, “I would be having this conversation with Napoleon, or the Police Department in Davidson.”
She sighed and unclamped the necklace which hid her true appearance from everyone but those with my gift. “This blasted thing makes my entire field of vision fuzzy.”
* * *
Medusa’s face did not turn men to stone and she was not beheaded by a hero named Perseus. In truth, she was a kind gorgon on a Mediterranean island who was cursed with thick hair follicles capable of independent locomotion. The stone in her mythology is a metaphor for the utter shock which appeared on the faces of anyone witnessing her locks curl and slither of their own accord. Despite being young, beautiful and among a human population accustomed to the green skin of gorgons, no male save her father would come within a spear’s length of her mane. She had never been held, kissed or desired.
One moonlit evening, as she sat upon the shore weeping from loneliness, a damaged sailing ship drifted onto the beach. This was not an uncommon occurrence on the remote island, which was surrounded by waters swarming with sea nymphs.
Medusa rushed to render aide to the sailors. She found all perished but one, a young alchemist from the isle of Ceto named Branus.
“Water,” Branus wheezed from parched lips. “I desire water and food.”
Medusa, knowing time was of the essence in these shipwrecks, dashed off to retrieve the wineskin and fruit she had packed for her own needs.
She returned to the ship and offered her wineskin to Branus, who did not reach out for it.
“My sight has been stolen by the disease which took the lives of the other seamen,” he said. “Please deliver the wine unto me, sweet maiden.”
As she carefully dribbled the apricot water into the sailor’s mouth, Medusa recognized the opportunity before her.
She carried Branus to a hidden cave near the shore, which she returned to each night with the nutrients and medicinal salves he required to return to health. When he trembled with nightmares of drowning at sea, she sung calming songs in his ear, being careful to keep her hair outside his reach.
During the course of his recovery, Branus came to love Medusa by virtue of her words and deeds. One particular night, when he was strong again and Medusa’s hair was wrapped tightly in a thick cloth, he came to know her body as well.
Branus seemed content to spend the rest of his days in the cave enjoying Medusa’s songs and bounty, which both pleased and perplexed her. A full Lunar cycle after his rescue, she asked him why this was so.
“It is not my desire to go among the people without my sight,” he confessed. “They shall treat me as a monster.”
Medusa, starkly familiar with such treatment, began to cry.
Branus embraced her. “Why do weep, sweet Medusa?”
“I have not shared the full truth with you.”
“There is no truth dark enough to weaken the gratitude and bond between us. The gods set my ship adrift so my soul could come ashore. You are the glint in Athena’s eye, no matter what shames you.”
She told him the full truth of what she was, guiding his hands to her hair.
His love for her unshaken, he said, “If you will be my eyes, I shall be your shield.”
He provided he
r with a list of alchemical ingredients. Then, after she had obtained the items, he instructed her how to combine and prepare them. Their machinations produced a crude metallic necklace possessed of properties which fooled the eye.
To test the necklace’s worthiness, Medusa wore it as she walked among the seamen gathered at the port. Unlike the island’s permanent inhabitants, none of these men would recognize and despise her face. To her astonishment, she encountered no fear or disgust. Indeed, she was showered with words of longing.
When she returned to the cave to tell Branus of his great achievement, she found her lover forlorn. “What troubles you?”
“My love, where did you obtain the bronze ore and stallion hair that you delivered onto me? These goods must have great value on an island such as this.”
She lowered her head. “I stole each, one from the forgery and the other from the stable. My family is poor of coin and I saw no other way. Forgive me.”
“They will come for our heads,” he warned. “We must prepare.”
He directed her to go into the village and return with potter’s clay, a broadsword and tar pitch. She did as he asked, retrieving one of her father’s retired weapons and a quarter satchel of clay mixture and pitch from her mother’s workshop.
When soldiers of the merchants from whom Medusa had stolen marched upon the cave, Branus went forth to face them.
Holding the sword in one hand and a false clay bust of Medusa’s head in the other, he declared, “I have slain the wicked gorgon for stealing my master’s goods, yet sacrificed my sight when my eyes fell upon her locks. The black magic of her scalp still whispers to me from Hades!” He tossed the clay head into the midst of the mercenaries. The kinetic energy generated by the rolling head produced heat which lit the strategically placed pitch. An eerie glow emanated from the eyes of the decapitated head.
The soldiers, deciding they had not been paid enough to endure an eternal curse, fled.
