“Wow…” Corlis repeated. “What a concept!”
“Cool, isn’t it?” Dylan said with a smug smile. “Repetitive patterns get deeply imprinted. Events accompanied by strong emotions or trauma are recorded the most intensely into the immediate surroundings.”
“So, are you saying that what you end up with over the years are kind of like psychic cobwebs clustered inside buildings… or at places like the battlefield at Gettysburg, where there’s just a sense you feel that a lot of people suffered and died at that spot?”
“Exactly,” Dylan nodded. “Think of it as concentrated clumps of static energy—generated in great part by trauma and unseen to the naked eye—that can accumulate in all the corners. A residue, if you will, of psychic debris that gathers over time, and this state of affairs can be especially true inside really old buildings like this one.”
Dylan became lost in thought as he gazed steadily, first in one direction, and then another.
“Well…? What?” Corlis demanded. “Are you saying you can feel leftover tension and—what do you call it—psychic debris in this particular room, for instance?”
“I not only feel it, I can see,” he declared calmly. “The stuck energy in this place of yours stands three feet thick off the walls and feels like psychic molasses. There must have been a lot of mental and emotional anguish going on here since—when were these row houses built?”
“I think King said 1832.”
“Even in the lives of people with the normal ups and downs of living, that accounts for a lot of Sturm und Drang taking place within these walls. Births and deaths happening in these rooms: run-of-the-mill arguments, even physical struggles. All this stuff can generate plenty of psychic caca,” he joked. Then his expression grew serious. “However”—he glanced at her strangely—“I believe you, particularly, would be able to pick up on the energy that’s congealed around here and in other old places around New Orleans.”
“Why me?” Corlis asked apprehensively.
“Because I think you were drawn to New Orleans and to buying this house for a reason,” Dylan replied. “And you’ve probably guessed by now what that is.”
For a long moment Corlis remained silent. Then she said, barely above a whisper, “The minute I saw this place from the street… it felt familiar…”
“The dates are about right,” Dylan said, nodding. “Didn’t you tell me earlier tonight that the first Corlis McCullough was in New Orleans around that time? She could have been a visitor in this room at some point and left her energy imprinted. Perhaps you, her direct descendent and her namesake, simply picked up on it like those extra-sensitive cameras at UCLA you described. Like it or not, Ms. Show-Me-the-Facts,” Dylan said gently, “from what you’ve just recounted to me, you obviously have some psychic abilities of your own.”
“Oh, go on!” she protested.
“No, I’m serious. People inherit blue eyes and bowlegs, don’t they? Have you ever thought that perhaps it’s possible for DNA to pass on—just like blue eyes or brown hair—a few lasting memories to succeeding generations of the McCullough clan, and you simply have an unusual ability to tune in to them?”
Corlis lay her head against the back of the club chair and closed her eyes.
“Oh, wonderful. Just what I need. Inheriting some old relative’s memory bank!” Then she opened her eyes to look Dylan squarely in the eye. “For some reason, I’m sure now that Corlis Bell McCullough lived here in this very apartment,” she said quietly, silently recalling her vision of a young mother padding down the hallway to eavesdrop on a conversation between Randall McCullough and Ian Jeffries that took place over brandy and cigars in a New Orleans parlor more than a century earlier. “I just know it.” Then she tossed a petit point pillow at him and declared, “I want you to space-clear this place—pronto—and then I want to forget all about this weird nonsense, once and for all!”
Dylan, who’d neatly caught the tossed pillow, laid it carefully on the love seat beside him. “From what King told me about you, I figured you might want to do something like that,” he said with a short laugh. He unfolded his long legs and stood to leave.
“You’re going?” she said with alarm.
“It’s late, sugar,” Dylan said in a tone of familiarity, as if they’d known each other for years.
