by Brian Mercer
"I'll be fine."
"You saw this thing," Tommy said. "What do you think?"
"Honestly? I think we're gonna need some help on this one, Boss. Just you and me ain't gonna be enough. Not against this thing."
Tommy took a deep, thoughtful breath. "I know some people. Let me make a few calls."
"What, a priest?"
"Is that supposed to be funny? No, Alexander Bray is considerably better than a priest. In fact, you might say the spirit world is his specialty. You're going to have to trust me on this one, Tyson."
"I trust you, Boss. Because, right now the only thing I'm sure of is that we're in over our heads."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Becky
Central London
May 5
"I've always wanted to see London," Nicole said as the legendary British Parliament building swung into view, bookended by Victoria Tower and Big Ben.
"We're not far from my home now," Sara blurted excitedly. "You see, just that way is Hyde Park and then some ways beyond is Regents Park, near where I live. Or, er, used to live.
"Sean," she called out, "are we staying at Uncle Alex's tonight?"
"I'm afraid not, Miss," our shaved-headed driver replied. "Sir Alex thought you girls might be more comfortable at Dukes."
"Dukes?" she said, folding her arms over her chest as she stuck out a pouty lower lip. "Well, I suppose we would be more comfortable there. But I did want to show the girls around Uncle Alex's place in London. Ah, well, perhaps next time."
"I'm told he's reserved the penthouse suite for you," Sean went on, unusually chatty. "It's quite roomy and bright and I'm told the food is exceptional."
The car sped over Westminster Bridge, made a right on Parliament Street and then on to Whitehall, passing one iconic landmark after another. I sat mute next to Nicole, feeling strangely numb and detached. It had been months since I'd ventured into any kind of populated area. The last time that happened I'd been completely overwhelmed by the rush of extrasensory information pouring in from every direction.
At the time it had taken all my will to keep from coming utterly unglued. Now, with my psychic protection tools in place, I found I could tune out the jumble of information that would otherwise have swamped me.
The chaos was still there. I could feel it behind an invisible wall, like an angry mob pounding to get through, everyone shouting at once. My defenses seemed shaky at best and I was terrified what would happen should they all come tumbling down. I dreaded making another scene in front of the girls.
I'd been anxious ever since Sir Alex had called us into his private study three days ago. "Girls," he'd said from the plush chair behind his desk, his fingers steepled in front of him, "I want you to join me on a sort of field trip into London. It will only be for a few days. A week at most."
The girls and I had been expecting information, psychic or otherwise, about the dark apparition that had for so long been troubling us. This was completely unexpected.
"London!" Sara had exclaimed. Then to us, "Oh, you'll love it. There is so much to see and do there." To Sir Alex, "When do we leave?"
"In a few days," he’d explained. "My apologies for the short notice. I received a call last night from a friend whose sister was once a student here at Waltham. He's a London-area paranormal investigator with whom I work on occasion to train students. He presently finds himself in a rather sensitive situation with a high-profile client that requires the utmost discretion. He's requested my assistance in the investigation and I thought, in this particular instance, it might be a good idea to take along a few students to see what they pick up."
"That sounds interestin'," said Nicole.
"I'm curious, Sir Alex, why us?" This came from Cali, whose eyes had narrowed skeptically. "Why not take students with a little more experience?"
"I fear there is a young girl involved in these disturbances not much younger than yourselves. Well, she's near Sara's age, but I thought together you would be in an excellent position to connect with her on a more fundamental level than I or your more mature colleagues."
It had sounded harmless enough, but I’d had to work to hold back panic. The thought of traveling into an immense city with a population of over seven and a half million, packed with centuries of intense and sometimes violent history, filled me with horror. It conjured memories of last summer's trips into Manhattan with Mom. I'd gotten so stressed out that I'd ended up sobbing on the cab floor without even caring how truly disgusting it was.
