by J. R. Rain
Charlie stood and seemed to regain the confidence he’d displayed the other day, when he hired me. “I mean, I would never have believed in ghosts either. But these past few months... it’s undeniable. Just undeniable. Something is here.” I saw in his mind’s eye again the fleeting glimpses he had of movement. Glimpses only. No details. I saw again the flickering blue light, the mist, the sense of being watched. All of this played out in his mind, and all of it was, admittedly, strong indicators of a typical haunting. “And you, Sam? You believe it’s her?”
“I do,” I said, “and I think it’s time that I show you what I saw.”
“Show me? Wait. What?”
“Sit next to me, Charlie,” I said.
He was pacing, but paused and sat between Allison and I. He shivered a little when his forearm brushed my own arm. I tried not to be offended.
“Close your eyes,” I said.
“Why—”
“It’ll be okay,” I said, adding a small suggestion that all would be okay, and his eyes promptly closed.
I didn’t want him too deep, because I wanted him to remember what he was seeing, so I gave him a series of prompts to remember the image I was about to convey to him, and to also believe that I had drawn the image for him. And when he was calm and receptive, I gave him a clear view, telepathically, of the woman in my own memory, and he gasped.
And then he wept.
Chapter Fourteen
“Can I keep this?” he asked, reaching for the closest piece of paper, a bill from AT&T. Yes, he believed this was my drawing of Autumn.
“Sure,” I said, and reinforced the belief that the image he saw in his mind’s eye—the image I had transferred to him—was, in fact, clearly displayed on the phone bill before him. Briefly, I saw what he saw: a surprisingly lifelike portrait of Autumn smiling back at him.
“Her eyes look so real,” he said, staring closely at his phone bill. “You really are a wonderful artist, Samantha. I mean, this is exactly how I imagined her.” He held up the page for Allison to see, showing her the AT&T logo and columns of numbers.
“She’s a regular Picasso,” said Allison drily.
As Charlie stared at his phone bill, often reaching out and brushing it lightly with his fingertips, Allison motioned with her head for me to follow her, which I did into the very hallway where I’d seen the full-body apparition of Queen Autumn.
Allison, privy to my thoughts, scanned the area. “There’s no ghost here. In fact, I don’t feel a ghost anywhere in this house.”
My psychic, witchy friend was almost as good at perceiving ghosts as I was. Almost. She didn’t quite see the world of energy and light that I did. Nor did she see the minor and often fleeting manifestations, or the ever-flowing currents of well-being. She didn’t see, for instance, the briefest hint of a dog manifesting in the far corner of the hallway, then disappear again. But she did catch it in my thoughts.
She turned and looked in the corner. “Really, a dog?”
“It came and went, so fleeting as almost to not be here.”
“A ghost dog?”
“Almost, but not quite. The wavering hint of a memory of a dog.”
“But how?” she asked.
“Its imprint could be stamped upon this place, or it was just swinging by to say hello. Then again, it might have realized it had the wrong house. It was just a dog, after all.”
“Do you see her now?” asked Allison. “Autumn?”
“She’s not here, but this hallway...” I let my voice trail off and frowned. I hadn’t really looked at the hallway before. Or, rather, I hadn’t looked too deeply. “This hallway is particularly lively.”
Allison saw what I was seeing in my mind’s eye, so tuned in was she to me.
“You are seeing mini-manifestations everywhere, Sam. They’re coming and going rapidly.”
And so I was. I turned in the hallway, tuning into the energy, and watching the various eddying pools of flowing light coagulate into faces and shapes and blobs, only to disperse again. I looked toward the end of the long hallway, where the light was flowing through walls and passing through us. Some of this wasn’t new to me. All light behaved this way. Although I had come to know it not as light, but as a never-ending flow of well-being, the energy that creates worlds. I always suspected that those who harnessed the energy, through focused thought and right action, had the best results. It was energy available to all. I just happened to see it, and it lit my way, even in the darkest of rooms.
But this hallway had one difference: the sheer amount of manifestations.
“What does it mean, Sam?” asked Allison, who had been following my train of thought.
“I don’t know.”
She nodded, frowned. “It’s like we’re standing in a tunnel of creation.”
“Why tunnel?” I asked.
“It sounds more mysterious.”
“Oh, brother,” I said.
She snapped her head around because she had caught in my mind’s eye the merest hint of a stag or horse manifesting behind her, and charging at her. She shuddered as it went through her. “Sam, what’s going on here? Have you seen something like this before?”
“No, not really. Not that I can recall. I mean, some areas tend to have a lot of spirit activity. Cemeteries. Hospitals. Old homes. Busy street corners.”
“Where people have died in accidents?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But you aren’t seeing much human activity,” she said. “I mean, I can see some manifestations that could be human. But many more are animal shapes. Some tiny and some quite—whoa!”
Something swooped down the hallway, over our heads, something that flapped with great wings, only to disappear through the far wall. Allison, had she not been seeing through my own inner eye, would have missed it.