“You mean you won’t help me?” Corlis protested. She sprang to her feet. “You have to help me,” she pleaded. “I mean, I don’t exactly know if I believe all this stuff you’re telling me… or the stuff I’ve been telling you, Dylan, but I’m at my wit’s end!” She began pacing in front of her fireplace. “It’s starting to affect my work… my judgment… my life! Please—”
“Now, calm down, sweetheart,” Dylan said soothingly. “I’ll do a space clearing for you.”
Corlis halted in her tracks. “You will?” She was filled with an enormous sense of relief. “Thanks! Thanks so much!” Then she added in a small voice. “I guess.”
“But what I’ll be doing takes some planning and preparation,” he warned.
“What will you do, exactly?” she asked. “This doubting Thomasina needs a full-on exorcism—okay?”
“All right!” he said, laughing. “But, I don’t just snap my fingers and say, ‘Abracadabra! Entities, beat feet outta here!’” he protested. “I need to make some arrangements. And I’ll need my equipment.”
“What kind of equipment?” Corlis inquired doubtfully. “This isn’t voodoo or anything, is it?”
“Look, now,” Dylan said, gently chiding her. “You asked me for help, and that’s what I’m trying to do.” He looked at her closely. “You’re not accustomed to asking for help, are you, darlin’?”
Corlis was startled by the directness of his question, and something in his voice hinted he already knew her answer.
“No,” she admitted, surprised by how meek she sounded, even to herself.
“Well… it’s about time to seek some shelter in the storm. You could use it. I’ll see you around noon, okay?”
Corlis nodded, thankful he’d agreed to return.
“And before I get here, I want you to vacuum and dust, throw away the garbage, and empty all the wastebaskets. Tidy up any clutter in that office of yours. It makes less work for me.” Corlis looked at him questioningly. “Less extraneous stuff for the built-up energy to cling to.”
Just then Cagney Cat sauntered into the living room and rubbed sensuously against Dylan’s pants leg. Dylan reached down and vigorously scratched the cat’s back near his tail. “It’s okay if this guy sticks around tomorrow. He’ll adore it.”
She felt like giggling at the notion of Cagney Cat, assistant ghostbuster. She escorted her visitor to the front door with her feline trotting along behind. Dylan leaned forward and bussed her on the cheek. “See you at noon tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Dylan,” she said. “I don’t understand very much of this, but I’m grateful you don’t think I’m a mental case.”
“Naw… I think it’s pretty amusing that a person like you should be having things like this pop up in your life right now,” he avowed, his golden-brown eyes twinkling slyly.
And before Corlis could react, Dylan strode down the stairs and walked out the front door into Julia Street. To her amazement, Cagney meowed plaintively. The cat turned on his paws, dashed down the hallway, and scampered into the front parlor. Corlis quickly followed and was startled to see him leap through the open window and onto the iron gallery’s hand railing, balancing there precariously, exactly as he had the morning she’d burned the oatmeal. The twenty-three-pound feline appeared to focus his complete attention on Dylan Fouché while the former priest got into his car and drove off. Then Cagney closed his amber eyes and went to sleep, seemingly undisturbed by the thirty-foot drop to the pavement below.
As for Corlis, she didn’t even attempt to persuade the cat to come inside. Leaving the balcony window open with her pet snoozing contentedly under the night sky, she quickly got ready for bed and prayed for a dreamle
ss sleep.
***
Dylan appeared at the stroke of noon. He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that sported an image of Pete Fountain blowing his clarinet and the words “Jazz Fest ’03” embossed over his narrow chest.
“I thought maybe you’d be wearing a black cape,” Corlis teased, leading the way down the hallway toward the front parlor. He paused at the door to her office and glanced inside.
“Very neat and tidy,” he said approvingly. “Good girl.”
Cagney Cat, who’d been asleep on the love seat where Dylan had sat the previous evening, opened his eyes, stretched languidly, and hopped down onto the Persian carpet. He trotted over to Dylan and rubbed his side vigorously against the man’s pants leg.
“Hey, buddy… how ya doin’?” Dylan drawled. Cagney chirped ecstatically, arched his back, and flopped onto the floor, wanting his stomach rubbed. “What a guy,” Dylan said, laughing. He gave the cat’s vast tummy a playful pat.
