Life to Life

by Don Pendleton

  "Not mine," he replied. "Selma did that. They didn't like it, either. They called her home over that."

  “Why did she do it?”

  "She was afraid for Annie. But Carver was, you see, connected. It was a hideous mistake."

  "Why did Maizey have to die?" I asked him. "She was old. How could she hurt you?"

  "She lost the way long ago."

  I asked, "How long ago?"

  He replied, "Very long ago. She and all her followers. They began with us. But she wanted Annie for herself."

  "All she wanted was a daughter," I told him. "A natural daughter."

  He laughed, choked again, spit something from his mouth; said to me, "Then she went about it the wrong way. Annie was never hers."

  I asked, "Whose was she?"

  He spat again and said nothing.

  So I tried again, "Was she Clara's?"

  Those eyes were really getting crazy, now. He said, "Stop this. I know who you are. You're the hit man this time, aren't you. I know that you despise me. And I know why you were sent. You overruled me, didn't you. You killed it."

  I told him, "I don't know what the hell you're talking about. But I don't despise you. I pity you. Because you are the one who lost the way. You blew the game again. Who are you? Are you Judas?"

  He laughed a hollow laugh. "I was never Judas."

  I told him, "You are not going to save the game this way."

  He told me, "The game is never lost. The game goes on. Only the players change."

  I told him, "Wrong. Only the game changes. The players are never lost. You're going to remember that, when you wake up."

  He laughed again, but very weakly. "Am I asleep, then?"

  "This time, yes," I told him. "You are asleep. What happened to Annie's husbands?"

  He said, "They were carefully selected."

  "Baby-sitters?"

  "You could say that."

  "Were you Peter?"

  "Do I look like a Peter?"

  I said, "No. You look more like an Esther."

  He repeated that weak laugh; spat again; told me, "My mother this time was called Mary Magdalene. Don't you know me, Elijah?"

  I said, "You've got it all wrong, pal. I was never Elijah."

  He laughed, hung his head, and became very still.

  I turned to look at Stewart.

  He came slowly up the mound; said to me, "You people are giving me the shivers. I think he passed out. Let's get him down."

  But Bruce had not passed out.

  Bruce was dead.

  Beneath that sheet we found him naked and bleeding from various wounds. He had nailed his feet to the platform. He had nailed one hand to the crossbar and then impaled himself onto the upright with a long carving knife. And obviously he'd done all that quite some time before we arrived on the scene.

  A banner draped across the shoulders was inscribed: free annie for she is without sin.

  I do not know who the hell that guy was, life to life. But he'd played his masters' game to the bitter end.

  And, even with all the errors, and even with all the confusion over sexual roles, he had died a hell of a man.

  Epilogue: Casefile Wrap-up

  Well, I will leave it to you to fill in your own blanks on this one. Already I have said more than should have been said. Guess I could clear up one important point, though, about this reincarnation stuff. Among the most popular Western theories on the subject is the idea of repeating life after life in company with certain groups with whom the individual has become strongly attached. Within the group, the various individuals take on differing relationships from one life to the next. Your father in this life, for example, could have been your son or brother or best friend in a previous one. To the theorist, this occurs whether or not you happen to believe in it. Ordinarily you would never be aware of these deeper relationships but it is believed in certain quarters that it is possible to become aware and even to remember certain events from past lives. Even certain antagonistic personalities, it is said, return to the stage time after time in an attempt to work out on earth the difficulties between them.

  I do not know as much as I would like to know about all that. In the aftermath of this case, even, I feel very much ill at ease with the subject and not really inclined to buy anything yet. As for who I am or was, all I know about myself is that I was named for the car in which I was conceived—and please note that I have not changed my name to Studebaker or Buick.

  The trouble with coming to terms, you see, is very evident even in the transcript of this case. I do not feel with any certainty that these people knew any more than I knew. I mean, they were still human beings—not gods or angels—and still had to cope with the human situation. No matter how convinced they may have become, through certain experiences, that they were on some vital mission from the stars or wherever, they still had immense doubts, weaknesses, temptations to stray.

