Desert Son Trilogy: Desert Son, Wayward Soul, Spiritual Intervention (Books 1-3)

by Glenn Maynard

  The cemetery trio passed out in their respective beds until the clock crept up to the noon hour. These were new people at this point, having slept off the nightmare, remembering only bits and pieces of the prior evening. There was a significant memory lapse, but Brenda did recall having strong thoughts about Martin before she went under.

  “That’s how he does it,” said Adam. “That’s why I do it…just like you did it.”

  How could they argue with that? A first-hand account. First-hand experience. No video monitoring system would hold a candle to that data. As they sat around the kitchen table discussing what had just happened to them, Carter seemed to be worried about how he was going to break the news to Bradley’s parents.

  “Don’t say anything to them,” said Bradley.

  Carter looked at him bewilderedly. “I have to say something. I can’t just not say anything. That would be terrible. If that happened to Adam at your house, then I would want to know immediately.”

  “I was told to say nothing,” said Bradley.

  Carter looked at Bradley, who developed a look of fear in his eyes from the very thought of revealing his secret. He thought about how everyone had seemed to come through this ordeal unscathed, and if he had the opportunity to prevent harm to a child and he ignored the direct message, then he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

  “Told by whom?” asked Carter.

  “Remember what Adam said about thoughts and demands put inside our heads?” asked Bradley.

  “Yes,” said Carter.

  “That’s how it happened here, too.”

  Carter pondered what Bradley had just said. It matched what Adam had told him in the past, and now Brenda was jumping on board with this explanation. Apparently Martin was planting his thoughts in people’s minds and they were carrying out his wishes subconsciously. The same thing was happening with Bradley and Mr. Jenkins next door. It was a secret society of sorts, and it felt to the boys that these spirits were still walking the earth.

  Carter and Brenda seemed to be out of options as to what to do to get this crotchety old man out of their world. They had been so involved in the different realms, but now they needed to shove Martin out of that in-between realm. He needed to go home, and not just to Boulder, Colorado. He needed to go higher than that. He needed to pass over into the afterlife. There was a spot for him there, and he seemed to be avoiding it because Shirley’s soul had been reincarnated.

  Martin needed to understand that Brenda was not Shirley anymore. That ship had sailed. The only thing Brenda had for Martin was intense hatred. That’s all it would ever be. She hated every fiber of his being, and yet he had made it a point to attach to her like the plague.

  Carter looked over and saw Brenda coming back to her normal self. She smiled at him, and now she knew the score. She understood what the old man had done to her. She was no dummy. She was just upset with herself that she had allowed it to happen. That’s what she told Carter, and he wanted to talk her down from the ledge and convince her that it was not her fault. Carter would have acted in the same manner simply because that was Martin’s game, and he had mastered it. That’s why he was able to survive below for so long, and nobody was ever able to put him away for good. It was like he was untouchable, and Carter and Brenda wanted so badly to change that.

  “That son of a bitch,” said Brenda.

  Carter looked at her and could not stop himself from grinning awkwardly. He knew that Brenda was back. She was herself again. She was not only back, but she appeared hungry. She appeared hungry to stop this insanity that was not only consuming her life, but was involving her son. Do whatever you want to Brenda, but do not touch her son. That was the line that she had drawn in the desert sand. She was determined to put an end to Martin.

  When Victoria Oldman from next door came over to collect her son, nothing was mentioned to her about what had happened, and nothing was asked. They felt that it would be best for everybody to leave it at that. They weren’t worried that Bradley would spill the beans because Martin had convinced him that he’d better keep it under lock and key. After all that had happened, Bradley walked out of there without a scratch on him. It was as if he came over, slept, and went back home. That’s how it seemed to Victoria. That’s not how the Spence’s saw it. There was a little more to it than that, but they focused their discussion on the wicked storm that had destroyed the garage.

  . . .

  Once the Spence household returned to normal and power was fully restored, the Oldman’s offered to have Adam stay overnight at their house to return the favor and it would allow Carter and Brenda to get down to business taking care of the storm damage. They did get down to business right away, but it was not what the Oldman’s had in mind when they made the offer.

  “I say we get in contact with Evelyn,” said Carter. “This is getting out of hand and if we don’t get it under control real soon, we’re gonna be burying somebody. Martin is a dangerous man, and he’s doing it in a way that makes him untouchable. He’s obnoxious. He’s evil. I just want to kill him once and for all.”

  “How we’re going to do it is the million-dollar question,” said Brenda.

  They began by taking a walk back to the cemetery to check out the scene. Brenda didn’t even remember going there. She remembered being there, but at the time she didn’t possess the brain capacity to question why she was there or how she had gotten there. If it hadn’t been for Evan and Carter’s intervention, then the trio would have been there overnight, like Adam. Martin liked to work this way.

