by Dermot Davis
Disappointed with his meeting in the desert with the man that was supposed to hold all of the answers, Andrew sorted through the pile of work on his desk looking very down in the mouth. Both his court case and his initiation into the secret society were but days away. If he wished to find an answer to how he could break himself free from the stranglehold of the organization, he was running out of time.
Would he never be a free man again? Would he always have to answer to an outside authority for the rest of his life? How could he possibly live with such an arrangement? Surely there must be someone somewhere who could provide some answers for him? Someone that faced a similar situation perhaps and managed to escape?
Considering it fortunate that his court case came before the formal membership into the secret group, Andrew contemplated the idea that he would simply vanish should his case be dropped, as the lawyers had promised. Possessing a clear record with the law was huge and if indeed his name were legally wiped clean, then he had only one major hurdle to climb: escaping from the clutches of the serpent group.
If he could avoid formal membership, then he would be better placed to abandon them altogether. He could very probably live in a similar fashion that the fake guru guy was living: in the desert and off the grid. He had enough money to buy a used truck and a small travel trailer. All he needed was to convince Fiona to come away with him, which actually, based upon their past plans, she might not need much convincing, at all.
“How’s my star employee doing today?” Simon asked as he casually strolled into Andrew’s tiny windowless office. “Looking a bit glum today, I should say,” he said as he sat on the side of Andrew’s desk. “Well, never worry, never fear, big bad Simon is always here,” he said, smiling. “Ready for lunch?” he then asked as if they had previously discussed it, which they hadn’t.
“Sure,” Andrew answered, caught unawares. “You and me?” he asked, uncertainly.
“I’ve got good news,” Simon said, walking to the door and grabbing Andrew’s jacket from its hook. “My treat.”
Taking Andrew to the same restaurant that he had struck out in with Fiona, Andrew smiled with the memory. He was secretly pleased that Fiona was not impressed by how elitist and upscale the restaurant was. As they were shown to a table near the center of the large room, Andrew now realized that he was not particularly as impressed as he had been in the beginning.
“I love this place,” Simon said to Andrew as he accepted with relish the menu from the Maître D’. “Have whatever you want,” he then said as Andrew opened up his menu. “Price is no object.”
For the first time all day, Andrew smiled at the gesture that Simon was doing his best to cheer him up. Despite his initial dislike of the man, as he got to know him and see more sides of his personality, he had actually grown to like his self-appointed serpent mentor.
He wasn’t a person that Andrew would necessarily choose to hang out with a lot but he had grown to understand him a bit better and accept his many personality quirks. Perhaps Fiona was right when she said that he only had a hard exterior because he was protecting a soft heart, or something of that nature. “What’s the good news?” Andrew asked once he was done with the menu.
“Do you want to tell me what’s on your mind first?” Simon asked, flagging down a waiter to order a gin and tonic or a “G and T,” as he would invariably abbreviate.
“There’s nothing on my mind, really,” Andrew answered while mentally planning out what was comfortable for him to reveal during the lunch.
“There’s something bothering you, I can tell, what is it?” Simon insisted. “You’re not still thinking about the Yakomoto business, are you?”
“A little bit,” Andrew lied.
“You’re having doubts,” Simon then said, as if he could read Andrew exactly. “Your initiation is coming up and you’re having doubts about your membership and your future.”
“Yes,” Andrew admitted, relaxing his body as if he had been found out. “I am having my doubts."
“Perfectly understandable. I’d be worried if you weren’t. This is a big step in any young man’s life. Can’t be too cavalier about something like this; something this big.”
“Exactly,” Andrew agreed, nodding his head while looking at the strange-shaped salt shaker on the table. Was it supposed to be shaped like a swan or something? That’s weird.
“What questions do you have for me?” Simon asked. “And don’t be afraid to ask; I’ve heard them all, believe me.”
“What questions?” Andrew asked, as if caught napping.
“Doesn’t matter how basic or trivial they might sound. There’s no such thing as a bad question.”
