Sarina was so deep in this thought process that when the phone rang it was as if it had exploded in her hand. She jumped and dropped the phone. When she picked up the phone she saw on the phone screen that the caller was Detective Holden.
“Hello Detective,” Sarina said.
“What the hell was that last night?!” he asked.
Sarina sighed knowing the question that was about to be asked. “What are you talking about, Detective?”
“I was … this sounds ridiculous … I thought I was in a dream with you? Is that even possible? Did you have the same dream? Am I crazy?” The detective was speaking in a frenzied raised voice, seemingly disoriented.
“Okay, Detective Holden, slow down. Yes, I had the same experience and you indeed were there. Apparently, I was not as surprised as you.”
“Well, apparently not! You seem so … well, calm! I, on the other hand, I was surprised! That’s why I called you!”
“Calm down. This isn’t a common occurrence but it does happen. From what I’ve read and heard, we were lucid dream sharing.”
“Lucid what sharing?”
“Lucid dream sharing. Lucid dreaming is where a person enters his or her dream space and makes conscious decisions while in the dream such as to turn left or right, go up or down, speak to or confront an image in the dream, do you understand?”
“Oookaaayyy ...” he dragged the word out not really getting the full picture. “But what is dream sharing?”
“Dream sharing is when two different people in different locations join together somewhere within a common dream. Either person may start the dream and then call the other in. This generally happens only when the people involved have consented to share, so what we experienced must indeed be quite rare. In fact, I have only read one example where two people had a unique relationship.” There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Are you there, Detective?”
“I am having a hard time believing any of this,” he said. “What kind of unique relationship?”
“Well, the couple I read about had apparently been together in a past life as a royal couple. They had not met in this life time but discovered each other in their shared dream so no consent was initially given. They agreed to meet each other while dreaming together. I know it may be hard to understand or even believe …”
“Yeah, if it’s even real or possible,” the detective cut her off.
“A lot of research has been done about dreams and the dream state and I assure you, this is both real and possible and has been reproduced again and again in controlled clinical experiments. But beyond anything that has been done in a lab, the only thing you need to believe is what you absolutely know happened to you and that I am independently confirming what happened to me. You and I both had and were in the same dream at the same time from two different locations, you at your house and me at mine, and we interacted as we dreamt. Remember the papers from your desk?” Sarina paused. “You knocked them over … they began to float up from your desk … in no apparent order and then, one by one the papers burst into green flames … with no smoke?” Sarina was staring just ahead of herself at what she perceived to be Riley with an exasperated expression on her face and rolled her eyes. She was getting impatient with the detective’s skepticism.
“So … You actually were in my dream?!”
She sighed into the phone as if this idea should be common knowledge. “Yes I was. Don’t you get it?”
“Get what?”
“This type of “merging of the minds” is quite possible if you let go of believing that the brain’s electro-magnetic field can be contained by its skull. Energy can pass through what appears to be solid matter.” Sarina stopped there to allow the detective’s thick skull absorb what she had just said.
“Fine,” was all he was able to spit out and in order for Riley to regain composure, he did what any man might do, changed the subject. “Ms. Conti, I mean, Sarina, I’m sorry to call this early but I have a mountain of questions I need to ask beyond the dream thing. Are you available to talk this morning?”
“Sure, I have a few of my own.”
“Okay then, how about breakfast at Tart to Tart on Irving Street? Do you know the one near 7th Street?”
“Um … yes I do, how about if we meet in an hour?”
“Perfect. See you then.”
Sarina was beginning to feel angry at the detective. First, he jumped down her throat about the dream experience, maybe even justifiably, but then Sarina also was able to see that he knew something and was not letting her in the loop. This was not Sarina’s style but then she was also holding back the information about her conversation with Detective Banderas. She was a stickler for honesty in any relationship, even professional ones yet she also realized the need to wait until the right moment to reveal, what she felt was, critical information. She needed a trump card and she thought that the information about Detective Banderas was just that. Sarina took a deep breath and collected her thoughts.
As a research editor, Sarina had trained herself to explore every angle before drawing any conclusion. Her ability to process was uncanny. Some people found this a bit annoying. Sarina’s capacity to turn over an event in her mind until no facet was unexplored seemed tedious for some but this was the only way Sarina was able to completely understand the entire story from every side, especially the emotional side, which lay just outside of most people’s view. This is why Sarina was so valuable to Mary and Earth Based Publishing Company.
Sarina was keeping a journal of these events over the past 24 hours and sat down to expand her notes. What did these dreams mean, she wondered? She organized her thoughts on paper, which helped her remain grounded and focused.
Once she was done, Sarina got ready to meet with Detective Holden at Tart to Tart. Before going, she reviewed her notes from her previous meetings with him one more time. He had related the story of Ann’s murder in more detail. What he left out was HOW he knew Sarina was her sister with no identification and no other apparent information to connect them. She was noting these things in her journal very systematically but found that her mind kept wandering from details of this case to feelings inside about Detective Holden that only made her feel unsettled and anxious. She saw him in her mind’s eye, which was knocking her off center. What was it about this man that occupied a deeper part of Sarina that made it a bit hard for her to focus? Stop being so irrational, Sarina told herself. Quit flipping from one thing to another. Stay focused!