“Damn if that cat doesn’t do the exact same maneuver with King,” Corlis said, disgruntled. “He hardly gives me the time of day!”
Dylan just smiled and set down the briefcase he had brought with him. He proceeded to take out, among several items, two small leafy green bundles wrapped in twine. Then he retrieved sticks of incense, a few white candles, a salt shaker, and a bouquet of small daisies.
“What are those?” she demanded, pointing at the green bundles the size of cucumbers.
“Trussed-up sage with some rosemary mixed in,” he informed her. “When this particular herb burns, it helps cleanse the air of psychic pollution.”
“You don’t say?” Corlis commented, deadpan. “I hope the smell doesn’t send me back to the Crusades.”
Ignoring her, Dylan continued. “The candles, salt, and incense aid in consecrating the space for higher, healthier purposes.”
“And what are the flowers for?”
“They’re offerings to the guardian spirits of the house and to the earth it sits on.”
“Whatever,” muttered Corlis, suddenly feeling as if she was getting in way over her head with this woo-woo routine.
“Thanks for your enthusiasm and support,” Dylan replied wryly. “Do you want to purify the objects in the rooms as well?”
“What do you mean, ‘objects’?”
He pointed to the floor. “These Persian carpets, for instance, have a thick crust of psychic crud.”
“This is getting a bit too much for me, Dylan. Those rugs are vacuumed every week!”
“Well, somebody’s extrasensory cooties are still clinging to it, sunshine! It’s got the imprint of a couple of very nasty, greedy folks all over it!”
Corlis thought of the grasping Randall McCullough and his partner, Ian Jeffries.
“Okay! Okay! Clear the rug, and anything else you see lurking around here. But let’s just do it,” she added apprehensively, “and get it over with.” She was due back at the station in two hours.
Without further conversation Dylan snapped the heads of the daisies off their stems and arranged them in three small dishes around lighted candles. He stuck the incense in several holders and lit them as well. Then he asked Corlis to place the offerings around her house—in the parlor, in her bedroom, and the third dish in her tiny kitchen.
Methodically he removed a gold crest ring from his pinkie finger, his watch, his belt with its metal belt buckle, and the metal coins from his pockets, and put them inside her refrigerator. He pointed to a flat gold necklace Corlis wore and asked her to take it off.
“Metal attracts energy,” he explained when she had returned to the front parlor. “It acts as an electrical conductor, which would be counterproductive.”
“Right,” Corlis agreed doubtfully.
“Let’s both wash our hands in the kitchen sink.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Next Dylan took off his shoes. “I hope you don’t mind. I get a better feel for how well I’m clearing the space of negative energy if I walk around the place barefoot.”
“Be my guest,” she nodded. “My shoes are the first thing I take off when I come home.”
He crossed the parlor and pushed open the two large windows that fronted the ironwork gallery facing Julia Street.
“The energy needs a place to go,” he explained. “It can travel through solid objects, but I like to invite it to dissipate and diffuse into the larger atmosphere outside.”
“Sounds perfectly sensible to me,” Corlis said. The truth was everything that had happened since Dylan arrived seemed surreal.
He then took her hand and led her down the hallway toward the front door. To her surprise, they continued down the stairs and stood beside the closed entrance that faced Julia Street.
Dylan paused, shut his eyes, and indicated with a gesture that she should do the same.
“Try to quiet your mind,” he said softly, and began inhaling and exhaling in deep, even breaths. “Silently petition for help with our cleansing enterprise here today.”
“You mean pray?” she asked, feeling uncomfortable even uttering the word.
“Whatever,” he murmured. After a few minutes matching Dylan breath for breath, she felt an unaccountable sense of calm and serenity settle into her chest. “Now open your eyes and stand sideways, like I am. Hold your hand nearest the front door a few inches away from it… like this.”
Corlis did as she was instructed.
