Triumph Over Tragedy: an anthology for the victims of Hurricane Sandy

by R. T. Kaelin

  “I don’t…don’t understand.”

  “In’da, you understand that every individual creates their own reality, do you not? As John Milton said: ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.’”

  Lai Wan paused for a moment, giving the other woman a chance to soak in what she had said, then added;

  “In other words, whatever we see within our head colors our perception of what we see in the world around us.”

  “You mean…”

  “Yes—we are walking within your mother’s soul.”

  In’da waved her hands all about, practically spinning about as she shrieked;

  “This? This is my mother’s soul?”

  Lai Wan reached out, taking In’da’s arm gently as she told her;

  “It is, but it is being poisoned by a demon which has made its way into your mother’s heart. If I recognize the signs, this is the work of a creature known as Shaitan—one of the Djinn.”

  “What can we do?”

  “We can do nothing. What must be done can only be done by you.” Staring into In’da’s eyes, the psychometrist told her, “You must engage the djinn in combat and destroy it.”

  “Me—fight a demon? Are you insane?” The daughter touched her chest absently, reacting with a frightened jump as if the sensation had come from another. Her head trembling madly, she whimpered;

  “I can’t—it’s impossible…I, what would, this is madness, I, I…I…”

  With the speed of thought Lai Wan made a swirling motion with her arms. Immediately In’da found the psychometrist in front of her, holding her arms at her sides, her eyes blazing as she stared into In’da’s, hissing;

  “Your mother is in the grips of this creature. It can, and most certainly does on a routine basis, cause her unending, unbearable pain.”

  “But…” Shaking the woman, her voice inching up into a snarl, Lai Wan snapped;

  “You listen to me, In'da Bin Goden, your mother’s intellect and emotions and thoughts will be consumed by this thing—bit by bit, morsel by morsel—until there is not enough of her mind left to generate a steady stream of drool over her gibbering lips.”

  “No.”

  “You know that I am telling you the truth. You can feel it in the air here. You came to me because you wanted your mother released from her pain. There is only one way she can be released, and that is if you take action. But then…”

  And at that point, the psychometrist released her hold on the other woman, stepping back from her as she said;

  “You do not really like your mother all that much, do you?” Shocked, partly at what had been said, partly that she who said the words could suspect their power, In’da snapped;

  “How dare you?!”

  “You forget,” Lai Wan gently reminded the daughter, “once you open yourself to me, all is revealed. You might love your mother out of instinct, mouthing the words out of habit, but the two of you have never gotten along.”

  Spinning away from the psychometrist, shutting her eyes as she did so, In’da screamed;

  “Be quiet!”

  But it was too late for any kind of tactical retreat for In’da Bin Goden, either from Lai Wan’s words, or from the situation into which she had willingly placed herself. Their invasion of the mother’s mind had gone on too long. They had walked the corridors of her soul defiantly, without guile or whispers, and as one must expect, they had finally been observed.

  “My, my—my*my*my—what have we here?”

  A monstrous form, humanoid roughly, but shattered, with bones sticking through its skin, with features mounted in the wrong place, appeared before the pair, its floppingly long tongue wagging in the air before them. Sitting on a large rock in the middle of a great stand of cattail reeds, the thing somehow stuck out its hand and stroked In’da’s chin with its clawlike nail as it chuckled;

  “It’s the beloved daughter, come a’calling.” Even as In’da pulled back, the oddly-jointed thing was somehow still at her side. Running another hand over her back, up toward her skull, it cooed;

  “What a lovely, long neck you have—my—my*my*my—uummmmmm, so tasty looking. Tell me, are you tasty?”

  From the side, Lai Wan caught In’da’s attention, letting her know that if she wished, they could abandon the garden at the speed of thought.

  “Merely tell me you would leave your mother to this odious thing,” she assured In’da, “and we shall depart immediately.”