Entry number 2 in her journal:
My father was not to be found, at least not on this planet.
Mom has been missing for about three years and that mystery has yet to be solved.
The strange man I met on Irving Street, Dana, knew all about the event and knew my name as well. There were some facts but mostly loose ends without explanations.
Last night’s dream with the detective, which ended at 4:30, the same time as the first dream.
Detective Jennifer Banderas, in my home town seemed to have an intuitive feeling about mom’s disappearance and seemed unsettled by it.
The only thing to do now was to meet Detective Holden and ask more questions. With that understanding, Sarina closed her journal, grabbed her pen and a few dollars, and went out to the back alley to the street and walked the few blocks to Tart to Tart coffee shop.
The walk was about 10 minutes, just enough time for her to review her other notes. Sarina read her notes about her first dream as she walked. She connected the names in her dream: Sarina, Ann, Jack, Riley, and Dana. The other names were foreign to her: Ixchel, Akna, Chac, Camazotz, Xbalanque, Hunahpu, and Cum-Hau. They were names in a language that was somehow familiar but just outside of Sarina’s grasp. She needed to sort this out. Her next step, after her meeting with Detective Holden, was to research languages that might connect these names to this story. And now the second dream. What seemed, to Sabrina, to be the most important things about the second dream were the papers consumed by green flames, the blue
flash, and the scream that ended the dream.
Tart to Tart was a few blocks away on Irving Street and Sarina heard the flute music again as she walked past the Academy of Music, the same haunting sound that took her back in time to days of fondness.
Joe played Native American flutes. Sarina was first introduced to this style of flute when he played for her when they were courting. Joe and Sarina had known each other from their years near Seattle when they were casual friends. He had contacted her seven years after she had moved to the Southeast and had shared his life. He was searching for a new life after a marriage of more than 15 years had broken up. Although his contacting her seemed a coincidence, somewhere in her belief system Sarina knew it was more than that.
During that time, Sarina had been calling into her life a man of substance; so when Joe stumbled upon her name on a social network site and sent her a message, she felt something stir inside of her. They were then both single and the attraction felt natural. Sarina had invited him to play his music for an old friend who was in process of creating an amazing story about his life as an artist. Native American flute music seemed like a good fit for the soundtrack to the biopic being filmed.
This was how their romance had begun. The enticement was the music but the deeper intention was to explore a potentially new relationship. His first visit was in the spring around the beginning of March. She had picked him up from the airport and with the stirrings of the season, their journey began.
The music wafting down Irving Street being played indeed was from one of his CDs produced so many years before. She slipped into a deep place of longing for those times. So many years had passed since Joe had gone missing without a trace. Funny, Sarina thought, all the close relationships she adored involved people who had disappeared or died or simply given up the relationship and moved on, making her suspicious of forming close and potentially lasting personal relationships with a fear that all relationships, no matter how wonderful, ultimately come to an end. Even as Sarina might be willing to trust intimate relationships again, her feelings of abandonment, however irrational they might seem, had kept herself from getting too close to most people and Riley was no exception.
Mary was quite possibly the only person she have ever allowed close enough to really know her, although Mary never pried so deeply as to force Sarina to be too vulnerable and face her abandonment issues. Was all of this somehow connected?
Sarina’s mind was swirling when she reached the coffee shop and sat in a seat close to the door so that she was better placed to see Detective Holden when he arrived. A few more moments allowed her to collect her thoughts and prepare for the detective’s arrival.
Sarina closed her eyes and sipped some chai as she allowed her guides to communicate with her. She felt a gentle push on her back towards Guatemala. She connected this sensation of Guatemala with the Mayan people. Joe had disappeared in Guatemala and she was about to journey there to sit with the Thirteen Grandmothers. The Mayan culture, she thought, must somehow be connected to this, but it all seemed fuzzy and disjointed. She felt another gentle push when she thought about the Mayan people. Sarina opened her journal and scribbled some notes and decided to look deeper into the Mayan culture when she had some down time. Find out if the names from my dream are ancient Mayan gods or somehow connected to the Mayan people.
Detective Holden walked in and found Sarina right away. He then ordered his favorite coffee drink and sat across the table from her. Sarina slowly closed her journal and looked up at the detective as he sat down.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, looking at her wearily.
Sarina shot him an all knowing kind of stare, nodded and said, “No problem. By the way, that couple who shared their dream and had never met… They ultimately got together and introduced a cultural revolution in their country by bringing back ritual and ancient customs to the people.”
Riley just stared at Sarina. He shook his head as if to shake Sarina’s comment out and said, “I have a few more questions to ask you.”
