by Lee Baldwin
Strand nods. “That’s about the size of it. They have done scans including UV through visible and infrared light, EM radiation, imaging sonar. It looks like a man standing there, simple as that. Every so often, he disappears for a few minutes, then comes right back. But watch now.” Strand fast-forwards his video to a wider view. “Look at the shadow. It seems to indicate something huge standing there, but nothing can be seen on any imagery.”
“Are we going to work on this?”
“Yes, Solberg says we’ve got it. What I have so far is the guy’s a blank. Nobody has missed him, no twaff on him, no foreign powers or terror groups even know about him, let alone claim responsibility.”
“The Chinese have it,” Gary states flatly.
“What?”
“Intercepted satellite imagery coming down. They have detected the shadow, know the Pentagon parking lot is clearing out. At two PM on a weekday. Traffic’s spreading across Asian military and civilian, not well-contained.”
“Fecal matter encounters cooling device,” Jerry grins.
“So,” Sami says, “what do you make of this whale thing? I mean, is there like, a whale tat parlor somewhere? Practical joke?”
“The photos are numerous and convincing,” says Jerry, serious, absorbed with his screen, “If we take these whale markings seriously, I’d guess in two days we might expect more of the same. It’s an invite. Look below the writing, the row of whale icons. Looks like a parade.”
“The Joint Chiefs announced a tactical exercise,” Carl reads from his laptop. “That chunk of ocean is now off limits. U.S. Navy has it.”
“How many countries have the Japanese told?”
“Forget that, it happened on a civilian vessel. It’s not contained.”
“Obviously not,” Sami says, looking at the stream of traffic pouring through her filters.
Learning to Spell
Locked in her room, quiet of the night, Clay out at a neighborhood blues jam. Cross-legged on her bed, Tharcia strokes an exotic bone-handled dagger. The carving is intricate with symbols, she admires the long blade, clean and sharp. Removes all ordinary things from her dresser surface, fashions with her ritual objects an altar on which she places seven white beeswax candles wound with strands of her long hair. She lights seven sticks of incense, a pleasing mixture of patchouli, jade, sandalwood. Places a heavy crystal of quartz in the center of the arrangement, a black mirror beside it. From her closet a maroon velvet robe with hood, lays it on her bed.
When everything is prepared, she starts a bath. Candle glow lights the room, she slides into warm bubbles, breathes deeply and envisions around her an orb of protective radiance. Soaking in warmth, she meditates on the complete ritual, the memorized steps she’ll take and what she will say to her spirit guide. Tharcia visualizes the guide as a true demon, a demon that can tell her something real. Such as where her mom is. Or maybe her mom herself will appear! She must talk to her.
Moist and pink from bathing, door locked in her room. Glances at the dark rectangle of night, cold thrill strokes her spine. Arches away as though touched, nipples harden. Slips the robe over her head. The deep red velvet is soft on her spotless flesh. Raises the hood, tucks in her hair.
Tharcia enters the circle and lights more incense. With a vial of scented cannabis oil from the phallus-shaped bottle, she dresses the altar candle, mind focused on the purpose of her ritual. I want to talk to my mother. Tharcia faces the altar, her dresser, and states her intent.
“I am here to contact my Spirit Guide, and to acknowledge him or her.”
With the bone dagger, she inscribes a violet candle with the words, "Spirit Mother." She dresses the candle with the oil, places it in the ornate candelabra. As she lights the candle she focuses white fury on it. “I light the first Lamp of Spirit. May its light cross the barriers from here to the Other Side. May it touch the World of Spirit and allow connection.”
She swings her incense wand, censing the area around the altar, while rhythmically repeating the words, “Merge now with this reality.”
She repeats the words until the incense burns down. Takes the second violet candle, with the dagger inscribes the words “Spirit Mother” and dresses it with the oil. She lights it from the first burning candle, adds it to the candelabra.
“I now light the second Lamp of Spirit. May its light also reach out across the barriers from this world to the next. May it contact that Realm of Spirit and create a connection between worlds.”
