Mind Fray

by Alexie Aaron

  “When the human race was young, they were in tune to both worlds,” Bev enlightened. “For simplification, let’s say good and evil. Both worlds were interested in the bipeds who shouldn’t have survived, let alone dominated this world. It’s our brains that interest both sides. These little computers upstairs do much more than keep the old bod running. Mia, you’ve developed the ability to travel with your mind divided. OOBing depends on the duality of the brain. It allows your body to run while your soul is gallivanting around town. What we like to call our mind goes OOBing with you. Telekinesis,” Bev paused, giving her niece a knowing look. “It’s the ability to send tendrils of yourself out and influence the physical world. Many real magicians use this. Now mentalists, such as our friend Gerald, can walk the halls of your brain. Things that look like electrical impulses, when the brain is studied mechanically, are actually a way to track your accessing of the halls.”

  Ted made a sound.

  “Go ahead and scoff, youngster. I may not be describing things scientifically enough for you. But I recommend that you abandon some of the technical aspect of your training. This will make it easier to understand the magical things a brain can do,” Bev suggested.

  “Bev, I’m a bit lost,” Burt admitted. “Where are you going with this?”

  “Be patient and listen,” Bev scolded. “If you understand the way a mentalist accesses your mind, and in turn your memories, you can block him from using the traumas of your life against you. I taught Mia the basics: how to close her mind, so Murphy couldn’t get a foothold in there. Yes, don’t look shocked gentlemen. That ghost is more powerful than you realize. But he’s not our problem, so we’ll let it go for now. Mia, explain how you do this.”

  Mia, a bit put out by the mention of Murphy, gave her aunt a vicious glare before talking. “I imagine that my mind is a house with many rooms. Each room has a doorway and a window. Before I venture into a situation where I’ve determined an entity is looking for a host, I shut all the windows. If I’m using my mind to transport a spirit, I segment off a room in my mind and envision shutting the door to the rest of the house before I open the window to let the entity in. It safeguards the rest of my mind.”

  “How did Cezar get to you?” Bev asked.

  “I didn’t sense him there. I went in with an open mind,” Mia admitted. “I still didn’t see him though. I saw the sheets as they wrapped around my arms and legs, but I didn’t see the entity. I can only see him on film, but in person, he is invisible to me. I am vulnerable…”

  “No,” Gerald interjected. “You are strong. You see, the entity depends on pulling memories in order to create an image. From the accounts you have given me, it can access many minds at once. It doesn’t actually manifest per se. It gives you a hallucination instead.”

  “When I was accessing the memories of Max and Kim, I got glimpses of it. It was a grey bubbling mass…”

  “Smokey?” Bev asked.

  “Yes, if it was liquid, it would be boiling, but this was air.”

  Bev looked at Gerald. “Remember Elsa Devine?”

  Gerald nodded.

  Bev explained, “Elsa Devine was a medium our group ran into, oh, maybe twenty years ago?” she asked Gerald.

  “Maybe less,” he answered.

  “She had sought us out because of a problem she encountered at a séance.” Bev looked at Ted and pointed a finger. “Don’t you start,” she warned.

  Mia grabbed his hand in hers, and she squeezed it gently.

  “She related that once when she was on site - Denver, I’m not exactly sure, somewhere around there. Anyway, she said that before she could open a door to allow communication from the family’s grandmother, something else entered the room. It came through a slice in the ether. She said it was a bubbling gray mass. The family all saw someone different, and they were not happy. There were six people, all seeing different people from their past, and none of them was grandma.”

  “What happened?” Burt asked Bev.

  “She lost control of the situation and stopped the séance. She contacted Father Santos. I believe we decided that she should move the séance offsite. There wasn’t a repetition of the bubbling entity, and as far as we know, grandma sent her love and the location of where the old dear hid the family jewels.”

  “So either this thing was already in the house or it entered prior to the grandmother being contacted,” Ted reasoned. “It’s probably still there.”

  “Could be. Or it was weak and was sucked back into the dimension it came from,” Bev offered. “Anyway, does this help?”

