by Eve Paludan
She turned over a card. “You want to know about love?” She turned over another card. “Queen of Cups is about romance and a passionate relationship.” She smiled. “The future is looking wonderful for you. You will not be alone for much longer.”
Diego blushed. “What do the three cards mean together?”
“As one story: There will be many changes for you soon. Even more than the gallery opening, you will be letting go of old love and beginning new love. And yet, there will be a mystical and spiritual quality to your new love interest that has remnants of the past in it, to bring you forward and give you strength and confidence in the new relationship. There will be emotional healing, a resurgence of your health that will make you feel younger, and you will be doing some travel but you will not be alone.”
“It is hard to believe that all of that happiness and good fortune can spring from how my heart is feeling right now,” Diego admitted.
“You have been through a lot. Let’s look at the present and see if that helps,” Sandy said, and turned over another three cards. The first card was The Hermit, followed by The Lovers upside down and also, the Moon Card.
Sandy paused a moment. “I’m going to give you the one-story of these cards. You’ve been feeling very alone in your life.” A stricken look crossed Diego’s face. Sandy looked up from the card. “You’ve lost someone dear to you, a wife of many years.”
Diego nodded. “Last year. My wife died of colon cancer. We were married for thirty years.”
“I am very sorry for your loss,” Sandy said. “Since her death, you’ve cloistered yourself away, waiting for something to happen to prove that you and she are always going to be together. You’ve surrounded yourself with the arts and with artsy people who offered small comfort but not the kind that you had with your wife. You have shut out other interested women who might have been able to love you. Two, in fact.”
“That is true. Two women have asked me out and I declined. I said that I wasn’t ready to date or for a relationship. And both of them went away, never to darken my doorway again.”
“That’s pretty negative, Diego,” Sandy observed. “The spirit of your wife can see this and she is sad that you are not moving forward emotionally.”
“That was the lovers upside down, right?”
She nodded. “In Tarot, we call the upside-down card a ‘reverse.’ So, with the combination of the moon, which is about doubt and uncertainty, I see that you had a lot of arguing in your marriage at the end and some animosity, perhaps even adultery when she was gravely ill. By you. Forgive me if I am wrong, but the cards are saying it.”
A tear sprang to Diego’s eye and misted it. Ellen and I looked at each other. Poor guy! I felt sorry for him. I could not even imagine my life without Ellen or imagine her sick. Above all, I could not imagine betraying her with another woman if she got sick. He was living a nightmare that was my greatest fear, that something would happen to my love, my Ellen. She must have known what I was feeling because her hand found mine under the table and we laced our fingers together in solidarity. Her touch was reassuring.
Diego said, “She was very sick and I was afraid. Once, just once, I reached out to someone for comfort when my wife was dying and I did not want to be alone.”
“No one here judges you, Diego,” Ellen said softly. “People do a lot of wrong things when they are taking care of a loved one with a terminal illness. That you were there for her, almost 24/7, for close to a year, took a toll on your judgment.”
Sandy nodded. “Further,” Sandy said, “I believe that these cards are showing up in the present because you have not fully dealt with the repercussions of what happened that day that you betrayed her. I sense that this gallery building has been very active with negative spirits and I must let you know that in your current negative state of mind, especially the guilt and the sorrow that accompany events both before and after your wife’s death, that you are lending power to the negative spirits. The present is full of uncertainty and conflict and your fears are a banquet for malicious spirits to feed upon and gain power.”
“Oh, boy,” I said. This was getting heavy. Ellen squeezed my hand and I drew it into my lap. I wanted to hold her tight. Not this. Not on our anniversary.
“Let’s move on and look at your past,” Sandy said. She turned over another three cards. “The Ace of Wands is a very creative card. I sense that with these other cards that your dead wife was very much your muse, your reason for living, and your creative inspiration for all of the art you created for your gallery.”
“It’s true,” Diego replied.
