by Julie Paul
Pilgrim
When I decided to go to Arizona, Warren wasn’t too happy about it.
I applied for a course in Sedona on angel reading, and when I got accepted, he kind of flipped. Why didn’t you tell me? And I was all like, I didn’t think you’d mind, and he said, Shit, girl, it’s our life you’re talking about, and I said, I know. I want to become a better person. Then he said, Aren’t we trying to build something here, Lacy? And I said I needed to get realigned, and he told me I wasn’t a car, needing its tires rebalanced, and I said, Well, I kind of like that metaphor.
Sedona’s a centre for tuning in. I needed to expand my chakras, flush my channels, tune into the universe. Warren used to think it was cute, the way I believed in all this stuff, but then he went sad and mopey when I told him he should try to save his sexual energy instead of always spend, spend, spend. I was just trying to make him a stronger man.
He left our place in Peterborough and came back two days later, wearing a baseball shirt and sneakers, smelling like Taco Bell. Go, he said. Do what you like.
I thought about the moon a lot. I followed this astrologer on the west coast of BC, receiving her daily text updates about what to do or what not to do based on what was going on with the moon. People were under the lunar spell, she wrote; every earthling went through each day pulled by lunar strings. One day might not be a good day for real estate or financial planning—moon in Scorpio—but once the next morning came, bam! Buy that house.
I’d never looked for that kind of settling down. I was just passing through, as they say. In Sedona, I saw three Just Passing Through bumper stickers. My kind of place, if ever there was one.
The fact was, I didn’t know where I belonged. My parents—military people—pulled me across the country and back a few times during my childhood, and I never found my soul home. I thought maybe Arizona was the place, but even after being there for two weeks, I still wasn’t able to feel one bit of difference in my energy fields. Every day, at the ordained best times, I went to the airport vortex, sat cross-legged near the twisted juniper trees, and imagined every channel opening. All I felt was sunburn and red ants biting my butt.
I believed we were at the cusp of a new era. Life as we knew it was about to change, and the suffering would soon be over. What kept me sane was listening to other people like me. Seekers. Pilgrims. Carriers of the light. There were so many amazing webcasts out there that I spent most of my day tuning into interviews and guided meditations online when I wasn’t in class at the Harmonic Healing Centre, learning how to sense the angels that surrounded us.
One morning, after yoga on my tiny deck overlooking the incredible valley of red-orange rock below, I tuned into one of my favourite sites and clicked on their latest podcast.
You will not see this on mainstream television, the show host said. Censorship is alive and well in the United States and we are all test subjects in the experiment of how a government can keep their people in the dark. Breakfast cereals, chem trails, fluoride, vaccines, fast food, concentrated juices. You’ve been manipulated, folks. But it’s not too late!
I loved podcasts; I could pause them whenever I wanted to make myself a superfood smoothie. Even ten minutes of triangle pose and Savasana, the corpse pose, and my appetite was gigantic. That day, I added goji berries and some local herbs that were meant to increase psychic awareness, then settled into my papasan chair and pressed play again.
The host announced incredible news: nosebleeds had begun to affect a large percentage of residents in a New Mexico town. We’re going to look into this strange happening and attempt to get to the bottom of it.
First, let’s talk to a few of the people affected by the phenomenon.
This is Reuben, aged sixteen. “I think I was one of the first. The blood just started to pour onto my desk. I thought maybe I’d been thinking too hard. Sometimes my teachers tell me I overthink, you know, and although I knew it was scientifically unlikely, that’s what I thought, too. Anyway, the blood missed my chemistry book, but once I felt the blood, I didn’t do so well. Because you know, when you touch your own blood, you’re basically inside your own body. I’d never had a nosebleed before. I didn’t know how much blood could come out of me. Apparently I fell off my chair and passed out on the floor.”