  “It proves that this isn’t an isolated occurrence,” Burt said.

  “It kind of explains why I can’t see the hallucination it had planned for me,” Mia said, somewhat relieved. “The physical manifestation though, whoa, it surprised the crap out of me.”

  “You said Mike was with you,” Bev said. “Was he not affected at all?”

  “Beyond having a tug of war, with me as the rope, no,” Mia said.

  “I wonder why?” Bev said, looking at Gerald. “Tell me, and be honest, have you ever probed Mike Dupree’s mind?”

  Gerald thought a moment. “I can’t say I have. I don’t normally hop skip and jump around the people I’m with, unless I’m looking for information. Mike has always been very upfront in our dealings, so there has never been a need.”

  “Next time you’re together, try.”

  “Why?”

  “He could be the outlier. Outliers have been used before…” she trailed off in thought.

  “I taught Mike how to block mind readers,” Mia informed the group. “He gets physical symptoms when a ghost is present. Nausea, headaches,” Mia listed.

  “Good, tell me more,” Gerald asked. “I sense there is a well involved.”

  “Lund!” Ted blurted out. “Tell them about Lund.”

  Burt nodded his head vigorously. “Yes, tell them what happened to Mike in Lund.”

  “I think I ought to get his permission first,” Mia said.

  “Call him,” Burt ordered.

  “No, you call him. I’m not waking him up,” Mia argued.

  Bev observed the interaction between Mia and Burt. Bev wasn’t fond of Burt Hicks, but she could see how Mia’s stubbornness set him off.

  “Why can’t you just…” Burt was stopped by Ted shushing him. He had his phone to his ear.

  “Sorry to wake you, old chap,” Ted said in Sean Connery’s voice. “But we’ve got ourselves a situation here that we need your permission on.” Ted winced. “Strong words from such a delightful lad as yourself. No, fucking myself isn’t very fun. Let me hand the phone to Burt so you can tell him to fuck himself too.”

  Ted handed the phone to Burt.

  Burt got right to the point. “Mia needs your permission to tell Bev Cooper and Gerald Shem about your experience at Lund. She won’t talk unless she…” Burt handed the phone to Mia.

  “Is it really necessary?” Mike asked in a tired voice.

  “It might save us a lot of time,” Mia answered. “I’m sorry for waking you up.”

  There was silence on the other end. Mia could hear him breathing.

  “Alright, but ask them to use the information carefully.”

  “They will. My aunt may be brash, but she and Gerald have a lot of integrity.”

  “I hope so. Tell Burt I’m not coming in until after noon.”

  “I’ll break it to him.”

  “Goodnight, Mia.”

  Mia handed the phone back to Ted. “He said you two have to keep the information to yourselves. Understand?”

  Bev and Gerald nodded.

  “First, I have to make a trip to the ladies room, and it’s a few miles away,” Mia said.

  “Not anymore,” Father Santos said from outside the trailer. He held up a set of keys.

  The five looked amazed. They didn’t hear a car approach or sense his presence.

  “Mrs. Mullens gave me permission to use her house while we were here. I’ve
been taking a nap. I had no idea Gerald and Bev were here.”

  Mia jumped up and walked over. “I told you to stay away. It’s not safe,” she said, grabbing the keys.

  “I’ll walk you over,” Ted said, following his wife. “Nice to see you, Father.” He shook his hand and waited until the priest was safely up before jumping down and following his wife.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Bev said, amused.

  “I was just in the neighborhood,” Santos said, lifting an eyebrow.

  Burt smiled. He liked Santos, and he didn’t agree with Mia asking him to stay away. He offered him his seat and pointed out the picnic basket full of goodies.

  “Did I interrupt something?” he asked.

