“Actually, it’s Saturday and I assumed Dan’s car was in the garage. He’s not home?”
“No he isn’t,” said Victoria, who changed her tune when Bradley ran around the corner and appeared by her side to investigate the visitor. Her tune changed from seductive to friendly.
“Dan’s gone to the office this morning, but he’s only working a half day today. He should be home around noon.”
“Oh, great,” said Carter. “Listen…I have a friend who has a paranormal police dog that goes insane whenever he walks by your house. That was a message to me to have him take a walk through your house, especially with all the stuff you said was happening here. That is…if you don’t mind.”
Victoria was a little taken aback by the request, but being as desperate as she was under the circumstances, she agreed to have a spirit sniffer sniff out her house. She wasn’t even sure what Carter was talking about, but still agreed to let it happen if it was a step toward safety for her and her son. Carter turned to face his house from the porch and put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly, and this impressed Bradley enough to smile and pop out onto the porch to see who he was whistling to.
“Evan,” Carter shouted.
Evan came around the corner and walked up Victoria Oldman’s front steps and said, “Hey Carter. Did you call me?”
“Yes, I did,” said Carter, who then whispered that he didn’t have to play dumb since he told Victoria everything there was to know. Then he turned to Victoria and said, “I’d like you to meet your neighbor a couple of streets away. His name is Evan and this is his dog, Skippy.”
Victoria smiled as Evan approached the door with his walking stick and his dog on a leash. As Victoria moved to accept his handshake, Skippy started barking and shot past Victoria and Bradley, racing into the house and barking nonstop. Evan had been holding the leash and was knocked on his ass before losing his hold on the chain. The chain was a heavy one for large dogs, but this big dog was overpowering for an older man.
Victoria assisted Carter in getting Evan back on his feet as Bradley stood back and watched. Once Evan got to his feet, he shuffled past the three of them in an attempt to see what all the fuss was about. His dog’s behavior was outrageous just walking past this house, but now his reaction was twice that.
The rest of the crew followed Evan into the house and Carter closed the door so the dog wouldn’t get loose. They followed the barking upstairs and it brought them straight up to Bradley’s room, and then the barking abruptly stopped. They could hear the dog begin to whimper, so the four of them rushed into Bradley’s room.
“He’s got good instincts with this kinda stuff,” said Evan. Right after he said that Skippy turned his head to the four of them and took off like a shot, aiming for Bradley and knocking the six-year-old boy to the ground right at the doorway.
“Skippy, no!” Evan commanded. “Bad dog.”
Skippy stopped on a dime and bowed down at Evan’s feet, continuing to growl and whimper while looking at Bradley, who moved away from the dog and further into his room. Then Skippy jumped again to go after the young boy, but Evan quickly grabbed him by the collar before he could escape. Skippy squealed as he circled around in the air with his master’s grip on his chokehold. Evan then got to one knee and corralled him, wrapping the leash around his hand several times. “Take the boy out of here so we can let the dog check out this room. He was picking up on something in here, but now it seems the spirit is with the boy. Let’s clear the room first.”
Evan moved the dog into the corner of Bradley’s bedroom using a leash, which enabled Victoria to grab Bradley by the hand and usher him out of the room. They stayed in the hallway as Evan and Carter stayed in the room with Skippy to see where he took them. They wanted to see if the dog would go haywire because this apparently was the room where all things strange took place.
Nothing happened. Evan shook the leash and offered words of encouragement to the dog to use his special gift to go after any spirit within the room. Skippy sat quietly, but kept turning his head toward the door, then back at Carter in an attempt to tell his master that the place is clear.
As they were coming out of the room, the dog jumped at Bradley once again and began growling at him while showing his teeth. The dog did not like Bradley, and everyone seemed to be stymied by this. Luckily, Evan continued to hold the leash tight and the latest sudden outburst was met with enough resistance to withstand such aggression. Skippy continued to lunge at Bradley even with the chokehold on and Evan’s repeated commands for him to obey.
“This is very strange behavior for this dog,” said Evan. Something’s wrong here. Something’s terribly wrong. We have to get out of here and regroup.”
. . .
Carter and Evan returned from the Oldman’s house as Brenda was making them lunch. As they sat down to eat, Carter began telling Brenda about the dog’s wild reaction to Bradley, and Adam listened in during the discussion. Brenda had made sliced turkey sandwiches with lettuce and cheese, and placed a tray of half sandwiches in the middle of the table.
“Never seen Skippy react quite like that before,” said Evan. “We’ve been together for years. Never seen nothing like it. Usually he reacts, but he’s never gone ballistic!”
Brenda placed glasses of cold water on the table. “Are you saying it’s the boy?” she asked. “Skippy is reacting like that to Bradley?” She placed the final glass of water on the table and stopped in her tracks as she awaited an answer.
“That’s pretty much what we’re telling you,” said Carter. “You should have seen it. He wanted Bradley real bad.”
“The doggie’s right,” said Adam.
