by Dale Mayer
“Be careful. The edge is unstable. I’m not exactly sure what this was. Lava has filled in a lot of what’s here, but I can sense the spirits trapped here.”
“Were they murdered?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that what you said?”
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m right,” she said in defense. “I’m very new to this. I have no clue whether I should even be listening to Linnea.”
“It’s wise to double-check everything,” he said. “Especially what comes from the spirit world.”
“Which is really depressing.” She focused on Hunter. “You’d think that, after a lifetime and having lost their lives, they would be honest when they finally get a chance to talk again.”
“Most of the time they are,” Hunter said. “But you have to remember their world has shifted, and they’re usually focused on one thing.”
“Like, in the case of somebody whose child was murdered, they want that person found.”
“Something like that, yes.”
She peered into the darkness, but it was almost impossible to see into the corners. “I can’t see anything,” she complained.
“Maybe you need to look with your vision too,” Sebastian said in a dry tone from behind her.
She twisted to look up at him. “But I can’t see like Hunter does.”
“Then use your camera,” Hunter said helpfully. “Think about what it is you want to see and then view it by giving yourself permission to see.”
She studied both men’s faces as she processed what each had said. “You’re right. I only ever really saw when I had the camera at first, when I was looking deeper.”
“Chances are the camera was a prop,” Sebastian said. “You should try without it.”
She turned once more to peer into the darkness, giving herself permission to see what she had always seen before, but nothing happened. Finally in frustration, she reached for her bag, pulled out her camera and took some pictures. She twisted, rolled, crouched, leaned over—completely immersed in whatever had gone on here. It would take time looking at the pictures on the computer to understand what she saw. But, as she delved deeper and deeper, she could see the forms showing up. And then, in the next several clicks, she saw the blue lines.
“It was a prison,” she announced.
“What kind of prison?” Hunter asked.
She kept clicking as she viewed. “It was a single room. Similar to what was in the other area but bigger and a very different purpose.”
“And how many people are in here?”
She kept digging into her new vision. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Linnea said there were several prisoners, but I only saw one.”
“Maybe Linnea meant over time there had been several prisoners. Is this where her sister was?”
“I want to nod and say yes, but I don’t know that. I thought she meant the other room like this.”
“But maybe she was pointing in this direction.”
Too confused and turned around to understand which direction Linnea had been pointing, Lacey said, “At least I know she directed us here.”
“Except for that barrier,” Sebastian said, his tone mild. “Let’s not forget that barrier you couldn’t cross.”
She sat back on her heels, dropped her camera into her lap and stared up at him. “I wonder if I should photograph the barrier now.”
He looked at her in surprise. “What are you expecting to see?”
She frowned. “I’m not sure.” She picked up the camera and photographed the area around them. She could see other buildings, other homes, walkways, roads. “It was a slum area here,” she said, “not even the normal servant level. Or the everyday common man. It seems even lower income than that.” She stopped, hearing what she said. “Did they have slums back then?”
“They had the same problems we do today,” Sebastian said. “Every civilization does. There are always those who have more than others. And whether they have a caste system within the society or not, there will always be some people who have much less.”
She nodded slowly. “That also explains why we’re so far away from the touristy areas. This is one of the areas where the people who lived in this house had much less. But I believe, at one time, it was in better shape. I think, over time, these people lost what they had, and the place slowly fell into ruin around them.”
“There could be all kinds of reasons why one home is worse for wear,” Hunter said as he pulled himself out of the opening. “We also have to consider who was imprisoning these people—were his actions sanctioned by the law at the time or was he just an early sadistic serial killer?”
She nodded. “But there’s an odd sense about this one. As if people were afraid of it.”
“Again, think about today’s society and somebody who’s different and strange. Think about somebody who’s got a disease that’s physically disfiguring,” he said. “And think how that would be way back when. People would have avoided that person, would have moved quickly past him, whatever to avoid coming close. They could even have murdered him because of the disfiguration. People were very superstitious, and fear drove many of their actions.”
She nodded. “How sad is that though?”
“It’s no different than today,” Hunter said. “You might want to think society in the Western world is nice and pretty, but it’s not. Anybody with a handicap or a very visible disfiguration will tell you people are cruel. That life for them is not the easy life we would like to think they have.”
She slowly lowered her camera again. “I see that even in classrooms,” she said slowly. “As much as you hate to witness it, there’s always a child who doesn’t fit in, always a child who has something wrong—whether it’s, you know, a disorder, like Tourette’s, or coming back to school after cancer treatments with no hair, or even birthmarks that are scarring or very visible.” She lifted her camera, seeing in her lens the images from days gone by. “I can envision people racing past this corner. They’re almost holding their noses, as if the smell is too strong.”
“Which could mean all kinds of things,” Sebastian said. “They were very clean people. Imagine if you didn’t have any way to remove human waste because you were too poor to have proper tunnels built or any other way to remove it.”
