“So you holed up in here? Waiting?”
“I did. I waited, I prepared. I told only those I thought could help.”
A sense of destiny suddenly overcame me, not for myself so much as for my son.
“I invite you to stay here, until we have your baby healthy and strong. His destiny will be realized to you in time, and in between that time and now there is here. ”
The offer to stay was very appealing. I was lucky to have crossed their path, I knew that. She obviously noticed Leif’s small size and weakened state. She understood I had been having trouble latching him to my nipple. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I would very much appreciate that. Staying I mean. You’re kind to take us in.”
“Of course we would, Sara.”
“I-I need to feed him. Have you any milk?”
“He’s having difficulties at your breast.”
“Yes. He’ll eventually latch on, but not without a fight, and even then, it’s not much.”
“We will help you.” She opened a cupboard and revealed several tins of powdered baby formula. She turned to see the surprised look on my face. “We have prepared for your arrival.”
Chapter Twenty Four
The women were living in a cold war bomb shelter built by my hostess’ father in the Sixties. Her name was Bethany. She was a pale and wrinkled woman who’d spent her whole life in her father’s house. When he died twenty years before, she’d taken over the household, and with no brothers or sisters, no husband and a mother incapable of looking after herself, there she remained. Her father had revealed the underground structure to her when she was just a little girl. She had never been allowed to enter the space while he was alive. When she had returned home from his funeral, she finally entered it for the first time. There she found a stash of forty year old food tins and provisions long forgotten since the threat of nuclear war had vanished from conscious awareness.
But after having read the future promised to the world with her magic, she had the bomb shelter retro-fitted. That happened just one year before the end came. The smokeless fireplace, the kitchen, toilets and dry storage, all of it was improved and expanded upon. Bethany had spent her life savings on the project: she was so certain of our end.
The storage of food looked barely touched though the four women had lived in the shelter since before the bombs fell. As I became more at home with the women, I found chores to do to earn my keep. Leif had become quite a bit chubbier after only a week underground. The fact that Beth had a massive supply of baby formula convinced me of her ability to see the future.
“It wasn’t so much that I saw the future, or that I saw you and little Leif showing up at my door,” Beth explained as she shook another bottle of the milk and handed it to me. “I did, however, see the baby.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“Like I said, I can see a person’s aura. Yours is quite beautiful by the way, Sara. Bluish orange.” I blushed. “But your son’s….” She chuckled ironically. “Your son’s aura is a fire. You might say I saw his aura. One night, as I pondered the concept of the Yin and Yang, I realized that if someone were to plunge the world into despair, that another would rise to pull us out. So, I drew my magic frame on the horizon, first to the north, then the west, the east and finally the south asking the same question, ‘From where will our savior approach?’ Then a great light shimmered in my magical envelope and I knew – I knew the direction you’d come to find us. I knew it would be an aura I would see. I suspect his father’s aura would have been quite something to see as well.”
“He was the leader of our group.”
“Yes, I imagine he was. He must have been a good boy. You are a good girl, Sara, and Leif will command the respect of men as his father did, with compassion and with love.”
“Yes,” I trailed off a moment, remembering Joel. “He was a very kind man. It’s just…”
“Never mind what has been.” She waved her hands wildly. “Leif is here now. He is yours and his father’s prodigy. You are his rock. Speak only highly of his father and remember that you are his teacher, his guardian, his everything.”
Leif pushed his stomach out, arching his back as he sucked at the bottle, moving against my arm. I smiled down at him, my heart filled with a love I hadn’t imagined.
“It was Leif’s aura I saw.” She panned the south-west wall with her outstretched arm. “Coming from the direction you said you’d come from, the same day you said he’d been born. His aura was like a light haze on the horizon, where no such light had occurred prior to putting the question to Tages.”
Beth walked to her bed, which was positioned alongside the others. She sat at the edge and removed her shoes. “Tages is great,” she said, and laid down to sleep.
“Thank you so much for taking us in.” Tears welled up in my eyes.
“You are very welcome dear. You are a messenger of hope, in a time of great sorrow.”
Chapter Twenty Five
Occasionally we would venture outside. Jenny, the woman who read horoscopes, insisted that the baby spend quality time outdoors, when the sun was out. Jenny was a heavier woman; I thought it quite likely she was morbidly obese in life the way the skin hung from her neck and arms. Her face was kind, with not many lines for her age, which she said was sixty-seven. She, Leif and I would take walks around the burnt frame that once housed Bethany and her parents.
“It must have been a beautiful home,” I commented.
