Carter’s heightened level of panic from these reflections was due to the time he had lost his parents, and then learned afterward that they weren’t his biological parents. These thoughts funneled through him until he slumped in his chair. His mind was flooded with memories that he had been trying to repress for the last four years. He began to realize that forgetting was not an option. The waves kept pounding him, and pounding him hard, until he felt the loss of muscle control. The levee broke.
Brenda caught Carter as he was slipping to the floor. He sensed her presence, and it was crucial that he snap out of it and try to hold it together. Brenda slapped his face in an attempt to resurrect him, and then he felt a sudden surge race through him. He may have gotten pissed off at Brenda for slapping him in the face, but the result brought him back and prevented injury. Brenda slid him further back in the chair.
His purpose for being at the hospital suddenly dawned on him, and he again heard the blipping and the bleeping of the life-support system that was keeping a psychic alive. They had only met her about an hour ago, but it was imperative that he not allow her to die. There was too much on the line, and it pissed him off that he allowed himself to spiral out of control the way he had.
The blipping and the bleeping continued. Machines all around them kept her alive. It was in Carter and Brenda’s best interest to keep those lines from going flat. They were talking to her and checking out the monitors, acting like immediate family. That’s what they had told hospital staff at the nurse’s station on the way in. Otherwise, they would have been escorted from the ICU, and their answers may have escaped to the clouds. If the psychic died, their motivation would follow suit. They were convinced that there was a very good reason why she ran off and into traffic, and there was not a chance in hell they would allow her to die without a fight.
The ICU doctor rushed into the room to check on his patient. Carter watched as the doctor’s eyes moved from one monitor to another, jotting down notes throughout the process. He moved like a doctor who had to check on dozens of other patients, so the time he spent with the patient at hand and the quality of care was greatly compromised. He began to walk away as he looked down at his clipboard, without saying a word to the patient’s supposed immediate family, which Brenda thought was rude.
“Excuse me, doctor?” she interrupted. “Are you going to tell us how our Angie is doing?” she asked.
“Excuse me?” said the doctor.
“Can you give us an update? Is she going to be okay?” she asked.
“We’re hoping so,” said the doctor, looking at her strangely, “but I cannot promise you anything when a patient is comatose. Just pray for Angie. You two are family?”
“Yes we are,” answered Brenda. “We will be devastated if anything happens to our Aunt Angie.”
Carter disguised this act with a cough. The doctor looked over at Carter, and then left the room.
Carter and Brenda had been living in old man Martin’s house for the past four years, and had made a pact to not live in the past. It was full steam ahead. The task was difficult because nobody can withstand such life-altering events and then put them to rest entirely. They could try not to live in their miserable past, perhaps limiting it, but what will be… will be.
Brenda had to live with the fact that she was Martin’s wife, Shirley, in a past life, and Martin had strangled her to death and covered it up. She was at peace with the fact that she and Carter disposed of him in the same spot in the desert where Martin had disposed of Carter’s mother, who was pregnant with Carter. Brenda had a new life now and had turned the page.
One day while walking the Pearl Street Mall, they saw a flyer on an outdoor billboard. A psychic listed her services for half-price. Brenda was the one to notice the flyer.
“Carter, check it out,” she said. “Half price readings from this psychic.”
“Wow,” said Carter. “Half price of what?”
“Sessions generally run about a hundred bucks.”
“So… fifty bucks for someone with questionable qualifications to tell us things about ourselves that we already know.”
“No, that’s not how it works,” said Brenda, softly pushing Carter. “Stop being a killjoy.”
“I’ve seen shows and heard stories about psychics who say that you have a sister named Gertrude and she has brown eyes and weighs 250 pounds. How does that help people?” Carter loved to push her buttons, and she loved to push his buttons, but he kept the ball in his court at this moment. “Why can’t these psychics come out of hiding when the bad things happen in the world? There were no psychics available when Jim Jones poured the punch, or when Son of Sam terrorized New York City. Hell, what about Osama bin Laden? With all the psychics in the world, how come none of the great tragedies were averted?”
“That’s not true,” Brenda said. “Psychics help police departments all over the world. You just don’t hear about it because they don’t report it. I don’t know… what could it hurt by us giving it a try?”
Carter hesitated for quite some time. He had his opinion, but he was not really up on the reality of the psychic. He thought about it some more and a little piece of him was curious about what it would be like to have a psychic do a reading on him.
“Half price, Carter.” Brenda began lobbying harder and mixing in a little bit of whine. “Come on… you know you want it.”
“How do you know that I want it?” Carter was laughing when he asked.
“I can see your mind contemplating. It’s churning, processing,” said Brenda.
“I can’t get away with anything with you,” Carter said. “I could just go to you for free and we’d pocket that fifty instead.”
Brenda laughed. “Tell you what,” she began, “if you don’t like it, I swear I’ll never ask you to go again. What will it hurt, huh? Maybe we’ll learn something. You never know.”
