Siren Hunter- the Curse

by J G Barber

  Paul paces his hotel room, consumed by anxiety and unable to sleep. He’s not happy about the fact he let Lorelei get to him. Every time he thinks he has her figured out, she surprises him. And that sensation around his neck is bugging the shit out of him. He dials his smartphone. “Ellen?”

  “Paul?” She was not expecting his call. “Why are you calling me? I’m not getting in the middle between you and—”

  “I’m not calling to talk to Laura,” Paul says. “I want to talk to you.”

  This surprises Ellen. He’s never sought a conversation. “Oh. Okay.”

  “How do I see the supernatural?” he asks, interested in learning what she knows.

  “Thursday 8pm on the CW,” she teases, seizing the opportunity to make fun of him for a change.

  He’s annoyed that she’s not playing ball. “I’m not joking, Ellen. How do I see beyond the physical dimension?”

  “Hmmm.” She hears in his voice that he’s serious about it. Ellen thinks for a minute about how to explain this to him. “Well, there are seven planes of existence. Each one has a different vibratory rate. To see or perceive that plane, you must change your vibratory rate. Which planes to you want to see?”

  “The one where we make things happen,” Paul says with no hesitation.

  “The causal plane.” Ellen thinks about it more. “That will be difficult for you. Master the astral plane first.”

  “English please,” Paul snaps.

  “The causal plane is the third plane of existence. Intellectual energy. The astral plane is the second. Emotional energy. You can’t see into the third plane until you have your act together in the second,” she says. “You have a lot of emotional baggage.”

  He doesn’t want to go there. “Whatever. Can I see on the second then?”

  “Perhaps.” Ellen thinks about confronting him with her view that he’s possessed by a demon, but she remembers what Laura said about the ancestral curse. She takes the high road instead. “You need to start by thinking in circles instead of lines. The universe uses spirals of energy to create everything. Breathe and center yourself, like Laura taught you, until you no longer perceive space and time. If you have the gift of sight, then you might get a glimpse of astral plane as it manifests around you.”

  Paul rolls his eyes. “I don’t understand, but I’m going to try it.”

  “If you have the gift, there’s a part of you that understands,” Ellen assures him. “Trust it.”

  Paul ends the call. He lies down on the hotel bed, closes his eyes, and breathes to center himself. “I can do this.” After a few minutes, he enters a waking dream state. He sees through Erik’s eyes.

  A small lodge constructed of weather worn timber stands alone in the Icelandic wilderness, covered in snow, tucked away in the rocks of the volcanic landscape. Erik, Alexander and Dutch approach. They hear men’s voices inside. Erik and his partners enter the lodge to find a group of twenty men dressed in animal pelts, standing in a circle around a fire. A sorcerer circles the fire, inspecting the men one by one. He’s wearing a pointed leather hat adorned with the eight-pointed symbol from Alexei’s business card.

  The three men stand outside the circle and listen as the sorcerer recites a passage in Old Norse from a worn, ancient book. The sorcerer slams the book shut and points at Erik. “You! You believe you can resist the powers of the nixe.”

  “My will is strong,” Erik replies, pounding his fist on his chest.

  The sorcerer gets in Erik’s face. “You can destroy that which you love more than life itself, huh?”

  Erik counters with fierce determination. “She will submit herself to me. Or I will kill her.”

  “Fool!” The Sorcerer slaps Erik face. “You cannot kill it. It will destroy you with its song.” Erik scoffs. “The power of the nixe lies beyond the reach of mortal men,” the sorcerer lectures. “To defeat it, you must join its realm. Learn its tricks.” He grabs Erik’s cheek between his fingers. “Do you have the strength of will to leave behind this flesh, to carry on your quest from the place where spirits dwell, until you have exacted your revenge?”

  Erik does not back down. “My rage knows no bounds.”

  “So it is spoken,” the sorcerer acknowledges. He looks around the circle for confirmation.

  “So it is spoken,” the group of men repeats.