  Before the daughter could react, the demon caught her in a powerful handhold, wheeling about to confront Lai Wan at the same time. While In’da trembled in fear in the thing’s grasp, it spat at the psychometrist;

  “The Dreamwalker—that explains much. Keep your advice to yourself, bitch. This ungrateful tramp and I are just getting to know each other.”

  “You have no say in this matter, eater of offal. If In’da wishes you dispelled, you shall be flung to the desert winds without a thought.”

  “You think me dismissed so easily?” The demon ran its hands relentlessly over In’da’s body, almost singing its words as it answered, “You wound me. Oh wait, no—you can’t. No one can dislodge me from this soul!”

  To this, Lai Wan could only sneer. Pointing a finger forward toward both In’da and the demon, she cried out;

  “Whose ears are your lies aimed at? Mine? You know I am not so easily fooled? Hers? But she is already here, ready to destroy you—and so your lies could not trick her.” Advancing on the demon, her finger still stabbing the air, the psychometrist added;

  “Maybe you hope to fool yourself. Could you, djinn? Could you lie yourself brave?”

  Enraged, the oddly shaped sack of life released its hold on In’da, shoving her to the ground so it could move forward on Lai Wan. Its clawed toes drawing irregular circles in the dust, it growled;

  “Defy me all you will, dreamwalker. You have no power here.”

  “‘Tis true, beast,” Lai Wan admitted. “In this instance I cannot order you from this place. But…” With a slowly forming, deadly smile spreading across her lips, the psychometrist pointed to In’da and said;

  “She can.”

  Without hesitation, the demon wheeled about and moved on In’da once more. Embracing her, it licked her body with its long, sore-covered tongue, answering;

  “My darling In’da, stop what she, herself, has set in motion? You can’t be serious, dreamwalker. You forget…she’s the one that invited me in here.”

  And then, the demon’s voice became a wicked, chastising laugh as it detailed how every rejection of her mother’s advice, every turning of a deaf ear to what her mother had to tell her, every time she had tossed her head and sadly pitied her mother’s feeble little mind…because, after all…She knew so much better than she who had given her birth, had thrown open the doors to its arrival. Its arms multiplying into dozens, it grabbed and pinched and teased its newest victim, reminding her;

  “After all, with your mother always criticizing, always pickingpickingpicking, always so annoying, so demanding, giving you so much interference…why, what else could you do but invite me in to shut the old bitch up?”

  With those words, the demonic presence seemed to have pushed the woman trembling within its rude grasp too far. With an impossible strength, something which could only have been found on the dreamplane In’da rebelled, pushing her way loose of the demon’s smothering grasp. Stumbling backwards, she screamed that she could not have called the thing, that the idea was absurd. After all, who knew how to summon demons?

  To her protestations, however, the demon merely smiled, rows of broken teeth with leaves and bugs and a Slim Jim wrapper stuck within them exposed as it did so. Licking its lips, it assured her;

  “But you did, every time you groaned when your mother asked for a favor, every time you dragged your feet when she needed your help…every time you cursed the sound of her voice, you were naught but a lighthouse, guiding me to her shore.”

  In’da s
creamed her defiance. It was an agonizing sound, mere tone and fury on the one hand, but the throat-tearing noise captured all attention and threw the focus to her. Drawing herself to her full height, the woman commanded;

  “No! I cast you out. Be gone from this place!”

  It was a superb performance, one for which the demon took the time to show its appreciation. While it applauded, it smiled, criticizing her delivery.

  “Yes, nicely done,” it admitted. “Good, round tones. But really, you pathetic bundle of knucklemeat…You really didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you?”

  Leaping forward, the demon grabbed In’da. Wrapping its various appendages around her once more, it sneered as it reminded her how she had spent years defying her mother, ignoring her every word, putting her off, hating her. Its grip grew tighter at the daughter’s inability to refute its claims.

  “Did you actually believe a measly few words, no matter how heartfelt for the moment, were going to send me running for the door?” Spinning In’da around, its fingers wrapped within her hair, the thing mocked her as it revealed;

  “Foolish cow—you don’t even truly believe that you’re here. You reek of the fear that this could all be true, that your mother’s pain could be your fault.”

