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

by Glenn Maynard

  “Did you see that?” Carter asked.

  “I sure did. I’m shaking now,” said Brenda.

  “We need to find a way to shove Martin into the afterlife. He’s scary and he’s dangerous. We’re not going to sleep at night until we take care of this. We really need to contact Evelyn. I don’t really know of another way. Do you?”

  “No,” said Brenda. “I think you’re right. Evelyn does seem like our only option, and it doesn’t get any more paranormal than that. I mean…think about it. She said she was going to try to get in touch with her deceased son? I know she’s good and all, and she has tons of experience, but her suggestion was pretty bizarre. Of course, she made no guarantees, but we really need to do something extraordinary because this psychopath has been following us for years.”

  “Yeah,” Carter agreed, “and he’ll follow us around forever if we do nothing about it. Look, there he is again!”

  Martin’s apparition was clearly defined. There was no question as to who that ghost-like figure was in Adam’s room. Adam had never mentioned that he saw anything. He only said that Martin planted messages in his head and sometimes threatened him. Maybe one of the threats was to never mention that he sees Martin. Imagine the fear someone like Martin could put into a six-year-old child? He is gutless!”

  They watched as Martin made his way through the room. He looked a bit lost, which he was, but it looked as though he was looking for Adam. The apparition of the old man appeared to be pacing through the room and walking in and out of the closet. He appeared to be bothered by the fact that Adam was not in his room that night. Perhaps he thought his vehicle was never again going to return.

  The camera turned out to be an invaluable investment because it got them much more than they could ever have imagined. Now it was picking up Martin’s spirit as an apparition. This was scary as hell for Carter and Brenda, yet it was exhilarating as well. If nothing else, they had the proof that they had been trying to nail down for Evelyn, should they need her assistance, and now they badly needed it. She would hopefully be able to watch the video and sense things, or get vibes or readings, and figure out a way to deal with Martin. They would reach out to Evelyn and go from there.

  Martin continued to pace around Adam’s room, occasionally doing a disappearing act. Something was clearly wrong with this unsettled spirit, and Carter and Brenda believed it was due to Adam’s absence. He no longer had control of what meant the most to his ex-wife. He knew where to hit her the hardest, but with that option gone, he was wearing out the panic button.

  The air began to thicken in that room and the red drippings down the walls increased dramatically. The curtains sporadically moved about viciously and violently. They jerked and ducked in an angry way. How dare Adam be away when he was needed! He should always be available to the king. Objects began flying around the room and crashing into the walls.

  The screen turned to snow again, then flashed over to the Oldman’s house and to Bradley’s bedroom. There was nobody in the bedroom. Carter and Brenda were not concerned because they both had somehow been roused from their sleep and it happens to kids. They get excited during sleepovers with friends. There was nothing to be concerned about as they probably had just gone downstairs to get a snack. However, when the snow returned, and the camera footage again showed Adam’s room, Adam and Bradley were in it.

  “Holy shit!” said Carter. “Did you see that?”

  “How the hell did they slip by us?” asked Brenda.

  “Ask yourself that,” said Carter, “because you did that just the other day.”

  Carter was right. Brenda had performed that disappearing act just the other day. Are their guards so far down that they do not see the comings and goings of things before them? It was preposterous. If attention to detail was ever necessary, then this was the time. There were two times when Martin escaped with Carter’s family members. The first time was with Adam. The second time was with Brenda, Adam and Bradley. Things happen in threes, and this time Martin was able to smuggle the boys in to the nightmare taking place within the confines of Adam’s bedroom.

  “Son of a bitch!” That’s all that Brenda could muster. She was so over Martin. He was clever, sly, artsy, and passively evil at times. There was nothing that they could do but watch. The speaker was no longer an option. The two boys were in Adam’s room now and there was nothing they could do about it.

  Suddenly, curtains fluffed out and shades jolted up and down. Items from the dressers launched through the air. The red drippings began shooting out of the walls. Adam was walking across the room and slipped on the red and went head over heels, landing very hard on his butt.

  “We have to get Evelyn on the phone. Now!” said Carter.

  Brenda looked away from the monitor and then into Carter’s worried blue eyes. “We don’t have a choice, so let’s do it now!” she said.

  Brenda ran for the phone and placed a call to Evelyn. Her hands were trembling, making it difficult for her fingers to land on the right numbers, and she had to start over several times. She began hyperventilating and sweating. Martin had somehow nabbed her kid while he was sleeping over next door. There was no telling what he would do, but she needed to get her child back as soon as possible. She knew Adam had to be petrified in that chaotic bedroom, and her mind was so far out of control that it was hard for her to think.

  The phone was busy, so Brenda kept hitting redial as Carter kept a watchful eye on the goings on in Adam’s bedroom.

  “Son of a bitch!” she yelled. “Get off the God damn phone, Evelyn!”

  She continued her frantic redials. Adam was standing off in the corner with his arms folded. He looked terrified, and had never been exposed to anything as menacing as this.

