THE INTERLUDE BETWEEN
Oh What A World ~ Erasure
Twenty-Nine
They started their journey by heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Aislen knew Sigmund’s house had a view of it, and when she explained the vision to Raziel, he knew it would be on the Presidio somewhere.
It would make sense, he said. The CIA brought a lot of Nazis to the US after the war specifically for MKUltra. Providing him with housing on the base near the Army hospital would ensure that he would have an abundant source of test subjects.
He grabbed one of his burner phones and a pre-paid Visa from a safe in a hidden panel of his closet, and as soon as they stepped out on the street, he told her to drop his signature and find another.
“We should get used to this now, to be on the safe side.” He set the alarm on his watch to alert them every five minutes so they could practice shifting frequencies. Well, so she could; he was an expert at that already.
As they walked toward Market Street, she dropped his signature. The fresh frequency, plus being outdoors in the sunlight and bustle of the city, infused Aislen with vitality. There was a spring in her step and hope in her heart that she couldn’t help but carry.
The amulet was pitch-perfect against her chest, assuring her this was the right decision. And she was with Raziel, whom she knew she could trust implicitly. After how he had treated her the past 24 hours, Aislen had no doubts about his intents or integrity. She knew he was on her side, especially since he agreed to take her to Sigmund’s house against his better judgment.
She could feel the tension radiating off of him as they walked side by side. Each time they crossed the street or made a turn, he moved to the outside of her so that he was near the street. His eyes scanned the vicinity on a perpetual lookout for any possible threats.
Aislen glanced up at him out of the corner of her eye. He looked like the man he was when she’d first met him in Demesne, sans visor: steely, self-assured and incredibly magnetic. It couldn’t be just Aislen who reacted to his commanding presence. She felt small and inadequate next to him.
Raze placed his hand at the small of her back and guided her around another corner. It was also his signal that it was time to change frequencies. She still wasn’t used to the fine thread of shock his touch created.
Aislen grabbed a signature, this time from a business woman walking the opposite direction across the street. She seemed confident and determined. Maybe it would help Aislen feel like she could hold her own with Raziel.
Raze flicked his hand out toward the street, and on cue, a taxi pulled up and stopped. He could summon anything he wanted, all energetically. Aislen was more than a little in awe of it. He opened the door for her and guided her in with his fiery touch.
Shift again, just to be safe, he telepathed as he slid into the seat beside her.
Aislen snagged a hold of the signature of a transient sitting on the corner, brown paper bag in one hand, a cardboard sign in another, “The Father Knows The Way” scrawled in Sharpie across the ripped, corrugated box-top. Aislen felt a frisson work down her spine. Her father had carried such a sign in one of her first dreams. The powerful déjà vu felt like another assurance that they were on the right track.
“Déjà vu,” she said out loud.
Raziel glanced sideways at her, raised his eyebrows and nodded.
“Palace of Fine Arts,” he said to the driver. We’ll walk from there, he telepathed to her. Shift again as soon as you step out of the car.
She nodded.
It didn’t take long, partly because San Francisco really wasn’t that big for a metropolitan city and also because the driver drove like a madman. As soon as they stepped out of the taxi, Aislen switched her cloak again, taking the taxi driver’s with her.
Raziel led the way, walking west from the Palace and into another park across the street.
“This used to be where the old hospital stood,” he said, acting like a tour guide. It was a more modern building now, but it was white and had a red roof like Sigmund’s house, so Aislen knew they were in the right neighborhood. “There was a psych ward here that fed some of its patients into MKUltra programs like your great-grandfather’s. But they did some of their own here, too.
“It was only used for 20 years before they abandoned it. The public thought it was haunted by the ghosts of soldiers who died from war injuries, but it was the early days of MKUltra and remote viewing, and sometimes Viewers didn’t make it back into their bodies. They’d get lost or were administered too many psychotropics. So there were a lot of wanderers around the property searching for their lost bodies, and generally disoriented disincarnates.” They turned and walked past another. “The Army finally blew up the whole building in an attempt to put an end to the curious snooping around and to destroy the residual effects of their experiments. I am sure there are still wanderers around here, though.”
Aislen couldn’t believe that she actually believed what he was saying. What kind of world were they living in? Five days ago she was a student nurse, living in her boring small town and perfectly content with that. Each day since, she’d awakened into a different reality.
“This is Lucasfilm now,” Raziel continued, sounding like a fanboy who wanted to go sightseeing. “There’s a fountain of Yoda around here somewhere.” He looked down at Aislen, a humored smile on his face. “You really breed some weird genius out in your neck of the woods, don’t you?”
He directed them up a hill, passing the cypress trees and eucalyptus that Aislen had seen in the Viewing.
“I want to try something when we get to the house,” he said. “I’m not sure what we will find, whether people live there or whether they turned it into offices. But I want us to try to hide in plain sight.”
“Like make ourselves invisible?” Aislen asked.
“Kind of. We obviously can’t dematerialize, but we can try to blend in energetically, enough that the average passerby might not notice us. You know, in case we need to break into the house.”
