Angie wasn’t panicking anymore, and she couldn’t run away this time. She was also being strong-armed by Brenda, just as she had been strong-armed by Brenda’s parents, so all she could do was return her focus to Brenda. It seemed to be a relief for Angie to get this off her chest. It was so much of a burden that the change could be seen in her demeanor as she released the details.
“Now the question that I have for you is Why did you run away from us and into the street?” Red blotches sprung up on Brenda’s face as she anticipated the answer. Carter could hardly contain himself.
Angie looked very frail, but her eyes connected with Brenda’s and the reply finally came out. “When I touched you… I was flooded with visions of your parents… until it was apparent to me that you were actually their daughter… the reincarnation of that Shirley woman that you had talked about all through your childhood. I also saw myself becoming a part of this reincarnation dynamic in some way in the near future… scared the living shit outta me.”
Carter and Brenda gasped, forcing a hiccup in the story, but she kept on going. “It really threw me for a loop. I felt possessed, violated. I froze, and then began to tremble, and felt so claustrophobic that I needed to run through any opening to get out of the house. The visions came flooding through like water through a broken levee. I saw Martin coming after me. He wanted to possess my body. Before I could think about the danger I was putting myself in, I needed out. It was like being trapped underwater and having one final second to reach the top to breathe. Next thing I knew, I popped like a balloon and I was looking down at my body, and now I’m here with you.”
Brenda was trying to absorb what Angie had just told them. It was definitely strange that she and Angie had grown up in the same city, many states away. Then they both traveled to the same city in an attempt to escape their lives in Iowa. Carter could see the toll this information was taking on Brenda as her complexion had changed for the worse. He could also see how Angie felt like she was being stalked.
“Why would you pick up your entire life and move because of angry customers?” Brenda asked. “Was it really that bad… bad enough that you had to relocate?”
“It was bad. I actually got death threats. I did file a complaint against them, but you know how that goes. I’m pretty sure I’m still alive today because I made that move. It was a terrible thing to have to live through… not knowing if you were going to be shot in the head one night while sitting on the couch watching television. It just wasn’t worth it to me… police report or no police report.”
Brenda exhaled. “Carter and I were so overwhelmed with fear, not knowing why you ran out on us, and all we could think of was that we were going to be up against the worst thing in the world! We were going crazy thinking about what was coming at us in our lives? It’s a relief knowing that it mostly had to do with past life events.”
“Well… not all of it. There was one more thing,” said Angie.
Carter and Brenda stopped, and were all ears. What a disappointing moment it was after thinking that they had finally received the answer they had been seeking, and seemingly out of the woods.
“What is it?” Carter asked. “Tell us what it is.”
Angie paused her story for a moment, trying to recapture her breath. The oxygen tubes still poked through her nostrils, but her speaking was doing a number on her oxygen intake. She looked over at Brenda, and then her eyes moved over to Carter. She fidgeted a bit in her bed, and then carried on with what she had to say. “When I touched your arm, Brenda, I got a rush of bad. I’ve been doing this for a long time. Actually… let me back up. When I first touched the article of clothing that your parents presented to me back in Iowa… your whole story destroyed me. It was… truthfully… your reincarnation from Shirley that initially disturbed me. I’d never experienced anything like that, and frankly… did not believe the concept even possible. It was as if I had just come face to face with a UFO. Then when I explained to your parents that what you were claiming this whole time was true, their reaction was the icing on the cake. So when I discovered that I had reconnected with you, I thought you were after me.”
“So that’s why you ran?” Brenda looked at Carter, who was somewhat relieved, and more so when he saw that Brenda’s complexion had changed.
Angie looked at them again and said, “There’s still one more thing.”
“What do you mean?” Carter protested. “You just told us one more thing. Wasn’t that the one more thing? Jesus Christ, Angie… will you just get it out!”
“There’s still one more thing about you, Brenda.”
“Tell us!” Brenda was so pissed off that she grabbed the oxygen tube and held it threateningly in her hand. She knew that Angie’s reaction had to do with her specifically. “Tell us now, Angie!”
Angie took a dry gulp. She looked into Brenda’s eyes with a glossy red-eyed stare. “I was flooded. It was overload. Then there was something very bad in your future. It was so bad… I lost control … never experienced anything like that in all my years.”
Brenda’s mouth hung open and remained that way, because she didn’t even know how to respond. It was too much for any person to handle, knowing that something bad was going to happen… something very bad. It was bad enough to send a psychic running into the street with reckless abandon.
Carter could not speak either. He didn’t even know how to console Brenda, as he had just received the news now himself. He finally managed to ask, enunciating in anger. “Can’t you tell us… now that you’re here with us? Angie, for Christ’s sake. We need to know what that bad something is.”
“I am here with you,” said Angie, but Carter and Brenda knew that Martin had returned. It was his damn voice again. He wasn’t gone yet. Why and how he kept slipping back into Angie was beyond them. Angie was really an outsider. The only connection she had to them was their chance encounter for the reading. “Shirley,” Martin continued, “Shirley please come to me. Shirley come join me. I miss you so much, my love. I warn you… watch out for your past relations.”