  “I will teach you the secrets of life beyond death.” The sorcerer hands Erik the spyglass. He points out the Nordic runes and unrecognizable symbols etched into the metal. “But, first, you must learn to see.”

  Paul awakens after a full night’s sleep, refreshed and energized. He tries to remember the dream about Erik. The sorcerer’s final words echo in his mind. “But first, you must learn to see.” As he showers and dresses for the day, he senses something is different. The room looks different. He perceives a current of energy all around him.

  His subtle change in perception continues as he stands on the sidewalk outside the hotel, watching the cars and people go by. Lorelei pulls up in the Gemballa. Paul opens the door and squeezes in. “Well, look at you, Sailor! You need more massages.” He remains silent, watching her as she drives. For an instant, he perceives Lorelei as a shadow overlaid on the energy field of another, distinct energy field. She notices his reaction. “Excellent,” she says. “Today you’ll get a glimpse of my control. It will reveal the part you must play to make the deal happen.”

  Paul and Lorelei enter the executive conference room where Jerry, the crew and New Century management await them. “Sorry we’re late,” Lorelei says. She motions Paul to take the empty seat at the far end of the table, and she takes the opposite end. Lorelei connects with each person as she speaks. “I understand you all have new concerns after the visit to Seattle. Cards on the table.” The crew doesn’t understand what’s going on. The management looks to Jerry.

  “There is only one concern, Lorelei,” Jerry says on their behalf.

  Lorelei laughs. “Thank you, Jerry, it’s good to start off Monday morning with a joke.”

  “I’m not joking,” he says, eyes flashing in anger.

  She already knows what Jerry’s angry about. Art’s meddling. Time to have some fun. “I’m going to break script from the Seattle Nice you’ve all come to expect from us. Here’s the truth. Art Feldman is not a factor. I represent the money.”

  “He’s the Chairman and CEO. He has corporate authority,” Jerry reminds her.

  “Does he?” she says in a voice infused with a siren’s spell. Her eyes lead Paul’s around the table.

  Paul sees that everyone in the room is wearing a translucent snake collar like the one he perceived around his own neck. Except for Monica. A wave of fear overtakes him. Holy shit.

  “Okay, Lorelei. We trust you and Paul to make this right,” Jerry says in an entranced voice.

  Lorelei sings again in an inaudible tone. The snake collars around everyone’s necks oscillate and tighten. Paul’s vision blurs. When the tone ends, he can see again. The room looks normal. No snake collars. Everyone looks to Lorelei and nods as they file out of the room, leaving Paul alone with Lorelei and Monica.

  Monica observes Paul as his fears about Art destroying his hard work take over his mind and emotions, obliterating everything he just saw from his awareness. Great Mother, she thinks to Lorelei.

  Yes, sister. You bear witness to the awesome power of Great Mother, Lorelei replies. She intends for us to succeed this time. Nothing can stop us.

  Monica walks over to Paul. She gives him a passionate tongue kiss that leaves Paul speechless and wanting more. Her eyes promise more to come as her eye contact lingers. She saunters out of the room, followed by Lorelei.

  Left alone in the room as intense currents of fear and lust surge through his body, Paul fights with all his will to bring his mind back to the present moment. He can’t remember what happened before Monica’s kiss. Art appears in his mind’s eye. Fucking Art! He’s going to fuck this whole thing up again. I have to stop him.

  Chapt
er Seventeen

  Paul, Lorelei and Jerry sit in a triangle at a round patio table in a quiet Beverly Hills hangout. Lorelei rests her hands behind her head, energized by the male testosterone and conflict. Paul tries to get Jerry to disclose what Art said to get him so riled up. “Come on, Jerry. You’ve been there. You know the realities of the software business. Every cloud platform requires development work to meet a company’s specific needs. Nothing works out of the box.”

  Jerry holds tight to his illogical conclusions. “I need a working product now. There are other solutions.”

  “Like Microsoft?” Paul shoots Jerry a penetrating look. “Jerry, help me understand. We wouldn’t be here today if you had another solution. I know our software isn’t the problem. What did Art say to you to break our trust?”