What if somebody was murdered here?” Hunter asked. “How would they dispose of the body? Maybe they just buried it in the garden, and the rot is what people would smell.”
Her face twisted up at the thought. “You’re not making me feel better.”
Hunter laughed. “Remember that, whatever happened, happened a long time ago. And there’s nothing you can do to help them right now.”
She nodded. “I know. It is a good puzzle though.” She slowly made her way to her feet and turned to look the way they had come. “Would you both mind walking back to that barrier with me? I’d love to take pictures and maybe see what it is.”
“If you can take a picture of it and see what it is,” Hunter said, “does that mean the barrier was there way back when?”
She thought about it and looked at him. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I couldn’t tell you. I’d still like to see it again.” She twisted to look up at Sebastian, realizing he held out a hand. Slowly they made their way to where the barrier had been. She kept a hand in front of her, just in case, so she didn’t walk into it. When she stepped up to where she thought it was and kept going another ten feet, she turned and looked at him. “Is it gone?”
Sebastian turned to study the area and then shrugged. “Maybe?”
“That makes no sense. Why would it be here before and not now?”
Hunter came up behind them. “Because you found this area. Somebody was probably stopping you from finding it, and, now that you have, there’s no point in expending the energy to keep it up.”
“How the hell does one even do that?” she asked in amazement. “As humans we can’t, so why the hell would we be able to do it as spirits?”
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“When it’s your turn to try, you let us know,” Sebastian said drily. “You have to remember there is no precedence for this. There is no text we can refer to. No ancient words of wisdom that give us the answers.”
At that, she nodded. “I’m sorry. I keep expecting you guys to have all the answers, don’t I?” She walked forward a few more feet, then said, “I’m sure this is where we were stopped on the other side. So I think it must be gone.” She turned and walked back toward them. Almost instantly she hit the barrier. She froze and reached out a hand. It wouldn’t let her pass.
“Can you see me?” she called out.
Sebastian frowned and stepped forward. “I can see you. Can you not come toward me?”
She shook her head. Knowing that he would reach across to help her again, she pulled out her camera, stepped back, taking photographs to see what that barrier was. But the more she took, the less she could see, like everything blurred in front of her. She rubbed her eyes. “Everything’s becoming paler and blurry, less distinct.”
“It could be that you’re picking up the energy buzz,” Sebastian said. He grabbed a hold of Hunter’s arm and walked them both through the barrier. “I suggest we call it quits for the day or find something else to look at.”
She reached up, feeling her head boom. “I think I already did too much.” She winced. “My head is really aching now.”
He gently lifted the camera away from her hands and pulled the bag off her shoulder while she rubbed her forehead, trying to control the pain now slamming hard against her temples. He put the camera away, put the shoulder bag on his own shoulder, then hooked her arm through his and said, “That’s enough for today. It’s late. Let’s walk back to the apartment.”
She glanced at Hunter to see him nodding in agreement. With a final glance at the barrier and then at the hill behind them, she said, “Will you guys remember where this is?”
Hunter held up his phone and said, “I recorded the coordinates.”
“Both places?”
He chuckled. “Both for the barrier and for the jail room. Now let’s get you back where you can lie down. You’re not used to doing all this energy work. And it’s taking its toll on you.”
She nodded. “I can’t say I feel all that great.” She took several steps forward and found herself using Sebastian’s arm for support. She stopped, took several deep breaths and said, “Why am I so weak? I need to sit down for a minute to rest.”
Sebastian helped to lower her to the ground. She sat for several moments, taking many deep breaths, looking around, trying to understand why she felt queasy. “My stomach is nauseated.”
He popped a bottle of water into her hand. “You don’t have water with you again. Remember how you’re supposed to always have water with you?”
She nodded. “Sorry. I must have forgotten. I didn’t remember to bring lunch either.”
“Have you not eaten?” Hunter asked sharply.
“Only half a sandwich. But it didn’t sit well. That’s when I saw the other apparition this morning.”
“That was hours ago. As in many.” Hunter slipped the backpack off his shoulder and crouched in front of her. He pulled out a granola bar and handed it to her. “You can’t be without food for so long either,” he admonished.
She groaned. “Normally I’m good at taking care of myself. You know that, right?”
“We’ll stay here for a few minutes while you eat and get some water down. Then we’ll continue so we can get you out of the heat,” Sebastian said.
She sat for several minutes and ate the granola bar. When it was gone, she handed the wrapper back to Hunter. “Thank you.” Slowly she sipped the water until it was all gone. Using Sebastian’s hand again, she stood, giving him a bright smile. “I feel much better.”
The three turned and walked back toward the Stabian Gate.
She took another ten steps, then she gripped his arm and whispered, “Sebastian, … help …”
He turned as she pitched forward and blacked out.
*
“Whoa,” Sebastian said as he caught her in his arms and slowly lowered her to the ground.
Hunter was at his side, already running his hands over her frame.
