The Haunting of the Gemini

by Jackie Barrett

  On the way home, I decided to take a detour. I suddenly felt the need to go to church. I wanted to confess the murderous thoughts I’d had in my head last night. I wanted to confess what Eddie had made me think. Will took a seat in a back pew to wait, and I walked into a confessional booth. Although I’m a religious person, we’re not much for going to church—I believe God lives in every person, in the human soul, not just in buildings—so going to confession was a very unusual thing for me. But then, so was walking the streets of Manhattan hoping to kill someone. So, I thought, why not?

  The priest walked into his side of the confessional, and I kneeled down. “Father, I have a confession. Something got in me and I thought of murder—” He interrupted me by striking a match. A puff of cigarette smoke wafted through the mesh screen between us.

  I knew immediately that this was not going to go as planned.

  “Well, my child. Did you feel good? Or did you deny yourself?” he asked. His face pressed against the screen as I heard his pants unzip. He jerked back and forth. My hand went slowly to the doorknob but my eyes stayed on him. As I watched, his face became a demon—the wet, gray skin; the sharp features; a crusty substance in the corners of his mouth. He looked like a corpse. “You’re right, Jackie, you’re never alone. And this place is solace for all. It wouldn’t exist without me. Now come and sit on my lap. Let me impale you. Touch me, Jackie.”

  I threw open the door on my side and yanked open the door on his. A priest sat there who looked nothing like what I had seen through the mesh screen. Startled, he jumped up and demanded I remove myself from the house of God. I backed away and looked around the church. All of the statues seemed to be grinning. The devil could find me anywhere. I could lock him away in one place, and he would come after me in another. I felt very tired.

  FOURTEEN

  Every night now, I prayed for sleep. It had been more than two and a half years since Patricia first thrust herself into my life. My body was tired and worn, my eyes heavy, my thoughts scattered. I was holding on to a thin thread of sanity, and I knew it could snap—I could snap—at any time. I was at the point where I looked forward to exhaustion, hoping for that kind of deep, heavy sleep. Maybe then I wouldn’t remember any details that would affect my waking hours. Maybe then I wouldn’t remember the nightmares.

  One night, when I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, I found myself inside what looked like an abandoned warehouse, with dusty floors and shattered windowpanes. I could hear the wind blowing but couldn’t feel it touch my skin. I walked slowly toward the center of the room and felt like I had passed an invisible line.

  One step: nothing.

  Two steps: the same.

  Three steps: I’m not alone.

  Four steps: I’m home.

  And the room came to life. Or should I say death?

  I saw two rows of white candles, making a perfect circle. Their flames swayed in unison. I stood just outside the ring of fire. And then that ancient book of spells slid out from a dark corner along the concrete floor and hit my bare foot. The candles flared, making the dark shadows around the circle dance fiercely. The book opened with a fury, and pages marked with the devil’s ink flew out. Encrypted letters, symbols of the zodiac, the sign of the Gemini traced in blood—a scrapbook of murder and mutilation. The pages steadied themselves like a magic carpet would and then launched forward onto the walls around the flaming circle. I heard moans of ecstasy mixed with the sounds of a woman gurgling and choking on her own blood.

  The walls turned to silken curtains, and I saw the tall man in black emerge slowly from behind them, directly across the circle of candles from me. He was dressed as usual, his hair perfect, his eyes like lit coals. As though performing a twisted striptease, he first poked one booted foot and a bloody knife into view, then stretched his arm out and made a fist. I could hear the leather of his gloves crackle.

  “I am the Lord of Death, and this is your party. I will swallow your sins, Jackie, and drink from your throat, banishing you from this world once again.” The book pages on the walls fluttered as he spoke. “You stand upon the burial grounds of the crossroads. The night belongs to me. Your name has been written on my arrow, spelled out e-n-e-m-y. You can’t stop what has been prophesied. Satan’s powers!”