“It was in Beth’s family for generations. They were farmers. Beth made the decision to burn the house in an effort to keep would-be squatters and groups seeking shelter a comfortable distance away from our hiding place.”
“Smart. And you? Did you live nearby?”
“No, I lived in the city. Beth and I knew each other from the Expo circuit, Beth offering her aura readings and predictions and me with my horoscopes.” She shifted her heavy rifle from one shoulder to the other.
“Do you still read horoscopes?”
“I have read your son’s according to my star charts and am currently putting it together. We can discuss it another time.”
“I’d love that.” Completing our umpteenth circle we headed back into the tunnel as the sun set in the west.
*****
We spent our time listening to music, baking, cleaning, maintaining equipment and appliances, and entertaining Leif. I felt very safe underground. The seals on the shafts that opened up to the rest of the world were military grade. They locked like a submarine, virtually airtight. Air was circulated through grates that could pass as sewer covers to anyone the least bit interested, but they could never open them. It seemed the perfect hiding place from the world at large.
Leif was gaining weight at a surprising rate after two weeks with an unlimited supply of food. The women were very understanding over his quirks and late night feedings. They helped when I asked and offered when I didn’t. It was like having four midwives at my service 24/7. I wouldn’t have had it this good in life. My thoughts often turned to my own parents when I looked at Leif. They would have been so proud, perhaps not that their 19-year old daughter had given birth before entering college, but that they were grandparents. I tried not to think too much about my family. All that accomplished was to make me angry, and sad, and I needed to stay as happy as possible for Leif’s sake.
Sally was another of the four women sharing her space with Leif and I. She was around forty years old and very thin, even more so than Beth. I worried for her. She never seemed to be eating, and when I thought I saw her chewing it was on that damn rope of hers.
“It keeps me from overeating,” she would tell me.
I would fight her on her logic. “You barely eat as it is, Sally. There’s not much left of you.”
“Never mind Sally,” Beth would say. “She’s a vain one! Waiting on her Prince Charming to arrive and take her away from all of this.”
“It could happen!” she shouted.
“How many times do you need to shuffle
that deck of yours before you believe that it isn’t?” Sally was a Tarot card reader and, as I found out, also a friend from the Expo circuit.
“What sort of Expos did you ladies attend exactly?” The question had been on my mind since Jenny had mentioned it.
“Psychic fairs, and things of that nature,” Jenny piped in while busily loading the ten disc CD player. “Sally was a whiz with those cards. You should let her read your cards, Sara.”
“Actually, Tarot cards scare me. Like Ouija boards. I’ve always steered clear of them. No offence, Sally.”
“None taken. I dislike the Ouija board too. Evil contraption!” I noted a sarcastic tone in her voice.
“I think we can all agree the Ouija board is a powerful portal that should only be handled by a professional.” Beth had a playful look on her face.
“A professional?” I asked. “What do you call a professional Ouija board user?”
“A medium.” Carol spoke up from her corner. She rarely spoke at all, never mind to me. She slipped out of her dark corner where she spent most of her time reading and re-reading a giant volume of some kind. She kept a comfortable chair, a side table and lamp that looked as though it were pilfered from a Psychic expo. She was the creepy one of the four.
“The Ouija is a portal, and yes, it should only be accessed by a medium. Someone with a higher understanding of what you’re letting into the waking world.” As she moved past me, her long black hair brushed my face and smelled of olive oil.
“I used one once, with my friends when we were fourteen,” I said. “There were four of us: two boys and two girls. My friend said we should pair up, boy-girl because it worked better that way.”
“True,” Carol confirmed. She sat next to me at the table, running her olive-skinned fingers through her long black hair.
“Yeah, so we did,” I continued. “It was crazy what happened. We asked questions about silly things mostly but then my friend, Julia, asked something of the spirit.”
“And what did she ask?” Carol stared through me, anticipating my answer.
“Well, I remember its name was Samuel, the spirit or whatever it was.”
“Spirit. That is your best case scenario.”
“I guess.” I was pleased that Carol was so interested in my story. “Anyways, Julia asked it to prove its presence to us.”
“And did it?”
“Yes. The lights went off a moment after she’d challenged it, and we ran out of the basement screaming.”
“Your friend conjured a powerful spirit.” She looked reproachfully at me. “And so you never played with it again?”
“No.” I felt a chill run through me. “That scared me half to death.”
“Breaking the connection like that can sometimes leave the spirit in our plane. I wonder if your friend ever suffered a similar experience in her basement again.”
My eyes popped and my head involuntarily cocked back. “She did actually. Many times after that night, whenever she went into the basement the light would turn off. She found an excuse to never go back down there. And she never did.”
