First Published in Australia by Aurora House
www.aurorahouse.com.au
This edition published 2019
Copyright © Lesley A. Meldrum 2019
Book formatting: Amit Dey
Cover design: Simon Critchell
The right of Lesley A. Meldrum to be identified as Author of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN number: 978-0-6483794-4-7 (Kindle)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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Dedication
I would like to dedicate this book to my daughter Andrea who has always been supportive and encouraging.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the staff of Aurora House Publishing who have taken a chance on me. They have been a great help. I thank my editor, Alyssa Lanyon-Owen, who really helped to make my story flow. Thank you, Sarah Vogler and Linda Lycett, for believing in me. Thank you, Simon, for designing my book cover and Meredith for proofreading my story before sending it out into the world.
I would also like to acknowledge my good friends Terry Wright and Tui Giles, who supported me from the start. Tui, thank you for continuously sending me all that resourceful material. And a big thanks in general to everyone who wished me well. Many names come to mind.
Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge all the town libraries I visited while travelling and working on my story. Every library I used was helpful and resourceful. Thank you, Emerald, Mareeba, Mackay, Sarina, and Warwick.
One
Australia 2015
It was three weeks earlier that had led Sarah to this moment. While eating at the dinner table one night, she had glimpsed a Psychic Expo ad on the television.
‘We’ll be coming to you soon,’ she caught the tail end. ‘Check out the venues anywhere near you.’
Sarah skimmed the list displayed on the screen. ‘Emerald, Town Hall, Thurs. 22 January – Fri. 23 January. Doors open at 8am.’ She wondered if this was the answer she had been looking for.
She jumped to her feet and like a mad hatter raced around looking for a pen and paper to record the details.
From that moment on, she counted the days. She had prepared herself by meditating, praying, and cleansing herself with sage. However, the ritual had had an adverse effect on her. The smell of the smoke wafting from the sage caused her sinuses to swell and, for some unaccounted reason, something within her stirred. She buckled over and clenched her stomach.
For the rest of the day, she curled up in bed fighting migraines on top of her nausea and stomach cramps. It didn’t matter what position she lay in, she could not get comfortable. The pain was so severe it induced vomiting. In her agony she would alternate between lying down, sitting up, or pacing.
It had taken days to recover. Thank goodness she was feeling better when the day of the expo finally arrived.
Although she found herself hesitating, she willed herself to go through with it. She was harbouring a deep embedded concern that needed to be resolved and time was of the essence.
As a young child, she had only told her parents and a few close friends about her concern. Every one of them had labelled her a drama queen or a nutcase, but her fears were very real to her. Since nobody believed them, she stopped revealing them to others.
But time was running out. She had to fix this before it was too late.
When she came to the wide entrance at the town hall, there was no doubt in her mind that she was in the right place. A large sign reading, ‘Psychic Expo Here,’ had been set up and under the writing was a big arrow pointing towards the wide-open entrance doors.
Inside was a bazaar-style market area filled with new age items for sale. After taking in what the market had to offer, Sarah’s eyes travelled to where she was to pay for her readings. Stationed there was a billboard displaying profiles of all the mediums, and next to the billboard was a lady sitting at a small table with an old cash register. Her table held a stack of CDs and piles of docket books. The dockets made sense to Sarah—she knew they were entry tickets should she want to book a reading—but she wasn’t quite sure what the CDs were for.
To her right was an area filled with empty seats where she assumed people had their readings. Her attention lingered over the designated workstation area where all the mediums had set up their individual workspaces.
The event was quieter than Sarah had expected. But then again, she was one of the early birds.
The smell of sandalwood incense and soft new age music lulled Sarah into a tranquil mood. Having taken in all the surroundings, she relaxed a little. It didn’t look too scary, after all. Her imaginings had been misguided. She had let the fear of the unfamiliar toy with her insecurities.
Sarah squared her shoulders and approached the display board where the ticket lady sat. The lady smiled at her warmly and then left her to herself, which she appreciated. She searched the board, reading every profile and studying their faces. Sarah believed she had a knack for reading faces, but it turned out a difficult task. They all looked welcoming and came with interesting credentials. Each had their own individual abilities, some more than others. The different types of mediums boggled her mind. She wanted to try them all, only she wasn’t willing to spend that much money.
After scanning all the faces one last time, her eyes fell on a serene face that stared back at her like an old friend. Sarah was looking at the star attraction, whose readings were double the price of the others.
The lady was advertised as Australia’s leading number one psychic, as seen on TV, and psychic to the celebrities. Her credentials were impressive, to say the least.
But it wasn’t merely the promo that had Sarah sucked in. Something inside her decided that this psychic was the one. She wasn’t dressed as a gypsy or Indian shaman like many of the others. In fact, she was dressed rather plain.