  “Yes, but you’re forgiven,” Gerald said wryly. “We were just getting to the good part. Now we have to wait.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “It started with a black mass forming at the edge of Mike’s childhood bed when he and his mother were staying with his grandparents in Lund, Illinois. It was an ancestor who warning him about a well on the property. His name was Joel. We found out his, crippled from birth, brother Jonas died down there. I died down there. Believe me, it’s not a great place to die.” Mia stopped a moment to thank God, Murphy decided to restart her heart and that Ted was brave and climbed down the well and retrieve her body. She didn’t relate any of this to Bev and Gerald because she didn’t want to detract from the point she was going to make about Mike. “The spirit never left Mike. It stayed with him, probably closeted in one of the deep dark rooms of his mind. Eventually, we were able to sort things out, and the entity ascended with his brother. Happy ending, I suppose. But what I’m getting at is this, I think Mike’s mind was changed by housing the spirit for so long.”

  “He’s pretty sensitive,” Father Santos agreed. “Strong too. There’s more to him than he lets us see.”

  “I’ve been with him for years. I didn’t even know about the possession until Lund,” Burt admitted.

  “So he didn’t see anything when you were attacked?” Bev reconfirmed.

  “No. I didn’t see anything either. I only saw the twisted sheet.”

  Bev thought a moment and said, “The sheet is tangible. It could be that Mike, upon learning how to close his mind, is doing just that all the time, or…”

  “The entity left scars,” Santos said.

  “Scars?” Mia asked alarmed.

  “Sorry, that was the first word that came to me,” Santos apologized. “What I meant was, there is something in place that blocks the entity, Cezar if you will, from reading his memories. His traumas could be pushed into that now empty space that the entity in Lund once possessed.”

  “So in essence, Mike Dupree is immune to a Mind Blast,” Ted said.

  Burt sighed. Ted’s compulsion to relate his games to life and death situations was tiring.

  Bev and Gerald looked at each other. Mia tugged on Ted’s sleeve and said, “You may want to explain a Mind Blast.”

  “In Dungeons and Dragons…”

  “That’s a role-playing game,” Bev explained to Father Santos.

  Ted looked at her, and she nodded for him to continue.

  “There is a monster called a Mind Flayer. Basically, it eats your brain and kills you, or turns you into a thrall.” He looked at their blank faces and explained, “A thrall is a servant, ah, like Igor. Anyway, the Mind Flayer uses telepathy to communicate. Cezar uses past traumas. He makes you hallucinate and waits until the trauma overcomes you before he moves in for the kill.”

  “It’s not killed anyone yet,” Burt pointed out.

  “What do you call the unfortunate souls who were trampled to death in the theater, including Anatolie?” Bev asked.

  “I have no delusions that this is a Mind Flayer,” Ted clarified. “Mind Flayers belong in games. What I am telling you is that it may have a similar weakness. In the case of D & D’s Mind Flayer, it has to stun the prey before it can feed on the brain. I think our Cezar’s weakness is that he has a definite range. Mr. Druther’s mind was read before he entered the garage. Murphy’s was read on the porch. If this Cezar is using the darkness equivalent of a mind blast, then we better be careful of how close we are standing to the house unprotected.”

  “How does this relate to Mike?” Mia nudged.

  “Oh, sorry. He can’t be affected. Whether it’s because of the scarring as you’ve said or that he has a better lock on his mind-house than Mia has… Either way, I think he’s going to have to be the go-to person if we are going to be able to get near this thing.”

  “What about Gerald?” Bev asked.

  Ted, Mia and Burt looked at the wheeler-dealer.

  “Beverly, I’m a just a mind reader…”

  “Bullshit! You’re the most powerful mind reader alive.”

  “Is this true?” Mia asked Gerald.

  “I have abilities. But I can’t do what this Cezar does,” he protested.

  “But you wouldn’t have to. If we distract Cezar, could you read him?”

  Gerald lifted his hands. “I don’t know, maybe.”

  “Why?” Santos asked.

  “We’re stumbling around in the dark here. It sure would be nice to know at least what Cezar’s motivations are. We may have it all wrong, and he’s just trying to survive in a hostile world. Or we may have it right, and in that case, the more we know, the better we’re going to be able to put this thing on ice,” Mia explained. “Also, while I have your attention, I’d like to show you all something. Burt, Ted, you’ll need your infrared glasses. Grab a pair for Father Santos too.”