  Jerry blows his stack. “That man you call your boss is a cheapskate narrow-minded motherfucker. He’s a fucking idiot! I won’t do business with him.”

  “Art Feldman, my benefactor and my nemesis,” Paul says with a genuineness that rarely accompanies any private conversation about his CEO. Jerry loosens up a notch in response to Paul’s authenticity. Paul continues. “He doesn’t trust you either, and I can’t resolve that for you two. I guarantee that our platform can do everything you need, with minor customizations. We can do the work in a reasonable amount of time. Our engineers will break it down for Elmo and your technical teams. I’ll write it up in a statement of work.”

  Paul moves in for the close. “Jerry, we have the right solution for you. You know it and I know it. Let me fly our engineers in.” Jerry exhales.

  “Give them another chance, Jerry,” Lorelei sings. The song tightens Jerry’s snake collar and loosens Paul’s.

  Jerry shakes Paul’s hand. “You’re the only reason I’m still in this, Paul.” Their eyes connect. Paul sees the same disturbed look in his eyes he saw the night he had dinner at Jerry’s house.

  “Excellent.” Lorelei grins. “A round of drinks to celebrate our renewed partnership.” She signals the waitress to come over and take their order.

  Inebriated and re-bonded in their shared goal to close the deal, the three of them walk to the valet stand, where Jerry’s car awaits. Jerry drives away without a word.

  Paul turns on Lorelei. “I was right! You fucking bitch. You orchestrated this whole thing from the start.”

  Lorelei laughs. “You’re sexy when you’re angry.” She pulls him against her and gives him a deep, penetrating tongue kiss like the one Monica gave him. Paul is helpless to stop himself; the taste of her saliva is more intoxicating than her smell. She pushes him away when he’s finished and sings the tone that reactivates and tightens his snake collar. “You have work to do. Write up the changes that will make your product what they want. Call me when you’re finished.”

  The Valet delivers the Gemballa. She jumps in and locks the door before Paul can get in. Paul steps in front of the car and leans on the hood, staring at her through the windshield. She backs away and Paul falls on his face. Then she punches forward, clipping his shoulder and spinning him to the ground as she drives away.

  After an evening of channeling his rage and lust into his work, Paul saves an open document titled ‘Statement of Work.’ He steps away from the work desk, takes off his shirt, and rubs his clipped shoulder with ice cubes. He picks up his smartphone and dials Lorelei.

  “Please leave a message after the beep,” the automated voice replies. Paul ends the call and taps the redial button. “Please leave a message after the beep.” End. Redial. “Please leave a—” End. Redial. “Please—” He throws his smartphone as hard as he can at the bed pillows, suits up in his gym clothes, and heads to the hotel racquetball court.

  Paul pounds the blue ball against the wall. “I can say no. I’m not going to fuck you. I can say no. I’m not going to fuck you!” he screams. Exhausted, he pauses, dripping with sweat and coughing. He massages his neck until he catches his breath. Paul resumes, his rage building with every swing. The rhythmic popping of the ball against his racket and the wall echoes around him, creating an eerie, entrancing industrial kick beat.

  This week’s meetings—and the late nights writing the statement of work—grind on Paul. He has operated like this for years, and normally this all in commitment would give him confidence. But several things become clear to him on this leg of the trip. One: somehow, beyond logic or explanation, he’s become Lorelei’s bitch. And two: he is no longer in control of the deal. To make matters worse, snakes haunt his dreams at night. He hates snakes. He has a vague, recurring memory of seeing a bunch of snakes. But he can’t remember where he saw them.

  Paul’s engineering team comes through for him. With his guidance, they drive out the technical details and agreements needed for the statement of work. The other bright spot through all this is the crew. The bond he forged with the crew in Seattle, and their insight into how to set up this next phase of the deal for success, proves invaluable. And Monica can turn almost any situation into a party. Despite his obsession with Lorelei, his desire for Monica continues to grow. In the moments they were alone, it was all Paul could to stop himself from bending her over the conference room table, lifting her skirt, and taking care of business.