She repeats the chant while waving the incense wand, censing the room and chanting the words, “Merge now with this reality,” building her focus. The room is thick with smoke from incense and oiled candles.
She rolls her Oriental silk rug aside and carefully draws, over earlier rubbed-out marks, a pentagram on the rough floorboards in purple chalk. Kneeling before the pentagram, Tharcia begins the chant, a spell to summon spirits of the dead.
“Beloved Spirit, I seek your guidance. I ask that you join with me here. Hear these words, Spirit from the other side, beloved mother, come to me, I call to you, cross over now what e’er divides.
“Hear these words, Spirit from the other side. Come to me, I summon you, cross over now what e’er divides. Beloved spirit, Hannah Louise Harrison, I seek your guidance. Beloved mother, be with me.”
For a long time she kneels beside the pentagram, quiet, eyes closed, willing something to appear in its center, willing her mother to materialize and speak to her. But there is nothing. After an hour her knees are numb on the hard boards and her eyes sting with smoke. Faintly hears a rhythmic scratching from above. She gets up, extinguishes the candles in their proper order. Opens the dark window to air the place out. She pulls the robe over her head, hangs it carefully in the closet, gets into jeans, a black T-shirt. Rubs out the chalk pentagram with a damp cloth and pulls the Oriental rug over it.
Tharcia ponders the last two hours, decides she has to up the voltage. The scratching sound is faint now, but she can hear it if she listens. The attic. At the end of the hall, a trapdoor in the ceiling.
From beside the back porch she brings Clay’s stepladder, bangs her way upstairs with the clumsy metal thing, spreads it beneath the trapdoor and climbs. She has to slam her palms hard against the overhead panel several times to get it loose, then it flies open and slams down loud on the boards up there. The noise echoes, a waft of ancient dust fills the air. Stillness.
She has only a small flashlight from her keychain, the kind for emergencies lasting five minutes or less. Standing atop the jiggly ladder she makes out the sloping eaves that span the dusty space. A small window at the end admits shadows from a distant streetlight, a branch moving with the wind.
Looking at the attic window she becomes aware that the air in the confined space is very cold. A soft skritch-skritch close behind. Startled, she whirls around to see and her motion kicks the ladder out. She drops through the hole, manages to catch the rim, dangles, breath coming fast. Studies the fallen ladder to make sure she doesn’t hit it. Drops safely down, puts the ladder back up. Her car keys still up there. She’s ready to climb up when she notices the silence. The usual sounds of an old house on a winter night no longer here. The steady purring of the refrigerator, drip of kitchen faucet, scuttlings of animals outside, wind moving around the house, all are still. She intends to retrieve her keychain and close the trapdoor but the dark rectangle above has a malicious cast. Her hand draws back on its own.
She returns to her room and shuts the door, closes and locks the window. Everything is as it was, except for a stillness that lies over the house as though a heavy blanket settled down. Drum of blood in her ears, she finds herself looking at the door, stares at it hard as though she waits for it to open. Her fingers tremble.
Tharcia reaches out gingerly, pulls the door open a crack. The hallway is completely still. Sticks her head out, looks both ways, sees dimly a hump-shouldered outline at the hall closet. Plunges for the stairs in a rush down and out to her car gets in slams door locks
it fast. She peers out the windows, the night so dark like syrup it pulls at her head trying to see. She’s cold, just the T-shirt and jeans, running shoes with no socks. Something tells her don’t go inside. Knows it’s irrational, knows she’s acting flat-out loony but can’t overcome it. She bites her lip, hating this. It is unlike her to panic.
She pushes a button on the CD player and it starts, the last exercises of her lesson on learning to speak French. She’s heard it already. Inserts another CD from the box by feel. Strange sounds come from the speakers. It’s almost comical, but between the careful English phrases of the presenter are practice sessions of a language that is at times flowing, at times guttural. She has no idea what she is saying as she follows the exercises, but it passes the time. She is not going back in that house.
An hour later she is hunched tight against the cold and repeating nonsense phrases from the language CD when lights sweep up behind and Clay's coupe pulls to a stop. The second he closes the door she is out and running, calling Clay Clay Clay.
