No. He couldn't have meant what he said in a romantic way. He was just being Marcus – always there, always willing to boost my spirits whenever I felt like I was the lowest form of life on the planet.
"We need to see if there is any spell residue from the stuff I collected inside the shed," I said, bringing my mind back to the task at hand. "Measure about a third of a cup of that distilled water and pour it into the bowl, will you?"
Marcus nodded and carefully poured distilled water into a beaker, and then dumped the whole thing into the bowl. I took a deep breath and drew on my magic, as I stirred the gunk from the shed into a fine grey paste.
"That should do it," I said as I took the opal and dangled it into the goop.
"What's the rock on a string for?" asked Marcus.
"This spell is called the penndulata – it's a very basic locating spell that draws on the tiniest fragments of magical energy in an object. In a moment, I'm going to dangle it over the map of Calgary and wherever the goop I've slopped all over the opal drops on the map will point to places where either the former spirit has been or, if we're lucky, we might find a clue as to who pulled it from the other side."
"Will it work?"
I shrugged. "Hopefully. Maybe you might want to step back in case I blow this and we end up covered in the stuff?"
Marcus nodded as I dangled the pendulum over the map and focused on the opal. I gathered my magic and whispered, "Seek."
The tiny birthstone span slowly and I could feel the wispy tendrils of residual magic beginning to intermingle with the energy of my spell. A small bead of inky grey liquid rolled down the thread and dropped with pinpoint precision onto the map, followed by another and then finally a miniscule drop landed with a tiny tap. I dropped the opal back into the goop and then bent over to see where the drops had landed.
"Call me a sceptical philistine," said Marcus. "But that ain't magic, that's called gravity."
I spun the map around and pointed to the droplets for Marcus to see. "Oh there was magic at work here, Marcus," I said. "You're just unable to feel it because you don't have heightened sensitivity to magical energy."
"No, I just have near-death experiences when I hang with you," he said sourly.
"What does the map say?"
Marcus' eyes narrowed. "The Beltline? That's where the spell came from?"
"Looks that way," I said flatly. "We're going to have to do a bit of research."
"What kind of research?"
I narrowed my eyes as I gently blew on the inky spots to dry them off. "The kind that involves figuring out if there's been any weird ass supernatural stuff going on in that neighbourhood. I need to hit some of Mom's spell books, too, because it'll help to know what kind of spell was used to yank John Stearne into the mortal world."
Marcus pursed his lips tightly as he scanned the map. "You don't know anyone that lives in the Beltline, do you?"
"Why do you ask?"
He spun the map around. "Well it just seems too convenient, you know?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that everything happens for a reason," he said firmly. "Don't you find it a bit disturbing that Mrs Gilbert's poltergeist dealio happened on the same street where we were going door-to-door and in the same community where a pair of witches lives?"
"You think this was aimed at me instead of Mom?" I asked in a surprised voice.
"Maybe," he said, staring at the map. "Then again, you haven't been around long enough to make any enemies. Does your mom have anyone in her coven that might be holding a grudge or something?"
I chewed my lip for a moment. We'd been out of the covens for so long that I could barely remember the last time we took part in a gathering. I knew that from time to time we'd be visited by a "designate" – a witch whose sole purpose is to remind those outside of the covens that the Grand Council still reigned supreme under the watchful eye of the local Maven or High Priest. Mom's mood would darken whenever a designate showed up at the door and the visit would generally last fewer than ten minutes before she'd send them packing.
I shrugged. "I don't think so. I mean, the community of witches in the city is pretty small and Mom and I have sort of been keeping a low profile for years, I'd seriously doubt that anyone would target my mother with anything."
Marcus nodded. "It's still too convenient. I'm thinking maybe we expand our sleuthing and hit up Google. There's bound to be some other stuff going on in the city."
"Sounds like a plan," I said.
Chapter 6
"You guys still here?" my mother called out.
"Yeah!" I shouted back. "Marcus and I are doing some investigatory stuff in the library!"
I could hear her padding down the steps and in seconds she was hunched over my shoulder examining the map.
"Tracking spell, huh?" she grunted. "What part of 'study for your exam' aren't you getting, Julie?"
Damn it. I hate it when she chews me out in front of people. I clenched my jaw tightly and took a deep breath because I was ready to snap at her.
"We're good for the calculus exam tomorrow, okay?" I groaned. "I just wanted to help out a bit."
"You are an adept," she said snatching the map from the table. "I decide when and if you're ready to take matters into your own hands. Damn it all, you're as bloody headstrong as your father was!"
Whoa.
Okay, clearly I'd stepped over the line because whenever my mom invoked my late father we'd be inches away from a titanic argument that generally wound up with me stomping up to my bedroom and slamming the door. Being grounded for a week generally followed my angry outburst and then two or three days of icy silence between us.