  Lorelei keeps Paul at arms-length all week. The part of him that wants her grows stronger day by day. As does the part of him that wants the deal done so he can realize his corporate exit. He suffers through the obsession to reach his payday at the end.

  Laura calls him multiple times every night. Paul doesn’t take the calls. He can’t. If he loses focus, if he doesn’t spend every waking minute taking advantage of his engineering team on site, if he doesn’t keep pace with synthesizing their discoveries into the statement of work, the week’s efforts are a total loss. Besides, he told Laura what to do. She has the support she needs, and she knows not to count on him.

  What Laura doesn’t know: Paul has a snake collar around his neck, it is cutting off his higher awareness at Lorelei’s command, and he’s becoming entangled in a web of primal lust woven by Lorelei and Monica.

  Paul finishes the specifications at 11 p.m. on Thursday night, right on schedule. They’ll have Friday for a review before a night flight out. Right on cue, the phone rings. Paul’s ready to talk to Laura now. “Hi.”

  “You okay?” Laura asks. “You didn’t return any of my calls or texts. You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

  “It took a lot of work to fix Art’s blunder,” Paul says with a sigh. “Just finished the statement of work. Mission accomplished.”

  She detects there is more to the story. “Siren incidents?”

  Paul reflects on the four days of intense activity. A blurred mind rewind of work discussions ends with Lorelei’s tongue in his mouth and the taste of her saliva. “Lorelei set up a meeting with me and Jerry. I got him on board with my plan.” He omits the part he fell flat on his face before she clipped his shoulder with the Porsche. “Since then, she’s left me alone to focus on my work.”

  Laura’s still not convinced he’s telling her everything. “What about Monica?”

  He feels Monica’s tongue in his mouth again. “She was an asset. She helped us get it done.” Paul’s gut spirals into a pit of fear and lust.

  Laura changes the subject. “Ellen told me you called her.”

  Hearing Ellen’s names triggers a flash sequence of moments he had forgotten. “Yes. I asked her how I could see the supernatural. She told me how. On Monday, in the meetings at New Century, I saw collars around everyone’s necks that looked like snakes. Lorelei has some kind of control over these people, and she wanted me to see it.”

  “The snake you saw. It was eating its own tail?” Laura

  His memory of the moment blurs. He wills his mind to focus long enough to re-see the snake collars before the memory fades to black. “Yes.”

  Laura draws on her master’s research to explain. “The ouroboros, also known as the world serpent. The serpent eating its own tail is an ancient symbol found i
n archaeology and mythology, representing cycles and the beginning and end of time. Jung interpreted it as an archetype, the representation of alchemy. The sirens must practice some kind of pagan ritual magic.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Paul says. She is using some kind of magic-infused chemistry on me, he concludes as he recalls the intoxicating power of Lorelei’s smell and taste.

  “I’m meeting you at the airport,” Laura says, still suspicious that he’s withholding something. “What time does your flight land?”

  Paul checks the calendar on his smartphone. “Tomorrow night around ten-thirty, I think. At Boeing Field. You remember I drove the Hummer?”

  She enters the time into her calendar. “You can follow me home. Until then, don’t let yourself be alone with those sirens. Seriously, Paul. Don’t fuck around. And, I love you.”

  “Love you too. See you tomorrow night.” Paul tosses his smartphone on the bed as his moment of admiration for Laura gives way to the memory of Lorelei’s taste as she thrust her tongue in his mouth. “I need to book a commercial flight,” he says as he heads for the bathroom to relieve four days of pent-up sexual tension.

  Laura parks at Madame Aurora’s, intent on getting more answers about the spyglass symbols. She finds Aurora already seated at the table. “I was expecting you,” Aurora says. She lays out a rune spread as Laura situates herself.

  “Thank you for being here.” Laura withdraws the spyglass from her bag and opens it. She compares the etched runes to those on the table. Again, the spread contains the same runes. She looks to Aurora for an explanation. Laura grows impatient when it’s not forthcoming. “That’s twice now you’ve laid out the same runes. I won’t ask you again. What does it mean? Can you translate these engravings for me?”