  They retraced Brenda’s steps to the cemetery on this warm afternoon. It was a little damp after heavy dew the night before. They made it to the grave sites of Sidney and Patricia Spence, and the stones were in pretty good shape after several years of wear and tear from the elements. However, for the first time since Carter has been going to that spot, he did not do so to see his parents. He was there to investigate his parent’s neighbors.

  They now believed that Martin’s parents were possibly buried next to them. Carter was aware that Martin helped his father build the house in Boulder, Colorado, so why would they be buried in Boston? They clearly had some more work to do. Where was the Buchanan family from originally? Were they East Coasters or Mountain Men? How on earth did it come to pass that they became neighbors in the same cemetery?

  “It seems like this wasn’t about your parents after all,” said Brenda.

  “Well,” said Carter, “we don’t know that for certain, yet.”

  “We weren’t facing your parents this time,” said Brenda, “and Adam wasn’t facing them last time. If they really are Martin’s parents, it seemed like he was using us to get to them. We need to search the town records for this cemetery. None of this matters until we’re able to confirm their link to Martin. They strongly suspected that there was a link mainly because of the way Martin brought visitors there twice and the names matched up.

  They returned to the house and then took a car ride into town to the City Clerk’s office, where the death records were available on those who died after 1910 in the United States.

  “I had an aunt who worked with birth, marriage and death certificates back in Iowa,” said Brenda, “and I heard a lot of stories about it.”

  “A lot of stories,” Carter repeated. “What kind of stories could she possibly tell you about records?”

  “Mostly about the accuracy of the records. Some people try to change errors on the death records because there were problems with the informants. They were sometimes too distraught from the death, and sometimes the informant was a stranger, like a nurse in a convalescent home. Sometimes the place of their birth is wrong. Can you imagine that? Sometimes there were reports that the dates of birth and death were wrong. People are human. To
err is human. What can you do?”

  “Well, hopefully that’s not in all cases. Of course, this pathway might be a little sketchy. Already we’re questioning their location. We don’t know if the family is here nor there.”

  “We can only try,” said Brenda. “It wouldn’t surprise me if his parents moved from Boulder to Boston, just like us. It seems as if this was meant to be a life trajectory for both of us. We haven’t confirmed it though.”

  CHAPTER 30

  They made it to the records department and asked the clerk at the desk about obtaining a copy of the death certificate. Her name tag identified her as Ms. Barry. They told Ms. Barry that they just needed to view the certificate, so they did not need a copy to take with them. They would allow this, and that’s all they really needed, so they gave up the names, and waited while Ms. Barry walked through rows of files searching for the death certificates, much like you would search for books at the library.

  The process was not as quick and easy as they had hoped. They waited and paced in circles outside the sliding window. This was barely killing time, but eventually they saw Ms. Barry grab a file and bring it down to a table. They watched as she leafed through certificate after certificate. They needed B for Buchanan. It was happening in slow motion as if Ms. Barry didn’t know a quicker way to do her job. Her leafing slowed to a crawl, then to a complete stop.

  “Here we go,” she said, smiling and sliding the sheet under the window where the ledge dipped down. “I won’t even charge you a rental fee today.” She smiled after she said this and then laughed hard. She laughed alone.

  “Thank you, Ms. Barry,” said Brenda. “We really appreciate this. All we need is about a minute with this document and then you can have ‘er back. Just one query for Ms. Barry.” This time, Brenda laughed alone because Carter was too busy perusing the documents to hear.

  They verified the names on the two certificates and then shot over to the pertinent information. Lance Buchanan was indeed born in Boulder, Colorado. That was a victory in their search for confirmation. Margaret Buchanan was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Another win. That was the Boston to Boulder connection. The path back and forth that Carter and Brenda had been taking all of these years was blazed by Martin’s parents, which went back as early as the year Martin was born in 1924. They were the roaring 20’s all right. Martin’s parents were apparently roaring back and forth along this path for a while now.

  Further examination took them beyond the one minute Brenda had estimated it would take, but Ms. Barry appeared to be fine with it. They noticed that Martin’s parents had died on the same day in 1968, and cause of death was asphyxiation. There was nothing about an autopsy and nothing listed as homicide or foul play, but perhaps back then they didn’t question things as much as they do now.

  Later that day, they did online searches to determine if Martin was possibly connected in any way to his parent’s demise on the same day, but there wasn’t a whisper about him or their deaths. That wasn’t surprising, though, because in 1968 there was nothing online.

  With Adam out of the house, Carter and Brenda were preparing for bed, but Carter wanted to hop on the computer to check a few things out. As he was going through his email, there was a notification about his video monitoring system. It was just details about an extended warranty He wasn’t interested in that, but it brought his eye down to the video monitoring icon at the bottom right corner of his computer. He clicked on the icon.

  Adam’s room consumed his screen. “Brenda,” he yelled out, “get over here and make it quick!”

  Brenda whipped around the corner and was looking at the video feed of Adam’s room. “Oh my God!” she said, “What the hell?”

