Sinsperationally Yours

by Prince, Nikki

  “I know what you’re going to say,” Beth continued in a rush. “But you’re one of the best. There has to be something else we can try.” Her hopeful eyes bored into him, pleading.

  He shook his head gently and ran a hand through the short, light brown strands of his hair, which always looked rumpled from the habit. His heart ached for them. Ever since they were young Sean had spoken of the many children he would have and all that he would teach them. When he’d met Beth, who was also eager to have a large family, it’d seemed like a match made in heaven. “I don’t know Beth. It’s not that I don’t want to help you it’s just that Dr. Hannigan and I trained together. I’m pretty sure she’s done everything I would have done for you.”

  “Not everything,” Sean objected.

  Stephen cocked his head at him.

  “You have training she doesn’t have.”

  The light went on in his mind. His brother was referring to the little known fact that, aside from being a medical doctor, he was also a shaman. He sat back and observed them both. They had to be really desperate to be asking him for that kind of help.

  “Off the top of my head I can tell you there’s no ritual or spell for this sort of thing. Don’t you think I would have already tried?” It was true. He would have offered his help immediately if there was something that could make it happen but most of the rituals and spells he knew of had to do with healing and traveling through the world of spirit, not conjuring babies.

  “There has to be something,” Sean insisted. “Something someone hasn’t discovered yet.” He swiped at an errant tear that escaped from his eye.

  “Please,” Beth pleaded. “Won’t you at least look into it for us?”

  His heart melted. They looked so worn out, so desolate. How could he not try to help them? “Sure. I’ll look into it for you. But don’t get your hopes up.” He affixed them with a firm look.

  Too late. They clutched at each other in relief and beamed at him.

  He came around the desk as they rose to go and clasped hands with his brother.

  “Thank you for doing this,” Sean said earnestly pulling Stephen in for a quick chest-to-chest hug. “You’re our last hope. Thank you.”

  Stephen closed the door behind them, already regretting his words. Why couldn’t he have just back up Dr. Hannigan? He knew as well as she did that the longer the couple kept hoping the more crushing the defeat would be in the end. But they were family, he had to try.

  He stayed late in his office that night reviewing the copies of their medical charts they’d left with his receptionist. Dr. Hannigan had indeed tried every trick in the book and then some. Some of the procedures she’d tried were still experimental and didn’t yet have any clinical data to prove that they were effective. The problem was that both Sean and Beth had multiple issues making it impossible for them to have children. He scrutinized every page closely hoping to find a tidbit that might have been overlooked but could find nothing. Everything had been done as perfectly as he would have done it himself. Every test, every procedure, all the hormones and supplements they were taking…he could find nothing he would have changed. Of course, they only hired the best here at Genea. It was one of the world’s leading fertility clinics and they were all up to date with the most cutting edge technology available.

  He finally slammed both charts closed with a sigh and rubbed his eyes as he leaned back in his chair and looked back out the window. The office was quiet. All the staff had gone home. The lights across the harbor twinkled in the darkness and some even moved as boats they belonged to glided across the water.

  He supposed he could try some healing rituals with them but technically they weren’t sick. They just had different genetics. It was who they were. Healing rituals were used to restore people back to their natural healthy state, not change them. What they needed was something to enhance what they had, to amplify. He would have to see if he could speak with Burnu, the aborigine who’d trained him as a shaman, and see if there were any possibilities.

  He idly tapped his finger on the keyboard of his computer and the screen popped to life. With a twist of his mouth he typed ‘miracle pregnancy’ in the search box and hit enter. That’s pretty much what it was going to take at this point. A random search on the Internet was going to be as good as anything else.

  He lazily scrolled through the links. Most were sites with advice on things to try to get pregnant, reports of women gushing with gratitude at becoming pregnant, ads for fertility centers, celebrity pregnancies…the links went on and on, page after page. He was about to click the screen closed but decided to advance one more screen at the last second. It was more of the same but he scrolled to the bottom anyway and his hand automatically started rolling the cursor back up to close. But he stopped when his lazily scanning eyes caught the title of the very last link at the bottom of the page. ‘Incubus Got Me Pregnant?’ it read.

  He clicked on it.

  Chapter 3

  He woke with the first rays of light the next morning even though it was Saturday. He’d always found it tough to sleep when he had a particularly difficult case on his mind. Knowing Burnu was an early riser as well, he didn’t hesitate to call him after he showered. The shaman answered the phone right away and agreed to meet Stephen for breakfast at one of their favorite cafes in The Rocks on George Street.

  The Rocks was midway between where he lived in Mosman on the North Shore and where Burnu lived, south in Eastern Redfern. It was a suburb at the foot of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on the western shore of Sydney Cove with picturesque cobblestone streets and vibrant cafes and restaurants. Stephen tugged a coat on to ward off the sharp chill of the morning air before getting in his car for the short drive down the highway and across Sydney Harbour Bridge.

