Nightmare Stalkers

by Michael La Ronn

“Can we help you?” a female voice said.

  “We’re here to visit a resident,” I said. “Letty Jones.”

  “Names, please,” the voice said.

  “Aisha Robinson and Destiny Robinson.”

  “Okay,” the voice said. “I see you’ve been here in the past. We’ll send someone out to meet you. Please have your driver’s licenses ready.”

  Destiny and I stood waiting in the snow as a burly Latino security guard jogged out to meet us. We showed him our IDs, and he opened the gate for us, ushered us across the parking lot and into the crispy warmth of the Twin Harbors Assisted Living Retirement Community, the place where seniors came to have fun.

  A friendly receptionist at the front desk asked us if we wanted a cup of coffee.

  “Miss Jones is feisty as ever,” she said.

  “That’s what we like to hear,” I said.

  While I waited for her to print our name tags, I texted Darius.

  How’s your lady doing?

  Darius replied immediately.

  Still waiting to see the damn nurse.

  Chuckling, I replied, Be a gentleman and ask her if she wants something to drink. Ya know, the basics.

  Darius replied with a GIF of him shaking his head at me.

  The receptionist handed us our name tags.

  Destiny and I took an elevator that dropped us off on the tenth floor into a brightly lit hallway with apartment doors on both sides, and a circular window at the end of the hallway that overlooked Latin Town.

  We found Aunt Letty’s door and knocked.

  On the other side, we heard Earth, Wind & Fire songs playing.

  No response.

  We knocked again, this time a little harder.

  No response, except Earth, Wind & Fire music. “After the Love Has Gone.” Destiny snapped and sang along with the lyrics.

  “Maybe we ought to call her?” Destiny asked.

  Then, the door flew open and a four-foot-eight-inch black woman peered up at us.

  She wore a denim jacket, a long black skirt that went to her ankles, and a head wrap in the African tradition—bright orange, black, blue, red, and green. A sparkling, shiny star jewel held the head wrap together.

  My Aunt Letty saw us and let out a happy cackle, exposing a missing bottom tooth and a mouthful of fillings.

  “Thought it was about time to come and see me, huh? Ha!” she said, holding out her arms.

  We hugged her, taking in all three dimensions of her Coco Chanel perfume. She smelled floral and soapy.

  Pause.

  Time out.

  As happy as I was to see my Aunt Letty, and as happy as I am to tell you what happened next, I need to tell you a story.

  Hold my Aunt Letty’s beautiful, African goddess face in your mind—and hold it in high esteem, okay?

  Hold that picture, then follow me back about ten years ago, back when Nana was still alive and we still lived in her bungalow on Skinner Avenue, the left ventricle of the heart of the hood.

  Aunt Letty was Nana’s best friend, more like a grandmother to me. Her and Nana grew up on the same street, back when the hood was the place to be. They went to school together, manifested their powers around the same time, and even worked in the same movie theater for a while out of high school. Unlike Nana, my Aunt Letty never married. She was a free spirit who always reminded you that she was free and could do anything she damn well wanted.

  Imagine my Aunt Letty’s laughing face at our doorstep every Sunday morning, dressed to the nines, as Nana got us ready for church.

  Imagine her busting Darius’s balls like no one you’ve ever seen before, and that’s saying something.

  Imagine her telling me and Destiny that we were gonna be somebody—every Sunday—“Y’all two gonna be somebody, you hear? But let’s go ahead to church and give some thanks to Jesus.”

  Imagine her and my Nana sitting at the kitchen table, talking in hushed tones about things I didn’t even pretend to understand. About the ways of shifters and demons.

  There was never any point in eavesdropping on Aunt Letty. Since she was a psychic, she’d call your bluff every time. Every. Time.

  Still got that picture?

  Imagine it getting older.

  See those wrinkles? That was cancer.

  Stage zero breast cancer. She beat it.

  See those other wrinkles? That was a heart attack. She beat that shit too.

  See that scar on her left shoulder? Slip and fall in her driveway.

  She didn’t beat that.

