by Alexie Aaron
“You could touch me?”
“Could then, can’t now,” he said simply. He pushed his hand through her chest for effect.
“Hey no feelies,” Mia said immaturely.
“Where was you before?”
“Sabine’s.” Mia stopped seeing the puzzlement in his steely eyes. She explained, “The pale girl that took the crazy one away. Well I was at her condo… um… house,” Mia said and struggled to find words she thought the 18th century farmer would understand.
He caught on to what she was doing. “No need to dumb it down, I watch PBS.”
Mia gave a shocked smile. “You pledge too I suppose, or are you watching for free?”
“Miss April pledges, and we watch it on Sunday nights.”
Mia tilted her head and imagined the dirt-covered ghost sitting on April Johnston’s immaculate settee watching television. It was too much to contemplate.
“You was saying,” Murphy encouraged.
“Oh, I was standing on a chair, giving the raspberries to my aunt Bev, when I started looking at something she had drawn out on the tablecloth. I think ley lines… Yes. The ones she drew started to come alive and others joined them. I felt this was important information we would need to find Sabine so I let the lines take me over. I found an island. I pointed it out to Bev and then… Shit, can’t remember… Wait, oh yeah. I remember feeling real scared as I was being pulled out of my body. I thought, ‘I wanna go home where I am safe,’ and that’s it.”
“So why ain’t you home?”
“I don’t know, maybe because I feel safe with you?” Mia scratched her head. “The fuck I know.”
“Darlin, you gotta stop with that sailor talk. You won’t get a husband with a potty mouth,” Murphy admonished. “You sound like a two-bit hooker. Gutter talk don’t suit a lady.”
“Sorry, Murph, I’ll watch it.” Mia continued, “Sabine was bi-locating when something or someone took her. She’s missing.” She could see the proud farmer struggling with understanding what she was saying. Hell, Mia thought, a savvy geek getting off on paranormal adventures would have a hard time following her discourse. “We are trying to get her back. Bev and I bi-located… ah… It’s like being spirits,” she explained. “And we went looking for her.”
“Sounds like you’re playing with fire, darlin.”
“Yeah, you’re right, we are. Not something I want to do too much.”
“Maybe you’s in spirit right now.”
“What do I look like to you?”
“Short, big eyes and kind of glowy.”
Mia sighed, “Yep, I’m OOBing. I must have gotten sucked into whatever I was drawing power from when I was reading that ley line map that Bev had scribbled on the table.” Mia lay back down and stared up at the sky, trying to judge the time of day to determine how long she had been gone.
“So instead of going home or to yer fancy new boyfriend, it brings you to me,” Murphy said and plopped down beside her.
“Don’t get ideas,” Mia warned him.
“Me?” Murphy smacked his leg and started laughing. “I’d rather kiss a tree.”
Mia laughed. “Lucky tree.” She looked over at her friend. “Murph, are you lonely?”
“No. Bored though.”
“Not enough to do here on the farm?”
Murphy scratched at his neck. The one day beard growth that lasted an eternity seemed to bother him. “April has been kind, but she treats me like a pet or sumthin. Since that priest vanquished most of the bad ones up at the hollow, there ain’t a whole lot to do.”
“How far can you wander?” Mia asked.
Murphy thought for a while and answered. “Half a day’s walk all around, I guess.” He wrinkled his face. “Not far enough to gets me into town.” He looked at Mia and could see she had something on her mind but was struggling with it. “Spit it out, darlin, you’s giving yerself frown lines.”
Mia told Murphy about Burt’s latest investigation. “The chair holds the spirit of this woman, see, and he thought that if we had your axe then he or I could take you with us, if you were wanting an outing.”
“That means digging me up.” Murphy frowned. “They buried me with it.”
“For the record I was against the idea. I thought it was wrong to disturb your remains, and it may not work. But I promised Burt to ask you. After all, it’s not what I want that is important but what you want.”
“It’s not a trick by that priest to send me to the hereafter?”
Mia shook her head. “Father Santos has no idea.” She put her hand on her heart. “I swears it.”
Murphy looked at her hand and then at the necklace hanging above it from her tiny neck. He smiled. It was an axe. “Not to change the subject, mind you, but what’s that there hanging from yer neck, darlin.”
Mia put her hand on the charm and smiled. “Don’t you go thinking the wrong things. Burt gave this to me to… to honor you and the time he and I met. You’re important to us, Murph, we wouldn’t trick you.”
“I’ll mull it over some and get back to you.”
“Good. Now how about showing me the spot you pulled me out of? I have an OOBer to save, and I worry about being gone too long as there is a lady with a penchant for catheters hovering around my body right now.”
“A what?”
Mia explained and Murphy reeled back. “Just to pee, Glory be!” He smacked his leg and started laughing.
“Ah, cut it out. You’re only laughing cuz you haven’t peed in hundreds of years.”
“Don’tcha go aging me.” Murphy got up and walked over to a spot between two towering maple trees. “Here, you was here.” He pointed.
Mia got up and slowly moved towards the area. She didn’t feel anything until she was right at the spot. She felt a warm tickling move through her. “Damn it, oh sorry, dag nab it.”