I shrunk a little in my chair. "Yes," I said hesitantly. "It's just that the protective sentinel on the shed got blown up and what with the poltergeist at Mrs Gilbert's… I mean, whoever did this spoke to us, Mom. It knows our names!"
She cocked an eyebrow "And what's the first thing I ever taught you about what to do if someone attacks you using magic?"
"Yeah but I was just–"
"Julie," she said in a tone that told me that what she was about to say was non-negotiable. "What's the first thing I ever taught you about what to do when you're attacked?"
"To never take matters into my own hands," I said sheepishly. "But it was just a small tracking spell. I wanted to figure out what we were up against."
"And you could have waited until I got home," she said sharply. "It's bad enough that Marcus was attacked at Mrs Gilbert's house. You're far too inexperienced to be going it alone. You know this."
I nodded. I glanced at Marcus and he grimaced at me. "I'm sorry," I said. "You're right and I probably should have listened to Marcus. He told me to wait."
"You got lucky this time," she said, placing a firm hand on my shoulder. "So, you figure the spell emanates from the Beltline, huh?"
"It looks that way. What do you think it means?"
Her eyes narrowed. "It means that someone or something is either holding a grudge against witches, or my sentinels malfunctioned badly. Listen, I'm going to check each protective spell I've spoken into the wards on the shed."
"Is it cool if we do a bit more sleuthing?" I asked, half-expecting her to shoot me down. "I want to do some online research and see what I can find out about any recent poltergeist activity in town."
She blinked a couple of times and waved a finger at me. "That's fine; see what you can come up with but no magic. Got it?"
I nodded. "Got it."
Mom headed to the backyard, so I raced up to my bedroom to grab my laptop along with a half-eaten tube of Pringles. Marcus met me in the living room and he hooked my computer into the wide screen. The laptop hummed quietly and he began searching Google for paranormal activity in the Calgary area while I thumbed through a couple of my mother's well-used spell books.
Now I'm no expert, but I do know a little bit more than the average person about poltergeists. There are two schools of thought regarding how they happen. The f
irst one is that a poltergeist is what it appears to be; a ghostly manifestation that interacts with the world of the living. There can be a malevolent purpose behind a poltergeist's activity, but more often than not, they're just harmless spirits who are compelled to move objects around or even hide things; like your house keys, for example.
Understand that Marcus would scoff at this because it can't be proven with empirical precision, but think about it for a second. Have you ever misplaced something that you were one hundred percent certain was left where you said you left it? Maybe it's a watch or your bus pass, whatever. What I'm saying is that nine times out of ten, you eventually find that missing item and it's almost always found in a place where you'd have never thought about leaving that item in a thousand years.
I always leave my earrings in my small ceramic junk jar on top of my dresser, yet when a pair of my favourite earrings goes missing, I inevitably find one, not two, and it's usually in a dumb place like beside the toaster oven or in the pocket of a blazer that I wear only once in a blue moon. Naturally, the vast majority of us believe we stupidly misplaced the item, I get that. But when it happens to you, me, your neighbour and basically to any of the seven billion people who inhabit the planet with us, then either all of humanity is colossally absent-minded or there's a ton of supernatural activity going on that we turn a blind eye to.
The second possibility – and this is the one that Marcus likes – is that poltergeists aren't really spirits at all. He believes that some poltergeist activity has a physical explanation like static electricity, electromagnetic fields or even sound waves where tremors from underground sources – say, blasting in a nearby mine – carry through the earth's crust and rattle our dishes. While I can accept that there are man-made reasons for why something that might look like a poltergeist has taken up residence in your home, he's forgetting that disembodied voices or objects floating through the air of their own accord are classic examples of poltergeist activity.
"I'm going to Google 'Beltline Poltergeist Activity' and see what comes up," said Marcus, as he clicked away at the keyboard.
In less than three seconds, the search gave us fourteen hits. The first three linked directly to YouTube, so we checked the date for each video to see which one was the most recent and we began our search there.
"Three videos isn't a lot, right?" asked Marcus.
I shrugged. "Beats me. It's possible they're all fake."
We spent the next few minutes reviewing a video that showed a roll of paper towel that was resting on top of a dishwasher flip into the air and then fall to the floor. Marcus was good enough to point out that a jolt of compressed air from off camera would have easily sent the paper towel roll tumbling and we decided it was a fake. Another video showed a closet door open a fraction of an inch and then moments later open to about a foot wide, but on closer examination we spotted the faint silhouette of a human arm inside the closet.
"Hmm," Marcus said, pointing to a link showing a blackened frame where a screenshot should have been. "What about this one? The title looks like it's written in some weird-ass form of computer programming code."
I leaned into the monitor and shook my head slowly. "That's not computer coding, it's something written using the Theban alphabet."