“And so, you want your wife back in your present life because you fear that your creativity sprang from her and that you will not be able to be as inspired as you were when she was alive. So, it isn’t just missing her as a wife and companion, but you have this great fear that you lost the impetus and passion for your artistic talent when she died. You are afraid that you cannot proceed with the gallery success without her by your side, your inspirational partner in the creation of almost every piece in your collection. You think you will fail without your sounding board and mentor, a brilliant artist in her own right.”
Diego took a big breath and let it out. “I have not told one person of this terrible fear. This is all completely true. How do you even know this?”
“The Tarot cards revealed this. However, I interpret certain nuances of the cards, based on the energy that comes from you as well as the order of the cards and whether they are reversed, when I turn them over. But since the story is not yet over, I will tell you how the last two cards figure into your past.”
She smiled. “The Two of Cups is clearly a relationship card, a coupling of two beings of light into one. And here is The Sun, the presence of your dead wife. She is joy and optimism and a profound light. I feel her spirit very near. Reaching out strongly.”
Ellen nodded. “Your Tarot reading has an unorthodox technique to it but your empathizing seems accurate to me, too. I think that it is Diego who is making the poltergeist in this building have power and his unhappiness at his wife’s death and the unfinished business with his affair and the guilty aftermath is a strong reason for what is going on in this haunting, in general. I mean, there is obviously history here, too, in the building, but things are ramped up in the psychic world when heartbreak is present.”
Sandy said, “I agree. Diego, everything in your past is connected to your present, good and bad. I see the elimination of this self-blame and self-loathing as the key to solving every problem that plagues you right now, from your gallery haunting to the empty place in your heart: Rosa wants to connect with you and help you to let it all go.”
“You know her name?” Diego put his hand over his heart.
“Yes, I can see a rose when I close my eyes. A pink rose. It is a metaphor for her.”
“They were her favorite. What do I do to make this happen? How can I connect with my beloved Rosa tonight?”
Sandy closed her eyes for a few moments and when she opened them, both she and Ellen said the word at the same time: “Séance.”
Chapter Ten
“What if the malevolent shadow spirit of the chupacabra thing shows up and starts, you know, devouring us?” I said softly to Ellen. I kind of hated to even ask her, but I had a bad feeling about all of this. I sure didn’t want that thing sucking out all of my blood and dragging my dead body through a concrete wall into some alternate dimension.
“If that happens, I’ll deal with it,” Ellen said. “More than one spirit may make its presence known and we can hopefully convince some of the more benevolent ones to help us fight it. We will see who or what shows up. I’ll take it from there and hopefully, Sandy will be of help, too.”
“Should we wait until Sister Maggie gets back from cooking at the soup kitchen?” I asked Ellen. “I mean, she seems to have a legion of angels as an entourage wherever she goes. It would be nice to have that kind of backup on a B team. I mean, not saying religion is the
B team to ghost hunting, but it’s not that different. Sister Maggie’s perspective probably works the divine mysteries from the sky down, and we work on them from the ground up.”
Diego interjected, “Oh, no, no, no! Sister Maggie wouldn’t participate in this tonight. I know her opinions on these matters. Even though she creates spiritual paintings, she is highly offended by what she calls ‘dabbling,’ where people deliberately try to invoke any entity that isn’t an angel. I am sure that a séance to contact a dead loved one would cross the line for her.”
I shrugged. “Okay, it was just an idea.”
“We’ll have to proceed without Sister Maggie, then. There’s no better way to get this solved,” Ellen said, “other than to get Rosa’s ghost here to shed some light on the negative-energy entities surrounding Diego and tormenting his life and his art gallery with the fires and all of the psychic disturbances. A séance has to be our first step toward cleaning house before the First Friday Art Walk and the co-op gallery opening.”
“It would be very bad for business if the public knew this place was haunted,” Diego said. “And not by friendly ghosts, either.”
“Agreed,” Sandy said. “But, from what I know, everyone at a séance has to be receptive or neutral at the very least.”
“I’m neutral, but I have faith in Ellen’s abilities,” I said.