Carter smirked and reminded Brenda about the sweet part of the deal. “One time,” he said.
“Goodie!” said Brenda, clapping her hands quickly three times. She ripped one of the fringes from the bottom of the flyer, which listed the phone number, and they had an afternoon plan in place.
When Brenda called the number, she learned that the psychic’s name was Angie, she had a cancellation for her next appointment, and she was only two blocks away. Not 10 minutes had passed before Carter and Brenda came upon the hole in the wall shack, which was actually a very small house with a sign in front which read, “Psychic Readings – A Blueprint of your Life.”
The two new customers stopped, looked at each other, and raised their eyebrows, creating a mirror image. Cars were flying by in both directions on this rather busy street. According to the sign, walk-ins were welcome. They looked back at the house.
“Let’s do it,” said Carter. “We’ve come this far.” Carter noticed reservations within Brenda, but then she casually started to walk up the walkway to the house, holding Carter’s hand. When they approached, the door opened as Carter was reaching for the knocker, nearly getting the wrong knocker.
“Wow!” said Carter. “You’re good!”
“Angie.” The psychic introduced herself with a raucous chuckle. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
“And confident,” Brenda chimed in.
Carter and Brenda followed Angie into the small nook of a house and they ended up in a small den. Everything about the house was small. She invited Carter and Brenda to sit on the loveseat, then turned and sat in an old wooden chair with a blue, padded seat cushion clinging on with little strips of cloth that appeared to be aftermarket threads.
Carter began to introduce himself. “My name is… ”
The psychic jumped up from her seat with enlarged eyeballs
and raced toward Carter, yelling, “Ahhhhhhhhhh!” She then pressed her index finger against Carter’s lips, instead of her own, and followed with “Shhhhhhhh! It would ruin my reading if I got your name,” she said with enlarged eyes. “That’s why I only accept cash. Names contaminate readings. I need a moment of silence to get tuned in to you both. No more of that. Any questions?”
Carter shifted nervously in his seat, trying hard to come up with a question. “I’d like to know… ”
“Ut!” yelled Angie. “No questions until after your reading. I told you that I don’t want any outside influences, and a question and answer session in the beginning would defeat the purpose.”
Carter sighed in slight disgust, wondering why she would ask if there were any questions. He sat silently, staring at Angie, wondering why he even came. One and done, he thought. He would never have to deal with her or anyone like her again.
Angie came off as a little abrasive, and this kept Brenda tight-lipped. Carter had never seen this side of Brenda. He looked at Angie sitting in the chair. There was a lot of energy pent up in that little middle-aged body. She had very big brown eyes, and Carter estimated that those eyes had given Angie the gift of sight for just beyond a half-century. Her brown hair was a little bit wiry and landed near the back and bottom of her heart. It seemed to him that sitting still was a difficult task for this psychic. Carter could read into her a little as well.
Out of the corner of his eye, Carter could see Brenda’s blues locked into Angie’s browns. It was obvious that Angie commanded the room. A coffee cup smoldered on the coffee table in front of her. The walls of the room seemed to shoot out intermittent coffee mist. Carter would not have been shocked if he discovered that Juan Valdez had lived here. The well-defined wrinkles on Angie’s cheeks told of age or stress, or perhaps both. However, the initial greeting exuded a youthful energy. Her big browns opened, and then closed. They opened again, and then closed again. This time they stayed closed.
Angie opened her eyes after a minute. She jumped up and leaped in front of Carter and Brenda, startling them both and forcing them to jerk their bodies further back onto the couch. She reached out with both hands, grabbed a hand from each of them, and squeezed tight. Then she squeezed her eyes closed tighter. Carter looked down at the kneeling Angie as her eyelids fluttered and she began bellowing and talking in tongues. Carter and Brenda exchanged rapid glances. They did not know how to react. The coffee-stained air began to thicken and the oxygen level decreased. The closed shades made the room rather dark for an afternoon.
Angie suddenly went silent and her eyes jerked open wide. She looked at Brenda with a horrified look on her face, the bright whites of her eyes glowing in the darkened room. Her mouth transformed into a rectangle as she slowly returned to her feet and inched her way back from them, not once taking her eyes off of Brenda. Her body began to twitch wildly. Carter could not make heads or tails of what the hell was going on, and he and Brenda did not utter a word. Maybe this was a test, he thought, and he would speak and get kicked out for not playing right.
They just let her be, and observed. He looked over again at Brenda, who appeared to be shell-shocked. She didn’t even return his glance. Angie backed up to the front door, feeling the walls along the way. She turned, screamed, and bolted outside. Then came the horrifying sound of screeching brakes and a loud, impactful thud, followed by another thud.
CHAPTER TWO
When Carter and Brenda ran to the front door, they saw Angie lying in the middle of the street like a limp ragdoll. Brenda put her hands on top of her head and screamed. Carter ran past her and out into the street to Angie’s body, and Brenda soon appeared by his side. She grabbed Angie’s wrist and checked for a pulse.