  Adam stood still and watched the apparition of Martin continue to move about the room. Even though Adam was there now, Martin was still buzzing around the room. The way he moved in a line and abruptly stopped and bounded in a different direction like a bumper car was haunting. The look on Adam’s face expressed sheer terror.

  There was no use trying to get into the bedroom. They had tried that several times, but Martin sometimes sealed the door. They could only watch and wait as Brenda continued to hit redial on the phone. Adam was not being hurt, but he was scared, and they had seen enough of this. They were going out of their minds trying to watch what was happening before their eyes without being able to do a damn thing about it. They were terrified of the outcome, but they continued to press forward and seek help that they could not themselves provide.

  CHAPTER 31

  “Evelyn!” Brenda finally got through and then wasn’t even sure what to say. “This is Brenda…of Carter and Brenda. We met the other day and we were talking about Evan and the son you had together.” Her voice trembled as she spoke and she very nearly dropped the phone.

  Brenda listened for Evelyn’s short recognition, then began stating her reason for the call. “Carter and I are in trouble. Actually, our son is the one in trouble. He is being haunted by Martin as we speak.” Brenda was so upset hearing it aloud that she began to sob, but knew right then that she had to recover quickly for the sake of her son. “He had been sleeping over the next door neighbor’s house when Martin got him to return to his room, where he had been waiting for him.” Brenda paused to breathe. “We wanted to give you as much information about Martin because we need you to help us. When we spoke that day, you told us that you would try to reconnect with your son and possibly find a way to drive Martin away. We need your help with this now! Please!”

  Carter continued viewing the computer screen as Brenda tried securing help from Evelyn. They could not lose sight of the fact that their son was being terrorized, so Carter paid more attention to his computer than he did to Brenda’s phone call, but he did attem
pt to keep an ear trained on the call. Suddenly, Bradley appeared in the screenshot and he was crying. The condition of the room was frightening enough, but then he was suddenly transferred from his own bedroom to Adam’s bedroom. This was his first encounter with Martin. He had heard so much about him, but had yet to be formally introduced.

  When Martin swirled his way through the room like a tornado, both kids backed up and leaped up on the bed, panicked and crying. They were both looking around the bedroom and jerking their heads back and forth to keep an eye on the evil spirit. Carter jumped up and ran for the bedroom door, but all of the pounding in the world did little to breach that entrance. He knew it, but he could only watch for so long without making an attempt to free the youngsters. He felt so hopeless not being able to do anything about it.

  As Brenda spoke with Evelyn, she relayed all of the pertinent details of the case involving Martin. She mentioned every connection that Martin had with her son, and began to feel additional urgency. “Can you come here now? We need you now, Evelyn. The boy next door is also trapped, and we need some sort of intervention now!”

  Brenda listened as Evelyn calmly spoke. After receiving an earful, she formulated a plan with every detail she extracted from Brenda. She asked for specifics, and had follow-up questions for everything Brenda had offered. She seemed to know what she was doing from all the years of experience working with Evan. It was her natural ability and keen sense of how to proceed which had drawn Evan to her, and although it did not end well, it was a relationship that was golden on a professional level.

  Although Evelyn dragged her feet at first, she realized how dire the situation was with two boys who were the same age as her son when he died. Evelyn and Evan went their separate ways, but neither of them ever got over their son, and Carter and Brenda realized then why Evan was such a frequent visitor, and had been ever since he joined the search party that morning to search for Adam, the lost six-year-old boy he had perhaps heard about on his scanner that morning.

  Evelyn was about 20 minutes away from their house, so all that Carter and Brenda could do was sit very tight and monitor Martin and the boys on the computer, hoping that nothing went terribly wrong before help arrived. They both watched as Martin continued to move about the room in dark shadows, sometimes revealing his face. He didn’t want to lose control of the room for a moment, and wanted to ensure that the boys didn’t lose sight of who was in charge.

  The two boys huddled by Adam’s bed, afraid to leave each other’s side because of the man who seemed to go out of his way to make anything Brenda, or having to do with Brenda, miserable. He sucked the life force out of anybody he was after. He had done a number on Carter and Brenda, and now Evelyn was racing over there to prevent him from doing much of the same to the kids.

  The speaker popped on and off, and then on again, although the microphone was still not working. There was no communication into their world, but at least they had an ear on the room. Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be very helpful because the only noise coming from the room was a low drone. There were also sounds like swirling wind which created eeriness in the audio. The speaker produced intermittent static, which broke up the droning. Only a couple times did they hear Martin’s voice, but when they tried to speak into the microphone, Martin’s voice came out, and the message was different than the one they were trying to deliver. They couldn’t figure out what it was that Martin was trying to do.

  By the time Evelyn banged on the door, twenty minutes had passed and nothing had changed. That was perfect as far as they were concerned. Status quo. They just needed nothing to happen for the 20 minutes that it took Evelyn to arrive. They were so grateful to have her assistance on short notice. They were stuck and didn’t know who else to turn to.