  Mia waited for the group to assemble outside the command vehicle. She walked them to the edge of the empty lot before speaking, “Look at the far edge of the property. Do you see them? All lined up, tethered so they don’t float away.”

  Bev and Gerald counted fourteen souls floundering in the spectral breezes. Father Santos, Burt and Ted saw fourteen orbs.

  Father Santos asked, “What are they?”

  “They are what almost happened to Murphy. Cezar took enough of his energy to enslave him, not enough to slay him. If you slay a ghost, they go back to their power source, recharge, and come back at you. These souls aren’t going anywhere.”

  “What are they?” Santos asked again.

  Mia looked at the group and said, “Thralls.”

  ~

  Mike lay with his head in his arms, staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom. He pondered the phone call from Ted. He knew the guy didn’t instigate the call, and he felt that Mia was somewhat put on the spot talking to him. It wasn’t that the two of them didn’t get along. That was ages ago. Mia was now family to him, the lusty second cousin type of family. He laughed at this thought. She’d no doubt hit him if she knew what he was thinking.

  He was happy she’d asked him first before blabbing all the pertinent details of Lund to her aunt and Gerald. Did she tell them about their hijinks at the hospital, him telling the nurses that Mia and he were married? News spread fast across four counties, and his aunt was well putout she hadn’t been invited to the wedding. His mother still refers to Mia as her favorite former daughter-in-law. Was that incident the closest he was going to come to having a wife?

  A lot of things changed on that trip. He was released from Joel, the ghost who had haunted him most of his life. His mother was made a millionaire by the find of the priceless books in the attic. And Ted stepped up and surprised them all by taking Mia’s heart. Both of them would plead innocent, but the writing was on the wall. These two unlikely people were meant for each other. Mia would soon end her relationship with the handsome deputy Whitney. Ted flatly refused Beth’s advances, putting her nose out of joint, and opening her eyes to the fact that he was never going to be hers.

  Burt didn’t help smooth the waters. Mike suspected that he took pleasure in stirring the shit until Mia was hurt. The dude had his chance, and he blew it. Why continuously punish Mia for his lacking? She seemed to be taking it well,
but it had to hurt to be constantly in the doghouse on a never-ending list of complaints. He smiled in satisfaction at taking her side in the Murphy fiasco. Perhaps it would earn him a get-out-of-glare-free card the next time he pissed Mia off.

  But Lund was far away and long ago, and he wondered why it needed to be dragged up again? He rolled over and grabbed his phone. He typed in a few words and sent them to Mia.

  ~

  Alerted by the vibration, Mia pulled her iPhone out of her pocket. She read the text and smiled. Mind telling your ex-husband what’s going on? Call me.” Mia excused herself from the console where Burt and Ted were going through the film Curly had taken frame by frame.

  “Going to make a call,” she said.

  Burt looked at the time and then over at her. “Kind of late.”

  “Not where I’m calling,” she said.

  Ted looked up. “Leave the girl alone. But if she’s calling Guam, it better be on her dime,” he joked.

  Mia smiled and grabbed the key to Irma’s house on her way out of the trailer. Gerald took Bev home. Father Santos left soon after, promising to return if they needed him. He hinted that he wanted to be there when and if they confronted Cezar. Promises were made, and the priest left.

  Mia let herself into Irma’s house and walked into the bathroom. She dialed Mike’s number after she had taken care of business.

  “I was just lying here thinking of my favorite prego,” he said.

  “I bet you were,” she said and let out a girlish giggle.

  “Where are you?” he asked because her voice seemed a bit too friendly if hubby or Burt were listening in.

  “Over at Irma Mullens’s. She’s letting us use her bathroom. It saves me a mad dash to the Burger King, and Burt ten pounds.”

  “He doesn’t have to buy something every time he pees,” Mike observed.

  “He’s just trying to do his part to strengthen the economy,” Mia joked.

  “Enough about Burt bursting at the seams. Talk dirty to me.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Mia’s voice went icy.

  “Sorry, bad joke. Tell me why I’m being discussed by Gerald and Bev.”