  As they were observing Adam’s room, the video turned to snow. However, what happened next was probably not something a warranty had ever come across. The snow disappeared, and the video was not showing footage of Adam’s room. Instead, they were showing footage of Bradley’s room next door. They could see the boys sound asleep in their beds.

  Snow soon wiped out that picture too, and Adam’s bedroom returned. It stayed there longer this time and provided more detail than they could ever have imagined, and they were just happy they didn’t randomly go in there to pick up the room or check things out. Carter’s random click was much more than that. They would have walked into a nightmare.

  Carter and Brenda watched in absolute horror as they could see what they believed to be the work of Martin. They didn’t like Martin before, and they liked him even less now. Adam’s bed was in shambles. The box spring and mattress were on the floor, and the bureau was tipped over with a couple of the drawers out. One of the drawers held all of his little knick-knacks that had spilled onto every inch of floor. Across the wall written in red paint or blood was “Martin’s parents always wanted a good son.”

  As Carter and Brenda continued to survey the room, there seemed to be an active entity within the red walls. The windows were open and the curtains were blowing around. That was Martin’s signature move. He seemed to do that as a divergence, as if people would start looking outside immediately. He didn’t know enough to switch it up on occasion.

  They zoomed in on the red walls, and it really seemed like blood dripping down them. It may have been an angry message from Martin since everyone was now aware his parents were buried next to Carter’s parents. The secret was out, but they weren’t sure whether Martin wanted them to know or didn’t want them to know. He did bring Adam there twice, and Brenda once. Although he could have thought that Carter and Brenda would never have gone the lengths they did to resolve his little game. After all, there was no reason for it. What was he getting out of this?

  “That’s the thing about sick minds,” said Brenda, “they don’t need a reason to do whatever they do, as crazy as it is. They think their actions are normal.”

  “You mean to tell me that Martin believes what he’s done is normal? Wow. That guy’s got to go. I guess it works like that whether you’re embodied or not. Crazy is as crazy does. Isn’t that what Gump says in that movie?”

  “Which movie, hon?” asked Brenda.

  “Forest Gump? Obviously you’re not listening to me.”

  “No, it’s not that I’m not listening,” said Brenda, “but we’ve gotta pay attention here. We need to check it out. For God’s sake…this camera is now somehow linked up to Bradley’s room! How is that even possible? What has that maniac done?”

  “No way in hell am I going in Adam’s room,” said Carter.

  “I’m not asking you to, but I do need you to pay attention a little better. Look at what he’s done to his room!”

  “I see it, and I am paying attention, but I was just making a comparison, so calm yourself down.”

  “I’m calm. Sorry, Carter. I’m just…beyond stressed over this right now. I don’t want Adam to spend another night in this house until we figure a way out of this. It’s not a good situation and we need a plan before Adam returns to this house tomorrow.”

  The message on the wall was clear to them. Martin’s parents always wanted a good son. That seemed to be Martin’s way of announcing his presence. The secret’s out. He’s back. He could also be coming clean about his parents in the cemetery. It had to be an unbelievable coincidence that Carter’s parents were planted right next to Martin’s parents. There was no way that Martin could have pre-arranged something like that. Sure he can mess around and do paranormal things. That was what Martin’s specialty had been for years, and he’d gotten pretty good at it. He was a lost soul. He was a wayward soul. He was a jealous and spiteful soul. He was all of those things, but he was no magician. He could not have had a hand in cemetery arrangements over the course of a half century.

  The snow knocked out footage in Adam’s room, once again. Whe
n the snow disappeared, the monitor showed Bradley’s room again, where the boys were now up and horsing around. Carter and Brenda looked at their computer and tried to figure out if the footage was live and whether it was real. What it was to them was horrifying, and Brenda was getting more pissed than worried. She stood up and blazed a trail to Adam’s room, and doing so in a huff.

  “What are you…you’re not going into that room, are you?” asked Carter.

  “Damn right I am,” she said. “Let him get me. I’ll kick his sorry spirit-ass if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Carter got up and followed behind her. He did not agree with her going into the room, but if she tried, he was certainly not going to sit around and watch her do it alone.

  They tried to get in the door and it was locked. Carter remembered that it had been locked from the inside. He tried pounding and there was no give. The door did not even weaken on its hinges. It was a fortress, and Carter knew this when he began pounding, because he had tried this before when Brenda and the boys were stuck on the other side. He was so furious with himself for replacing the door so quickly after hammering it down.

  “I’m going to get Adam,” she said, and began running for the front door.

  “No,” said Carter. “You can’t do that. The danger is here, not there. Keep him there, where he’s safe. Why the hell would you bring him into this war zone?”

  “You’re right,” said Brenda.

  They returned to the computer and there were more red marks on the walls. It appeared to be more words, but they were hard to make out as the dripping was significant. There was a fog in the room, which also made reading difficult, and then they saw a vision that was quite blurry. They both agreed that the vision began to take the shape of Martin’s head, and then his full body, walking from one end of the room to the other before disappearing into the wall.