The Crystal Circle: A Paranormal Romance Novel

by L. Rosenman

  Rami agreed, and Gidi nodded at him and smiled. Saul and Gidi walked among the stalls, delivering money and whispering. Occasionally, they’d buy a hat or a shirt to appease anyone watching.

  At one o’clock, when they left the boardwalk area and were headed toward the hotel district, they heard someone calling them.

  They turned to see a skinny guy who smiled at them, showing his rotten teeth. “Hey, I got business with you.”

  Gidi took a step back and tried to run away, but Saul stopped him with an iron grip and faced the man. “Yes?” he asked politely. “How can I help you?”

  “You better stop doing business with the traders. They’re mine. Is that clear?”

  From the shadows stepped the muscleman Saul had seen on his first day on the promenade. He came closer to Saul with a menacing look. Saul looked at them both and quickly figured out what he should do.

  “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t take you in as investors in the King’s Bank. You could make a lot more money. Maybe even 25% by the end of the third week.” The thin man looked at him and grinned, then nodded to the muscleman. The muscleman suddenly grabbed Gidi and flattened him on the floor with a single punch.

  Before anyone could react, Saul drew the pistol from his pocket and instructed, “Pick him up and apologize nicely. You really don’t know me. I’m not kidding. I shoot first and then ask who the hell you people are.”

  The skinny guy with the bad teeth nodded and the thug picked Gidi up. Gidi staggered, dizzy from the blow.

  “Then let’s get back to business,” said Saul in a pleasant and quiet tone, as if they had been mildly interrupted in the midst of a business meeting. All the while, his gun was drawn and directed at the two. “How much would you like to invest this evening?”

  The boss was silent, but the muscleman said, “Leave it, boss. Let’s go. They stink, these whores.” Saul kicked his boot out hard, and the muscleman doubled over, nursing his crotch, wailing from pain and humiliation. “What’s your name, boy?” he asked the boss.

  “To you, I’m Joe.”

  “And him, the whiner. What’s his name?”

  “David,” came the answer.

  Saul felt like someone had plugged him to an enormous electrical current. “David!” he roared. He gave another powerful kick that hit the same place as before, making the giant collapse to his knees. He threw another kick at David’s nose, and it began to bleed. Saul’s eyes bulged and the veins on his forehead throbbed. Saul hissed in a hoarse voice that bordered on shouting, “I hate David… I hate him!”

  Then he stepped back and changed back to the quiet and calculated tone of voice he’d used before. “You’re lucky you’re not the right David.” He walked away, still with his gun out and called over his shoulder, “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  By the time he reached the Solomon Hotel, a group of about ten people was already standing there, led by Rami, the enthusiastic investor. Rami gave him 10,000 shekels and asked to have it returned within a month. Gidi wrote a note with the details and gave it to Rami, while Saul recorded the deposits in his little book under code names.

  Rami was codenamed ‘Shark’ because of his small and pointy teeth. Ezra had won the dubious title ‘The Little Ethiopian’ because he was dark and short. There were also ‘The Fish,’ ‘The Warrior King’ and ‘The Gangster.’ People who invested with him for the first time only dared to invest small sums, and were always saddened when, a few days later, they received only a small profit, which could have grown much larger had they dared to invest more. To the interested investors, Saul showed more precise graphs and financial reports, tables of capital markets and explanations, all in black and white, on the small tablet he carried. Of course, none of them understood any of it, but the wealth of information and confidence, and in particular the amounts they earned each week, gradually formed a halo around him, and a name: The Wizard

  When the service staff came to close the rear gate of the hotel, they stared in amazement at the group of people talking, but didn’t say a word. Gidi made the rounds and saw two men, but as soon as they caught his stare, they rushed away toward the beach.

  Back home, Gidi suggested, “Listen, Saul, next time let’s set up the meetings in the industrial area. The hotel’s not good at all.” Gidi was impressed by the amounts of money and said, “Let’s run away now. Forget about it, let’s just go.”