“I don’t know what just happened,” Sebastian said. “But something did.”
“Look at her stomach,” Hunter said.
Sebastian studied her exposed abdomen, going so far as to lift up her T-shirt to her ribs. “Outside of the fact a ton of energy is right here, what am I looking at?”
“The energy is dark, cloudy,” Hunter said, using his hand to brush it away from her aura.
“A faint line of black runs all the way through her system.” Sebastian did the same as Hunter to remove the cloudy energy. “She had captured some dark energy in one of her earlier photos. Of course she didn’t know what to call them yet, just saying they were smudges caught on film. It was the only part of her visions that I could see in any of photographs. I can only guess it is related to my ability to read auras.”
“Are we thinking this particular black energy is from the spirit roaming the Pompeii site? Or from that opening in the ground? Or from the barrier?”
“My guess,” Sebastian said, “would be the barrier. She walked right through it from that side to this. I think with me there, when we went the other way, it helped to protect her somehow. Maybe my psychic protections already in place protect her when we touch each other. But, when she went back through, she had no protection. She didn’t even feel it, did she?”
“No, she didn’t appear to. She walked right through it and turned around. When she tried to come back, she came up against it.”
“So it’s a one-way gate. Interesting.”
“And you held on to me when we came back. But I might have been able to have come through without your assistance, like Lacey did, as long as we are headed in this direction, leaving the jail room cave-in,” Hunter said. “But we definitely needed you to open the gate enough to let us through.”
“I’m not even sure that I opened the gate as much as the gate let us through on a vibrational level.”
Hunter made a strangled exclamation.
Sebastian looked up at him. “What?”
“Look at her face.”
The black energy had formed around her chin, like a mask. “Oh, my God! Look at that,” Sebastian whispered. He leaned forward, his hand trying to remove the black energy, but it had locked down, the energy firmer, denser, more substantial.
Hunter reached up as well. Together they tried to clear away the darkness. But the mask became almost solid right before their eyes. “We have to get that off of her,” Sebastian yelled. He placed his hands along her throat, coming up underneath the mask.
Hunter did the same from the topmost edge of the mask, coming down. “At least if we can block it from forming around her chin, that would be something,” Hunter said. “But I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Neither have I,” Sebastian whispered. His hands were busy inching beneath the darkness forming. “You can see the detail. The markings, the detailed metal work.”
“Are we really thinking this will become a permanent mask?”
“I don’t know,” Sebastian said. “But it’s giving it a damn good try.”
“We have to get it off,” Hunter said. He closed his eyes. “I’m calling on a healer to help.”
“You can do that?” Sebastian asked looking around for someone he was trying to contact only to realize he was contacting someone on an energetic level. “Stefan?”
“No, Dr. Maddy,” he whispered. “Leave me to do it.”
Sebastian watched as energy poured through Hunter’s hands—clean, pure, loving energy, into Lacey’s system. “I don’t know what you’re doing,” Sebastian said, “but do more.”
Hunter gave a broken laugh and whispered, “I’m trying. I’m trying.”
Sebastian used his own energy to go into Lacey’s aura, sliding in as deep and as low as he co
uld to come inside from her skin to the mask. What he didn’t want was for the mask to seal atop her. He recognized the markings on it now. It looked exactly like the one she had drawn on him in her sketchbook. The fact that it was in visible form in front of him terrified him. It looked like it wanted to cover both her mouth and her nose. He didn’t know if it would stop her from breathing or not, but it was way too dangerous to even consider.
Finally it seemed like Hunter’s energy overpowered the darkness, so it was incapable of latching tight enough to seal around her.
Sebastian’s own energy was smoothed across her skin, coming up underneath the mask. Then he gave it a hard blast, splintering the darkness up and away from her. He wanted to pick her up and race her back to the apartment, but he knew the energy, being energy, could easily follow them and reform at any time. He placed his hand on her heart chakra and surged more energy into her system, as much as he could, filling it with warm loving energy.
“Can you add your energy to mine?” he whispered to Hunter. “We need to somehow send a message to that darkness that it can’t come back to her.”
“I’m working on it,” Hunter said.
Before long she was completely enveloped in a glowing, healing, healthy ball of energy. The men sat back on their heels and studied her for a long moment.
“She looks much better,” Hunter said.
“Yeah, well, what the hell was that mask? And why did it go after her?”
“Either she’s more vulnerable or she’s connected to something we don’t understand here. Whatever it was, we have to make sure it doesn’t come back after her.”
“And how do we do that?” Sebastian asked in a harsh voice. “Nothing going on here is normal, whether it’s psychic or not. I don’t know what that mask is all about. No one who’s seen the sketches she drew knew of any historical reference to them. I’ve never heard of anybody in Pompeii or that society using masks like this.”
“No. You have to wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with the prisoners she keeps talking about.”
“And Linnea. Maybe somebody else can contact Linnea and get clarification of what’s going on?”