All eyes turned to Adam. He didn’t say a lot, but when he spoke, people listened.
“What are you talking about, hon?” asked Brenda.
“Mom, do you remember the mud? Do you remember I got mud all over me?”
“Yes, of course,” said Brenda. “How could I forget?”
“I think it’s the man.”
“What man?” said Carter. Evan’s eyes bounced back and forth to keep on the speaker.
“The man next door.”
“Dan? Dan Oldman? Bradley’s father?” asked Brenda.
“Not that man,” said Adam. “The old man.”
The three adults appeared confused as they looked back and forth at each other in wonderment.
“That old man who lived there,” Adam continued. “The J man.” He looked at his father when he said this.
“Mr. Jenkins,” said Carter.
“Yes, that’s the man.”
“What about Mr. Jenkins?” asked his mother.
“I think it’s him.”
“Who’s him? What are you talking about Adam?” asked Brenda.
“That’s who the dog was barking at.”
Carter and Brenda paused and looked at each other.
“No,” said Brenda. “They said the dog was barking at Bradley. They said the dog was clearly barking at Bradley.”
Adam timidly eyed his surroundings, almost as if he was looking for an escape route. He was now forced to talk, but he started off volunteering the information before the listeners made the information important and sought after.
“Do you remember that night when Bradley came to my room and I got all muddy?” asked Adam.
“Yes,” said Brenda. “I remember. What about it?”
“Bradley said a man told him to. The man worked in the garden in the back, and he lived there a long time ago. He said that the old man made him get me to help. There was so much to do and nobody was doing it. If he didn’t do it, something might happen to me and Bradley, so we worke
d hard that night. We got so dirty and tired and slept a lot of the morning.”
Brenda was still standing at the table, Carter and Evan were sitting, but everybody was hanging onto Adam’s every word. “So where was Mr. Jenkins in all of this?” asked Brenda. She wanted to keep the ball rolling as long as Adam was talking because he didn’t do much of that. With all eyes on Adam, he continued to roll the ball.
“Bradley came and got me,” Adam continued. It looked like he was overwhelmed. He was in a trance and spoke in an unusual monotone, staring straight ahead while delivering somewhat of a sermon. “Mr. Jenkins is with him…like Martin is with me. They make us do things and we do what they tell us to do. We have no choice. If we don’t do it, then they make things worse for us, so we do what they say. That’s why I left that night and went to the cemetery. I didn’t want to, but...I was forced to.”
“Where are they?” asked Carter. “Can you see them?”
Adam thought for a moment, looking around at the three seeking a response as if Mr. Jenkins and Martin were there applying pressure for him to say no more. “Sometimes,” said Adam.
“When you hear them speak, do you feel like the voices are inside of you?” asked Brenda.
Again, Adam paused and looked around at them. “They aren’t inside me.”
“Oh,” said Carter, “so they’re in your room and they’re telling you what to do?”
“Yes,” said Adam.
There was a lull in the conversation, and Evan went to the plate. “Adam, can you see this Martin fellow, or do you just hear him?”
“I can hear him, but nobody else can.”
“Is that what happens to Bradley with Mr. Jenkins?”
“I guess so.”
Evan considered his answers thoughtfully, using his experience to ask further questions. “Are you able to hear Mr. Jenkins?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know?”
“I’ve never heard him. He hasn’t been around when I’ve been around.”
Brenda jumped into the questioning. “Adam, honey…what about the night you and Bradley were in the yard. Wasn’t Mr. Jenkins there telling you boys what to do?”
“No,” said Adam. “He wasn’t there when I was there. Bradley talked to him and then came over to get me. He said that I had to help him.”
“Why did you feel like you had to go help him in the middle of the night?” asked Brenda.
“Because if I didn’t help him, then something bad could happen to me just like what Martin says.”
“Did Bradley tell you that?” asked Carter.
“No. He didn’t have to.”
“Why didn’t he have to?” asked Carter.
Adam fidgeted with his hands a little bit and seemed a little bit nervous to reply, but finally managed to answer in a voice that was almost under his breath. “He said that Mr. Jenkins asked him to get me so we could get more done. If Mr. Jenkins is saying it…then it’s like Martin’s saying it, and I didn’t want bad things to happen to me.” Adam’s voice then got even lower; almost like a whisper. “Bradley told me that he feels like he’s sleepwalking, but gets where he’s told to go. The last time he was here in the night…he got in through the garage. That’s what he said. He doesn’t remember much, but he kinda remembered that.”
There was a loud crash upstairs. Everybody stopped for a moment and listened, but Adam seemed to know a little more about it than anyone else, and ran into his mother’s arms with a look of terror in his eyes. He was shaking while his mother was attempting to calm him by telling him that everything was going to be okay. She tried to console him with scientific explanations, but he didn’t believe it, nor did she, and his reaction remained.