  She healed, but she up and moved herself into this assisted living facility. Her niece and nephew, who visited her once a week, came to her house one day to find the house empty and a note on the door saying that she had moved. Aunt Letty hired movers to throw out everything she owned except for a few boxes.

  And she’s lived in Twin Harbors ever since.

  Aunt Letty was black, but not quite. Her dad was from Puerto Rico, and she spoke Spanish. She was as much a part of Latin Town as she was the hood.

  “I ain’t a nigra,” she used to say to my Nana. “I’m Porter Rican.”

  “Yo skin is still dark as mine, so you a nigger just the same as the rest of us.”

  And then they’d have a good laugh.

  That laugh. It filled my ears now, taking me back, back, back to when life was simpler, when I was still a girl.

  Got it?

  Okay.

  Back to reality.

  “I was about to call the police to go and look for you,” Aunt Letty said, ushering us into her apartment. “Since I ain’t seen your faces in so long, I almost forgot what you looked like.”

  I thought about my last adventure—a crazy journey into the bowels of the underworld—and realized maybe it would have worked out better if Aunt Letty had sent the police after me.

  Aunt Letty turned down the volume on her stereo as we eased into two worn leather chairs by the balcony.

  She muted the television, which was playing the news.

  Aunt Letty drew hot water from a kettle on the stove and made tea. She carried it into the living room, but Destiny helped her, taking it instead. She plopped down in her chair and put her feet up on an ottoman.

  “Tell me what’s on your mind,” she said, grinning.

  Destiny wagged a finger.

  “Nice try,” she said. “You already know.”

  Aunt Letty pretended surprise.

  “Just tryin’ to keep y’all honest,” she said. “Since you two didn’t bother to visit your dear old auntie for Christmas…”

  Destiny and I gave each other knowing smiles.

  “Couldn’t help myself,” Aunt Letty said. “Looks like the two of you were out saving the world. Now you’re off carrying the weight of the city on your shoulders. Done gone and did it again, huh? Ha!”

  It only took Aunt Letty a few seconds to read our minds.

  Before we could open our mouths to say we needed help, she snapped her fingers and pointed at me.

  “I can’t do what you want me to do,” she said. “Nope.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Allegra da Silva,” Aunt Letty said. The way she said the name, it sounded like she was tasting the name on her tongue. “I like the sound of those Brazilian names. Mmm mmm. Y’all done went and found yourselves an international friend. A friend with all kinds of damn issues.”

  She grinned at us. “You know, doin’ what’chall do best, finding new ways to endanger y’all’s lives.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Aunt Letty snapped her fingers again, silencing me. Then she took a magazine on the coffee table and hit me with it.

  “The hell’s the matter with you, girl?” she asked.

  “Aunt Letty!” I said. “You haven’t even let me speak!”

  “Don’t need to hear a word,” she said. Then she turned to Destiny and hit her with the magazine.

  “You just as silly, girl,” Aunt Letty said.

  “Aunt Letty, stop!” Destiny said,
shielding her face.

  “Darius is the only one among y’all that has any sense,” Aunt Letty said, settling back into her chair. “When he’s the one that’s making sense for a change, y’all need to talk to Jesus.”

  I started to speak again, but Aunt Letty held up a hand.

  “Before you go and try to reason with me, baby, I’m older than you,” she said. “I done seen some shit. More shit than you. So before you try to tell me that you were trying to help this girl, I’ma tell you that you crazy.”

  “Okay, I’m crazy,” I said. “Crazy Aisha, trying to help people again.”

  “You don’t even know the girl, and now you’re running around on misadventures with her,” Aunt Letty said.

  “You didn’t go on misadventures back in the day?” Destiny asked.

  “Naw,” Aunt Letty said. “We did real shit.”

  I pursed my lips.

  “I got to scold you, baby,” Aunt Letty said. “I know foolishness when I see it.”

  I sighed.

  “There you go, closing your mind,” Aunt Letty said. “Baby, I knew you two was gon’ do what you was gon’ do when you walked in the door. I’m just telling you I know better. That’s what this is about.”