And Noel, fourteen. “I’d just climbed up into a tree in my backyard, to spy on my sister and her friends. Usually she didn’t even know I was there, but not that day. I felt the blood start pouring from my nose, and I hit my head on the limb above me. The yelling kind of gave me away. When I told my sister I was bleeding, she said, ‘Not enough!’ But I kept on bleeding, and she and her friends all screamed when they saw my bloody hands and shirt.”
Deb, the mother of Sadie, eleven, was awakened by her daughter crying and holding her hand to her face, blood running between her fingers. “I was in bed, and grabbed the closest thing—my husband’s T-shirt—and I told her to press it to her face. I can never remember if it’s don’t tilt your head back or don’t tilt it forward. Seems they’re always changing these pieces of advice. Anyway, Sadie asked me, ‘Am I dying?’ and I told her, No, of course not, it’s just a part of growing. Then we went into the hallway and saw the trail from Sadie’s bedroom into mine. She started wailing then, I tell you. ‘I don’t want to die!’ I had to give her a sedative to calm her down.”
Doug, eighteen, was playing basketball with his friend, Chum, when his nose started spilling its guts. “I’d just sunk a basket when I could taste blood. ‘Oh, shit,’ I said, and I like pinched my nose shut and ran to the water fountain to wash off. I really freaked out the little girl there, filling up her sand pail. It wouldn’t stop, you know? It just kept pouring out, so I went to the walk-in clinic down the street, and I really freaked them out, too.”
All of this happened last week. As you may have gathered, it’s been affecting the young people first, but we have reports of adults succumbing as well. And, as you might expect, there are many theories, the link to food getting the most press. But when we come back after the break, we’ll look at what communities are doing to manage the cases, and we’ll talk with a man who’s got another theory about all of this blood.
Gah. The idea of all that blood made me feel nauseous. Or it might’ve been the wheatgrass or herbs. Too much detoxification? Too much awareness of what my gut was trying to process? I unfolded my body from the chair, took a few Tums, and went back to listen.
And so this brings us to the next part of our show, where we ask the big questions: Why is this happening to this small community? And what can be done?
I was sitting on the edge of my seat, looking at the blue sky, the red rock. The podcaster interviewed Mr. Jones, from an organization called Lunar Hoax. “The moon never changes,” he said. “Ever notice that?” I wasn’t sure that statement was true, but he went on to say that Lunar Hoax believes the moon isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. He wanted us all to doubt the moon.
“So what you’re asking is, is the moon, in fact, a moon?”
“That’s correct.”
“Well, what do you think it is? Or might be?”
“We at Lunar Hoax believe that it is a satellite-like formation, a built object. We believe it is not simply a giant chunk of rock, in orbit around Earth, but a manufactured entity.”
The host paused. “A man-made moon.”
“No. Not man-made. Alien-made. We believe that it was created thousands of years ago as a means to control earthlings, and it’s a hub from which they operate to this day.”
“So, all this time, we’ve been worshipping a false moon? We walked on a satellite? Wolves howl at a space station?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Wow. Now, I know many people will ask this: what about the tides?”
“A means of controlling seaside populations.”
“Women’s . . . cycles?”
“Yes, the aliens want to manage us in untold ways.”
“Madness?”
/> “I assure you, it’s not—”
“No, full-moon madness.”
“Oh, yes. Well. That’s what happens to those who’ve been abducted before. The full moon reminds them and they feel . . . a bit crazy.”
I knew that feeling. Abduction? I lay down in Savasana, contemplating my situation. Aliens lived among us, Mr. Jones said. People pouring out blood was an alien control tactic.
“Have you ever”—and at this the host’s voice dropped— “encountered one?”
“Not to my knowledge. But they are here, among us. And yes, I’m sure I have seen one, even if I don’t remember. And so have you.”
“Fascinating. Well, then. Maybe the ones who aren’t bleeding are, in fact, not of this earth.”
“Quite possibly. We just don’t know.”