“Okay,” Andrew said as he looked away in thought. “Any question?” he asked, stalling for time.
“Hit me,” Simon answered as he took a sip of his ice cold G and T.
“What does the secret society do, exactly?” he then asked. “I mean I’ve been to meetings and stuff but I’ve no idea, like, I don’t know, what they stand for. You know?”
“Excellent question,” Simon said, relieved that they were finally on the right track. “First of all, it is not a secret society,” he said in a hushed tone. “Anybody can join. Members have to be referred or recommended, of course, but anybody can join, well anyone can apply, there’s no guarantee of membership,” he corrected himself. “Same thing with any group, correct? A country club, for instance.”
“Yes,” Andrew agreed, like his question was well answered.
“It’s a fraternity of like-minded individuals that aspire to do good works for each other and for humanity at large,” he continued as Andrew nodded his head with satisfied attentiveness. “Like if you joined a networking group; people helping people.”
“Like a Facebook group,” Andrew suggested.
“Yeah, something along those lines.”
“So, what about the rituals and the murders and the secrecy?” Andrew surprised himself by asking.
Looking like a boxer that wasn’t expecting a left hook from his opponent, Simon glanced around the near vicinity and then leaned closer towards Andrew. “Murders?” he asked in a forced whisper. “We don’t engage in murders,” he sneered. “What kind of people do you take us for, exactly?”
“What about Yakomoto?” Andrew asked, like he didn’t understand Simon’s reaction. “Wasn’t he murdered?”
“No, of course not,” Simon said like it was the most outrageous thing he had ever heard. “We were praying for his enlightenment,” he said, his voice restoring its near normal volume. “His heart attack had nothing to do with us or our activities. We were praying that he would see the light and return from the path of darkness where he had lost his way. What happened to him was unfortunate but his predicament had nothing to do with us. That was solely between him and his maker, may his soul rest in peace,” he said with a reverence that Andrew felt impelled to agree with as he also bowed his head.
“I see,” Andrew said, totally confused about how the new answer fit in with their previous conversation.
“Only the pure of heart are allowed to join the fraternity,” Simon then said. “Most initiates feel honored and extremely grateful for such an opportunity.”
“Oh, I do,” Andrew insisted. “You asked me if I had any questions,” he added.
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” Simon said, his mood brightening. “Which brings me to the good news.”
“Great,” Andrew said, leaning forward like he was excited.
“Your initiation has been moved forward,” he said with a broad grin. “How does this Friday night sound?”
“Oh, cool,” Andrew said, his expression looking doubtful.
“You’re not happy?”
“No, I am, just, I have the court case next week and I thought that they were spaced perfectly, you know, so they don’t interfere with each other.”
“Oh, don’t worry about any of that. There won’t be any interference, I can assure you of that. In fact, once you’re
initiated, our team of lawyers will feel extra incentive to work your case. Now they’ll be doing it for a fellow serpent,” Simon said with the last word hushed. “Members look after members. As I’ve told you.”
“Great. That’s great.”
“Knew you’d be happy.”
“I am. Terrific. Why did they move the date forward?” Andrew asked but then realized that the question may make him sound skeptical. “They’re obviously happy with my progress, I guess,” he then added.
“Yes, absolutely. But they also wanted to clear the calendar for the impending visit of our UK visitor. I think I told you about that?”
“Yes, the head of the UK section, fraternity,” Andrew answered, abandoning the effort to find the right word.
“I’m terrifically excited for you, Andrew. This is a wonderful opportunity and I know that you are going to be a valuable asset to the entire organization. Well done,” he said, raising his glass in a toast.
“Thank you, Simon. I appreciate the opportunity,” Andrew said with tears in his eyes which Simon may have interpreted were there for a different reason.
With so much time on her hands, Fiona had been spending more time with Professor Dowling. She thoroughly enjoyed visiting him at what she considered was his goofy little playhouse crammed with paranormal gizmos that she had the best fun playing with. For his part, Gus Dowling enjoyed the company. As entranced by her youthful innocence and energy as she was by his age and experience, they made a good pairing and increasingly enjoyed each other’s company the more that they got to know each other.