  When Evelyn arrived, she pulled off her gloves, took off her coat and fixed her red lipstick with a Kleenex that she had extracted from her pants pocket. Brenda had left her round make-up mirror on the kitchen table, and Evelyn made use of it.

  “Oh…hi!” she said. “I hate smudges. Can’t work under those conditions. Gotta be 100% on point.”

  “Fine…fine,” said Carter.

  Although she wasn’t aware of it, she was far from 100% from Carter’s angle. The Kleenex had created more smeared red marks, but they were much lighter on the family-of-red scale. He could also see that a lot of spirits had sucked the life out of her face. They were not your average wrinkles. They were hardcore wrinkles on a pasty-white face. That might very well have been the reason Evelyn was balking at helping Carter and Brenda. She didn’t want to return to the cause of those wrinkles. She had hung up her skates, but based on the circumstances that were presented to her, she was convinced to come out of retirement for one more.

  This final paranormal shot was probably ill-advised by more than a few because it was more than she could handle due to her medical condition. One of the many reasons she hung up her skates all those years ago was that it was taking a toll on her health. She had been diagnosed with a heart condition and had to maintain a reserved lifestyle. That would not entail paranormal investigations, so she had to leave that part of her life many moons ago because it was literally sucking the life out of her.

  The visit to her house one evening, a handful of nights ago, restarted what the doctor did not order. This got Evelyn thinking, and over the next several days she was consumed by thoughts of reintroducing herself to a possible paranormal investigation. She thought that it would be nice to return for a one-shot deal and help a six-year-old boy in need.

  She mostly did it for selfish reasons, which had more to do with reuniting with her own six-year-old son. He was six years old when he left her and he would still be that six-year-old boy when they reunited, whether now, which was seven years after his death, or if her heart condition worsened, if that was indeed how she passed.

  Evelyn sat down at the monitor with Carter and Brenda as they showed the current scene with shadows and smoke and apparitions of Martin as he terrorized the boys. She watched with no reaction on her aged face. The haunting footage that they replayed didn’t overwhelm Evelyn. Apparently, she had seen much worse. Her face then began to brighten as it appeared she knew where she was going to take this investigation.

  Evelyn dismissed herself and sat on a couch in the living room, saying she needed to meditate on that realm she was trying to reach. She briskly walked over to the living room couch and sat down, pulling her feet up and tucking them in so that she could sit Indian style. She asked for complete silence before she started.

  Evelyn began with a low humming noise. She had only asked for details about what was happening on Carter and Brenda’s end, but there was nothing coming back to them as far as her plan of action. They were at her mercy, and that was the best and only thing Evelyn could do. Who would argue with the only person in the world who could possibly help their child? It remained to be seen. No cards would be shown. Evelyn rarely showed her cards, but the technique was successful in the past, so it would be welcomed with open arms here.

  “Let me tell you something about myself and how I work, and listen up because it’s very important,” said Evelyn quickly. “I don’t know if you spoke with Evan about my work ethic or how I go about my business, but if you hear nothing else, listen to what I’m saying now.”

  Evelyn then connected with Carter and Brenda’s eyes to make sure she had their full attention and would get their full cooperation. Her red lipstick was popping, and she was ready to go into battle. She mentioned that she always got dialed up to go into this realm because “you never know when you’ll meet a nice man.”

  “Do not disturb!” Evelyn repeated it. “Do not disturb! If you think I’ve crossed over and I’m in trouble because of my screams or body language, then what are you gonna do?”

  Carter and Brenda looked at each o
ther, unaware that this was a question and answer session.

  “Do not…disturb,” said Carter.

  Brenda was more taken aback than anything. She wasn’t sure if Evelyn was being serious or not, but she had to believe that she was being serious and not burn any bridges. She was certainly abrasive.

  “Sometimes you’ll see twitching,” said Evelyn, “and sometimes I’ll shout as if someone is killing me. Don’t disturb me. It’s all part of the process, and especially if there are evil elements out there. I might get doused with evil and try to filter it out with my earth capsule, or my body…that’s what the earthlings call it.” Evelyn then laughed hard, looking at her audience with steely eyes. She thought that was so funny, and it appeared to be her number one joke. However, it was only funny to her. Carter thought she was a nut job, and the look on Brenda’s face matched his assessment, but she was the only one who possessed what they needed.

  “So I’m gonna have you both stay back where you are in the kitchen. You can stay seated where you are and let me do my thing here in the living room. I don’t mind if you watch, but remember, this is not interactive. What are you gonna do if I appear to be in trouble?”

  “Do not disturb,” Carter and Brenda said together.

  “Very good,” said Evelyn. “And if you do…the experiment’s over and I’m going home. Now without further ado…no more ado…of the further variety, I’ll just get started here and see what I can do for you. I’m a tad rusty, but it’s like riding a bike.”

  “You never forget,” said Carter.

  “No,” said Evelyn, “ut-uh, it just takes so much outta you that it makes you too tired…get it…two tired?” Evelyn laughed harder than ever. She had a wacky sense of humor during such a critical time. Carter and Brenda were just thankful that there was a lull in Adam’s bedroom.