Marcus cocked his head and let out a grunt. "Theban, huh? What's that?"
"It's a very old and very sacred form of text used almost exclusively by witches. I need to decipher it."
He handed me a small yellow pad and a pen, and as I grabbed the other end of the pad and pulled, Marcus wouldn't let go of it. "There's just no freaking way this is a coincidence, Julie. We should call your mom in."
Part of me agreed with him, but I honestly didn't see any harm in translating the script or watching the video. I draped a reassuring arm over his shoulders and said, "You're probably right, but I don't think we're going to be in a world of hurt if I just translate the title. We'll decide what to do once I know what it means."
I spent the next couple of minutes scribbling down the characters from the title on my pad. I drew a line underneath and then transcribed each character with its corresponding Latin alphabet letter and then slid the pad onto the table. Marcus leaned in and read my translation aloud.
"A soul for a soul?" he said, his voice lilting up an octave. "What's that supposed to mean."
"Two things," I said, eyeballing the now translated title of the video. "Few people know what Theban writing is and fewer still would take the time to try and translate it. If you look at the number of hits the video has received it isn't exactly going viral. Click on the stats link, would you?"
Marcus emitted a disapproving grunt and then clicked on the link. A small bar graph appeared below the video and the time date stamp showed today's date.
"Someone's sending you a message, Julie," said Marcus in a wary voice.
"Because attacking us in the shed wasn't message enough. I guess there's only one way to find out what they want."
We watched closely as the video showed two golden labs sleeping soundly on a large puffy sofa.
"There doesn't seem to be much happening," said Marcus. "This looks more like it should be called 'What Dogs Do While I'm at Work'."
"Give it a second," I said. "Let's just watch."
We sat in silence for a few moments when suddenly the video went photonegative for a fraction of a second. Both dogs immediately looked up and cocked their heads to the right, as if someone was giving them commands. A half a second later, they cocked their heads to the left, their eyes focused on their unseen master.
"Oh… what a load of BS!" Marcus groaned.
We watched both dogs begin rolling left and then right on the couch with a feverish amount of energy. As they rolled back and forth, I saw the curtains behind them flutter for a moment and then they slowly slide apart to reveal a small bluish orb hovering above the windowsill. It floated in a parallel line directly over the dogs – both still rolling around like crazy and looking like they were getting a heck of a workout. What happened next confirmed for me this video had to be the real deal.
The dogs immediately let out an ear-splitting yelp and then their tails pulled straight up like someone with a great deal of strength was tugging on them. They started wailing as their hindquarters raised up above the top of the couch and I decided this had to be unbelievably painful for both dogs since they started snapping at their tails in an attempt to get at whatever had grabbed them.
"Oh my God!" Marcus gasped. "Those poor dogs."
The worst was yet to come. In a scene that I'm certain would get the Humane Society involved, both dogs were pulled high into the air by their tails. Their howls poured through the small speakers in my laptop and I heard a low, almost guttural sounding voice that sent a knot of panic straight into the pit of my stomach.
"A soul for a soul." The voice rumbled as both dogs simultaneously dropped to the floor, landing in a stressed-out furry heap. The screen went photonegative again for a millisecond and then I saw the couch was turned upside down with the feet facing the ceiling, just like at Mrs Gilbert's.
"That's enough proof for me," I said. "Are you up to doing some more detective work?"
"Proof of what?" Marcus choked, as he minimized the browser. "You're not seriously thinking we should try to contact this guy, are you?"
"Why not?"
"Um… because your mom will probably lose her mind. Julie, she warned you. And then there's the whole 'you could get killed' part of it."
I threw my hands in the air. "We were targeted, Marcus! John Stearne's spirit became a poltergeist after someone yanked it into the mortal realm. Whoever was responsible attacked you with a dark spell, for crying out loud!"
"Then let someone who isn't barely in control of their abilities manage it," he said, motioning for me to calm down. "Why not tell her and get your coven involved?"
"Witches' covens suck," I said flatly. "There's a whole whack of internal politics junk we have to go through to get an official
ly sanctioned investigation."
Marcus blinked a few times and exhaled heavily. "You know, this is going to be unbelievably dangerous for both of us," he said warily. "What makes you think your mom is going to be okay with you doing this? I mean, Julie, that dark spell that was used to attack me back at Mrs Gilbert's house was huge!"
I nodded. "I know, but it's like you said – there's no such thing as a coincidence. I need to figure out who pulled John Stearne's spirit from the other side, and I'm thinking we should head over to the Beltline after school tomorrow and check it out."
"Whoa… wait a minute!" Marcus protested. "If you're saying there's some supernatural conspiracy involving that video and Mrs Gilbert's poltergeist, you should totally step aside."
Poltergeeks Page 4