  Laughing, the demon sent In’da spinning, splashing down into the mud, a great clump of her hair remaining in the thing’s scaly fist. Oddly enough, in the ethereal reality, she could see the trail of blood this left flying through the air. As she sobbed on the ground, the demon whispered yet more truth to her;

  “Such weakness merely makes me stronger, foolish bitch.”

  And with that, the demon flipped In’da over in the mud. Before she had even landed, face in the thick sludge, it straddled her, rubbing itself over her body, its bizarre form rolling this way and that across her spine, through her fingers, against the backs of her knees, much of it opening into one giant mouth which drooled monstrously over her, spewing;

  “Your mother is mine! You gave her to me!”

  In’da struggled beneath the horrid thing’s cruel weight, but she could not free herself. The demon laughed at what it considered her last gram of defiance. Sneering, it chided the daughter for her ingratitude, reminded her of how it had listened to her pleas, her throbbing entreaties for someone—anyone—to spare her of the burden of her mother.

  “Indeed, I rush to your aid,” it added in a wounded tone, “pull your mother as neatly from your back as you might pick up a pin, and what ‘thanks’ do I get? None at all.”

  Then, somehow suddenly on its feet once more, the demon presence lifted and threw In’da across the garden. She screamed as long as she was airborne, then went abruptly silent as she hit something which sounded both solid and heavy back in the overgrown brush. Tearing hair from its body, the thing danced in the mud, screaming to the heavens;

  “None!”

  While the horror cavorted, Lai Wan appeared at In’da’s side. Gently, she cradled the woman’s head in her hands, telling her;

  “Do remember, all of this is only as real as you wish it to be. You are not here. You are not hurt.” Gasping through broken, bleeding lips, In’da murmured;

  “But the pain…”

  As a storm broke overhead, darkening most of the garden, even as its lightning illuminated selected flashes of it, Lai Wan held a finger before In’da’s face, telling her that the pain of which she spoke was;

  “Born of your guilt.” She gave the thought only an instant to sink in, then added, “Do not give in to the djinn or your mother will be lost.”

  Dancing under the ever increasing lightning, the demon, its rubbery skin slick with rain, screeched to the shattered sky;

  “Foolish bitch! You’ve changed nothing by bringing this ungrateful baggage here. She gave me this soul years ago. The thoughts and memories I’ve stolen, given to me, freely they were, on a platter fashioned from the finest hate—”

  And then, the demon halted its gyrations, turning to stare with laughing eyes at In’da as it added;

  “And inlaid with the purest selfishness I have ever seen.”

  Pulling herself up, In’da rebelled against the horror’s words, reborn in fury. Savagely, she grabbed up a thick branch from the ruined garden, hefting in both hands with menace as she screamed;

  “NNNNOOOOOOO!! I didn’t do this to my mother. I didn’t give her to you!” Swinging her weapon wildly, sometimes connecting with the shifting form, sometimes not, she swore to it;

  “Not on purpose!”

  Another swing slammed her weapon against the demon.

  “Yes, we disagreed. We fought over stupid things. But I never wanted you in her life…”

  Another swing missed, turning the daughter completely around. As the demon stopped jumping to laugh, his closed eyes brought him a smashing blow to the head as In’da cried;

  “Never!”

  Beginning to feel the sting of the daughter’s strikes, the demon reformed itself, flinging three of its appendages into In’da’s midsection, knocking her away. A second salvo sent them flying forth once more, this assault leaving her face torn and gashed. Spitting into her wounds, the demon shouted;

  “Liar!”

  As the bleeding woman wavered on the edge of collapse, Lai Wan appeared at her side once more. Whispering into her ear, she said;

  “Shaitan has not the brains to lie about this. If you are to win through you must strip away all falsehood.” And then, fixing the woman with her gaze, the psychometrist told her;

  “You cannot speak the truth if you cannot bear to know it.”

  And, at those words In’da gasp in horror.