  Saul gave him a withering look and said, “Gidi, there’s a plan. Stick to the plan and you’ll see. Everything will be wonderful. First of all, I need a safer place to live.” He looked out of the window. The shadows of the trees at the entrance provided a wonderful hiding place for anyone on his trail. “So, Gidi, where would you suggest I move to?”

  “There’s the Uprooted Camp, near the border.”

  “Uprooted Camp?” Saul looked at him quizzically and then dropped back on the couch. “Speak, I’m listening.”

  Gidi told him about the trailer park. Specifically, he spelled out that, between the police and the permanent tenants, there was an unspoken agreement: The police did not go in there. The residents agreed not to sell or use drugs or to organize parties, including trance parties, and they were responsible for eradicating crime if it ever popped up.

  Saul stood up and leaned toward him with shining eyes. “Continue.”

  “Families live there or people who want to be alone, and it’s convenient for them that way. That’s why the place is called the Uprooted Camp. If you want to go, the border’s only fifty meters away. You can go for a few days and then come back. There’s a hole in the fence... unofficially. Everyone in Eilat knows about this place. It’s a nice place. I once had a girlfriend from there... she’s gone now...” He drifted away, happy in his memories, until Saul shook his arm impatiently. “Don’t worry,” promised Gidi, “they won’t come looking for you there.”

  Late that night, while Gidi exhaled his sweet purple smoke and went for a trip in the provinces of his imagination, Saul walked down toward the lagoon. He looked at it, saw a reflection of himself dressed in his odd attire, and a chill grabbed him from head to toe.

  The Crystal Circle Meeting

  He walked hesitantly down the white hall to the familiar shrine. He was wearing a dark purple velvet cloak and went to the center of the Circle. The group had been waiting for him, sitting in the circle. Everyone smiled and got up to hug him. They were surrounded by music and dimmed light to soften the warm atmosphere. Raz’el sat waiting calmly, smiling. He was dressed in his blue robe and asked everyone to sit down. They sat on the white sofas and held hands.

  “Welcome to the Crystal Circle. Raul, you look upset. What’s going on?”

  Raul fired off without further ado, “Raz’el, why have I lost my memory? I lost my memory, turned into Saul, and Michal became Lynn that night. Why is that?”

  Raz’el stood up and walked amongst them, speaking in a low tone directly into the eyes of everyone present.

  “Michal has violated the Rule of the Crystal Circle. She tried to pass on information. I had to act. It was forbidden for you to remember what she said.” All eyes were fixed on Michal, and she blushed. Raz’el continued. “On the bus. When you went to the ten- year celebrations of the bank in Tel Aviv. She had a daydream, and she realized what was going to happen. She tried to warn Raul, meaning Saul, that he might kill David. I had to stop it. The rules of the game say you have to cope alone with the challenges that arise, without the information processed here reaching your conscious reality. I have no idea how Michal does it, but she often remembers things that have been discussed here. It was a memory that belonged to past lives of Saul and David. It impairs your development, Michal, as well as the development of the entire group...

  “Right now, the situation is that Lynn does not remember that she is Michal, and Saul does not remember that he is Raul. You have to handle it. Michal is facing the danger of incestuous love and intimacy with her brother, and Saul is faced with the threat of murder. You should keep from mur
dering or being murdered. After all, this is truly an innate urge within you as far as David is concerned. You’ll have to activate that which is special in you and the others. Anyway... it’s just a game, you know.” He smiled. “I don’t know what the outcome of this game will be. Although I could guess... And I’m here to welcome you with open arms each time you return. “

  “So when do I get my memory back?” Raul hardened. “It really doesn’t suit me one bit to be a menacing mobster and a financial trickster.”

  “First, you need to deal with the urge to murder; attempt to deepen yourself. There are still parts of yourself that you like, aren’t there?”

  “Yes,” Raul said hesitantly. “Guiding people. Being a leader. Grouping. Finance.” “So try to connect to it. You’ll get there sooner or later.”