  I was unable to move or speak. He walked through the candle fire, disturbing not a single flame. He stopped in the middle of the circle and drew his mask out of a back pocket. He threw it on the floor and asked me if I liked to watch. I still couldn’t speak.

  He turned from me and began to slowly dance in place, now holding something in his arms. I could see a bloodstained sheet—a body wrapped up, the arms and feet dangling out, lifeless. I caught a glimpse of the head and knew then that it was a woman. He saw that I had seen, and the evil laughter roared from his mouth like a lion. He laughed and he danced, dragging her body around and around like a rag doll.

  I could not turn away. I kept looking and saw a flash of something on her foot. It was a toe tag, the kind used on bodies in a morgue. I squinted, but the flickering candlelight and his quick movements made it impossible to read. He laughed at me again.

  “You’re trying to read the name, aren’t you?”

  He dropped the limp body on the ground, leaped to my edge of the circle, and grabbed me by the neck. He shoved the tag in my face and ordered me to read it.

  Jane. Jackie. Patricia.

  DOA.

  The limp body on the floor changed from a woman to a child. And then, in a flash, I was that body, wrapped in the bloody sheet and held in his arms. I looked outside the circle and saw two little girls sitting there. One was me, the child Jackie, the girl I had been when I died on the operating table, my Forever Guardian. The other wore a yellow raincoat. They both moved as if to flee.

  “Run!” I screamed at them. “He’s going to kill you!”

  “I already did.” His fetid breath overwhelmed me as he whispered in my ear. “You can come back, and so can I. You’ll never find that escape hatch, those golden gates to heaven. You’re in my world now.”

  His world glowed and crackled with fire. But over the flames, I began to hear a low growl, coming from beyond the circle. He dropped me like I was nothing but a bag of bones and turned. The growl became a roar, and then its owner broke through the ring of fire and attacked. The beast ripped into the devil’s arms as candles went flying everywhere, setting the walls on fire. I tried to escape, but the inferno was too great. I heard the devil scream.

  “I’ll be back, you damn bitch. There is only so much you can eat and take in, Jackie, before you explode or become one with me.”

  I knew what he meant. My work has always involved taking in evil from others in order to free them. It was finally catching up to me. The flames were getting closer.

  But instead of heat, I felt coolness. The beast was beside me, licking me and jumping like a long-lost dog come home. And he had. It was my spirit guide, the Blackfoot wolf spirit assigned to me at birth. His painting hung on my bedroom wall, and I often spoke to him about the lost souls I encountered in my work.

  He moved slightly and I saw the leather cord around his neck, partially hidden in his thick, gray fur. It was the one my father’s father—the great medicine man—had used to put my mojo bag around my own neck.

  I had not been forsaken. Thank God. I quickly grabbed the cord from around the wolf’s neck. I knew to hold on and jump with him out of this nightmare. We leaped together, and I awoke back in my own bed. In my hands, I clutched my mojo bag, which I had certainly not taken to bed earlier. I sat up in bed and smiled at my wolf painting on the wall. The painted wolf’s head seemed to tilt and his eyes to glow. We had made it back. Things were going to be all right. I tossed back the covers and swung my bare feet onto the floor. Something tugged at my toes and I looked down. A thin, yellowed cord was knotted tightly around my big toe. I swore and tried to pull it off, but it wou
ld not come untied. I raced to the kitchen and dug in a drawer for the scissors. They worked, thank goodness, and I pushed the cord into the sink garbage disposal—which was the nearest thing I could find—and ran water to flush the cursed thing away.

  My rare moment of peace was gone. The exhaustion from my night of terror hit me hard. The smell of rotting death remained in my nose and worked its way down into my throat. I ran for the bathroom and leaned over the toilet, trying to cough it all up. Nothing happened, and the taste in my mouth grew worse. I went to the sink, grabbed my toothbrush, and went at my teeth as hard as I could. Foamy paste-and-blood bubbles swirled down the drain as I spit and rinsed. My smile was now white and shiny, but I knew as I stared at my sorry self in the mirror that it was only a superficial cleansing. The evil was still there.