Aislen’s heart skipped a beat. She hadn’t thought they would have to break the law to get into the house. In her mind, it was still Sigmund’s, and she could just walk in now that he was dead. But of course, that was 30 years ago…who knows what it would be now.
“It will be okay,” Raziel said, sensing her tension. “I can disable any alarm systems telekinetically. But if a passerby or security comes around, I want them to skip over us visually. You know how if you look at a brick wall, and there is a brick missing, your mind fills in the missing brick automatically?”
Aislen nodded.
“That’s what I want us to be, the missing bricks. So instead of matching the frequency of a person, try to match the frequency of the environment.” He checked to see if she was understanding. “It’s all frequency, right?”
Aislen thought about it. It sounded like something her father would say. “Makes sense, I guess. Does it work?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never tried it. You gave me the idea this morning.” He lifted his chin up the hill. “But we’re about to find out.” The houses she’d seen in the dream were standing there, picturesque in the dewy sunlight.
Aislen felt Raziel’s energy downshift, her cue to do the same. She tuned into the frequency of the cypress trees that dotted the landscape. For being so large and majestic, Aislen was surprised that their energy was infinitely subtler than a person’s, their frequency contained in a placid vessel of being, lacking the bold projections of personality and ego. Aislen slowed her own vibrations way down to sync up. Once she made the connection, a deep tranquility settled in and pervaded her being.
Raze felt her lock in and smiled, looking impressed. Silently, they continued up the path toward the houses.
When they reached the walkway of #59, Raziel pointed to the shrubbery around the perimeter. Aislen understood and tuned into their vibrations. They were higher pitched than the cypress, a trill rather than a drone, all in sync together like they we
re one organism instead of individual plants.
Raze motioned for her to stay on the lawn by the shrubs while he ascended the porch steps. He held his left hand up as though he were blind and feeling for something. Aislen realized he was scanning the house for signature frequencies of the people who might be inside. He continued to the front door and tried the handle. It was locked. As he moved across the porch to the front of the house, Aislen noticed a couple walking down the sidewalk across the street. She sank deeper into the buzz of the bushes and watched them closely while Raze peered inside the windows and tested to see if any were unlocked.
The couple looked over at the house. The woman raised her hand up to point, and Aislen’s heart faltered. She and Raziel were definitely suspicious, and he wasn’t hiding the fact that he was trying to find an unlocked window. But the woman’s hand continued, rising up above them as she pointed out the gingerbread shingles on the façade of the gables.
Raziel came down the steps and met Aislen next to the house, watching the couple as they continued down the street.
Not bad, he said. Most people are exactly that observant. Let’s check around the back. Even if something is locked, I can jimmy a window if we are more hidden from view.
They moved along the side of the house, scanning for any windows that may be cracked with no luck. At the back of the house, Raze went up the steps and tried the door, but it was locked, too. He came back to Aislen and motioned for her to follow him, and they continued around to the last side of the house. They were more exposed here; the shrubbery was cut lower, and it faced a slightly busier street.
Raziel pointed to a row of windows along the ground–the basement. As he crouched down along the wall trying to see if any would open, a white patrol car slowly drove up the street. The officer scanned the yards, looking for any discrepancies. Aislen froze. Raziel had found a loose pane and was actively pushing against it, trying to bust it in. Aislen held her breath, dropping her frequency into the lawn as the officer’s eyes scanned along the side of the house, right past her and toward Raziel, just as he got the window to give in and bent down to crawl inside.
The officer turned his head toward the other side of the street and waved at the couple who were enjoying the rest of their walk.
Aislen let out a heavy sigh, her knees going weak with relief.
Aislen! Come on! We’re in! Raziel called to her from inside the basement. Aislen moved over to the open window, her heart catching for another reason. She was going inside the house, into the basement where her grandfather had been captive and where her grandmother had been abused. Raziel looked up at her through the window. It’s okay, there’s no one here. He reached a hand up to her.
Aislen took a deep breath and lowered herself through the window. Raziel caught her in his arms and slowly set her to the ground. Her head started spinning immediately, not from his touch or proximity but from the memories that bombarded her in the room.
It didn’t look the same at all. The old, Army-issued bed was gone, as was the dingy mattress Astrid had slept on. There were more shelves along the walls and boxes stacked throughout the space. But Aislen could see and feel through all that. Astrid’s energy was still alive in here, baked into the essence of the bricks. She could also feel Thomas, a deep well of sadness, loss, and shame that he had failed Astrid.
Raziel sensed her apprehension. “You saw things here?”
She nodded. A tear unwillingly escaped from the corner of her eye, and she quickly brushed it away with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
“What happened to Thomas?” she asked, hoping Raziel would know.
He was hesitant. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes.”
Raziel sighed. “Well, as you’d expect, he fought Lange and Infinium all the way. Refused to cooperate. Refused to Travel willingly. If they suspected that he’d seen something, they tortured him. He started using his energy to counter the effect of the psychotropic drugs they injected him with. Lange, refusing to be outwitted, increased the dosages until Thomas’s body couldn’t take it anymore. He died of an overdose. There are rumors that they are both buried at Headquarters. I always thought it was bullshit, but I’m not so sure anymore.”