“I wish I had missed it, Sam.”
“No, you don’t.”
She nodded. “No, I don’t. This is so fascinating and kind of scary. That was no bird. It was...”
“A dragon,” I said.
“The ghost of a dragon?”
I paused. “I didn’t get a sense it was a ghost.”
“It felt real, huh, Sam? Like it was just passing through.”
My friend, I think, was right.
“What’s happening, Sam?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But let’s get back to loverboy before he runs off to Vegas and marries his phone bill.”
***
The night was uneventful.
Queen Autumn didn’t make another appearance, although Charlie’s side hallway was a veritable super highway of creation. Animals swept across the arched opening, and from where we sat in the office, Allison and I could see deer and rabbits and wolves and, once, long processions of people—all of which came and went quickly, flowing down the hallway, wavering in and out of existence. It was, quite frankly, the ultimate light show.
All the while, Charlie stared down at his AT&T phone bill, lovingly touching it and stroking it like a star-crossed lover.
Chapter Fifteen
I left my minivan parked in front of Charlie’s home, disrobed on his bedroom balcony under the dark of night, and, with Allison on her way home and Charlie snoozing—thanks to a suggestion of mine—I launched myself out as far and wide as possible.
Now, as his pool came rushing at me, something else rushed at me, too. Something beastly, and located directly in the center of the single flame. A flame that I had conjured. A flame that I had come to know as a portal between worlds—and a portal between time and space, too. If not time, then definitely space.
Now I felt myself rushing toward the creature in the flame. Except, of course, I wasn’t rushing. I was still falling toward the covered pool.
But that’s exactly what it felt like: rushing, movement forward, the sense of two creatures meeting somewhere in the middle. The middle of where, I didn’t know, but suddenly I wasn’t falling anymore. No, not at all. I was gliding, with great outstretched arms
that manipulated the air. Now, I was riding a cushion of air up and over the brick wall that separated Charlie’s house from his neighbor’s. I flapped once, twice, and now I was rocketing up, higher and higher.
And higher.
Hi Talos, I thought.
Hello Sam, came the voice in my head. A deep voice, with melodic overtones. A gentle and wise voice, too. I knew that in Talos’s world, communication was done primarily through telepathy, but I had a question.
Do you have a voice, Talos?
I have no need for a voice, Sam.
If you were to open your mouth and speak?
It would sound as a great roar.
Then why does your “voice” sound deep to me? Why wouldn’t it sound, I dunno, neutral?
I leveled off at a free-flowing air current that I knew to be a jet stream. Had I chosen to ride it to Hawaii, I could have. I knew Talos was capable of reaching great speeds, too. No doubt I would be there before sunrise. Then what? I couldn’t afford a hotel room out there.
The internal voice is nearly as real as the physical, Sam.
So, someone could have a high or deep internal voice?
Of course.
At present, Talos’s wings were outstretched and flapping just enough to keep me level—us level, since I was pretty sure I was the one doing the flying.
Indeed, Sam. We’ve talked about this.
But isn’t it a little like giving the keys to a dopey teenager?
You’re hardly dopey, Sam.
But I’d never flown before.
No, but you were a quick learner. Nearly expert now.
Nearly?
Oh, there are some things I can do that you haven’t tried.
I haven’t pushed you to your limits yet, you’re saying.
Something like that.
I could only shake my head. Hell, I’d taken him deep beneath the ocean, and all the way out into space, the moon and Mars, respectively. What else could the big fella do?
You need only ask, Sam.
Okay, maybe I will. Someday.
I’m always here, Sam.
I know, I thought. I mean, I think I know. Tell me again how we connected, Talos? Tell me how you found me, or I found you?
The answer is multifaceted and far-reaching, Sam.
I have all the time in the world.
My world and your world are deeply connected, as evidenced by the dragons in your mythology, both past and present.
I’m following so far.
We have a keen interest in your world, which is not very different from our own.
Except yours is much more highly evolved.
Much, much more.
Okay, no need to rub it in.
No rubbing, Sam. We are many millions of years ahead of you.
That’s a lot of evolving going on, I thought.
Precisely. And your highly evolved dark masters reached out to us.
How did they find you?
The worlds are not as separated as you might think, Sam. Indeed, you and I are only a flame away. But in their case, before a connection was made with us, they used astral traveling.
Conscious sleep? I asked.
Close, Sam. Meditation would be a better word. Many on your planet do it. But not all travel to new worlds.
And you formed a friendship with them?
Not quite, Sam. We saw an opportunity.
You do understand they are called dark masters for a reason? I asked.
We knew their nature, Sam.
What did they want from you?
A partnership, of sorts. They sought to use us in their wars.
And you agreed?
We do not fight wars, Sam.
I thought about that. I also thought about the few times I had summoned Talos to fight my own wars.
I used you to kill, I thought.
Indeed.