  “We’re listening, Aunt Letty,” I said. “But you read my thoughts. You know what’s bothering me.”

  “I ain’t your therapist,” Aunt Letty said, rocking in her chair. “Sometimes this power is a burden. You believe an old demon hunter came up here trying to ask me on a date last week. Lives down the hall.”

  “Ooooh, Aunt Letty,” Destiny said. “What you say?”

  “Shut the door in his face, that’s what I said,” Aunt Letty said.

  “Don’t you want to go on a nice date?” I asked. “I bet it’d be nice to have a man take you out for once.”

  “For what?” Aunt Letty asked. “To buy me dinner? I can pay for my own pork steak, baby. I can fix my own damn light bulbs too. What else you think I make Darius do when he come and see me?”

  “I’ll let Darius know that,” Destiny said.

  “You let him know he owes me five dollars too!” Aunt Letty said. “Last time he came here, he was kissing me on the cheek, sayin’ Aunt Letty, you the best, Aunt Letty, I need some help. Needed to buy some potato chips or whatever. I want my five dollars back! I only get but one check a month, and I just got cable.”

  “He owes me fifteen,” Destiny said. “We’ll beat him up together.”

  Aunt Letty nodded.

  “Now that I’ve loosened your minds up a little,” she said, “you tell me what you plan to do about your little situation.”

  “We don’t know,” I said.

  Aunt Letty pulled a deck of tarot cards out of her breast pocket.

  “Then let's see what I can do about that, huh? Ha!”

  10

  I drew the blinds and Destiny set several candles on the coffee table and lit them.

  Aunt Letty produced a bowl of cinnamon sticks, charcoal, and a prism, and laid them out on the table.

  I drew water from the tap and poured it into a chalice. I set it on the table along with a pentagrammed tablecloth for Aunt Letty’s tarot cards.

  Soon the room was dark, candlelit, and it smelled like burning.

  Aunt Letty’s tarot cards were huge, with blue swirls on the back. The sides of the deck were gold leaf and gleamed in the candlelight.

  “Get me the card shuffler from the entertainment center, will you?” Aunt Letty asked me.

  I grabbed a black automatic card shuffler.

  “Aunt Letty, you’re using a card shuffler for your tarot cards?” I asked.

  Aunt Letty exercised her fingers, folding them in and out.

  “With my arthritis, it just makes it easier,” she said. “It don’t change the readouts any.”

  “I like this,” I said, running my hands over the shuffler’s smooth plastic shell. I set it on the table, and Aunt Letty loaded her cards in.

  The shuffler whirred as it sucked the cards into its depths, rearranged them, and spit them out. The motor faded softly as Aunt Letty slid the cards out and set them face-down on the table.

  Destiny and I sat on our knees around the coffee table, watching Aunt Letty rock back and forth in her chair.

  Taking a little pencil, she started to write in a notebook.

  “What do we want out of this?” she asked. “Give me an intention.”

  “I want a clear way forward for us to help Allegra,” I said.

  “We want to stop people from dying,” Destiny said.

  “So let’s say…hmm…we want positive energy to solve our afflictions,” Aunt Letty said, scribbling on the paper.

  It took her a while to write the sentence down, and we waited. She dipped her fingers in a mound of salt on the table, then a bowl of water, and she tossed a few specks of salt water into the air, stating our intention again.

  Then she took the deck, spread out five cards face-down, forming a cross.

  “Y’all ready?” she asked.

  We nodded.

  She started at the top of the cross and worked her way down.

  “Current situation,” she said.

  An angel with red wings, pouring water from a golden chalice into another golden chalice. Behind her, a footpath through grassy hills leading all the way up to the sun, which was low in the sky.

  “This signifies temperance,” Aunt Letty said.

  She flipped the next card, a picture of four tall wooden wands with ribbons tied around them. A floral wreath connected them. Four of wands.

  The next card: a woman in a long orange dress, hands tied behind her back and blindfolded, standing among a flurry of swords as tall as her. Eight of swords.