Brenda, with all of her might, grabbed the cross and began flailing it through the air. She needed Martin to get the hell out of Angie and she needed him to leave forever. She also needed Angie to return. Although they had received the guts of what they needed, she had additional questions. She heard what sounded like a steam iron hissing, and Martin’s voice was gone. They looked at Angie and saw no movement, and her eyes were closed. Then the monitor flat-lined and the loud siren sounded.
Medical personnel rushed into the room, and they did so in a flash. Within minutes the room was full of doctors and nurses, and paddles that were jolting Angie a foot off the bed. There was no immediate response, and the doctors and nurses were exchanging glances as if hope of resuscitation was slipping away, just like Angie’s spirit. Carter looked up to the corner of the room and saw Angie’s spirit hanging in the balance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Brenda decided that she was going to go out for dinner and drinks with a girl from work. Carter began to get nervous when Brenda did not return home by the time he went to bed. She had told him not to wait up for her, so he wasn’t overly concerned that she hadn’t made it home by 11 PM. After the Angie incident a few days before, he thought it would be great for her to get her mind off the trauma. He was so exhausted when he went to bed that he was able to fall asleep inside of fifteen minutes.
A ringing phone awakened him. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was the light of the new day barely upon him. It was 5:57 AM. He immediately looked to the other side of the bed, and Brenda was not in it. His eyes shot open and he snatched at the phone receiver before the end of the second ring. “Brenda… is that you?”
Carter listened, hoping for Brenda’s voice, but it never came. As eac
h second ticked away, he became more awake and more panic-stricken. A phone call that early in the morning can never be good, and with Brenda still not home, Carter was going out of his mind. That mind was a circle of confusion. He had visions of her lying dead in a field. He had visions of her car crashing off the side of the road. He had other visions that he attempted to block, since they were far worse. Brenda was not like this. She wouldn’t just not come home. Something had to be wrong. He continued to hold the receiver to his ear, but heard nothing. “Brenda… Brenda… Brenda… is this you, Brenda?”
There was still nothing on the end of the other line, but Carter was hanging onto any hope that Brenda just had a bad connection. There couldn’t be a random call at six o’clock in the morning when she mysteriously did not return home the night before. That would be far too much of a coincidence. He held his left ear with his left hand to block out any external noise. He listened intently, and now he was downright scared. Then he heard a strange noise through the receiver. It sounded as if a chair in a classroom moved two inches when a student shifted. It was short and sudden, but that’s all he had to work with. “Brenda! Brenda… say something!”
The ticking of the alarm clock was the only sound that he could hear. He picked up the alarm clock and threw it outside of the bedroom to eliminate anything that might hinder his hearing. Then he heard muffled voices on the line. It sounded like a guy and a girl having a conversation, but the sound was so muffled it was more like masculine and feminine tones. He continued to listen in until the line became a little clearer. He feared that the feminine tone may have been Brenda, but that might have been his overactive imagination at work. It would be good in the sense that Brenda was still alive, but bad in the sense that she was with a guy and possibly at his house. Maybe she didn’t know that the phone had called him.
Nonsense! he thought. That was not an accident. She must be in trouble. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that she was in trouble. But why the phone call? How did that come about? He listened with every ounce of his being, zeroing in on any and all sounds coming from the other end of the receiver. The more he needed absolute silence, the more he noticed the chirping chorus of crickets and birds. He needed the crickets to stop, but that was a battle he knew he couldn’t win. Still having his left hand blocking his left ear and pressing the receiver hard against his right ear, he heard a clearer Brenda on the other end. He was sure it was her voice.
Brenda was clearly having a conversation with a man. Carter was able to ascertain that much, but as the jumbled tones vacillated from muffled to clear, he tried to grab key words to find out anything he could about what she was doing, where she was, who she was with or what was happening. He heard her mention Reggie, her controlling ex-boyfriend, who she had escaped from before being saved by Carter. They had a couple of run-ins in the last few years, but for the most part it seemed that the two were forever apart. Carter started to get pissed while thinking of him. Why was Brenda with him? Are they screwing around on him? But why the phone call? It kept coming back to that.
“No… don’t!” he heard Brenda scream.
“Brenda, what’s going on? Are you okay? Can you hear me?” Carter was frantic. His Brenda was in trouble, and it was serious, but he couldn’t do anything except listen helplessly. He wasn’t sure if he was about to hear Brenda getting murdered. He had no way to trace the call. He needed some clue.
“Reggie… why are you doing this,” she begged.
There was no answer from anyone else. It was only Brenda begging for her life. It was so hard for him to listen, but he had to force himself to listen. He wanted to make sure he had enough details in order to track her down and save her. He vaguely remembered where Reggie lived. Brenda showed him once, and he believed he could find it, although it had been a couple of years. His heart was palpitating hard in his chest, and Brenda’s pleas for help came and went as if Reggie was slowly torturing her. Carter kept calling her name, but he received no response.
