Snap, Crackle ...

by Dale Mayer

  She looked up at him, laughed, and said, “I’m not planning on running away again. Unless it’s running toward the bed in the cabin for an encore.”

  “I’ll lead the way, if that’s your destination. As for disappearing, well, as long as you know,” he said, “even if you do, I won’t be far behind you.”

  And he gave her a big smile, wrapped her up in his arms, and held her close.

  Epilogue

  Professor Gertrude Milligan strode down the stairs, studying the empty amphitheater. She was ready for her class, but, as always, she was a few minutes early. She liked to settle into the space alone, before the doors opened. It helped. After all these years, teaching was getting longer and harder, and she just wanted to sit down, have a cup of tea. But this philosophy class called What If? was one she enjoyed teaching, and she was here, bright and early.

  As she approached the main platform area, she walked to the podium and dumped her paperwork on top of it. She rolled her neck slightly and stretched her shoulderes back. She was coming to the end of her reign. She wasn’t quite ready to give up, but, at sixty-five, she knew it was time. Giving up her research would bother her the most. She absolutely loved the research. She didn’t mind the kids. Some of them were even incredibly intelligent and kept her hopping. They kept her mind going.

  And the rest of them were just here because they needed the credits, before they moved on to the rest of their dull, boring lives that had absolutely nothing to do with the what ifs in the world, and that was a damn shame.

  She walked to the chalkboard, wincing, because of course nobody had cleared off the last lecture. She quickly took the eraser and wiped down the board, wrote the name of her current lecture at the top, and underneath it wrote What If? in large bold lettering. Then, just as the doors opened, she turned toward the class. She walked back and forth on the platform, keeping her mind open, thinking about the million things in her day, until slowly the trickle of students came in.

  After a glance at her watch, she called out, “Two minutes.” And it always seemed like, in that last minute, about half of the class poured in. She frowned at the noisy group. All of them knew her by now. They’d been in her class for at least three months, and they were coming to the end of the term, and exams were coming up. She was ready, but she didn’t think they were.

  A class like this was supposed to make you think, to keep you on your toes, and to keep your brain nimble. Instead it seemed to have the opposite effect and put so many of these kids to sleep. As she looked at some of the older students, they were hardly kids anymore. A couple were under twenty, but most of them were in their early twenties, midtwenties, late twenties. She knew at least one was in her midforties. She even had a couple in their sixties here.

  “Time,” she called out.

  The two students closest to the doors got up, let in a few scrambling students, and then closed and locked the doors. She was strict on that. There were to be no interruptions. If you couldn’t be here on time, you couldn’t be allowed to disrupt the rest of her class. She waited a moment for everybody to calm down and to stop shuffling. And then she started.

  “Good morning, everyone. Glad to see you could make it so early.” They all cracked a smile. “I know. Lots of final projects, lots of exam studying to do as we begin next week,” she said. “This is our last lecture class, but don’t worry. You’ve come this far, and you’ll make it.” A twitter of laughter echoed through the group. She smiled and said, “As always, we’re talking what ifs. We already discussed in this class, What if aliens arrived? What if Armageddon happened? What if a third world war happened?

  “Today, as in some of the other topics, this one will be completely different. We’ll discuss psychic phenomena. But not just any psychic phenomenon, because, of course, it’s a very wide field. There are psychics, and then there are mediums, who don’t necessarily consider themselves psychics, like the aura readers, the healers, all kinds of different classifications and groups. But I want to talk about something completely different today because, of course, my mind always thinks in terms of what if,” she said, looking around at the class, noting that everybody leaned forward with interest. “Say, for example,” she stated, pointing to the row in front, where three girls sat together. The same three who’d sat there all semester. They were fun loving and she had a soft spot for each of them. She smiled at them. “Say these three girls were targeted.”

  At that, the girls straightened up and one asked, “Targeted for what?”

  Gertrude laughed. “I don’t mean targeted, targeted. I don’t mean to be stalked or with a target on your back or with a gun or something. But let’s just say, what if you had a back door into your mind? What if other people had a way to put ideas in your head? What if people could control your thinking? What if people not only controlled your thinking but your actions? Has anybody ever thought about this?”

  A couple students put up their hands.

  She continued, “And you’re thinking more of the movies, aren’t you? Like, you know, mind control and other things like that, right?”

  They both nodded.

  “Right? So think about psychics, think about energy, think about people who can heal somebody else just by waving their hands over the surface of an injury and pouring supposedly loving energy into that area. What about people who can stand here and look at you and see your past life all in your energy?” she said, waving her hand around one of the male students standing off to the side. “They can check out your history. They can go into something called akashic records—the Book of Life—and see all kinds of stuff.

  “And then we have others, energy forms, where people have hooks into each other because, of course, we either love or hate them. These can form at birth, and they can continue right through your death. Sometimes people say diseases can be caused this way because you’re so full of other people’s negative energy that you poison your own soul,” she murmured. “But what if—now think about this,” she said, “what if there was a back door to your mind? And somebody else had access?”

  She looked at the three girls and said, “I mean, just what if somebody stood up here today, without you even knowing it, and could get into your mind, while you sat here in class. What if that were possible? Now think about it, and then raise your hands and toss out the possibilities of what we could be looking at.”

  After that, it was a little slow to start, but then people came up with myriad ideas about how to run countries, how to control somebody’s love life, how to gain access to bank accounts, how to control relationships. She nodded and wrote a lot of them on the board.