“You’re on our side, Monty,” Ellen said. “Science meets spirit. With your instruments, you validate what I feel and what I know.”
I felt useful. “It’s good science to gather data from paranormal investigations to verify and solve problems,” I said.
Even though I was the most skeptical person present, I’d seen what Ellen could do and she was certainly no fake. Apparently, neither was Sandy, our cab driver. Sandy just didn’t have the same kind of sensitive experience that Ellen had.
I removed the patio umbrella from the table while Ellen arranged the twelve tall purple candles into concentric triangles inside of each other on the tabletop. Then she lit the wicks with the lighter from next to the barbeque grill. I did a last-minute equipment check and sat on a chair slightly apart from the patio table, next to my tools of the trade on a patio side table. For this séance, I was using all of my gear. We had a lot of paranormal activity and I wanted to get all of the data possible. The Trifield meter’s needle twitched. A lot. Ba-boom. Ba-boom.
“We’ve got an energy present that is vibrating like a pulse, a heartbeat,” I told them. I asked Diego, “Are there any utility wires or boxes under the concrete at our feet or any wireless or wired items in use?”
Diego said, “We have DSL for our internet and it is wireless. But it doesn’t run out here to the courtyard patio. There’s never a good signal down here. It’s like being at the bottom of a well. As for whatever is under the concrete, it is a very old building and I have no idea, really, what is under it. I haven’t owned it that long and the pre-sale inspection was pretty sketchy. As you may or may not know, Venice Beach was built on a reclaimed marsh. I know there used to be a full basement but now there is just a downstairs utility room and the rest was backfilled some time ago, due to occasional seawater floods. You can still kind of smell the ocean in the basement when we have high tide. The ocean is only a block away.”
“Okay, thank you,” I said. “It would help me to narrow down if a disturbance was electrical, magnetic or radio. Since I cannot detect any utility wires in the immediate vicinity, and it’s not really a wireless signal but something much stronger, I can only assume that the spirits are responsible.”
“It is my Rosa tuning in?” Diego asked Ellen.
“Not yet,” she said.
My thermal imaging and infrared equipment showed a hovering red dot, and the temperature registered 90 degrees and the data was recording perfectly. Wow. This was different. Hot instead of cold. It was nighttime, outdoors, next to the ocean. It seemed almost impossible that we were all sweating. Okay, I was sweating, the ladies were perspiring. Diego had a sheen on his face, too. I took off my jacket and hung it on the back of the chair and Diego did the same thing.
“Hmmm,” I said. I mouthed the word “poltergeist” to Ellen, so as not to let the thing know we were onto it, if it happened to understand English. I saw a big shadow flit across the screen of my anniversary present, the MEL-SDD Shadow Detection Device. A shudder went through me. Oh, that creepy chupacabra spirit was around. All microphones, the camera, all equipment was calibrated and turned on.
“Ready,” I said to Ellen. I sent her a mental telepathy message: We’re not alone. We’ve got trouble.
Ya think? she replied in my head and we smiled at each other. She could lighten up any situation.
“Great. Thanks for letting me know it’s a go.” She turned to Diego and Sandy. “Except for Monty, who is running the recording equipment and will, for all intents and purposes, be a neutral observer of this séance, I want you to place your hands flat on the table with your fingers touching. Diego, you need to sit between Sandy and me,” Ellen said. “There’s going to be a lot of psychic energy running between us and I want you in the safest place.” The three of them sat down.
“I’ve never run a séance,” Sandy said. “Just so you know. I write horoscopes. I do Tarot over the phone and internet. I haven’t had the kind of hands-on experience that you have.”
“I’ll act as the medium and you can lend your energy as well,” Ellen said. “It’s old hat for me, but I am putting a different spin on it than the usual séance I do, to try and get her to speak to us and maybe even manifest herself. Here we go.”