Jenny only added to my anxiety. The night Sir Alex told us about London, I'd been lounging alone in our sitting room. The sun was setting, casting a ruddy pink glow over the gardens. The windows on either side of me had been open to let in a spring breeze laced with the perfume of newly fallen rain and just a hint of cedar chips. I was just starting to doze when Jenny's familiar disembodied voice said, "He's co-o-o-o-oming."
This had startled me but not like it used to. By now Jenny's he's-comings had become a familiar refrain. I thought about my usual reply — "Who's coming?" — but Jenny's answer was always the same: "You know! The one you've been waiting for, silly."
The first time Jenny made this pronouncement had been at the evening mixer where I'd had my freak out. At the time she'd said it just before Jean Paul was about to ask me to dinner, so I'd assumed she'd been referring to him. But in the five or six times since Jenny had repeated the prediction, Jean Paul hadn't been anywhere around. In fact, ever since our past-life meditation session a few days ago, he'd been totally ignoring me.
Only then did it occur to me that, despite her rather playful, singsong delivery, "he's coming" might actually be a warning. Could Jenny be referring to the old man or men who dressed in black, the ones haunting our rooms? But, no, that didn't seem quite right either. "He's the one you've been waiting for." Why would I be waiting for the man in black?
"Who's coming?" I’d demanded. "Tell me, Jenny! I'm not kidding around. Who am I waiting for?"
"You'lllll seeeee," she’d sang, giggling.
The limousine rounded the corner from St. James Place and into Dukes' little front courtyard. Dukes Hotel rose five stories in layers of red brick and white woodwork, with a large Union Jack flying over its arched front entrance in crisp red, white, and blue. As Sean opened the car door for us, porters advanced from the black wrought-iron gate to collect our bags.
Sean's description of the hotel was accurate: white, bright, fresh, immaculate; stylish décor that was both modern and classic, soft curves accented with darkly stained antiques and vases with strikingly colorful bouquets. Our rooms in the penthouse suite were on the fifth floor, with a spacious sitting room, a dining area, and a private balcony overlooking Green Park and Buckingham Palace.
A large basket of fresh fruit sat on the table with a card from Sir Alex, who'd arrived in London the night before. The card said he would show up at the hotel at ten the next morning. He advised comfortable clothing and a full breakfast.
After freshening up, we had dinner in the hotel dining room — mushroom risotto and raspberry tarts — before taking our first excursion outside. We walked up the Mall from the Palace to Trafalgar Square, then through Piccadilly Square and the theater district. In Soho we browsed Chinese restaurants, each boasting the superiority of their crispy aromatic duck; in Leicester Square we ate ice cream; and at Covent Garden we watched street performers juggle fire and perform magic.
All night I felt the presence of unseen spirits crowding around me, lingering just at the border of my awareness. It made me think of wild animals crouched at the shadowy edge of a campfire. I managed to stay centered and calm until the girls and I got back to our hotel, but I wondered how long I could stay in London without suffering a compete meltdown.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cali
Dukes Hotel, Central London
Later That Night
I turned off the bathroom light and slid between the cool, soft sheets. Nicole was already in bed, asle
ep on her back, surrounded by her luxurious red hair. Before she'd dozed off she had arranged her arms neatly over her chest. Even asleep, she seemed to be posing for a portrait. Man, she was gorgeous.
For a long time I stared up at the ceiling in the dark, listening to her breathe, feeling the movement of the bed every time she inhaled and exhaled. Once upon a time, closing my eyes and relaxing was all I needed to do to have an out-of-body experience. But not anymore. It was hard to even remember the last time I'd consciously projected.
I wasn't sure what was stopping me now, when for so long I'd been projecting against my will, but I had my theories. The first time I remember going out of body was last August, but my sleep troubles had started over a year ago, around when Mom moved to Idaho. Becky claimed to have seen me wearing my hooded sweatshirt on the side of the road last May, so I'd probably been projecting even then, I just don't remember doing it.