“What’s up? You ok?”
Wind shakes the treetops. “Clay I got freaked. It was so weird. Jeez.”
“What happened, was someone here?”
“No, not that. I was in my room doing stuff. I heard sounds in the attic. The ladder fell. Then everything seemed way strange.”
Clay looks at her in the porch light. The black T-shirt clings to her breasts. “Let’s go in, you’re cold.”
Upstairs he climbs the ladder with his bright torch and looks in the attic, sees nothing. Standing below him a wash of frigid air falls on Tharcia’s face. Clay comes down.
“Now you.”
“Me? Oh no.” Tharcia backs away.
Clay grins. “It’s fine. You freaked yourself. Just go up, look. I’ll be here.”
At the top of the ladder, she casts the beam into dark corners of the attic. His hand warm on bare ankle. “What do you see?”
“Boards. The window.” She finds her keychain in the dust, comes down. Clay closes the trapdoor tight, takes the ladder out onto the porch, starts water for tea. She's wrapped in a blanket, watches silent as he builds up the fire with oak and split cedar.
Sipping tea on the dilapidated sofa, he says, “Care to tell what you were doing this evening?”
Still rattled, she feels like talking so tells him of the spell, about wanting to talk to her mother. Her zigzag path among massage therapists, the psychologist, arcane book shops, local psychics. Clay listens, saying nothing. Senses something dark hidden.
“So this is about talking to your mom?”
“Mm.”
“What will you say to her?”
“How she hurt me. Left me with creepo boyfriends. Got her ass killed.”
“What’s the one thing you want from her?”
“To know her own shit.” Wanting to trust him with a truth, trust someone.
“Will you ever forgive her?”
“Yes of course. Well maybe. First I want to hit her with everything. Full impact.”
“That’s a tall order.” Clay goes to the pantry, takes down a bottle of single malt Scotch, pours a couple shots.
“To Montana,” he says, lifting his glass.
“Oh sure, right. Bitch sent me to Camp Siberia.”
Clay laughs.
“No, weirdo, I really mean it. That was our name for a juvenile boot camp in the Sierras. All the other kids were ordered there by a judge. Mom was in the corrections system, so she got me in.”
“What for?”
“She freaked because I had some pills in my dresser. Sent me to this insane training camp for two weeks when I was fourteen. The counselors were sadists. Once they gave me a cold shower outdoors at night.”
“All women, I hope.”
She laughs. “A couple of them we weren’t too sure about.”
“Sounds too familiar. The wardens. I had to completely fake it with them.”
“Fake it how?”
“Invented a whole new personality.”
“Great minds think alike.”
Clay goes silent, watching the burning logs. She nudges him. “Hey where’d ya go?”
“Ah. Wondering if you could taste the strychnine I put in your orange juice.”
“Clay, you wouldn’t! Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.”
“You hurt my feelings back there, you know?”
“Back where?”
“Boner boy. Messing in your room. What’s up with that?”
She pulls away a little. “My stuff gets moved. Hate when people snoop me.”
“You’re the one with all the spooky friends. Don’t look at me.”
What she does do is look straight at him. He looks back. She sees only calm.
“Well okay. But I’m freaky to males in my house.”
“How come you’re messed up on anyone who could actually care about you?
“Who ya thinking?” Does he mean him?
“Like Rayne. Like your mom.”
“Don’t be a 'tard. Rayne and I were done way before.”
“Yeah? So why move her in here?”
“My hunter was hungry.” She sighs.
Clay looks at her. She said more in that sigh than I’ve said all day. “So that boner boy thing…”
She laughs. “Your morning junk sometimes, in your shorts.”
“Sometimes you get up too early. Alright, then what’s a knuckle-dragger?”
“Oh, that. Males living in their reptilian brain. They understand eating, fighting, fucking, running.”
“Ah. Then for sure you can tell us the source of your true wisdom.”