“Follow me and begin to stroke the energy field of this door.”
“Do what?”
“Every solid object has an energy field, remember?” Dylan reminded her. “Pretend you’re petting your cat, only not touching him. Stroke the area near the wall, and mentally commit your intention to connect spiritually with your home for the purpose of purifying your living space of old, negative energy generated by past traumas that took place here. Be receptive, Corlis. Listen to what the house has to say to you.”
“I feel kind of silly,” Corlis dared to whisper.
“Don’t waste your energy feeling silly,” he gently reprimanded. “Use it instead to feel the magnetic pulsations left over from the people who lived here before you did.”
Chastened, Corlis did as she was told. Amazingly her palms and fingertips began to tingle slightly, and she sensed a force field flowing around her hand. She followed behind Dylan as he moved counterclockwise along the walls on the ground floor. The sensations she was encountering reminded her of everything from the feel of fine cobwebs to an impression that she was handling thick, sticky molasses—just as Dylan had described earlier.
“Some places feel hot, some cool,” she marveled.
“And some sensations will be pleasant, others, not so pleasant,” Dylan commented softly. “You may even feel dull aches in your bones or a zippy, tingling feeling in your palms.”
Abruptly he began to shake his hands briskly.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Ridding myself of the energy I’m picking up as I travel around the perimeter of the lower floor. This place is loaded with it.”
As an experiment, she sharply gave both hands several hard flicks of the wrist and was gratified to feel the weird sensations course through her fingers and out the tips.
When Dylan arrived at a corner of the room, he raised his hands slightly above his head and clapped downward to the level of his waist, increasing the intensity of his clapping as he got closer to the floor.
“What are you doing?” she demanded in a low voice.
“Clapping out the bad energy sticking to the nooks and crannies,” he explained matter-of-factly, as if his actions were the most normal in the world. As they trudged upstairs to the second-story apartment, Dylan commented, “The living room, the bedroom, and the kitchen are the most important places for us to work on clearing out bad stuff. And don’t let me forget the closets and cupboards.”
Corlis followed in Dylan’s wake around the entire apartment, making a good-faith effort to suspend her normal critic
al faculties and just go with the program as he was urging. To Corlis’s astonishment, she realized that all the while Cagney had been following them from room to room.
When the three of them entered her bedroom, Dylan moved toward the wall behind the huge four-poster and began to clap in sharp, even motions. For no reason she could fathom, a flood of emotion suddenly began to well up in her chest. The next thing she knew, tears were streaming down her cheeks. Worse yet, she felt wracking sobs filling her throat. She saw in her mind’s eye a picture of King’s handsome face—only it wasn’t King’s at all. It was André Duvallon with blood streaming down his cheeks.
“Breathe! Breathe in and out… big breaths!” Dylan commanded, watching her closely. “That’s a girl… Let it go… Let the tears come if they want to… It’ll help the energy move on out… It will pass, I promise you.”
“I—f-feel so s-stupid!” Corlis wailed. “I’m not feeling s-sad for myself… It’s for… it’s like—”
“Letting go? Something passing through?”
“Yeah… s-sort of,” she stuttered. “It’s as if s-something sad that happened here was leaving… dissipating or something. I dunno. This is pretty crazy, Dylan,” she gulped, flashing him a watery smile while reaching for a tissue from her bedside table.
“No… it’s good,” he said quietly. He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a warm squeeze. “Take another deep breath. How are you feeling now?”
Corlis looked around her bedroom and suddenly felt a strange lightness come over her. Then she grinned. “It feels good in here!”
“All clear?” Dylan asked, beaming beatifically.
“All clear!”
Corlis dutifully threw salt into the corners of every room as instructed and followed Dylan throughout the apartment with a lighted sage-and-rosemary bundle laced with juniper berries in her hand. As its pungent, medicinal aroma filled the atmosphere, she remarked in a low voice, “It smells like someone’s getting ready to cook a turkey!”
Ciji Ware Page 25