Fascinated with her burgeoning psychic ability, when he wore his Paranormal Professor cap, Dowling liked to test her psychic aptitude on some of his research tests. Many of the experiments he had abandoned due to lack of adequate subjects. Some of the more elaborate ones he was forced to desert before their time due to research grant cut off.
Sitting in a wooden chair, strapped to what looked like an elaborate lie detector machine, Fiona concentrated on watching a monitor placed two feet away at the same level as her head. A whole series of wires fed from the devices on her head, her arms and her legs, into a homemade box which contained electronic circuits, the wires from which were plugged into a computer for analysis.
“So, I just watch the pictures as they come up on the monitor?” Fiona asked. “I don’t try to do anything, with my mind, that is?”
“Correct,” Dowling said as he wiped dirt and dust from the colored pens and graph paper on the ancient polygraph machine. “The electrodes will record your bodily sensations, your autonomic reactions to each picture that you see; heart rate, galvanic skin response, pupil dilation and so on.”
“So, I’ll just watch the pictures.”
“Innocuous pictures, I assure you,” Dowling confirmed. “Landscapes, scenery, people, famous paintings, you get the idea.”
“Cool,” Fiona said, excited about her task.
After watching a series of pictures flash on the screen, Fiona watched Dowling expectantly. “How did I do?” she asked as he disengaged her from the apparatus.
“I won’t have the full results for a few days,” he said as he lifted the headset from her head. “But judging from the primary, mechanical results,” he said, looking down at the colored lines sketched on the graph paper, “you’ve done quite well. Well above average, I would say.”
“Sweet,” Fiona said with a smile. “Above average what?”
“Well, what we’re testing for is precognition,” he explained as he made entries on the computer. “It’s an experiment they first designed at Cornell. We’re testing for the ability of your consciousness to know something before it actually happens; in this case, your ability to sense what kind of photograph you are about to see. By testing your body reactions, your stress levels, you are reacting to something before it actually happens.”
“So those jaggedly lines on the paper are my stress levels?”
“Correct. Some photographs will have a higher emotional content for you than others; the mother and baby photograph had an especially intense emotional resonance for you, for instance.”
“But my body was reacting before I actually saw the photograph?”
“Exactly.”
“How is that possible?” she asked, looking more closely at the lines on the polygraph paper.
“Exactly,” Dowling said with a smile. “How indeed is that possible? My lifelong quest,” he then said with an air of melancholy. “Some tea?” he then asked.
“You do love your tea, don’t you?” she asked with tenderness. “Yeah, let’s have some tea,” she then said as she took his arm and walked with him to the kitchen.
Fiona sat on a stool in Dowling’s kitchen and watched him with fondness as he conducted what she had come to call his ‘loose leaf tea ritual.’ While boiling water in a kettle, he would rinse out the teapot. Using the oddly-shaped tea spoon which he kept dangling from a hook sticking out of a kitchen cabinet, he would spoon out the loose leaf tea, counting one tea spoon for each person, “and one for the pot,” as he would merrily remark. Stirring sporadically, he would then wait a few minutes for the tea to “draw” before it was ready to pour through a strainer and into the tea cup.
“How long have you been doing that little loose leaf tea ritual, professor?” Fiona asked.
“For so many years, I’ve stopped counting,” he replied, pouring out her tea first. “It’s getting harder to get loose leaf, you know. It’s tea bags everywhere you look now.”
“How come you got to start making it that way?”
“This is how my wife used to make it,” he said sadly. “She was English, of course.”
Knowing the story about his wife that went missing, Fiona decided not to ask any further questions. “Well, I still say that you make the best tea, ever,” she said, toasting him with her cup.
“Cheers,” he said, clicking their cups together. “She used to say that too,” he remarked, his mind seeming to want to go back there.