  I stopped trying to smile. The minute I closed my lips, the blood came back, tasting metallic in my mouth. My lower teeth felt tight, like there was something caught in them. I pulled a small flashlight out of my vanity and used the beam to see back toward my molars. I spotted what looked like a piece of bloody floss—but I had only brushed, not flossed! I grabbed the end and pulled to get it out from between my teeth, and the pain hit me like a shock wave. What the hell?

  Dazed by the pain, I turned away from the mirror—and there she was. My roommate. My soul sister. My dead partner.

  “Let’s see, Jackie,” Patricia giggled as she moved toward me.

  I covered my mouth with one hand and pushed her with the other, yelling, “You’re crazy! Leave me alone!”

  She slapped my hands away. “How dare you call me crazy! I’m not going back to that nuthouse, not without you!”

  She smacked my hand away from my mouth and with the strength of ten men—or one crazy dead lady—pulled my mouth open. Her gray fingers had bits of flesh missing and cracked brown nails. I gagged as she forced them into my mouth and began to pull. She shouted out with success as I felt her grab the floss. I stopped struggling and stood still in the hope that would end this whole thing more quickly. Our eyes met, and for a split second, I saw empathy in the black holes where hers had once been. Maybe it was for me; maybe it was for herself.

  Then the rage returned and she gave a tremendous yank. The pain blew through me as she held up what she had ripped from my mouth. It wasn’t floss at all. It was the cord. From the toe tag. Blood dripped from my mouth as if I’d gotten socked in the face. I clutched my jaw and felt a tooth wiggle back and forth.

  Naturally, Patricia thought this was funny. She shook the bloody cord in my face. “You tried to eat your death away,” she laughed.

  That did it. I lunged for her. We pushed and shoved in my tiny bathroom, twisting and turning until I pinned her against the sink. I was facing the mirror and her back was reflected in the glass. I saw my face and the back of what was supposed to be her neck. But it was my neck, complete with my tattoo, a representation of my voodoo spirit doll that protects me—what I don’t see coming, it will.

  Well, I hadn’t seen that one coming at all. Damn. I turned Patricia around slowly so that we both faced the mirror. We both looked like me. We had on the same clothes, same hair, same face. I was the only one bleeding, though. And her expression was different. I was out of breath. She was calm and studying me.

  I swung her back around toward me and yelled, “What do you want from me?”

  “I want to live,” she yelled back.

  No way. I pushed her away, and she hit her back against the sink counter. She didn’t flinch, but I felt a sharp pain in my spine. I quickly realized that anything I did to her would only hurt me. We were becoming one. We faced off, staring at each other—or rather, I stared at myself.

  “Get out, or I will cut you out,” I finally shouted.

  She retreated into the corner, her eyes still locked with mine, and turned back into the dead woman with her gray skin and stringy hair.

  “My name is Patricia,” she whispered. “Someone killed me, and no one cares.”

  What was I going to do? My heart ached for her.

  “You care, Jackie,” she pleaded. “We can live together, go out and get guys . . .”

  And then she threw in stuff like that, wanting me to live her freewheeling, party-heavy lifestyle. I pulled my own hair in frustration. She grabbed her head in pain. Well, at least it went both ways. I forced my thoughts to a stop. What was I doing? Trying to hurt a ghost? Trying to reason with a vision? I was losing my mind. This wasn’t real. I pushed past her and ran into my bedroom. She followed me, leaped onto my bed, and started tossing a red ball into the air like a child.

  “Where did you get this?” I grabbed the ball from her.

  “Stop yelling at me,” she pouted.

  “Patricia, where did you get this from?” I got in her face. “I need to know.”

  She stuttered as she backed away from me. “A little girl gave it to me. I see her, too.”

  What?

  “You know, she was killed, too,” Patricia said. “She told me so. Yep, she told me so. She whispered it right in my ear. A man killed her.”