It occurred to me that my out-of-body experiences might have originally started because I’d been really stressed out. Maybe now that I was at Waltham Academy, where the atmosphere was calm and my living situation stable, my stress levels had gone down and, with it, the out-of-body experiences.
It might also have something to do with my new outlook about the projections. Before Waltham, I'd been resisting them with everything I had. Now that I wanted them to happen, they'd stopped. Maybe something about tensing up to prevent them had actually helped me get out.
Who knew? Maybe it was all of the above.
I felt more and more like a charlatan. Sir Alex had brought me halfway around the world, apparently because I had some kind of special ability, and now I couldn't even do that.
I had learned stuff at Waltham. I could see auras now, but not all the time, like Becky. To see them I had to get very relaxed and purposefully look for them. I'd also become more connected to my inner voice. More than once my intuition had coughed up a bit of otherworldly information that later proved accurate. I'd even seen a spirit, if you counted the man in black beneath the old Waltham ruins. But unlike Nicole and Becky, who seemed to be routinely in contact with the Other Side, I just sat in morning meditation, taking deep breaths and trying to stay awake.
Lessons with Arika and Robert hadn't been as easy as I thought they'd be. Conscious astral projection involved an exact balance of relaxation, focus, the right degree of drowsiness and wakefulness, and the ability to carry out complex and sometimes monotonous visualization techniques without the mind spiraling into a muddy half-sleep.
Several times I'd been able to get the vibrations going, the vibrations that usually happened just before I separated from my body, but I hadn't yet been able to take the final step and consciously get out. Either the vibrations would be so extreme that I'd lose focus, or the chair or bed I was practicing on would seem to disappear out from under me and I'd tense up to stop myself from falling. The few times I managed to get past that, an intense sexual energy rushed through me, like the one during my out-of-body experience where I'd seen the man in black making out with the young, blond, kitchen girl. The sexual energy had been so strong that twice it had shaken me completely out of my balanced state.
I felt like such a fraud.
"You're tryin' too 'ard!" Arika screamed at me during a break one afternoon. "You don't need trauma to be a Dream Walker." She grabbed my arm to stop me as we walked along, stabbing her finger into my forehead. "You live too much 'ere." She pointed to my chest. "And not enough 'ere. It's about lettin' go. When you learn to let go, you'll find what you're lookin' for."
What was that supposed to mean? A bunch of Yoda crap, if you ask me. I'm pretty sure I was still having out-of-body experiences at night. I'd wake with hazy, seemingly random memories of them: flying with others; bits of cryptic conversation; symbols that I couldn't make any sense of. And there were still those déjà vu moments, two and sometimes three a day, as if I'd either been projecting into my future or taking actions in life that I'd already carried out on the astral planes.
It took me a long time before I drifted off to sleep and even then I only dozed fitfully. I wasn't sure if London's frenetic energy had me all keyed up or if I kept thinking about tomorrow's field trip. Sir Alex had kept us in the dark about the paranormal disturbances we'd be investigating and there was something ominous about not knowing what we'd gotten ourselves into. I didn't think Sir Alex would purposefully put us in danger, but I did get a sense that where we were going wasn't completely safe, either.
When I woke up the next morning I was lying on my back. I was very calm and relaxed. Warm. Light. The room on the other side of my closed eyelids seemed unusually bright. I could hear the peaceful tempo of Nicole's breathing beside me and, from beyond the walls of our room, the vague stirring of hotel staff, and even farther, a city waking to a new business day. Gradually, though, I began to feel a presence in the room with us and, before I had time to think about it, I sat up to take a look.
I felt a faint resistance as I lifted myself off the bed, resistance and a sticky tearing sound. The light in the room seemed strangely bright, the colors unusually vivid. I looked first over at Nicole next to me. She was lying in the same position that she'd been in the night before.
Then I looked down at my own pillow. And there, looking back at me, was my own face.
