The Trimedian

by Dangerous Walker

  "AARRRGGGHH!" Lucas cried staring at the box. "What by thunder is that?"

  "It's a television," Dylan said.

  "How do the people get inside?" he was scared.

  "They're not inside, silly, they are somewhere else, we can just see them."

  "Like a Seer's Orb?"

  "No," Dad said, "it runs on electricity, look," he bent down and picked up the remote and showed Lucas how the channels changed.

  "Quickly, man, what is your name?"

  "Connor James and this is my son Dylan."

  "Connor James, explain quickly what this electrickery is."

  "Well, you burn coal to make it and then it powers just about everything we use."

  Lucas stood and thought about it.

  "Coal comes from the ground?"

  "Yes, it's animals that died millions of years ago."

  "I must go," Lucas said.

  "No, stay," said Dylan.

  "I will be back, but this is all too much for me. I am not a clever man."

  They followed him through the house as he looked at everything, touching things here and there until they were back at the shed. And then he stopped.

  "I don't know what to do. Who can I talk to?"

  "I don't understand," Connor James said.

  "This is too big for my understanding, yet I understand that this is important. Who will use this information for good? The wrong people would use the portal to change the Balance. What if the Chinerthian Queen finds out? But maybe we can use this to defeat her, but, but I don't know."

  "Who is the Chinerthian Queen?" Dylan asked.

  "I will be back, I don't know how long, but no longer than a week," Lucas said. "Farewell Connor and Dylan of The Shed," he said and then strode through the shed door and disappeared.

  Dylan moved towards it, but his Dad grabbed him.

  "No. We don't know what is on the other side, or whether we could get back again."

  {+}

  The next day at school went past as if in a dream. The bullies tried to take his lunch money, but he didn't even notice them.

  "Where's my money, pussy?"

  "What?" Dylan asked not really even hearing as he continued to walk around the playground.

  "My money. What are you deaf?"

  "Hmm, no," kept on walking.

  "Hey, come back here!" they ran around in front of him, but he changed direction and kept walking and thinking about Lucas and the shed and, what was it called? The portal.

  "He's talking to you," someone shouted, but they gave up chasing him as he wandered. He thought he heard someone say something about being 'crazy'.

  That evening he stood in the cold back garden staring at the open shed. The doorway was pitch black even though there was enough light coming from the house to see inside. He tried to remember all the things that he should be able to see, the lawn mower, their bikes, a hose, some gardening tools. But he could see nothing. He wondered what was on the other side really. A forest he thought. Lucas had said he came from a forest town and he'd been chasing a big pig. Would the forest be bright and green or dark and scary? Was it winter there too? Lucas had been wearing big furs so he thought it must be. But what he had been thinking about all day in school was what his Dad had said about five worlds. Not just one, but five.

  And now he heard his Dad come out of the house, felt him come and stand next to him and they both stood and stared at the shed.

  "Can you believe it?" his Dad asked.

  "Can you?" he asked and looked up at his Dad. He wasn't sure he could, but if his Dad could?

  "Come inside and let me show you a few things."

  They walked inside to the study and his Dad sat down at his desk and lifted Dylan onto his lap. Then he opened the big book he had shown Lucas.

  "OK, so throughout all the old mythologies; you know what they are?"

  "Like a story?"

  "Yes, exactly. Throughout them all there are hints and thoughts and stories about the Five Worlds. From Old Norse to ancient Chinese. They were never very big because even back then people thought it was silly, right?"

  "OK."

  "But this guy, Dr. Fozz?"

  "That's a funny name."

  "Yeah, it is; anyway, he studied it for years, all the clues, travelled the world and wrote this book. You see a lot of stories and myths never got written down, but they got passed on verbally."

  "Verbally?"

  "Verbally means speaking. So what Dr. Fozz found was that there are five worlds all connected by portals."

  "Like in our shed."

  "Exactly, but as people on Earth became more interested in science, medicine and money, they stopped believing in myths and magic and the portal to Earth closed."

  "Why?"

  "Because something can't exist if no one believes in it. If someone was walking in the forest and they thought they saw a unicorn in the forest, just somewhere in the trees, they wouldn't believe they saw a unicorn, they would believe they saw a horse and the light or the trees made it look like it had a horn. You see?"

  "I think so. But why would there be a portal in our shed?"

  "I don't know. But we have to be careful; we can't go through the portal, OK?"

  "OK."

  "Really."

  "OK, OK."

  "And we have to be careful; we don't know what might come out. Remember the pig?"

  "Yeah, that was scary."

  "Right."

  "Do you think Lucas will come back?"

  "I don't know. I think so, but I didn't really understand what he was talking about before he left, I need to read more now, OK?"

  "Yeah."

  His Dad put him down and turned him so they were looking into each other's eyes.

  "Don't go near the portal. We wait for Lucas, OK?"

  "Yes, Dad," he turned to leave. "Can I at least go out and look at it?"

  His Dad smiled.

  "If I said no, you would sneak out anyway," he got up and found a metal poker from the fireplace that had never been used. "If you do, keep this with you in case another animal comes out. And then shout for me," he smiled and Dylan smiled back.

  In the Valley of Elah

  CHAPTER ONE

  The door creaked open in the same way my secretary does her job, stubbornly half-hearted. It couldn't even be bothered to open all the way and the man who was trying to enter had to give it another push. I wished straightaway that it had been better at keeping closed, or that my secretary was better at telling people I was out to lunch.