Sarah explored the room to locate the lady in person. When she spotted her, she felt even more of a connection. Her station was a little off from the others. She was surrounded by advertisements that stated her star attraction status. The psychic was already busy with a client. Sarah had spotted her and the lady she was with before, but had not taken any particular interest until now.
The psychic’s simple dress, with its large floral print, had noticeably come from Best & Less. Sarah’s grandmother, along with many of the other local elderly women, ventured there to buy the same style of dress. In addition, the psychic had complemented her plain clothing with a pair of slip-ons. Sarah couldn’t say why she was drawn to this particular lady, for she certainly hadn’t lured her with her impressionable image.
Sarah reached for her purse, which was tucked away in her handbag. Customers were given a choice of either half hou
r or full hour readings. Sarah chose the full hour. The price did not deter her. She wanted a guarantee that she was going to walk away a satisfied customer. She hoped she’d get what she came for: someone adept enough to stop the dreams and change the fate she feared she was destined for.
For an extra charge, Sarah was offered a recording of the reading, which she accepted. The ticket lady took her money and handed her a blank CD. ‘Give this to Jana,’ she said, which explained what the CDs were for. She then handed Sarah a docket with a number. ‘Just wait over there, love, and your number will be called out when it’s your turn.’ She pointed to the area where empty seats occupied the room.
The seats Sarah had assumed to be the designated spot where she would get a reading done was simply a waiting area. She had tuned in that there were clients already doing readings at the private workstations, but assumed it might get so busy that they would allocate a stage area like that John Edward’s show she had seen on TV.
The event was run more like a doctor’s clinic. People sat in the waiting room until their name was called out. Sarah decided she liked the simple and organised setup. She was glad she wasn’t going to be one of those people in the audience who were hoping for a contact and nothing came through.
She took a seat and waited. Sarah felt fortunate that she had come early. Being the prized star that her reader was, she was bound to be in demand. Only one person was ahead of her and she had already been in session when Sarah arrived. As a result, it seemed only a short while before Sarah heard her number called.
She expected the psychic lady to be studying her as she walked to the table but thankfully, the lady was looking away, just staring into space, minding her own business.
When Sarah reached the workstation, the lady smiled at her as she took her seat. Sarah’s guard dropped immediately and she placed the CD on the table. The lady placed the blank CD into the player before turning her attention to Sarah.
‘Hi,’ she said. The lady’s greeting was barely a whisper.
‘Hi,’ Sarah repeated a little on the shy side.
‘My name is Jana. And your name is?’
‘Sarah.’
‘Sarah. What are you asking for in your reading?’
‘Just a general reading, please. Anything you can tell me about my finances, my career, and my love life. Whatever.’ Sarah shrugged her shoulders. She felt awkward and didn’t want to tell Jana the real reason she was there. She wanted to find out how real Jana’s powers were first.
‘Right, let us begin then, shall we?’ Sarah watched as Jana turned the egg timer over. The psychic pressed the play and record buttons before casually stretching her hands out to Sarah, her palms facing up. ‘Firstly, can I please hold your hands?’ she asked. ‘This is how I read your vibration.’
Every muscle in Sarah’s body tightened up. She sat back, putting some distance between her and the stranger who wanted to make skin contact with her. After a steadying breath, Sarah reached out and took hold of the lady’s hands, hoping her grip was not too tight or too limp. Her own hands were shaking. She agonised over why such trivial things could make her feel so self-conscious.
‘You’re extremely tense, aren’t you?’
Even though the medium was speaking to Sarah her focus was elsewhere, in another world per se. Her head was tilted back, her eyes closed. She was holding Sarah’s hands gently in her own, soaking up the girl’s psychic energy.
While she meditated, her face was soft—not strained as you would expect when somebody’s concentration was engaged in drawing information from the ethereal world. She had an ageless glow that all women would envy. She reminded Sarah of the people in church during worship who were filled with the Holy Spirit.
Sarah had briefly attended church during her teenage years in the hope of finding a cure for her dilemma, but her search had been uneventful.
She studied the old woman’s features as she gathered her thoughts in silence. She would have been a good-looking woman in her youth. In fact, she was still good looking. Every feature complimented the others, from her shiny silver hair to her flawless skin. She was one of the lucky ones who had evolved into a seasoned beauty.
Her bright green eyes were the first thing Sarah had noticed when she approached the table. The lady had big almond-shaped eyes that smiled when she greeted you.
The table between them was only small, but it was big enough to arrange the mystic’s work essentials. The medium was equipped with a few decks of cards and a small collection of crystal gemstones, with a compact CD player situated to the side to record their session. The smell of sandalwood permeated the air where they were stationed.