More tears slid from her eyes. Aislen made no move to stop them. Raziel made no move to stop her, allowing her a moment to grieve the loss of family she’d never met but knew everything about.
After a while, he gently rested his hand on her shoulder, comforting her but bringing her to the present. “Let’s go find what you’re looking for.”
She led the way, climbing the wooden staircase, fighting through the energetic repetitiveness of Astrid ascending and descending these stairs so long ago. She carefully pushed open the door, peeking into the kitchen, double-checking that no one was home. There was a hollow vacancy to the house. Although it was furnished as if someone could live there, it felt staged. There were no signs of actual living taking place here. Aislen could only feel the past life flowing through its walls.
She stepped into the kitchen, besieged by another flux of energy, a hurricane of anxiety and fear. Aislen felt paralyzed by its intensity. Raze came into the room behind her, looking around, sensing it too.
“Is it her ghost?” she asked him, wanting to make sense of Astrid’s palpable presence.
Raziel wandered around the kitchen evaluating the phenomenon. “No. It’s a signature remnant. Sometimes when a traumatic event happens, an imprint is left in the space. It’s like a shadow of her energy left here, not the actual person. In this case, Astrid was in here a lot; she had a routine, a pattern that she did over and over, and the intensity of her emotions during this routine left the residual vortex. I doubt anyone could stand to live or work here long. They would definitely think it is haunted.”
He came back over to her. “We should see if we can find what Preston was showing you.”
Aislen looked up at him. Although she desperately wanted to look for it, she didn’t want to go up the stairs. She was afraid of what she would feel there if it was this bad here.
“You can do it,” he said. “I’m here with you.”
She nodded and turned, walking down the hall and up the stairs. The bathroom door at the top of the stairs was open. Aislen could see the little figure of her dad in the ghost of her memory, standing at the door, looking in. Aislen, though terrified of what would be there, felt compelled to confront the memory and walked to the doorway.
The bathtub was gone, the whole room gutted and remodeled. It looked clean and bright. Through the window on the far side, Aislen could see the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. There was no energy here anymore. The memory of Sigmund and Astrid and what took place here were erased. The whole house should be gutted or torn down, she thought to herself.
Aislen heard a loud creak behind her as Raziel reached the top of the stairs, and she was snapped out of the phantom past. She turned and looked down at where he was standing, where Preston had pointed before he left this house forever.
“It would be here,” she said, pointing to the squeaky board.
Raziel bent down to examine the oak floorboard at the top of the stairs. It looked completely secure; one end under the ornate top banister, the other disappearing under the baseboard of the wall. He stood back up and shifted his weight side to side, making it squeak loudly again like Sigmund and Preston had both done in the past.
He bent back down, this time to the panel face of the top stair. He made a fist and pounded the front panel hard, and the board dropped down. He looked into the cavity, then up at Aislen, eyebrows raised.
“You were right.” He reached into the hidden space and pulled out a doll. He looked at it quizzically and handed it to Aislen.
“Is this what we came here for? An old plaything?”
Aislen looked at the doll. He looked like a Ken doll but was dressed like GI Joe. His dark hair had been trimmed with scissors and painted jet black with some type of shiny paint. His eyes were a piercing blue
. A small piece of white tape was stuck to the shoulder of the uniform, a hand-drawn infinity symbol in different colors of ink meticulously drawn on the tape.
She looked back at Raziel and held it up to him. “It’s you.”
He reached up and took it back, examining it closer. “No shit,” he said, a bit in awe.
“It’s you in Demesne.”
“I see that now.” He handed the doll back to Aislen and reached back into the opening, pulling out two more dolls. One a Ken doll, dressed in a tux with a black shirt and no bow tie, and the other a red-headed Barbie, eyes painted green with tiny gold flecks and freckles on her nose.
“He saw the future,” Raziel said and handed her the dolls.
Aislen marveled at the extra details her young father had painted on her face. “But why am I wearing this?” she wondered, looking at the matching all black suit her effigy was wearing, making her look exactly like the Ken.
“Maybe because you are wearing my clothes right now,” Raziel offered. “Maybe it was the best he could do.”
Aislen shrugged. “Is that all that’s in there? Dolls?”
Raziel slid his hand around inside one last time. “Wait, I think there is something lying on the bottom.” He used his fingernail to peel something off the bottom of the compartment and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
“AZLYN” was scrawled in crayon in a child’s handwriting.
“It’s for you,” Raze said, standing up and handing it to her.
Aislen unfolded the delicate paper carefully, revealing a hand-drawn image of a labyrinth; the labyrinth she wore around her neck. But in the drawing there were only two dots, one white and one in glitter glue; the diamond and the rainbow gem. The labyrinth in the picture was embedded within a larger field of small strokes and dots of color.
“It’s my necklace,” she said, looking at Raziel as he examined the drawing.
Time Walker: Episode 2 of The Walker Saga Page 21