  06/28/2013 – Thirteenth day of disappearance

  In the morning, a little after he returned to the sunglasses stall to open up shop with his father, Gidi left for the Uprooted Camp and began to prepare a patch of land for a trailer. To this end, he moved some rocks and slightly flattened the ground with a rake. Two days earlier, he’d found an ad in the local paper for an old trailer for rent, some sort of a painted shack on wheels. Transport was at the expense of the tenant. He explained to his father that he had an opportunity to get into a more serious and respectable business. His father was very happy and encouraged him to invest more time in it.

  “Don’t worry, Gidi,” he said. “I’ll manage the stall as long as you need. Just bring the merchandise and collect the money. Come for two hours a day, and I’ll be fine. Congratulations!”

  Gidi closed the deal on the trailer rental, paid for the first month, and booked movers to move the trailer the next day at eight in the morning. He helped Saul move his few belongings into a tent they set up in the designated field. At noon, they sat in Gidi’s apartment again and checked the accounts, and Saul gave Gidi his share of the partnership’s profits. Gidi was satisfied and tucked the bills under the mattress in his bedroom. That evening, they went looking for more customers to expand their group of clients. Frequent, prompt payouts reassured the customers of the ‘bank,’ encouraging even more investments.

  Skinny Joe and David the Muscleman gritted their teeth over the new takeover, but as long as they received their ‘taxes’ on time and without interruption, they didn’t dare to intervene further in the affairs of Saul and Gidi. They were accustomed to receiving payments, charging murderous interest rates to those who fell into debts, and making terrible threats. They didn’t dare extort money from respectable traders, only from small-time law offenders. They’d never come across a situation in which their traders were receiving a lot of money instead of paying it out. They had a sense that, somehow, they reinforced each other - the ‘tax’ collectors and the King’s Bank.

  By noon, the trailer was standing tall, a little distance from the beach, reasonably close to the Jordanian border, and not too close to any nosy neighbors. They arranged the inside of the trailer and placed all the paperwork, cash, notebooks, and the tablet in an interior room. Gidi installed a sophisticated coded key lock for the room. They ate dinner at a small bench outside, and they celebrated the opening of the second branch of the King’s Bank with a beer or two.

  Suddenly Gidi said, “I thought we could advertise with a flash mob video clip on the beach, to a soundtrack of The Gypsy Kings or The Beach Boys.”

  Saul laughed heartily and said, “Yeah, and the slogan could be ‘King’s Bank – you’re on a roll!’ But seriously now. Gidi, we need a contact here, someone linked to the trailer people who’ll get a bigger cut than the others, a commission for recruiting people. Without an inside man, this won’t work.”

  Gidi gritted his teeth. He saw his cash pile shrinking slightly, but didn’t interfere with Saul’s plans. The man seemed to know what he was doing. As they considered their next steps, they were approached by an older man wearing only a swimsuit and holding a bottle of water in his hand.

  He said, “Hello. Welcome! You’re new here, right?”

  They nodded.

  “I’m Maurice. I live in the white trailer, the one behind the yellow trailer. I wanted to ask, do you know the rules around here?”

  “Rules? What rules?” asked Gidi.

  “We don’t do drugs here, at least not outside. We don’t hold parties at night, and there’s security here. And you need to pay something toward maintaining the security.”

  “What? What is it, a council tax?”

  “No, we’ve just organized ourselves so as to avoid criminals or terrorists. There’s a guard roster. You can sign up for guard duty and save some money, or pay and have people guard for you. And there are cleaning taxes. We have people who keep the area clean so people won’t come from Eilat to dump their garbage here. So we pay toward these local services.”

  “Okay,” Saul inquired politely, “and how much are these taxes, Maurice?”

  “Nothing much. A hundred or so shekels per month. Talk to David. He takes care of it.”

  “David?” The veins on Saul’s forehead began to throb and his ears turned red. He asked as calmly as possible, “So, where do we find this David?”

  “He’s probably out at sea now. You’ll find him later in that trailer.” Maurice pointed at the remote trailer. “You’ll know it by the tables his girl - or partner, I don’t know - sets up over there. She makes cutlets for the people here. And who are you?”