As he listened, he was looking for confirmation that they were at Reggie’s house. He lived just a few blocks from the Pearl Street mall in a decent-sized house set back in a wooded area with neighbors not close enough to hear screams. He kept listening and waiting for that confirmation. If he blindly went to Reggie’s house and nobody was there, Brenda could be dead by the time he returned to his phone. Then he finally heard Reggie’s voice, and it was the last thing he wanted to hear. “What are you doing,” he heard him ask. “Are you trying to call someone? Hang up that fucking phone you slut!” Click.
Carter wasted no time getting into his car and heading to Reggie’s house. He assumed that Brenda dialed the phone and left it off the hook on purpose, so she could let Carter know that she was in trouble, without letting Reggie know that she had a line to the outside world. His biggest fear was the unknown. His mind produced so many vividly horrifying pictures on the way over there, and each one ended with Brenda dead on arrival. He couldn’t go on without her, and he knew it. He zoomed through quiet, empty streets to find out if there was going to be a corpse on the other end of his travels.
He was scared for Brenda. He imagined her being tortured. Maybe she was tied up in a chair, burned by cigarettes. The only thing Carter knew about Reggie was from what Brenda had told him. He was a sick man who liked to control women. He believed that women had a place in this world, and he felt that it was up to him to put them there, should they ever lose their way. Brenda finally saw the light, escaping from that darkness in which she had lived with Reggie. Apparently, Reggie wanted Brenda back after all these years. Carter was going to do everything he could to block that merger.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Boulder was just beginning to rise and shine, and the deeper he got into Boulder, the busier it became. However, since the sun was just brightening the landscape, there was only a smattering of people on the roads. Carter slowed as he approached the road where he believed Reggie lived. He tried to recreate the drive Brenda had taken him on when she dressed up in a fake mustache and a top hat, just to do a drive by. This dude scared her to pieces. She wanted to show Carter where she used to live, but she did not want to be recognized. Once in a while, stupid ideas end up paying dividends.
Carter believed he recognized the house. It looked familiar, even though a lot of the houses in the area resembled each other. He had a decent sense of direction, and with the houses far apart, he felt comfortable enough to park a good distance away from the house and sneak around the back. Feeling confident that he had the right place was a giant relief to him, because he pretty much knew the chances of him receiving another phone call from Brenda were nil.
Carter pulled past Reggie’s house, and then away from it, parking the car and moving in on the house by foot. He knew that with sunrise, it would be light enough for him to be detected, which could mean the end of him, the end of Brenda, or quite possibly the end of both of them. Forest surrounded both sides of the house and the back, so none of the neighbors could see the goings-on at this house. The front of the house had more forest, but on the other side of the street.
He walked through the forest slowly, stepping lightly in order to refrain from snapping sticks or twigs and rustling leaves, or doing anything else that could make noise in the forest, all the while having one eye on the house to ensure he was not spotted.
As he negotiated the forest, almost to the side of the house, he heard a noise and stopped in his tracks. He figured that it had to be an animal, but hoped it would be more afraid of him than he was afraid of it. That’s what they always say. Animals are usually more afraid of humans than vice versa, but Carter was not in the mood to test any theories. Not now. Brenda’s life was on the line. He had to stop taking steps, because each step snapped sticks and other forest growth. He needed to pause for a moment, since forest steps could not be done in silenc
e.
Time was very much of the essence, so he was having a hard time staying still. The small footsteps sounded closer. The damn theory was backfiring. He heard it closing in on his side, approximately ten feet away. The pitter patter of footsteps slowed the closer it came to him. He looked over and spotted it. That’s the only identifier he had. It looked like a dog, but it most likely was not. It was a coyote, a wolf or a fox. Whatever it was, it had light brown matted fur and glowing yellowish eyes that terrified Carter. He was leaning toward wolf, based on the eyes.
The only thing he could do was hope that it had a recent meal. The animal that was supposed to be more afraid of Carter stared at him for a moment. Carter stared back and their eyes were locked. He tried to be still, but he was shaking from fear. Carter’s stare paled in comparison to this beast, which did this for a living. The animal took one step closer and looked like he was seconds away from an attack. This paralyzed Carter, and he panicked and went on the offensive by taking a giant risk by stomping his foot in the animal’s direction, and it scattered away in lightning speed.
He looked on and listened to ensure it was definitely gone and did not have friends. All that he knew for sure was that it had moved away, but he could not tell how far it had moved. He could no longer hear the sound of sticks on the forest floor being trampled, so for all he knew it was ten feet away from him and ready to attack. Hyperventilating, he took deep breaths and pressed on.
Carter continued stepping through the forest, paying close attention to all sides. That last incident woke him up completely. When an animal like that one stares you down from 10 feet away in their territory, it doesn’t look good for the away team. That’s why Carter took desperate measures. He slowed his pace so he could keep one eye on the ground and one eye on the house. He made it to the back corner of the house, where windows were few. With the forest so close to the house, he could make his way there unnoticed. It was still dark enough with the shade from the trees, and it seemed unlikely that he would be seen. There were lights on in the house on the far side, so he planned to move from window to window until he could see something to work with.
Desert Son Trilogy: Desert Son, Wayward Soul, Spiritual Intervention (Books 1-3) Page 41