“Still a cuss.” Murphy shook his finger at her. “What’s wrong?”
“Honestly, I don’t know how to connect with it, and if I do, what if I go the wrong way? I could end up in New Orleans or worse.” Mia kicked at the dirt with her foot.
“I may be a dumb farmer, but what ifs you do what you did when you got sucked into the whirly-wind.”
Mia’s face lit up. She tried to hug the farmer but fell through him, landing on the ground behind the man.
He turned around laughing and said, “Now you know how I feel.”
“Stupid,” Mia confessed and got back on her feet. She walked back to the spot and closed her eyes a moment. “Okay, I think if I can draw some of those lines I could summon up the rest with my mind, and then hopefully, whoosh, I will be able to follow one back to Chicago. God, I hope I don’t get lost. If I do, it’s been nice knowing you Murph.”
He shook his head. Between the two of them, they summoned enough energy to clear away the dead leaves from the forest floor. Mia used her finger to draw out what she had seen on the table cloth. It exhausted her and she had to rest several times. Murphy walked over and deepened the scratches with the blade of his axe. He felt the drain himself but stubbornly finished the process.
Mia stood up and stared down at the map. After several minutes a pulse of light emerged from the earth. It spread along the slices the axe made. More lines appeared that glowed with a different color of light. One of the lines extended beyond the map to the spot she came through. Mia focused on Sabine’s apartment and was disappointed because nothing happened. A light bulb went off in her head. She knew what she had to do. She was brought to Murphy because of the emotional connection. Mia said out loud, “Take me to my aunt Beverly.”
Murphy watched as Mia was slowly being sucked into a black void. He reached out and touched her fingers before she disappeared completely. He raised his hand and placed it on his weathered cheek. For the second time in over a hundred years he was touched by a living person, by anything for that matter. Both times were today, and by the woman-child he loved with his entire soul. “Kiss a tree indeed,” he chided himself, and in the privacy
that was his forest he cried.
~
The first time Mia opened her eyes she immediately snapped them shut. Cerberus hovered over her. She tried again, her eyes focusing on the three-headed hound which was in reality her aunt, Gerald and Tauni. “How long have I been gone?” she asked as soon as she could speak.
“You’ve been unresponsive for just under an hour,” Tauni said, shining a pen light into Mia’s eyes.
“Where the hell have you been?” Bev asked in a tone radiating inconvenience.
Mia explain what she thought had happened, leaving out the conversation between Murphy and herself. She didn’t trust this group of people to respect Murphy’s feelings about staying earthbound. So far, only she and the PEEPs team knew where Murphy’s remains were buried.
“So the map pulled you in?” Bev walked over to the table and stared at it. “How?” she called back.
“Careful, it isn’t a joyride, I assure you,” Mia said, struggling to get to sit up. Gerald reached down and helped her raise her body. “Thanks,” she said rubbing her legs to get the circulation back.
“Do you think you could travel the line to Sabine?” he asked.
Mia shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s the water thing. I doubt I could cross it. Once, and if, I got there, I wouldn’t be able to do much of anything. I used all my energy and barely could move a leaf.” She didn’t want to mention that she didn’t have an emotional bond with Sabine. The waif disturbed her. She was a creepy thing that was touching Mia all the time. “Who would pull me out?” She regretted it the second after these words escaped her.
“What do you mean you were pulled out?”
“Murphy saw my hand in a whirly vortex, and he grabbed it and pulled me out,” Mia explained while the word shit was repeated over and over in her head.
“You touched him?” Gerald was aghast. “Bev, can you touch spirits when you OOB?”
“Come on, Gerald, I don’t OOB. I bi-locate. OOB sounds so oozy.”
“Well?”
“Oh. No,” she answered simply. “But I think with enough energy you can touch another traveler. This caped man had enough power to restrict Sabine and…”
OOBnap her,” Mia finished.
“Alright, alright, OOBer.” Bev rolled her eyes. “If this is what happened. We only have Brian’s word.”
“Oh my god, we have to connect with Brian before he bi-locates again. Do you remember the address he gave us?” Mia asked her aunt.
“I wrote it down, soon as I woke up.” Bev walked over to the sofa and pointed to a cushion beside Mia. “The girl really ought to have writing paper in this house.”
Gerald jotted down the address in his phone and pulled up the map function. “Four blocks from here.”
Mia got to her feet and wavered a bit before saying, “Let’s go.”
Tauni reached out a restraining hand. “Not before I take yer vitals, child.”
Mia succumbed to Tauni’s ministrations as Gerald and Bev made plans. He would drop them off at the address and then go to the docks and see if he could get a lead on the boat captain. He called for his driver, and soon the trio was off with promises to check in with Tauni from time to time.
~
The frail man in the wheelchair was a faded, trembling version of the knight they had met that morning. He still had good upper body motor control, although his voice was raspy and at times hard to understand. The lioness at his side explained that the constant suction of the fluid out of his lungs had left his vocal cords damaged. She was a beautiful young woman dressed in a business suit.