Without further preamble, Ellen closed her eyes and said, “We seek the spirit of Rosa Francisco, beloved wife of Diego Francisco, who is the petitioner of her presence here. Rosa, if you are here, please give us a sign.”
Without opening her eyes, Ellen said, “Diego, I forgot to tell you to close your eyes.” He did so. So did Sandy. I was apparently, the designated lookout. I kept my eyes open. Wide open. Nothing short of wild horses could have convinced me to close them.
In the next few minutes, as she repeatedly entreated Rosa to come out and play, nothing happened that Ellen reported. I, however, saw a lot of moving shadows on my MEL-SDD Shadow Detection Device. As if reading my mind, Ellen quietly said, “Monty, what do you see?”
“I’ve got several blobs of heat on the infrared, hotter than our air temperature of 90, and three corresponding figures slowly moving in the back of the courtyard as shadows on the MEL-SDD,” I replied.
Ellen nodded. “Excellent,” she said, and she said it in a way that I knew actually meant, “Oh crap!” In fact, “excellent” was our code word for that, under circumstances such as these when we didn’t want our subjects or observers to freak out.
“What do you need, Ellen?” I asked.
“I want you to look for a cold spot, Monty, and let me know when you see it. I believe that Rosa’s spirit is going to be a cold spot because she is a benevolent ghost and our hot spots are going to be related to the current poltergeist activity.”
“Okay, Ellie,” I replied and watched the activity on my instruments. “Nothing cold yet.”
Ellie continued the séance: “Rosa Francisco, we ask you to make yourself known to us because we need your help to fight a malevolent spirit that inhabits this building and is a threat to Diego Francisco. He loves you and wants to speak to you. We think that perhaps you are the key to removing the intended pall of destruction of property and death of sweet little animals that has been cast on this building. If you are here, I implore you to make your presence known to us.”
I saw a cold spot on the temperature gauge. “She’s coming.” I said. “A small blue spot just pushed past the red spots and is growing larger, coming toward us,” I whispered.
“Nobody let go,” Ellen breathed. “Keep your fingers touching. Keep your eyes closed.”
“She’s coming! She’s coming!” I said softly. I was pretty excited to see the blue spot and the threads of gold that were
swept along with it. It was a ghost showing up on my recording equipment complete with her energy tendrils in full color. I was thrilled!
Ellen said, “Everyone try to be open to Rosa. Be welcoming! Diego, I want you to think of your wedding day, the happy moment when you kissed her and you were pronounced man and wife.”
“She’s almost to you guys!” I said excitedly. “The red blobs are watching and coming up behind her. They’re excited, too.”
Sandy suddenly gave a little gasp and I looked up from my recording equipment to see her kissing Diego at the patio table. In fact, they were making out without lifting their hands from the table. My mouth dropped open and I said, “Um, Ellen. I think you better open your eyes. Something has gone awry here.”
Ellen sighed and opened her eyes as Sandy and Diego broke their first kiss, with tongue. She mouthed a swear word to me, which was unusual for Ellen. Apparently, we were in deep doo-doo-land. “Sandy, I think you were a little too open to Rosa manifesting here tonight.”
“I was just trying to help,” came a melodic older woman’s voice out of Sandy, one with a Spanish accent. And then she rattled off something passionate in Spanish with the word “Diego!” at the end. And then the two of them locked lips again, not coming up for air.
“What’s going on?” I asked Ellen. “The cold spot, the blue thing, is gone and Sandy is—”
“—possessed by the spirit of Rosa,” Ellen finished my sentence.
“Oh, man!” I said. “There goes our cab driver! Now that she’s possessed, what are we going to do for transportation for the rest of our vacation?”
“Very funny, Monty,” Ellen said, glaring at me.
Chapter Eleven
Of course, I immediately apologized to Ellen. “Sorry, I was just trying to lighten up the bizarre moment. What do you want me to do? Should I go get a cold bucket of water to throw on their liplock?”
“You’re digging yourself a hole, Monty. Just help me by watching the instruments and just tell me if any of the hot spots are coming closer.”