  The next card: a cloud-shrouded hand holding a gold coin with a pentagram engraved on it. Ace of coins.

  “This is getting more interesting by the minute,” Aunt Letty said. “I’ll refrain from commenting until—”

  She flipped the final card. A naked woman pouring a water jug into a pond, with a star shining bright behind her.

  “The star,” Aunt Letty said.

  She clapped her hands on her lap, studying the cards intently.

  “Mmm…” she said. “Uh huh. Well, I'll be—okay. All right.”

  I didn’t have a clue what any of this meant. I’d sat through plenty of Aunt Letty’s tarot readings, but I never understood what the cards signified.

  Then again, it wasn’t the cards that were important. It was the intuition of the person reading them. And there was no better person to read tarot than Aunt Letty.

  “Baby, you’ve got something in here that I’ve never seen in you before,” Aunt Letty said.

  She pointed to temperance.

  “You’re resilient, and you’ve been balancing positive and negative energies,” she said. “Most of the time, it’s not your fault, and you’re dealing with situations that come to you. That sounds like you, don't it, Aisha?”

  “Too much,” Destiny said.

  Aunt Letty swept her hand across three cards in the middle of the cross: four of wands, eight of swords, ace of coins.

  “Four of wands: you must work together to make your vision a reality,” she said. “More specifically, all of you on the team got to be calibrated. You ain’t all calibrated. I don’t know who the problem is, but y’all better talk it out. When you do, the risk you take will pay off and be a gift to humanity.”

  I thought quickly about my team.

  Who wasn't calibrated?

  Allegra was fine.

  Destiny seemed okay.

  Darius was mad at me last night. Maybe I needed to talk to him.

  Or was it me that wasn't calibrated?

  Ah, hell.

  Aunt Letty laughed as she pointed at the eight of swords.

  “Eight of swords: this here’s my card. Yes, sir! Always happy to see it show up, especially in the hearts of those I love. What else symbolizes womanhood but a woman tied up and blindfolded, with swords
all around her? Mmm hmmm. Make a wrong step and yo ass is a shish kabob. But keep on steppin’ and you gon’ be battle-tested. More specifically, you’re in the middle of a test, baby. A test bigger than yourself—”

  Aunt Letty’s eyes widened. She must have seen something in my mind. She paused, focused back on the cards, and picked up where she left off.

  “A test…that you don’t understand,” she said. “But remember that every failure is the groundwork for future success. You must eliminate all that doesn’t matter in your mission and focus on the key ingredients. Blindfolded and unable to use your senses, you must develop a heightened consciousness. That consciousness will help you see, see, see what was missing all along. And when you see it? Oh my, you’re gonna wish you had seen it all along. Next up! Ace of coins. Money, money, money, money. Money! You’re always so worried about it, but it’ll manifest itself. Find a way to help people and do your life’s work and the money will take care of itself. More specifically, focus on the here and now. All it takes is a single step to start attracting it to you.”

  She pointed to the final card, the star.

  “This here’s the card we need to talk about,” she said. “You don’t listen to yourself enough. You’re beautiful. Your mind is beautiful. And it’s expanding more every day. But that don’t mean nothin’ if you don’t take the time and listen to your soul. What’s it telling you? Why? You need to ask yourself questions and then get out of the way and listen. All the answers in life are waiting for you if you just ask. More specifically, you took the right step in coming to see me today. You asked. But you’ve got to keep asking. Keep asking the tough questions, and get of your own way and listen. The star is the forebearer of both foolishness and wisdom: they who listen, prosper, and they who do not, suffer in their own ignorance.”

  She rubbed her chin as she looked at the cards one final time.

  “Looking at your mission with this Allegra girl,” she said, “and seeing what was running through your mind as I read your fate, these cards are more important than ever. Don’t go to battle divided, or you’ll be sorry, because the road you walk is full of swords. What awaits you is the abundance you’ve always wanted and asked for. But you’ve got to get in touch with your DIVINE and reach for it! Huh? Ha!”

  She blew out the candles and the room went dark.