“I’m Holly, Brian’s sister. He alerted me that he was going to have visitors. Amelia Earhart and a punk in a hoodie. I see his imagination is still functioning,” she said and smiled, welcoming them.
“My sister knows all about the traveling,” Brian said in between longs gasps of air. “You see why I was doubtful at how much I could do to find her.”
Bev studied the man’s face a moment before replying, “I can see your reluctance, but you are a force to be reckoned with when traveling.”
“Yes, but traveling has its limits.”
Mia nodded and pulled up a chair next to the man. “Can you hear her when you are in corporal form?” she asked.
Brian wheezed, “No.”
“Who are you talking about?” his sister asked.
“The girl from the theater,” he answered blushing.
Holy thought a moment before she responded, “I take it that she is in trouble?”
“Can I?” Mia asked Brian for permission to talk for him. He nodded and smiled. Mia filled Holly in on the events of the loss of Sabine and Brian’s part in it. “He can hear her. I think he is an important link in finding and possibly rescuing our friend.”
Holly sobered. “How will you be involving my brother in this rescue?”
Bev cleared her voice before she spoke, “I have a plan forming in my mind. If Gerald, another friend of ours, can get confirmation on where this island is that Sabine is trapped on, we can transport there along the ley lines. I hope to travel with Mia and Brian to the island and bring her home.”
“How long would it take, and will he be in danger?”
“I don’t know, maybe a full day and night. He will be in peril as much as Mia and I will be. There is no guarantee that he or the rest of us will return.”
The cold facts sent a shiver down Holly’s spine. She knew about the freedom the bi-locating gave her brother. It not only put healthy limbs on her weakening brother, but gave him a reason to continue to fight his disease and live as long as possible. She and their parents knew that he was already living on borrowed time and had reconciled themselves to the knowledge that he could die at any moment. Still, putting him in danger like this horrified her.
“Holly,” Brian hissed, “Please let me do this.”
She dropped to her knees and tears sprang to her eyes. “Will you do everything possible to come back to me?”
He nodded, ignoring the tears that now ran down his face.
She picked up a tissue and dabbed tenderly at his face. “Well, go on and kick some ass.” She stood up and turned to Bev. “Let me know when, and I will stay with him, making sure he is given a fighting chance on this end.”
Bev reached forward and the young woman moved into her arms. They hugged a moment drawing power from each other.
“Aw, get a room,” Mia said, causing Brian to laugh so hard he started to hiccup.
Chapter Fourteen
Sabine felt his presence before she heard his voice.
“So, are you going to sit there all day? There is a whole island for you to explore. I have spared no expense in giving you the privacy to roam at will.”
“You mean you have imprisoned me on a private island,” Sabine snapped back. She was irritated at the man. “Where have you been?”
“I have been resting. The trip takes its toll on my corporal form.”
“Where do you sleep?” she asked him.
“If you would have left the beach, you would have found I have a comfortable home in the interior of this isle. I have all the pleasures one could want. Follow me.”
She hesitated but got to her feet. Sabine felt the more information she had on this man, the better she could fight his hold on her.
The stony shore was edged with magnificent willow trees, their long branches veiling the interior of the isle. They stood sentinel as their roots drank in the cool water of the lake. The lake had been dug deep by the glacier as it worked its way south. It left very few islands, and for this one to exist was a miracle in itself. Winter storms pushed massive chunks of ice onto the shore, but the trees held them back from scraping the isle clean again and again.
Sabine moved through the line of willows and felt a slight rise in the berry-snarled terrain. Bi-location saved her from the sharp thorns but also from tasting a ripe berry warmed by the afternoon sun. Nor could she feel the cool breeze that caressed the forgotten island.
&n
bsp; “I shall call you Pramada,” her captor informed her as he stopped before a wall of arborvitaes.
“That’s not my name.”
“It is now. You can call me Sire.”
Sabine had other names for this creature, this biped that oozed arrogance and evil. She kept those thoughts to herself. “I ask you once again, why you have taken me away from my home and friends?”
Sire dismissed the question with a wave of the hand. “That’s for me to know and you to accept.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“All in good time. Now follow me.”
They moved through the thick wall of towering conifers onto a pebble-strewn path and through another wall of the green beasts. This was repeated again and again. Sabine caught on after six such sets of path and hedge that they were moving through a maze. In corporal form they would have to navigate hours of switchbacks to reach the middle. Bi-location allowed them to simply take a straight line. As they melted through the last line of trees, Sabine could see a small fortress in front of her.
“It used to be a French settlement, before that a holy place for the Huron Indians. My family restored it and used it as a summer place. I have made it my museum. It is where I house my collections.”
“Collections, museum?” Sabine shook her head and asked, “This isn’t exactly a tourist mecca why house your collections here?”
“Oh, you misunderstand me. They are for my eyes only. Come and see.” Sire moved through the cold wall.
Sabine stopped. She had never moved through stone before. She even took the elevator at home and waited until the door opened to get on.
Sire moved back through the wall and grabbed her arm. He forced her through the stone. It felt scratchy and uncomfortable. “See, nothing to it.”
“I don’t like that,” Sabine said rubbing her arms. “It felt unnatural.”