Sarah didn’t have a nose for incense. She found it too strong and, regrettably, strong smells triggered her headaches.
Luckily, sandalwood happened to be the only one she could tolerate. Was it a coincidence or did the lady know? In fact, the entire building was scented with burning sandalwood. Was the universe orchestrating this given moment for Sarah’s sake? She had to wonder.
Sarah studied the psychic while she was trenched deep in thought. She admired the sheen of Jana’s silver hair and hoped her hair would turn out the same if she ever reached that age. All her life, she had been convinced she was going to die young.
The medium broke Sarah’s thought patterns when she began to speak. She hoped the lady could not read what she had been thinking. Until now, Sarah had never realised how private your own thoughts could be.
If Jana had read her thoughts, she spoke nothing of them.
Sarah tuned into what Jana was saying and straight away was amazed at the accurate details the gifted lady revealed. The lady clutched her hands and gave snippets of her personal life, some of which was only privy to her.
‘I see two young children,’ said the psychic. ‘A boy and a girl. They look about ten to twelve years of age.’
She paused for a moment. Her head was held high and her chin was uplifted. Her face was strained as she gathered information.
‘The girl,’ she spoke again. ‘The girl is you. The boy, he is related though he is not your brother. Perhaps your cousin.
‘I see your surroundings. You’re at a waterhole. The river is dry and sandy. There is very little water. An event is happening. There is cheering and people are running across the finishing line. It is a surf carnival.’
She smiled.
‘I gather there is humour in the festival event. There is no surf where this event is taking place because it is inland and the river is in place of the beach.
‘You and your cousin are bored with the turnout. You both climb the riverbank and venture off into the bush. You come across a secluded area and settle there, where it is quiet. It looks like a deserted campsite.
‘There is an old tree that has grown over and looks like a hut. You both walk into the hut for some shade. There, you discover some items left behind, which you explore. There is nothing of value, but there are some books that catch your attention—or should I say magazines?—that contain lude pictures.
‘The people in these photos are unique. They have both male and female anatomy. You can’t believe your finding. You struggle to fathom whether the pictures are real or not.’
Sarah’s breath caught in her throat.
Nobody knew about the books she and her cousin had read out of curiosity at the deserted campsite, which had been her discovery of hermaphrodites.
The lady’s face screwed up in pain. She moved to another time in Sarah’s life when Sarah was seven. ‘Oh dear, I can see a fire. It’s a camp fire. I see men trying to put it out. There’s a water truck slowly moving forward and spraying water from its spurt holes. The men are queued alongside the truck. As they move forward, in sync with the truck, they are using broken off gum tree branches to pat down the cindering flames until they die out. Thankfully, they manage to distinguish the fire before the whole countryside is ablaze.
‘You were blamed for the fire because you were seen holding a box of match
es. Your older cousin dobbed you in, but it was your younger cousin who started it. You saw him trying to light a small fire next to your aunt’s vehicle, right at the petrol tank, so you confiscated the matches from him. Little did you know, he knew where there was a whole stack of them. He retrieved another box and went off somewhere else and that was when he lit up the whole camp.
‘You didn’t dob him in and promised you never would.’
Apart from her younger cousin, nobody knew about the promise Sarah made. The younger cousin, since passed, had taken the secret to his grave. So now, Sarah was the only beholder to that privy information.
At the time of that incident, her father and uncle were working on the roadworks, building highways. They were working that weekend and staying on the campsite. Sarah’s aunt had decided to take them some lunch. At the same time, it was a nice drive for the kids. That was how they had ended up out in the countryside.
‘I always see fire around you,’ said Jana.
A shiver went through Sarah at this last remark, yet she said nothing.
The lady continued to recall stages of her life. Sarah listened attentively as the lady hit target after target.
‘I keep getting the number twenty-six and seeing fire.’ She looked across at Sarah. ‘Does the number twenty-six mean anything to you?’
Sarah did not answer.
Nevertheless, Jana continued her reading.
‘You’re very tired, aren’t you? You can’t sleep and you’re regularly having bad dreams. That’s not good.’ Her eyes opened, making immediate contact with Sarah’s rounded ones. ‘Just look at the big, dark circles under your eyes,’ she said as she studied the girl’s face. ‘Let’s see if we can help.’
Sarah felt even more tired at the mere mention. She sunk into her chair, almost melding into it.
‘These dreams, they’re so real, aren’t they?’ asked Jana.
‘Yes,’ Sarah said, her voice strained. She fought hard to hold the tears back.
Jana let go of her hands and picked up a deck of cards. She studied Sarah while she shuffled. Jana’s penetrating stare felt strange and intrusive.
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