“Nothing!” she screamed, panicking. “She’s got no pulse!”
“Are you sure?” Carter asked, quickly. “Are you sure you did it right?”
“I think so, but you try it,” she said. “Maybe you’ll have better luck.” She jumped up to get out of his way, waving her hand quickly so that Carter would hurry.
“I’ve never done this before,” Carter said. “I’ve never had to. I don’t know what to look for!”
Carter watched as Brenda bolted to the next house, pounding on the door to get help. The smell of brakes permeated the air.
“Call 911,” she demanded as the door opened. “There’s been an accident and we need an ambulance right away!”
Carter’s world slowed to a crawl as society’s noise followed suit. Slow motion ensued as Carter watched Angie’s spirit drift skyward, looking down on Carter, who could only watch her life slipping away on a thin string. There was nothing that he could do, but he was familiar with this territory. Up and away she drifted. Carter noticed that the movement was intermittent, as if there was something pulling her from a direct and impactful ascent from what seemed to be an untimely death.
Carter looked up at Angie and felt a connection. It seemed to him that he had a similar flight path, and could relate to her. He knew that she took with her a message that he and Brenda so desperately needed. That look on her face had twisted even her wrinkles. She had been holding their hands and must have sensed something terrible. Was it a message for them? Why did she only look at Brenda when she went into convulsions? Do they now have to live life looking over their shoulders?
Brenda returned to Carter, who was kneeling next to the body of Angie and intently peering up at her spirit. “What’s going on here, Carter? What do you see?”
Carter did not answer right away, but he did hear Brenda. He was mesmerized, yet blown away that he could see Angie, trapped in an out-of-body experience. He believed that because he had lived through an out-of-body experience himself, he could now become part of others. It was an amazing power, but it also scared the hell out of him. He wasn’t so sure that he wanted this feature in his life, but he did know that the subject he was looking up at held some sort of secret that would bode well for him to pursue.
Sirens far off became louder with each passing second. A crowd began to form around Angie. One man quickly approached, dropped his brief case and yelled, “I’m a doctor. Give me space!” The circle around them spread out like a drop in water. The doctor quickly checked her pulse, and just as quickly dropped her hand and began doing a chest compression in an attempt to return her to life.
Carter never lost eye contact with Angie’s spirit, and could see her slowly returning to her own body in spurts with each chest compression. However, there was an interruption as police cars swooned in from different angles, followed by an ambulance and a fire truck. Carter noticed that the changing of the guard was enough for Angie to lose the ground she had gained with the chest compressions.
There was so much commotion all around the body that Carter’s connection with Angie broke away. Brenda was caught up in the struggle and lost her focus on Carter’s focus. Carter returned to the body of Angie and was jostled aside by medical personnel trying to revive her. He then was knocked by a gurney rushed in by two of the paramedics, and could only watch from afar as Angie’s body was swiftly swung onto the gurney and into the waiting ambulance. The sirens blared in concert with the lights strobing Boulder, and Angie’s physical body was gone. Carter looked up to where Angie’s spirit had been hanging out, and all that he could see was some sort of astral streak, and again she vanished.
There remained a crowd outside of Angie’s place. Carter felt responsible for what had happened, and relayed that information to Brenda as some rescue workers slowly packed it in. Investigators began measuring skid marks and talking to witnesses. The drivers had already been identified by police and were freely speaking with detectives, who were trying to recreate the accident.
“Carter, you know it’s not our fault, right?” Brenda asked. She was crouched down to the level of
Carter’s crouch.
“What happened?” Carter asked aloud. “Why would she back away from us and rush away like that… as if she’d seen a ghost? What was it about us that would make her do that? It scares me to think of the reason, and to think that she ran straight out the front door knowing full well that there would be a busy street ready to greet her.”
Brenda inched closer, even though there was not an inch between them. “Carter, no… we don’t have any answers, but the only connection to this tragedy that we have is the fact that we were here when it happened. That’s it. That’s all. If you wish to count beans, then she was staring at me intently before she ran. Maybe it was just me that freaked her out.”
Carter looked up at Brenda, and then further up at the police officer, who had just appeared behind her.
“Can I speak to you two for a moment,” the officer asked.
“Sure… sure you can,” said Carter. “What would you like to know?”
The officer reached into the inside top pocket of his gray overcoat, and his hand returned with a mini notepad that had a pen clipped to it. He extracted the pen and flipped the notepad open with one hand, landing on a clean page. His untrusting eyes darted back and forth from Carter to Brenda and back again. “We have witnesses stating that they saw you two exiting the same premises where the subject came from and was hit by the cars.” The officer cleared his throat. “Excuse me, I’m Officer Barney. Let me start by getting your names.”
“I’m Carter Spence, and this is… ”
“Ut!” Officer Barney stuck out his hand to inform Carter that he wasn’t to introduce suspect number two.
“I’m Brenda Raycroft.”
Desert Son Trilogy: Desert Son, Wayward Soul, Spiritual Intervention (Books 1-3) Page 20