And you are okay with that?
I give myself to you, Sam, for you to use as you see fit.
Would you prefer I didn’t use you to kill?
I prefer for you to evolve at your own pace, Sam, without my intervention. I trust you are making the best choices for you and those you love.
I flapped his great wings. The process seemed effortless, but I could feel the great force behind each downthrust, a blast of wind that, I imagined, raced all the way to the land far below. Somewhere down there a man’s toupee had just blown off. That gave me a giggle.
That’s a lot of trust, I finally thought.
The trust goes both ways, Sam.
I nodded at that. My body is with you, in your world.
Safe and sound.
Am I in my body? I asked. I mean, am I holding a conversation with you there?
No, Sam. You are sitting next to me, quietly, waiting.
Because I have not mastered the art to being in two places at the same time.
Not yet. No.
But maybe someday?
Maybe, Sam. If it serves a purpose for you.
I considered the full extent of his words. So, the dark masters thought they were using you, but, in fact, you were using them?
That is safe to say, Sam.
And how, exactly, are you using them?
By finding our way to you. And others like you.
Other vampires?
Yes, Sam.
But how did we—you and I—link up, so to speak? How did you know to find me? How did I find you? How did you know to come on that night, five years ago, when I jumped out of the hotel balcony?
Oh, we had connected long before, Sam, thanks to the entity within you.
But does she not know that you cannot be used?
She does not know that, Sam.
I might be lost, I thought.
Sam, I have given myself to you completely and totally, in good faith.
I thought about that. I thought about it long and hard. And if she should ever take me over completely and totally...
She would take me over too, at least here in your world.
And she would be...
Powerful, Sam. Very, very powerful.
Then I can’t let that happen. Ever.
That is for you to decide, Sam.
But she gets ejected from me each time I connect with you. This is our safe place, you have said. Wouldn’t she be ejected? But before he could answer, I answered my own question. I would be the one who is ejected, then.
Indeed, Sam.
And Dracula? I know he, too, can transform into his own dragon.
The man you call Dracula is doing his best to fight the entity within him.
But he’s mostly losing, I thought.
He is in, it is safe to say, the fight of his life.
We were silent, even as the wind thundered over Talos’s ears. That is, if he even had ears. I twitched... something. I think it was an ear.
I have ears, Sam.
Good to know.
I continued flapping, each movement slow and methodical, effortless yet powerful. I sensed this was Talos’s optimum speed. His trot so to speak. His natural gait. I also sensed that Talos could fly like this from now until eternity.
Not quite that long, Sam. But put it this way: we could see much of your world before I needed rest.
What about eating?
I do not eat, Sam.
This was news to me. I had always assumed the big fellow partook in a fat cow or two, at least every now and then.
Maybe back in the day, Sam. But not anymore.
I frowned at this. Or tried to frown. For all I knew, Talos’s face did nothing at all.
So, what do you do for nourishment? Pardon me for pointing out the obvious, but you are a big son-of-a-bitch. And with all of this flying and spouting fire, well, I can only imagine the calories you burn through. No pun intended.
I heard a light flicker of laughter in my head. All good points, Sam. But those of my kind consume universal energy.
Say again.
Universal energy. A life source that is
available to all.
Not quite all, I thought.
Not true, Sam. There are those on your earth who do not eat—at least, not in the traditional sense. These are what you would call a master’s master.
Where is this universal energy?
It is everywhere, Sam.
Are you eating now? Did I just consume a universal cheeseburger and not know it?
More chuckling. In a way, yes. Those who are open to it are satiated continuously.
So, you are never hungry?
Never, Sam.
And your belly is full or empty?
My belly, for the most part, has been shut down.
Because you have no use for it.
Something like that.
And how often do you eat?
Continuously.
What does universal energy taste like?
There is no taste, Sam. There is only a sense of contentment, of nourishment, of strength.
Do I have access to this now? I thought.
Now? There was a long pause. A really long pause. I do not know, Sam. It is for you to decide.
I thought about this. I also thought about never drinking blood again. And I was intrigued. I asked: What, exactly, is it?
It is a source of well-being that permeates everything.
Is it God?
It is from God. From the creator. You have heard this before. This is not new information to you, Sam.
I did not know this well-being could also, you know, be a midnight snack too.
Like your kind says: you learn something new every day.
I thought about this in silence, flapping Talos’s great wings, and soaring high over Southern California and its glittering, rolling hills.
Chapter Sixteen
“You have a question, Sam,” said the young man who wasn’t so young after we’d greeted. Archibald Maximus, the Occult Reading Room Librarian—or guardian—who didn’t like to hug or shake hands, which was fine by me.
“I do, yes. And you don’t say hello anymore?”
“Hello, Sam. My apologies. I was busy back... there.” He gestured vaguely behind him, toward a short hallway with a number of doors leading off to either side, a hallway I’d never been down—or had even been invited down.
“And what is back there?” I asked.