  He was grateful to have Burnu to turn to with the questions on his mind. After getting home from work he’d done research on what an incubus was after reading the link he’d found in his office. According to legend it was a demon that would lie upon women as they slept in order to have sexual intercourse with them. It seemed, in ancient times, that the incubus had been blamed for many unwanted as well as miraculous pregnancies. In some cases it had been claimed that the incubus had taken the form of a priest. In others, women who had been unable to conceive before had found themselves pregnant even after long periods of time away from their husbands all because of an incubus.

  Convenient to have such a creature to blame, he thought.

  The woman in the link confessed to have had just such an experience. At the end she reported being pregnant with two babies that were not twins. Apparently it had been determined from the ultrasound that one fetus was sixteen weeks along and the other seven weeks along. She claimed that her husband was responsible for the first fetus but then had been away on business for a few months and attributed the second fetus to her encounter with an incubus.

  Clearly it had just been a case of superfestation, he thought. It was extremely rare for a woman to ovulate while pregnant but there did exist recorded cases of such a thing occurring. Women who superfestated ended up giving birth to babies several months apart in age. Of that much he was sure. Whether he bought the story of an incubus, he hadn’t decided. From his experience so far he knew there were many worlds and many creatures that existed that people didn’t know about so there was a possibility it was real. He was looking forward to what Burnu would say.

  Traffic was light on the bridge. He pulled his BMW to the lane farthest on the left and allowed his mind to free itself for a moment from the thoughts that had been plaguing him all night while he enjoyed the view. The pointed white domes of the Sydney Opera House gleamed in a shaft of sunlight that had broken through the clouds. Behind it stretched the vast lush green of the Royal Botanic Gardens. On its right side towered the line of skyscrapers that made up the central business district. As he exited the far end of the bridge he saw a large cruise ship docking with people lining its rails to enjoy the view.

  He left his car a
t a car park and made his way to the café, pulling the collar of his coat up around his neck against the stinging sea breeze. His breath blew puffs of white smoke while he walked. When he drew close, he saw Burnu waiting for him. He was standing out front, dressed simply in a pair of khakis, tennis shoes and a jumper.

  They both smiled widely when they saw each other and clasped hands to pull each other in for a hug.

  “Stephen, it is good to see you again mate,” Burnu said in his usual thin, reedy voice. His deep set, black eyes took Stephen in as they stepped apart. His wide, white smile made his cheekbones even more prominent.

  Burnu was of medium build with short, greying, black hair and dark, dark skin. It was pretty much black but no aborigine would ever call themselves that. It was a term African-Americans used but the aborigines had never applied it to themselves.

  “You too Burnu.” Stephen reached for the door. “Why didn’t you get a table and wait inside? It’s frigid out here.”

  Burnu shrugged. “It feels like any other day to me.”

  He rolled his eyes. Trust an aborigine to say that, they never seemed bothered by the weather no matter what temperature it was.

  They went inside and were shown to a table right away. It was still early enough that the place looked almost empty. Stephen pulled off his coat and hung it on the back of the chair and sat. A waitress appeared almost instantly to take their orders. They had been here so many times they already knew what they wanted. She scribbled it down with a smile and disappeared.

  “So tell me how you’ve been,” Burnu said. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you. I was really glad when you called me, I’d just been thinking about you.”

  Stephen felt a pang of remorse. First his brother, now Burnu. He really had been slacking off on his relationships. “I’m sorry I haven’t seen you in a while. Things have just been really crazy at the clinic.”

  Burnu sat back and smiled even broader. “I know. I know my friend. I’m not complaining. You have a great responsibility. That has always been clear.”

  He dipped his head, wishing that it had always been as clear to him as it had been to Burnu. Becoming a shaman hadn’t been something he’d ever dreamed about. During his third year of Uni he’d started to have crazy, vivid, frightening dreams, first at night and then during the day. Dreams and daydreams of places and…beings…so unnatural he could not have made them up himself. He’d been sure he was going insane.

  At the time, he had sought psychiatric and psychological help through the medical network on campus, but the looks the doctors had given him as they’d scribbled in his chart had frightened him even more than the dreams. He’d stopped going after only a few visits, sure that they were getting ready to lock him up. But the images had continued to occur. It wasn’t long before he’d turned to alcohol. It was the only thing that had seemed to help dull the vivid images that would appear at random.

  Because of it all his grades plummeted dramatically and it would have been only a matter of time before he was expelled. But he wasn’t. One weekend, after a full day of binge drinking to combat some particularly persistent images, the bouncer at the bar had come to remove him from the toilet where he had been puking his brains out.

  “It’s time for you to go,” he’d said, looking menacing dressed all in black with skin dark as night.

  Stephen had started laughing from where he’d lain on the cold tile floor, blitzed out of his mind. “Go?” he’d retorted. “I already left about a dozen times. I could show you things you’ve only ever dreamed of.”

  “Yeah? Like what?” the bouncer had replied.

  “There are worlds out there you never even imagined. Things so beautiful and some so terrifying you don’t even want to imagine they exist.”

  “Worlds aye?” he’d replied in a bored tone. “Why don’t you tell me about one of them?”