Carter cautiously made his way up to Adam’s room and confirmed that the bookshelf had tumbled to the floor. The books that weren’t smothered by the shelf when it fell were scattered about the floor. Carter looked around the room to see if he could see or hear any other activity, but nothing else happened, so he picked the bookshelf up and restored the books to the shelf. It was a solid bookshelf and that had never happened before. He returned to the table and downplayed what had happened, but he wasn’t even buying what he was selling.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Something fell on the floor up there. Not a big deal.”
“Where were we?” asked Evan, who knew that it was a big deal and wanted to get off the topic. He looked at Carter, trying to read the level of concern on his face. He could see the disguise as well as he could with Brenda. Adam had settled down a bit, which was enough for Evan to handle the tense situation at hand.
“Adam,” he began, “I’ve been around this stuff during my life, not so much as an officer, but more so as an interest of mine. Now you have to trust me and you have to tell me exactly what’s going on in your life as far as the voices are concerned. Listen to me. These voices will not go away unless you do something about it. You can start by letting us know how it works…what happens when the voices come to you, and what do you see, hear…feel?”
Evan paused to look at Adam for any sort of reaction, but got nothing, so he continued. “They tell you not to say anything because they don’t want anybody to interfere with what they’re trying to accomplish, which is to terrify little boys like you and Bradley. Maybe their intentions are less terror and more general messages, but here’s the deal…these are the spirits of people who have died and have not passed on to the afterlife. If you tell us what is going on, then we can try to help them get to that afterlife. That’s where they belong and they just don’t know it sometimes. They’re stuck in the in-between and we need to help them. That’s all this is. Now…they may tell you otherwise, but that’s because they are scared, or they just don’t know that they’re dead yet.”
“It’s okay, honey,” said Brenda, and Evan held his hand up to her without looking at her or saying anything as a message to limit the number of voices Adam was hearing.
The same crashing noise blasted the upstairs, which did a number on Adam’s nerves, and he began to cry again, still within his mother’s arms, and squeezing harder.
“It’s okay, Adam,” said Evan. “It’s just noise. Don’t let that voice scare you. It’s just a voice. Is he speaking to you now?” he repeated.
Adam did not answer, but the look of anguish on his face said enough.
“Adam, is Martin speaking to you now?” Evan repeated.
Adam remained in his mother’s arms. She was standing next to the kitchen table and Adam was standing and facing her with his arms wrapped around her waist. His profile showed his anguish as his head moved up and down. Martin was indeed speaking to him then and there, but he wasn’t offering more than a nod, so Evan pushed the issue as they could not have been any more in the moment.
“Adam, what is it that Martin is saying to you?” He asked.
There was no reply, but Adam squeezed his mother as if he wanted the questioner to go away as much as he wanted the voice to go away.
“Adam, remember what I said about helping yourself?” Evan continued. “You need to let us in. You need to talk to us about what’s going on. You can’t like the way this feels. You need to let us into this world of yours and let us help.”
Adam slowly turned to Evan, while still holding onto his mother, who was clutching him tightly. He stretched his neck far in order to face Evan head on. More things crashed upstairs in Adam’s room, but Adam had already reached his terror threshold. Martin was trying hard to rattle his cage, apparently in an attempt to keep him from talking, but Evan had different thoughts.
“Adam,” he said, “talk about it now so we can help you today. Let us know what’s going on and what that man is
saying, so we can push him back where he belongs in the afterlife. Adam, if you don’t, it could hurt you more. He could…I don’t know how to say this nicely, but he could…take over your body.”
Adam finally spoke. “What do you mean he can take over my body?” His voice quivered as he spoke.
“That voice that you’re hearing? That’s Martin’s voice that’s outside your body. If he gets inside of your body, then he can take you over…the voice would move inside your body and take over.”
Evan was trying to stress to Adam the importance of him speaking to them and revealing everything that he knew. They needed it all. Adam was sitting at the kitchen table, commanding the room, revealing secrets that only he knew, and everybody was hanging onto his every word.
“I don’t want Martin to do that! I’m scared! What do you need?”
Evan smiled calmly as if he had Adam where he wanted him. “For starters…why did you go to the cemetery that night when you had half the world looking for you?”
Adam remained silent.
“Adam?”
“Martin told me to.”
“Why? Why did he want you to go to that spot in the cemetery at that time?”
“He said it would be good if I did it when everyone’s asleep.”
Evan sat back in his chair and took a deep breath, and let it out gently as he geared up for the direction this conversation was heading. “Why did you do it?” he asked.
“I said I was scared that he would hurt me,” said Adam. “I don’t remember going there. I don’t know how I got there. I didn’t know that I ended up at the place where my grandparents were.”
“Why didn’t you come home afterwards?”
Adam looked scared. “Martin told me to stay there until he said I could return, and if I went home he would do something bad to me and my family.”
“Does Bradley also get threats? Does Mr. Jenkins threaten him like Martin threatens you?”
Desert Son Trilogy: Desert Son, Wayward Soul, Spiritual Intervention (Books 1-3) Page 62