  “We’re Saul and Gidi. Thanks, Maurice,” said Saul, smiling, calm returning to his face. “Bye.”

  He turned to Gidi. “Go see Josh from the gray trailer and ask how many more are interested today. There must be at least five more. We’ll start visiting them after dark. And get back as soon as possible because I want you with me when we go looking for this David. I don’t like people who collect taxes, and I don’t like guards.”

  Lynn finished cleaning the remaining food scraps from the tables. She was thinking about how her life seemed calm, and nice, and she wished she could move forward with Dave, especially as he also seemed interested. If only it weren’t for that inner voice that told her, “You can’t! It’s forbidden!” What’s forbidden, for God’s sake? We’re both single people, unmarried. Adults. What’s to think about? What the hell’s stopping me, deep within me? Busy with her own thoughts, Lynn didn’t see the two men approaching.

  “Hello!” Saul said, and she froze as if she was thunderstruck. She slowly raised her eyes and saw a young man with tattooed arms and a sly smile and an older man, who was bald with a trimmed beard. The look the older man gave her turned her stomach. His voice resonated in her mind, digging into her memory. She thought she knew him, but as she rifled through her unreliable memory, she couldn’t place him.

  “Hi,” she said after a slight hesitation.

  “My name’s Saul,” said the older man, “and this is Gidi. They told us this is where David lives. We’re looking for him.”

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Michal,” said Lynn, thinking right away about the biblical connection between Michal and Saul, who was the biblical Michal’s father. Something about him was disturbing and mysterious.

  “David? You mean Dave.”

  “Mmm... yes,” the man said, looking deep into her eyes. There was a spark or something in them. He thought he recognized her, but from where?

  “Dave’ll be back soon. What should I tell him?”

  “We’re new here in the camp. We heard from Maurice we should pay security taxes, so we came to pay up and also to get to know him a little, listen to some comprehensive explanations, if possible, about life here.”

  On one hand, he was eloquent and spoke politely, not like the rest of the people in the camp, as though he was more educated. On the other hand, he was a giant, tanned, bald man wearing a patterned T-shirt. His appearance didn’t fit his personality as she perceived it.

  “So if you’re around, maybe try in a couple of hours. He’ll surely be here by then.”

  “Are
you his wife?” Gidi probed, “Or his girlfriend?”

  Lynn stared at him. The audacity of the man! She wouldn’t ask a single man such a question. “Ask him,” she said firmly, straightening the last table and entering the trailer. The door slammed behind her.

  “What stung her, that one?” Gidi asked Saul quietly.

  “You don’t attack a woman the first time you see her with personal questions. First you must compliment her, talk about the sea, the weather, things like that. You’ll learn.”

  “Asking if she’s his wife is attacking? She’s just a snob.” Gidi made a face.

  Dave returned as the sun was setting. “Dave, two men were here asking for you,” Lynn said.

  “Who were they?” asked Dave.

  “Strange men. New people. A Saul and a Gidi. Wanted to pay the taxes Maurice told them about.”

  “Beautiful!” enthused Dave. “Didn’t even need to chase them! A good sign.”

  A bad sign, she thought.

  Later, the two men knocked on the door. Shampooed and fragrant in button-down shirts, they made a decent and favorable impression, much more so than earlier. Dave opened the door and they came in, standing in the doorway.

  “Hello. Michal said you’d come over,” said Dave. He looked directly into Saul’s eyes and saw fire there. The fire was immediately softened by modest blinking and a smile.

  “Good evening. Sorry to be a bother, but we didn’t want to live here in the area without paying our debts, and we heard that you’re responsible for these things.”

  “Please come in.” Dave gestured widely at the dining table inside the trailer. They entered, and Lynn hovered nearby. She felt a lot of tension in the air, a huge tension that smiles could not dispel. It seemed that Dave wasn’t aware of it. His serenity was admirable, but also worrying. Saul considered the cost of cleaning and security fees and what they covered and immediately put 600 shekels on the table. Dave raised an eyebrow, but Saul shoved the bills in his direction.