“And what about all the psychic stuff?” Fiona asked, wanting to change the subject. “How did that all start? Your interest in being a researcher of the paranormal?” she said in a deep voice to suggest mystery and suspense.
“That’s been,” he said and stopped. “Something of a lifelong obsession, really,” he said, taking a sip of his too-hot tea.
“Wanting to know stuff about the mind?”
“Is it really possible for two minds to communicate non-locally?” he asked like it was an answer.
“You mean, psychically?”
“Yes. Is it possible to communicate with another through time and space? Through thought alone?”
“Why that question?” Fiona asked, sensing there was a story attached. “Or is it only that question you want to have answered?”
Dowling poured a little more milk into his tea and looked like he was contemplating whether to answer in more detail. “I was born a twin,” he then said, testing his tea for taste and hotness. “We weren’t identical but you know what they say about twins being connected, being psychically connected, in some way.”
“Yes,” Fiona agreed. “That’s fantastic! You could feel the connection and that’s where you got the idea?”
“Well, no,” Dowling said, a look of sadness descending upon his face. “That’s just it: I didn’t feel it. I didn’t believe it. I was only ten but I used to get upset when adults especially would comment on the fallacy and ask me if I always knew what my brother was thinking. I thought it preposterous, actually. I used to get terribly annoyed.”
“I can see how that might be,” Fiona said, cupping her tea cup between her hands.
“Until one day… one day I did feel something,” Dowling said, his eyes staring ahead, as if the memory was still fresh. “I felt what I can only describe as a call for help. I got the sense, the strong sense, I may add, that my brother was in trouble. I got the sense that he was underwater somewhere, well, I knew where,” Dowling said, looking up at her wi
th a distressed look. “I got the sense that my brother was drowning in the lake by our home,” he said like it only happened yesterday.
“Wow,” Fiona said, feeling the hairs standing up on the back of her neck.
“And I did nothing,” Dowling said, a look of regret and remorse commandeering the softer features of his face. “I dismissed his cries for help as a figment of my own imagination; I dismissed them out of hand as being some personal mental discomfort that I was experiencing as a result of eating too much ice cream,” he said with a palpable twinge of self-recrimination. “My brother was drowning and I ignored his cries for help. Had I believed in psychic communication… he would be alive today,” he said with tearful eyes.
“How were you to know?” Fiona said, reaching out her hand to place it on his arm. “You were ten years old? You never experienced anything like that before, right? So, how were you to know? You couldn’t. It was a freak accident.”
“Yes, yes,” Dowling said, placing his other hand on hers to reassure her. “I’ve gone through all those conversations and scenarios in my head since then, believe me. You’re right, I cannot blame myself,” he said, although Fiona didn’t fully buy his reasoned, non-blaming frame of mind. “My interest began right at that moment,” he then said, his mood lightening. “I’ve been trying to prove what I discounted as quackery, as something impossible, ever since.”
“Wow,” Fiona said, lost for words. “Wow.”
“Career choices can be very much decided by our most earlier personal experiences,” he said, adding some more sugar to his tea. “And what about you, young lady?” he then asked brightly. “What’s new with you?”
“Ever heard of a person called Arjuna Cassidy?” she asked between sips of her hot drink. “He’s like this guru type guy, gives talks about the soul and stuff,” she added when Dowling’s puzzled expression deepened.
“Arjuna Cassidy?” he repeated. “What a strange name.”
“I know, right?”
“Arjuna is mythic, of course. Mentioned in the sacred books of India. Obviously not his birth name.”
“Obviously,” Fiona agreed. “Anyway, we went out to hear him talk last weekend, me and Andrew. He was odd,” Fiona said as if striving for the right word. “Like, he was odd but in a weird way like what he was saying made sense to me. He was saying things that I knew already but I never heard anybody else saying them or I knew what he was saying but I didn’t have the words to describe them to myself before,” she said like she was still trying to get a handle on her thoughts and feelings. “It all sounded familiar and yet strange at the same time. Does that make sense?”