  I mean, look at the record—Jesus himself begged that the cup be taken away.

  So none of us really know with any certainty what is really going on here on this planet. I have to allow the same for Bruce Janulski and his troops. He had a game going, sure, but how much came from his own misunderstanding and self-delusion? You will have to answer that for yourself. I can tell you that Bruce was really the brains and the moving force behind the Center of Light. I have discovered that Annie is simply too far into the spiritual path to have any business sense at all. If you asked her for a dime, she just might give you a hundred dollars; for a shirt, her whole damned wardrobe. That is what became of all the money she came into from the various marriages—she simply gave it away.

  Janulski came along and changed all that. He was the force behind incorporating as a nonprofit organization and he was the energy that manifested itself in the Center of Light activities. Annie may sit beneath a tree all day and meditate but Bruce was there to keep the tree watered.

  As for the game he was playing, or thought he was playing...who knows? As I have already suggested here, if it was truly a masters' game at play, something very important had to be at stake—something a hell of a lot more important than the self-aggrandizement of a few playful spirits from that other world. So if it really was a game, what was at stake? What has the world lost if an important game has failed? I would not even suggest an answer to such a question, but I would point out that every prophet since Nostradamus has predicted world-shaking events in store for the turn of this century—which, you may have noted, is not now that far away. To suggest that the human race needs no outside help would sound a little foolish, don't you think? The two powerful nuclear powers are still at standoff and rattling missiles at each other; we continue to systematically poison our atmosphere and our oceans; there is very little peace anywhere; the economic gap is ever-widening between the haves and the have-nots; and ordinary people everywhere seem to be becoming less and less concerned about anything or anybody other than themselves. So you go figure if we could use some help or not.

  Well...with all that, I am happy to be able to close out this transcript on a happy note. Annie has been out of jail for the past three months and it seems doubtful that she will ever return. She has been getting a lot of favorable press and money has been flying in from around the world for her legal defense fund, but I doubt that she will have to spend much of that. She also has friends in court, now—and I heard just yesterday that the D. A. is going to move for dismissal of charges as soon as some of the furor dies down. Bruce's grandstanding suicide, by the way, did not hurt her a bit in that regard.

  She and Francois have become just friends. She even calls him Uncle Frank again, and he seems quite content with that.

  Oh, he got a replacement for Annie for his satellite-TV investment, one of the new young born-again evangelists out of Barnum and Bailey. I am sure he will clean up, just like all the others.

  As for Annie...well, what can I say? Annie will forever be Annie, I guess, and I am sure she will be adored all the days of her life b
y a great many people.

  And, uh, I was visiting with Dear old Dad just the other day. As a result of that little visit, I've had to take another look at my evaluation of the masters' game.

  It is quite possible that—after all was said and done—no matter what Bruce thought he had going or for whatever reason—I think it may just be possible that it was Annie's game, after all, all the time.

  My father who is in heaven, or wherever, told me just the other day, you see, that Ann Marie is three months pregnant.

  Of course, he has to be wrong about that.

  As Annie told me from her hospital bed, it did not happen really; that flesh is still virgin flesh, with or without hymen.

  But I have been wondering if there could be such a thing as a spiritual surrogate father. Or would it be, let's see...a physical surrogate father for a spiritual mother? Or, let's see, would it be...?

  Hell. You go figure it. And have a nice day.

  ###

  About the Author

  Don Pendleton (1927-1995) is creator of The Executioner: Mack Bolan Action/Adventure series and the Joe Copp, Private Eye Mystery Thrillers.

  He also co-wrote, with his wife, Linda Pendleton, the nonfiction books To Dance With Angels and Whispers From the Soul: The Divine Dance of Consciousness, and the crime novel, Roulette.

  Don Pendleton, (1927-1995)

  Official Don Pendleton website: www.donpendleton.com

  Visit the Don Pendleton Smashwords Profile Page for available books of Don Pendleton

  The Ashton Ford Psychic Detective Series of six novels is available in print at Amazon.

  Table of Contents

  Life to Life: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective

  Midpoint

  Chapter Thirty: The Man