  As she spoke, her words seemed to get further and further away, like they were echoing in my empty tunnel. My vision blurred, as though I were looking through a kaleidoscope, and in the middle stood this child in a yellow raincoat . . . waving . . . blowing out candles on a birthday cake . . . waving again . . .

  The kaleidoscope twisted and the picture changed . . . a man now, dragging her away . . . tiny cries piercing my ears . . . the man, dropping her somewhere in the woods . . . turning toward me . . . closer and closer. Tilting his head from side to side and then squatting down, looking directly into the kaleidoscope lens at me . . . laughing . . . I see you, too.

  I backed away and slapped my hands over my eyes. I sat down on my bed, next to Patricia, who hadn’t moved while I saw those things.

  I lost my temper. “God, make this stop.”

  She leaned toward me. “God wasn’t home that night I was killed.”

  FIFTEEN

  Going beyond the grave is as natural to me as drinking a glass of water. I can’t get away from it, even when I try. And I have tried. But it is always the living who pull me back to death. People from all over the world, with all different educational levels and beliefs, all come to me for answers. The letters and the phone calls are relentless. There are always those who need me, either to help them communicate with a deceased loved one or to figure out their own past lives. And the spirits are just as persistent. Always tugging at my mind. There is only so much that a sponge can absorb before it needs to be wrung out and set aside to dry. I never get that chance. I don’t know what it’s like not to be soaked with other lives.

  I also take away the demons. And I do mean that literally. My home has been used to expel countless entities. I take them in and pack them away so they can’t escape. But the residue always remains. No matter how tightly you lock the box, the foul demon has seen your face and knows your home. I used to move often. My places would become so crowded that the knocks and bangs never stopped.

  People send me cursed objects from all over the world for safekeeping. I store them securely, but they don’t go away completely. Sometimes, when I am with a client, one of those demon boxes begins to bang. The poor person is always so startled, and I play it off—just a little activity stirring, nothing to worry about. What I really want to say is that I’m used to those damn demons trying to distract me. But they can’t. They’re not my demons. I can keep them in line. I am perfectly able to turn back to my clients and focus on their questions.

  But now, I was the one who needed someone like me. I was the one who couldn’t figure it out. Who does this child belong to? Why do I keep seeing her? What does she want from me? What is her message? I had stopped myself countless times from using my own skills to find the answers. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the fear of knowing the truth. Maybe it was the
fear of seeing things I would have no control over.

  If I did do this, there would be no one to filter my discoveries. When I work with other people, I can tell them about their past lives in a gentle manner. I do not share the pictures of torture and death. I would not want anyone to relive such hideous acts. I take extreme care to never cross that line. But I could not offer that kindness to myself. I knew I would see the violence and death. Even though I had not gone there—yet—I was damn sure it was not a peaceful ending.

  I had fought with myself for months, as this child’s visits became more frequent. Now I sat in my office and finally decided that I would do it. I drew a chalk circle about five feet wide in the center of the room and then prepared two candles. The white one, I bathed with a homemade blend of oils called “in one with the spirit talks.” The black candle I soaked with “the gate opener,” an old recipe that has been in my family for generations. I needed to open the past in order to heal the future. It would not be nice to witness, but then death never was.

  I washed my feet with holy water, which would take off the residue of any unwanted malevolent creatures of the night. Be gone, unclean spirits! I placed small mirrors in the circle—one in front of me and one behind—as well as my father’s rain stick and my childhood music box, where a tiny ballerina spun slowly to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

  Summonings can be dangerous to perform. They tend to attract a few hitchhikers, little entities that slip quickly through, trying to find a home for haunting in a dark corner or in a weak person. These beings are built for destruction and will definitely make your life hell. I can shoo them away, but I still have to keep my guard up.

  I hung my mojo bag around my neck. Then I picked up my chalk again and drew the symbols that represent the gods of aid in Native American beliefs. I moved in the ritual dance of the dead, which shows allegiance and honor. The spirit shall carry on.