Carol stood and put on the kettle. “It’s not a safe game to play. Spirits can become very resentful when left to linger in our plane, and depending on the spirit, or demon, they can become a poltergeist.”
“Why do they sell that game to children?”
“I wish they never had. There are countless souls that have been left behind in our world, condemned to isolation as a result of the Ouija. As a medium, I used to cleanse homes of spirits, showing them the light. Many of them manifested from the Ouija.”
“That’s so sad. If I’d known we were hurting anyone….”
“That’s the trouble with the Ouija board: they made it a game, and so the majority take it as a sleight-of-hand from a friend when they first experience anything.” She pulled her long black hair back into a ponytail and tied it. “It is almost never a sleight-of-hand.”
Bethany attempted to lighten the mood. “Okay Carol, don’t scare the poor girl. She’s innocent.”
“Ignorant is more apt a description, but I understand your point. It’s just that I feel their sadness, the spirits, when I cleanse a house. Lucky for your friend it was not a demon that answered your call. A demon can follow you for the rest of your life. It can interfere with your life in ways you cannot know.”
I went white at that. Julia had never really been the same after the experience: Christ, she’d killed herself eventually. What if her spirit was a demon that finally took its vengeance? I shook the thought from my head. No, it was the circumstances that forced her hand, not a demon.
“Carol summons spirits even now,” Jenny called over from the couch. “She confers with them on things that may come to pass. She is one of the reasons we were prepared for you. In fact, after Bethany came to us with her vision of Leif’s impending aura, we all used our crafts to pinpoint the time and place of his arrival.”
“A wonderful coincidence that he was born an eight hour walk from here,” I teased.
“Well, we could go into coincidences with you, Sara, but I think for right now you’ve heard enough of spirits, demons, auras and the like.” Bethany poured the boiled water into a tea pot and placed it on the table.
“No, I am very interested,” I assured them. “I have always been a spiritual person. The Bible is something I’d always held very close to my heart.”
“The Bible you say?” Sally moved her tiny frame to the table and took her seat. “There’s a book I have not picked up in a long time.”
“I had written it off myself a few months ago, after our friend Connor was taken from us. But I’ve revisited it since. Better to have faith in something than none at all.”
“Faith, hope, belief, they are what they are.” Sally picked up her cup. “The thing about faith is that it comes from within rather than from without. If you get my meaning.”
“That it exists at all at a time like this is enough, I should think,” Jenny offered. “That is enough for me, for now.”
“We had faith Leif would come.” Bethany sat too, and poured herself a cup of the hot tea. “You are an example of our faith, in our abilities to see.” She tipped her cup at me.
Leif began to fuss and cry, so I got up from the table and moved to the couch. The others sat drinking their tea, quietly. “You’re a vision, Leif,” I whispered at him, smiling. I bounced him on my knee until he calmed down.
“Take what we tell you to heart, Sara,” Sally called from the table, her back to me. The others turned to look at me and I nodded appreciatively at them. They were a coven of witches. What did they call that? A Wiccan? I knew there was no mistake that I had found my way here. They were too sure of themselves, too confident. I mean, why else would you stock baby formula?
*****
My Tarot card reading commenced the following evening. Sally sat across from me at the kitchen table. Her thin fingers shuffled a deck of cards much larger than what I was used to. She placed them in front of me and asked me to cut them.
“This isn’t like poker is it? ‘Cut the deck, cut your throat?’” I asked playfully.
“No,” she replied.
“Okay.” I cut the deck.
She explained that she used a very old Tarot card spread with its roots in 16th-century France. She would place seven cards on the table in a circle, with an eighth in the center representing the planets.
“Does it count that Pluto isn’t considered a planet anymore?”
“No.”
“Okay, what next?”
“Now ask your question. What would you like to know?”
“I think I should ask about Leif. What will he be like as a man, what is his destiny? Will that work or does it have to be about me?”
“No, it can be about anyone. Is that your question then? What is Leif’s destiny?”
“Yes, that’s my question.”
“Very well.” She smiled and began placing the cards in order. “If the card is upside d
own, the meaning changes. Each card placement represents a planet and the planets rule different aspects of our lives.”
“Okay.” I was excited to get a sneak peek into Leif’s adulthood. Tarot scared me only because my mother had been frightened off by a Tarot reader she’d visited once. She told me the reader had only negative things to say and that he even went as far as to tell her when she would die and how! I swore I’d never do this, but in light of what these women were capable of, I felt at least curious to learn what I could about Leif’s future.
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