Tharcia considers this. As in, what kind of answer suits her at the moment. Maybe she has been messed up on Clay. He wouldn’t be the only thing. Her funny side surfaces, she grins at the thought, first tells herself no. Then laughs, doesn’t care what he thinks. With a solemn wise-woman expression, she points a finger at her crotch.
He chuckles. “Your wisdom comes from your hunter.”
She tries to answer but instead can only laugh, looking at his eyes.
“Well, if that’s how all your problems get solved…”
“No,” she says, points at her head.
“May I borrow this?” Clay takes her hand, turns her finger around so it points at her heart. “This is where you are.”
She looks at him. Bomber has materialized in his lap, unnoticed. Clay strokes the animal’s ear. Of the two of them, he listens to her advice more than she does his. She doesn’t feel that makes her smarter. Clay doesn’t need to put in his two cents worth every time, his spirit is calm. He’s right. Her heart is where she is.
“Mm.”
“So men are reptilian? What part of the brain do females hang with?”
“Limbic system. Where all the feelings are.”
“Well la de dah. Hey, I see a foot.” Her feet stick out of the blanket. Clay strokes a fingernail up the center of a bare sole. Tharcia screeches, twists her legs away, but her laughing eyes are the most welcoming in half a year.
“You lunatic!”
Clay turns it serious. “You told me about your mom’s boyfriends. I’m sorry.”
She gives him a look. “I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.”
Clay waits a beat. “Your mom left me twisting in the wind.”
“Yeh. Must have been hard. I feel bad about it.”
“About what she did?”
“Being messed up on you.”
“You actually know you do that?”
“S’truth. I’m maladjusted. Maybe it’s genetic.”
“Speaking of genetic, what about your friend Porterfield?”
Tharcia’s eyes flash. “Omigod, Clay, that dweeber majorly put me off. Creep city.”
“Talk about messing in your stuff…”
“Perv. Did you see the way Bomber ran from him?”
“Cat goes freaky sometimes. What do you think about his claim to fame?”
“Huh? Oh, he’s no father o
f mine, I don’t care how many times he proves it.”
The fire burns low. Clay moves a strand of hair out of her eyes. Both her arms are wrapped in the blanket. He finishes his whisky, she dozes on his arm. When he eases off to bed, she wakes. Sits thinking until he is quiet in his room. Walks to his door, listens, says his name. She enters, gets on the bed beside him wrapped in the wooly blanket.
“Not sleeping in my room tonight,” she informs him quiet from her warm cocoon.
Cool Deal
Afternoon sun warms Tharcia’s room. Incense smolders and oiled candles glow. Hooded in the long velvet robe, she carefully chants a spell from a book Althea suggested. Occasionally she hears the distant whine of a drill, clang of metal. Clay in his shop, with his airplane, won’t come in here.
Kneeling on the floor before a purple-chalked pentagram, Tharcia closes her eyes, mind reaching for the other side. In her stillness she visualizes an orb. Shapes within dance to music. At the very center is pure emptiness. She sees plants, animals, people, hills, rivers and mountains, sun and moon, all connected, all coming to birth. They move in intricate dance, living patterns drift and evolve within the hazy-outlined globe. Sees her mother’s face, happy, eyes for only her that glow with accepting love as once they did when Tharcia’s life was new. She wants to reach out, to be held by that, but cannot move. Tears lash her cheeks while the orb in her mind’s eye glows strong, holds her focus, leaving her without will, thought or volition, aware only of wanting to become part of what she sees. Within the longing lies compassion, openness, without sorrow, without judgment. A joining.
She opens her eyes, the image gone. Nothing is changed. She tries not to be disappointed.
Outside her window sunlight bathes a sea of green, tall trees and calling birds. She begins the careful process of putting things away, off with the robe, into jeans. On her dresser the tissue-wrapped package from Althea, her parting gift. Inside there’s a nice T-shirt, lavender, the words Goddess Culture on it in graceful curlicue script. Lifts bare arms and slips into it, admires her reflection. The shirt holds her snug, feels womanly, the lavender ignites her eyes. Smiling, Tharcia opens the window to let the smoke out.