The shock felt like a sharp electric jolt. It took me only a second before I realized what had happened. When I sat up it was with my astral body only; I'd peeled away from my physical body like candy pulling away from its wrapper.
I stayed very calm, just the way I'd been practicing all these weeks in my astral projection class. I'd been told that stray thoughts could affect my ability to stay out of body, so I cleared my head and tried to relax.
Remembering the presence I'd felt earlier, I turned in the direction where I'd sensed it. There, in the corner between a lamp and a reading chair, stood my brother, Chris.
He looked exactly the way I remembered him from the last day of his life. He wore the same navy blue T-shirt, the same brand new blue jeans. His face was freckled and flushed, the way he'd been in life, not that gruesome blue color he'd been when the paramedics had arrived. He just stood there. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't frowning. He was simply watching me.
"Chris?"
My voice sounded hollow. Echo-y. Like I was talking through a tube from far away. Yet I felt full of warmth, full of light. Relief like light flooded through me. I reached out for him and, as I did, I felt something slide out from under me, exactly as if I'd slipped on a wet floor. I fell back hard, slamming into bed and body with a loud and solid snap!
When I sat up again the room was darker. Colors were only washed-out shades of what they had been before. Everything else was the same. Except for Chris. Chris, who I so desperately needed to talk to, had disappeared.
Chapter Thirty
Becky
Dukes Hotel
Same Morning, 9:45 a.m.
We were eating breakfast in the dining area of our penthouse suite when we heard a knock at the door. Assuming it was room service, delivering the rest of our food, I answered it. I was shocked to see Sir Alex dressed up in a navy pinstriped suit, looking like the London businessmen we'd seen walking home from work the night before.
"Uncle Alex!" Sara cried, embracing him. "How good it is to see you!"
"Eggs, sausages, scones, toast, marmalade, coffee, and tea," Sir Alex said, inventorying the contents of our table. "I see you put my advice into practice."
"We have plenty of food," I said. "Can we offer you anything, Sir Alex?"
"Some tea, please, if it's hot." He took the empty chair at the head of the table. "What, may I ask, is responsible for all these somber faces?"
"It's Cali," I said. "She's just seen her brother, Chris."
"Did you now. Where?"
"In my bedroom this morning. I was out of my body."
"And what did he have to say for himself?"
"Nothing. He was just standing there, looking at me."
&n
bsp; "Looking at you or looking out after you?"
"Looking out after me?" Cali smiled. "Chris?" She seemed to think about it. "Well, I guess. Why not?"
"Why didn't you talk to him?"
"I got overexcited and slammed back into my body before there was time."
"Ah, well then, not to worry." Sir Alex took a sip of tea. "He'll be back. I apologize for changing the subject so swiftly but our car will be here in a little while and I wanted to brief you before we get started.
"We will be going to Lord Arthur Humphreys' residence in northern London. Lord Humphreys is a prominent member of the House of Lords. He, his wife, and daughter Emily, have been experiencing paranormal disturbances since they moved into their house about eight months ago. They have no pets or other family members living at the residence. It's only the three of them.
"I met with Lord Humphreys yesterday and have had a tour of the house. He's invited the four of you over this morning."
"What do they want us to do?" Nicole asked.
"This morning? Nothing but observe. Walk around the house, pick up impressions, and report what you see, hear, and feel. I suspect they'll want you there for their all-night vigil tonight and, if that's the case, I'll have you back here for a nap and a good meal before having to head back out again."
Cali pushed away her untouched plate and reached for her coffee cup. "What aren't you telling us about these 'disturbances'? Something doesn't smell right."
"The investigators don't want me to bias you by feeding you too much information. They want everything you pick up raw and unfiltered, no matter how confusing, odd, or absurd. Bring your notebooks and nothing else. We leave in ten minutes."
****
"It looks quiet enough," I observed as our van wove through the streets of East Barnet, a suburb in north London.