  He had. And then everything had changed after that. The bouncer’s name had been Daku. Apparently he’d recognized Stephen’s description of the world from someone else, his uncle, who’d undergone the transition to shaman many years before.

  Daku was the one who’d introduced Stephen to Burnu and that was when he had learned that his visions were memories and experiences he’d had while visiting other worlds as an astral projection in his sleep. Unbeknownst to him, his power as shaman had established itself in him and his spirit had shifted continually between worlds, out of control. The shifts had occurred primarily while he was sleeping at first but then had started to take place during the day. When he was tired or daydreaming he would find himself suddenly somewhere else. He would be there minutes or hours. In one case days had passed.

  He’d found himself running from a pack of raven-headed beasts with multiple, scale-covered, slithering limbs. Just as he’d leapt off the edge of a cliff, to a thick branch sticking out its side far below, he’d snapped back to the present covered in a cold sweat. It had been enough for anyone to think they were going crazy. Thankfully Burnu had taught him how to control it, how to stay grounded in his physical plane. He had no idea what would have happened to him if Burnu had not become his mentor.

  That was how it happened for most shaman, Burnu had explained. It wasn’t something any of them set out to become. It was thrust upon them. A ‘gift’ that they were given in this lifetime.

  “Great responsibility,” Stephen repeated as he pulled himself from the memories. “Ta,” he said as the waitress set a cup of coffee down in front of him. He measured a teaspoon of sugar into it and stirred it slowly.

  Burnu waited patiently, dark eyes watching him. He had always had the patience of a saint, which made him a great mentor.

  “Everything is fine with me,” he finally said. “It’s my brother and his wife that are having the issues.”

  Burnu nodded and stirred cream into his own cup of coffee.

  “They asked for my help…wanted to know if there was anything I could do to enable them conceive a child. They’ve spent the last four years doing everything medically possible but nothing has worked.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  Stephen could see that his friend already knew what he was going to ask but he didn’t say another word. Typical Burnu. He always waited for Stephen to ask the right questions. He sipped his coffee, thinking how he wanted to phrase it, then asked the obvious question but it wasn’t really the one he wanted answered. “I already told them that there was nothing I could do as a shaman to help them conceive a child. When I think of every ritual, incantation and spell you’ve taught me…it’s all been about healing. Is there anything you can think of that would help them? Maybe something you haven’t taught me yet?”

  The shaman thought for a moment. “I have also received requests like this since becoming a shaman. Unfortunately, you are right, there’s nothing that can be done. The ceremonies and rituals we have in that area are to celebrate life and love, assign a totem to a child, but they can’t give the kind of help your relatives are looking for.”

  He nodded. “That’s what I thought. I just had to ask anyway.” Disappointment flooded him. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding onto the slim hope that his mentor could help them.

  The waitress returned with their brekky and plopped it down in front of them. His concern for his family was replaced momentarily as his mouth watered at the sight of the small stack of puffy ricotta hotcakes with fresh banana and honeycomb infused butter. They were his favorite. He kept swearing to order something different on his next visit but it never happened.

  Burnu scooped red currant jam onto the triangle of sourdough toast he held in his long fingers and took a bite of it before even touching the sunny yellow scrambled eggs on his plate.

  Both sighed in satisfaction. Several moments passed in silence as they dug into their meals.

  “So,” Burnu said, “I reckon that’s not what you wanted to ask me about since you already knew the answer.” He piled a fluffy helping of egg onto a piece of toast and bit into it.

&nbs
p; “Yeah, no, you’re right. There is something else.” He took a sip of coffee. “I read an article online about a woman becoming pregnant by an incubus.”

  “An incubus?” Burnu’s greying black eyebrows arched causing the lines of his forehead to crease.

  “You ever heard of them before?”

  “Yes, yes. I know what they are.”

  “You do?” Stephen’s hands, holding the knife and fork, lowered to the table.

  “Sure. I just haven’t heard anyone mention them in a really long time.” He shrugged. “Thought they’d become extinct.”

  “So are they real?” That was his true question, the one that had been burning in his mind. His hazel eyes fastened on his friend’s face.

  Burnu gnawed the corner off of another piece of toast slathered with jam and chewed for a minute as he regarded him. The muscles of his jaw worked making the greying stubble on his cheeks more apparent. Finally he set his toast down. “I see. So you think a demon might be able to help your brother and his wife. I don’t think that’s a good idea given how much trouble you’ve had accepting the spirit worlds. “

  Stephen set his utensils down and ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve changed. I’ve accepted them.”

  Burnu’s expression didn’t change. His eyes fixed calmly on Stephen’s face giving nothing away. He could tell the shaman didn’t believe him.

  “Ok. All right. I had a lot of trouble accepting it, that’s true.” He looked away from Burnu and out the window.

  It was one of the reasons he had gone into medical school. He had believed, at the time, that science would make sense of all that he had been experiencing. But it hadn’t. Doubt had been one of the major obstacles for him in his training as a shaman. It had been very hard for him to really believe there was any value to the things Burnu had been teaching him. He had simply gone along with it because it had helped him control his mind bringing peace to his soul.