I had to pause it there and walk around. Wow. That stuff got me so amped up! If Warren had been there, we’d have been walking around with the silver deely boppers from our New Year’s party on our heads because he would’ve been having a field day with it all. Not that he made fun of everything I believed in, but that stuff would have sounded pretty crazy to him. Then he would have taken me to bed and called me his little alien, his coffee skin stunning against the white sheets. My pasty tone never could compare. Even in Arizona, my skin just turned pink and peeled.
But love isn’t a colour. What got me with Warren was the air around him: it seemed to fizz a little. Some kind of force field I could not resist. And kindness! He gave me two gorgeous eggs—one of green glass and the other of blue and white marble. One day I was going on about the moon not being round but oval, more like an egg, and there he was, the next day, with these gifts. He was that kind of man.
His aura, of course, was that force field I’d been picking up. That’s what started me on the way to thinking about all of this Sedona stuff. Opening up. Ah, the innocence of my first encounter. The first little step.
The podcast moved onto the next section: callers.
“I’m worried about this,” the first caller said. “It’s a recipe for civil war. Think about it. If this thing spreads, it might be neighbour against non-bleeding neighbour. You’re gonna see fake blood recipes flying all over the Net, just so people can survive.”
The host asked her if she had any theories about its source.
“Oh, probably hormones. Isn’t that why we’re all messed up?”
“Let’s go to our next caller, Bob from Idaho. Hello, Bob.”
“Howdy.”
“So, Bob. What do you believe about the source of this bleeding?”
“He’s right.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Jonesy, there. He’s right. They’re out to keep us under their thumbs. Or whatever it is they’ve got dangling from their arms.”
“I see. And . . . have you seen one, yourself?”
“Well, now, I’m not sure, like Jones said. They’re here, and in good disguises. I don’t think it’s the non-bleeders, though. But I know they’re here.”
“So. What do we do?”
“Well,” drawled Bob from Idaho, “if y’all see a spacecraft, run the other way. If they can convince a whole planet to believe in the moon, they’ve got a lot more they want to do to us.”
The podcaster said goodbye to us earthlings. He said, “Love your neighbours, whether they bleed or not.”
I lay on my floor and tried to imagine a whole town bleeding from their faces. It made me ill; I scooted into the bathroom just in time. But maybe it was my precious moon, being talked about in such a way that had me feeling sick. I mean, sure, aliens, of course they were out there, but the moon as a disguised alien spaceship? It was deeply disturbing.
Shortly after this, the problem started to spread. At first it was just the young people in a few other towns close to the first, but it only took a day for it to jump the state line and affect all ages. Within a week, the whole country was suffering. Not everyone bled, but the outcome was pretty massive. You couldn’t get a bottle of iron supplements for less than forty bucks, and tissue prices tripled.
At first I wasn’t worried. I was in Sedona, surrounded by vortices. I was drinking potions of every colour, learning to see angels, standing on my head daily. I wasn’t American.
The theories came by the thousands. It was the meat: the blood was running because we’d killed too many beasts. It was the milk: cattle hormones mixing with human, bound to eventually cause trouble. The gigantic glasses of milk once prescribed to and enjoyed by bulking-up teens were exchanged for soda. The environment got a bad rap: global warming, of course, because blood flowed better with heat.
The US government created policies. No driving while bleeding. Disposal of bloody tissues in specific incinerator bags only. Spitting of blood was absolutely prohibited, ditto vomiting, even though it was a common reaction.
People began to walk under umbrellas when outdoors because the sun seemed to make it worse. Mostly they stayed in, distraught and queasy, as immobile as possible, heads held stiffly so the movement didn’t trigger another jag. Schools kept PE to a minimum, and they did away with projects, chemistry, home economics, and the more strenuous subjects like trigonometry and world history. All of that seemed to tax the brain too much, which brought on bleeding. Hospitals were plugged with bleeders at the beginning, but that got better after another ruling came down. If you had bleeding symptoms alone, you had to go to an EMC—an Epistaxis Management Centre—where hastily trained nurses administered basic care and comfort, ice packs and, it was said, gentle pinches to the nose.