  “Think bigger. Think World War Three,” she said. “What if somebody was controlling somebody else from a distance? I mean, just because we have a back door to the mind, does that mean the person has to be sitting right beside you in order to control your mind?” She looked at the girls and said, “What if the one in the middle could access the two outer girls of this group?”

  The girls just looked at her, and the one in the center, Carrie, said, “I don’t think I like being here.”

  Gertrude laughed. “Think about it. What if somebody from somewhere else in the world had access because energy …” and she turned to look at the class and said, “Energy …”

  And the class cried out, “Has no boundaries. There is no life. There is no death. Energy is forever. Energy only transforms. So what if?”

  By the time the hour-long class was more or less done, it had been a very animated session, and she was delighted. She readied the last of the homework for her next class and said, “It’s that time, and it’s been a pleasure, everybody. Good job. Feel free to take off, to get ready for your exams, and we’ll see you next term, maybe,” she said. “If not, have a good life.”

  And, with that, everybody gathered up their stuff.

  She walked over to the board, grabbed the eraser, and started clearing off all the notes that she had put there. A small shriek and a weird silence had
her turning to look. She asked, “What’s the matter?”

  While everybody else was still streaming out the doors up at the top, an entire group of people around the front row just stared at her and then looked at where the group of girls had been sitting.

  “We forgot one what if,” said Carrie in the middle, who now stood, her voice high and strained.

  “What’s that?” Gertrude asked.

  “What if the back door to the mind,” she said, “could kill someone?”

  Gertrude shrugged and said, “Well, if anything else is possible, that is too. Why?” she asked.

  Carrie looked at her professor in shock, then turned to look at the girls seated on either side of her and said, “Because both of them are dead.”

  This concludes Book 19 of Psychic Visions: Snap, Crackle….

  Read about What If…: Psychic Visions, Book 20

  What If…: Psychic Visions (Book #20)

  Detective Abigail Cartwright has earned a reputation for solving weird homicide cases, but, when she’s called to a lecture hall at the local university, she faces the oddest one yet. During a What If … lecture, run by soon-to-be-retired Professor Gertrude Milligan, two students died. Without any signs of how or why.

  Confused, Abby digs in to solve the mystery, only to find several old cases connect—or do they? Were the two students murdered, or was something else going on?

  Professor Leon Wellington is worried about his aunt Gertie. Their personal history was bad enough, but to have two of her favorite students die right in front of her has left her shocked and grieving. How can she not be a prime suspect in this case? Then she goes missing …

  When the past collides with the present, the stakes are higher than ever, as a killer realizes how close he is to losing everything …

  Find Book 20 here!

  To find out more visit Dale Mayer’s website.

  Simon Says…: Kate Morgan (Book #1)

  Welcome to a new thriller series from USA Today Best-Selling Author Dale Mayer. Set in Vancouver, BC, the team of Detective Kate Morgan and Simon St. Laurant, an unwilling psychic, marries all the elements of Dale’s work that you’ve come to love, plus so much more.

  Detective Kate Morgan, newly promoted to the Vancouver PD Homicide Department, stands for the victims in her world. She was once a victim herself, just as her mother had been a victim, and then her brother—an unsolved missing child’s case—was yet another victim. She can’t stand those who take advantage of others, and the worst ones are those who prey on the hopes of desperate people to line their own pockets.

  So, when she finds a connection between more than a half-dozen cold cases to a current case, where a child’s life hangs in the balance, Kate would make a deal with the devil himself to find the culprit and to save the child.

  Simon St. Laurant’s grandmother had the Sight and had warned him that, once he used it, he could never walk away. Until now, her caution had made it easy to avoid that first step. But, when nightmares of his own past are triggered, Simon can’t stand back and watch child after child be abused. Not without offering his help to those chasing the monsters.

  Even if it means dealing with the cranky and critical Detective Kate Morgan …

  Author’s Note

  Thank you for reading Snap, Crackle…: Psychic Visions, Book 19! If you enjoyed the book, please take a moment and leave a short review here.

  Dear reader,

  I love to hear from readers, and you can contact me at my website: www.dalemayer.com or at my Facebook author page. To be informed of new releases and special offers, sign up for my newsletter or follow me on BookBub. And if you are interested in joining Dale Mayer’s Reader Group, here is the Facebook sign up page.

  Cheers,

  Dale Mayer

  Get a Free Cozy Mystery Now!

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  About the Author

  Dale Mayer is a USA Today best-selling author, best known for her SEALs military romances, her Psychic Visions series, and her Lovely Lethal Garden cozy series. Her contemporary romances are raw and full of passion and emotion (Broken But … Mending series). Her thrillers will keep you guessing (By Death series), and her romantic comedies will keep you giggling (It’s a Dog’s Life, a stand-alone novella; and the Broken Protocols series, starring Charming Marvin, the cat).

  Dale honors the stories that come to her—and some of them are crazy and break all the rules and cross multiple genres!

  To go with her fiction, she also writes nonfiction in many different fields, with books available on résumé writing, companion gardening, and the US mortgage system. She has recently published her Career Essentials series. All her books are available in print and ebook format.

  Connect with Dale Mayer Online

  Dale’s Website – www.dalemayer.com

  Twitter – @DaleMayer

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  BookBub – bookbub.com/authors/dale-mayer

  SNAP, CRACKLE…

  Dale Mayer

  Valley Publishing

  Copyright © 2021

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-773364-82-7

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