“I have a question or two for you as well.” Sarina was staring the detective down. Her comment about the royal couple was a test of Riley’s resolve to see if he was capable of accepting her even if he did not understand the way a woman processes.
“Why don’t you start? Your questions might be pertinent to mine. Oh and I am sorry to have come across in a panic this morning. There are so many things I simply don’t understand. I was still shaken by last night.”
“I understand. I am a bit unnerved as well and I know a lot about the process,” said Sarina. Okay, maybe he is trying to keep an open mind, she thought.
Sarina opened her journal and put her pen on the topic of the day. “My first question for you is this. I want to know how you connected me to Ann. You told me she had no identification and you mentioned nothing about DNA testing.” Sarina looked directly into the detective’s eyes and asked, “How did you know I was her sister?”
Detective Holden shrugged, “I didn’t. I actually guessed from events long ago. I stumbled across the writings you had done over the years. Some of my work involves connecting cases from other detectives and your work was associated with a case involving indigenous people north of here. Your research on indigenous people from here and around the world became interesting to me so I read your bio on your Web page. The Internet contains a vast knowledge base. I Googled you and your name surfaced over and over again. Simple detective work really.”
“Come on, Detective Holden …”
“Please call me Riley.”
“Okay, Riley (she said through clenched teeth). You called me just a short time after you discovered Ann on the church steps. What else are you not telling me? I sense you are holding back something.”
“Sarina, please don’t be angry with me.”
“I’m not,” she lied, “I am a person with highly developed intuitive skills so I have a way of knowing these things ...”
“Hold on here, if you are so gifted, then what is your sense of all this?”
“I only sense that you are not sharing something. It’s written on your face and I can see it. Your energy has indeed shifted, which means I’m likely on to something. Am I right ... Riley?”
After a brief pause, Riley said, “Okay, okay ...”
Just then the server approached with Riley’s coffee, and he lapsed into silence while she set everything on the bistro table where Sarina and Riley sat across from each other.
“Thank you, Chelsea.” Riley looked at her and smiled.
She smiled back. “You’re welcome, Riley.”
Sarina looked indignantly at Riley as he flirted with the server and shook her head. “Men are all the same,” she muttered under her breath.
Riley looked at Sarina, “What? I know her. I come here all the time. And besides, you now have my unbroken attention.” Riley flashed his most appealing smile, and appealing it was. Sarina felt a flutter, but tried to cover it with a scowl that said, please go on.
Riley settled back with his coffee and began, “I was a 19-year-old police rookie in your home town about 30 years ago. My partner was Jennifer Banderas. We were dispatched out to your house on a few domestic disturbance calls from your neighbors. We found nothing unusual, only loud arguing, which had incited the neighbors to call. You were about 16 years old and your sister, Ann, was 19.
“On our last visit, I noticed you in the corner with a deep look of concern. Jennifer was talking to your mother and father and you were standing next to your sister, holding her hand. I reached out for your free hand to reassure you that all was well and you sister reached out with her free hand and touched my shoulder. So there we were, the three of us standing together like we were saying grace at a dinner table. I looked into Ann’s eyes. They seemed to be pleading for help but she said nothing. But even more memorable than her gaze was the sensation I received when she touched me. It was like nothing I’d previously experienced. It felt like a low-level electric pulse or shock or so
mething. Not painful, more like a tingling feeling. It reminds me of how I feel when I lie down in bed after a long day when the sheets are clean and I sink into the comfort of my mattress for the first time. All tension in my lower back is released and flows out of my body. The tight back pain fades into a great sense of relief and I feel like I am floating in that bed.”
Sarina looked over to where Chelsea was standing and then stared back at Riley in some disbelief. She had a vague memory of that day. “Those were troubling times and I have blocked out most of the events that led up to the disappearance of my father. I don’t remember how I felt on that day except that I was very angry.” Sarina was feeling the angry sensation begin to penetrate her consciousness and then a slight feeling of warmth and security swept over Sarina as she gazed into Riley’s eyes now convinced he was not interested in the server who was twenty-five or so years his junior. Her anger seemed to melt away. Maybe Riley was different than most other men.
Riley continued, “Jennifer finished talking to your parents and we wrapped up our visit. There was never any concern about abuse or violence and your family was well known in your small community. We never found out what the arguments were really about. Your parents said they involved some personal family issues from your father’s side and we left it at that. We drove by your house from time to time, just to check up on your family. We didn’t stop; we only drove by. Both Jennifer and I felt something was strange and I was not able to shake that electrical shock, or whatever, experience from my body. That same electrical pulses was what I experienced when I found Ann and touched her body, even though she was dead.”
Sarina felt a wave of emotion but remained collected. “I know about these electrical connections that can happen between people. I experienced it for a short time in my life with my former … uh partner, Joe. Electrical pulses, was how he described them.” Tears were beginning to well up in her eyes.
The Song_A mysterious tale of the Mayan spirit world and the Mayan calendar Page 11