  “Oh my God…” Struggling to rise, stiff, bleeding and broken, In’da cried, “It’s true. There were those moments…when, when I just couldn’t take it anymore. When I would think to myself, if only she’d shut up, if she would just leave me alone…”

  Looking around her, staring into the design of the garden, seeing her mother in every leaf, in every stone, she sobbed;

  “I just wanted to get away from you—but for just a minute—just one miserable little minute!”

  Turning on the horrid thing cackling against the roar of the store, In’da attacked once more, shouting;

  “I did think those things. I did wish for them—I did. But not so something like this could happen.”

  Laughing at the woman’s attack, the demon threw itself upon her, tearing her skin, shattering her bones. Drinking her blood. Ignoring it all, or moreover, embracing it, In’da told the monster;

  “I never meant to turn something like you loose in my mother’s soul.” Kicking her repeatedly, clawing digging away flesh, shredding organs, the demon shouted;

  “But you did…‘she wants to run my life,’ ‘She won’t leave me alone,’ ‘Oh, why can’t she just curl up and die?!”

  Helpless, curled up pitifully, bleeding and broken, In’da wailed through blistered lips;

  “How? How can this be possible? Yes, I was tired—wanted some time to myself. So I, I exaggerated…to make myself feel better. Like so many do—I admit that. But it was no invitation…”

  As she spoke, the demon returned to her and stepped on In’da’s back, grinding her down into the muck. Gasping in the mud, however, the daughter ignored the pain, saying;

  “I never wanted anything like this. Nothing like you. I swear. I swear it. I swear…”

  And then In’da, totally beaten, as near death as one could reach on the dreamplane without actually terminating, looked upward with her one good eye and told the demon quietly, plainly—

  “I love my mother…”

  And in that moment, everything changed. The demon, large and monumental one moment, suddenly took on a shriven and, in some ways, nearly comical aspect. The tiniest of noises escaping its rough lips, the thing looked one way, then another, and before it could do much more, time ran out and space folded on the demon, leaving it somewhere other than the garden. With the passing of the creature, the storm also dis
sipated, the returning sun showing a garden rapidly healing itself. Everywhere, weeds withered and fell away, replaced by thick vines heavy with melons, fields of brilliant daffodils, trees budding with flowers and fruit at the same time.

  In the center of all the returning beauty, Lai Wan helped the bleeding, broken In’da into a sitting position. The woman was one eye from night, and in terrible shape, but through her pain she asked weakly;

  “Is it…did we…?”

  “Save your strength,” the psychometrist told her. “The demon is gone. As your complaints and pettiness drew it here, your honest declaration of your true love for your mother drove it away.”

  “I meant what I said. I…”

  “I know,” Lai Wan assured her. “If you had not meant what you said, you could not have driven off the djinn.”

  All about the pair, the garden shone with a green glisten nearly as bright as the sun overhead. Worried that she would not long survive, In’da asked quietly;

  “What happens to me, it doesn’t matter. But…my mother…will she—”

  “Yes—” answered, Lai Wan calmly. Pointing to a spot in the distance, In’da could see her mother, vital and fresh, with all her faculties obviously clear. The old woman was smiling and her outstretched arms were filled with love and the longing to hold her daughter.

  “Thanks to you.”

  As mother and daughter hugged near the center of the garden, Lai Wan stood off to the side, in its very center. There, while dam and offspring shared their century-long instant, the psychometrist gazed upon that which was the center of the mother’s soul, that which she had placed in the most treasured spot of her heart. All about her, wherever Lai Wan looked, stood a never-ending stone shrine, its hundreds of statues of In’da—as a baby, a toddler, learning to cook, to tie her shoes—more. They were everywhere, in all sizes and shapes, In’da dressed for the dance, for church, for the first day of kindergarten, middle school, high school, college, dressed for her first day of work, her first date, her first sleep over, her first Halloween, in a costume her mother had made her—more. Thousands more. All carved in stone to be captured perfectly forever—all the images a mother would keep in her heart of hearts of her darling daughter.