I watched the news constantly; angel readings were put on hold. Scientists across the country set aside research projects to focus on the problem. Pfizer came up with a pill designed to control the bleeding, which was basically a common vasoconstrictive allergy drug in a new bottle. Coagulants were sometimes called upon, and the folks with really bad cases had to get their blood vessels cauterized, although bleeding rarely lasted more than a few minutes at a time. And—this was super weird, I watched a live show about it online—a handful of people reported severe bleeding, where blood actually flowed from the tear ducts. Once the Ebola virus was ruled out, they were questioned about their religious beliefs, in case they were displaying a variation on stigmata, bleeding like the suffering Christ statues in Bolivia. None of them claimed any affiliation.
And still I didn’t bleed. I kept sitting through every red-rocked sunrise, trying to feel my chakras. I was checking my face thirty times an hour for blood.
I tuned into my podcast, too, as the thing spread, and somehow the podcast managed to get the attention of mainstream media. The idea went viral after the first FOX radio show. The Lunar Hoax website had twenty thousand hits in one hour. In one day, nearly half the world suddenly knew about the Spaceship Moon theory. The American space shuttle program, with a moon rocket at the ready, had just recently been shut down, but now astronauts were swiftly brought up to snuff for the voyage. We had to get back up there and see what was what.
This was when Warren called me.
“Wassup, girl?” He always put on an accent, just to make me laugh.
“Oh, you know. Living in paradise.”
“You still okay down there?”
I didn’t know if he meant the States or my womanly parts. “All good.”
“Nothing’s happening up here, so far. Canada’s still clean. There’s lots of talk about the bleeding, though,” he said. “You . . . affected?”
“No. Not yet.”
He was quiet. Then he said, “Come home, Lacy.”
“I’m not done here.”
“I need you up here.”
His voice was making me cry. “What do you need?”
He laughed his velvet laugh and it felt like I was burning up. “What do you think?”
I was waiting it out. I wanted to see what side of things I was on. If I bled, aliens were trying to control me. If I didn’t bleed, well, maybe I didn’t need to. Maybe I was one of them. Maybe this was ex
actly why I’d been drawn to Sedona in the first place.
“Not yet,” I told Warren. “I’m on the brink of a breakthrough. But thank you for calling, Warren of Canada.” I’d been listening to too many call-in shows.
Just days before the scheduled launch of the Lunar Pilgrim shuttle, the noses of America stopped bleeding.
Oh, the odd child, nose-picker, or hockey player still got a garden-variety nosebleed, and every time it happened, people around the blood looked skyward, but it seemed that immediately after the wave of speculation about aliens being responsible had swept the globe, it was over. No more blood.
I’d been spared, or I’d been overlooked. I didn’t know what to feel.
Despite the blood stopping, the Lunar Pilgrim went forth as planned, and the reports came back: still a moon, still four and a half billion years old, still orbiting Earth, showing only its one side because of synchronous rotation. My magnificent, rocky moon was back.
The Lunar Hoaxers were interviewed once more, and they just laughed. Aliens were crafty, they said. No doubt those astronauts were taken inside and made to believe what the aliens planted in their heads.
The podcast host asked, “What can be done?”
“If y’all see a spacecraft, run,” they said.
It became a joke, with a So You Think You Can Write Songs competition on TV, hosted by Ryan Seacrest, where contestants had to write a song using that lyric in the chorus: If y’all see a spacecraft, run. The winner would get to make a video in Hollywood, complete with green Martians and Drew Barrymore.
But then, one day in September, after I’d been in Sedona for three scorching months, a stronger gravitational pull began to affect people. To move took sweat-inducing amounts of effort, and no one knew where to point the finger because gravity was still a mystery, despite scientists claiming they were closer to measuring gravitons than ever before.