  "Mr. Harker," the man said holding his hat in his hands.

  I held a palm out to the chair in front of my desk and he walked over and sat. I scratched my throat with the back of my fingers.

  "What can I do for you, Houngan?"

  "So you know who I am," the man said simply.

  I did, his name was DeSalle, he was a good twenty years older than me (which tells you nothing at this point, though my secretary might tell you that only makes him thirty) and had skin so dark it had a blue tinge in the dusty electric light. His eyes were dark and the sclera, you know the white part, was more a milky yellow, like cigarette stained wallpaper that used to be fancy. He wore a cheap suit with a crumpled pork pie hat that I admired before answering.

  "You're a Houngan, a Voodoo priest. It's DeSalle, isn't it?"

  "It is. I'm not local so I'm impressed you know me," he nodded to himself in some form of approval.

  "It's kinda my job," I shrugged. It was on the door, I mean what's the point of words if people aren't going to read them?

  "It is, and that's why I'm here."

  "So you can read."

  "What?"

  "I like your hat," I said and I did. I like hats.

  "You like hats."

  I said that.

  "Why are you here?" I asked.

  He pulled a crumpled newspaper from inside his suit.

  "I get the paper," I said, but I often didn't. Have I mentioned my lazy secretary?


  "Then you will have seen this," he opened the paper and showed me.

  Maybe he had already heard about my secretary.

  "Voodoo sacrifice."

  "That's what the papers are saying," he said, but not before a tired sigh.

  "And you disagree."

  "I do."

  "And what's it got to do with me?" I asked.

  "You're a private detective specialising in the occult," he said and the sign on the door paid for itself.

  "So I'm thinking you want me to show it had nothing to do with Voodoo."

  "Yes," he nodded earnestly.

  I shook my head for effect.

  "Can't do. This is murder, this is police business."

  "I don't want you to trouble them. I just want someone who knows what they are talking about to point out that this is not a Voodoo sacrifice. We don't do things like that, Mr Harker."

  "I know that."

  "So you already know that we are being targeted unfairly," he was getting more upset about it so I looked at the article.

  "All the hallmarks of a Voodoo sacrifice," I said.

  "Which you know we don't do."

  "Someone in your congregation might have."

  "Then you don't know my congregation."

  "I know you are meddling with Satan, Houngan."

  "We do good; Voodoo does good, Mr. Harker."

  "You're playing with spirits, Houngan, there's only one type that would go along with another religion," I said in my best stern voice.

  "I was told you would be like this," he said.

  "Celebrity," I said.

  "And I was told to come to you anyway because you wouldn't let innocents suffer, because you know the truth of these things," he kneaded his hat.

  "Alright," I said with hands up.

  He was right. Practitioners of Voodoo didn't go around sacrificing people, at least not anymore, and even a quick read through of the article made the whole thing seem suspicious. It was too much like what you thought a Voodoo sacrifice would look like. It was Voodoo in a way that anyone with a little knowledge (probably from a film) would not look any closer at.

  "You think someone is trying to pin this on your temple," I said.

  "Yes," he seemed relieved. "Who we are and who people think we are is very different."

  "Yes, it's much worse," I frowned.

  "We see things very differently," he said.

  "Yes, you are wrong, dangerously so, and I am right," I said leaning back in my chair.

  "So be it," he said looking down.

  "No," I said forcefully. "Not so be it."

  "I was told you would be like this," he said as if it was a mantra.

  I tossed up between angry and resigned and went for the latter, as I so often did.

  "They won't let me get in the way of a murder investigation," I said.

  "Not one of us can stop nor change the media, but we can present the real facts anyway. I worry that we will be persecuted, or someone will be prosecuted just because of how the media sees us," he said.

  I felt sorry for him. Voodoo was famous in the media, especially films, and none of it was positive. It was all witchcraft and Voodoo dolls and actually they had quite a positive religion. They thought they were doing good for their god, Bondye, a bastardisation of Bon Dieu. The problem being that they were deceived. Being deceived by evil spirits to keep them away from the one true God.

  I looked to the print on my wall, Hopper's 'Nighthawks'. I was being asked again to help someone, asked to do His work. Oh, yes, I already knew it was His work, I could feel it. This wasn't Voodoo, this was something else that they wanted people to attribute to the movie version of Voodoo. It was a cover and the question that burned in my gut was, for what?

  "Alright. I should be able to see the body, should be able to show that this wasn't Voodoo."

  "Oh, thank you," he almost deflated in my chair, you know, like someone had put a pin in him. "You don't think it is Voodoo."

  "Don't get ahead of yourself. It has all the hallmarks of Voodoo, the problem here is that it doesn't have any meaning behind it. I don't want to find that meaning, Houngan."

  "You won't," he said standing.

  "See yourself out, my secretary won't," I said.

  "My card," he said putting it on my desk before leaving. He stopped at the door. "Thank you, Harker."

  "Get out," I said staring at the ceiling.

  He left and seconds later my secretary entered.

  "You're surprisingly eager," I said to the ceiling.

  "This isn't the Mash is it?"

  "I don't think so."

  "You think we're on, don't you?"

  "What makes you say that?" I asked looking at her.

  "The sad resignation on your face."

  "You say that with scorn, Adelaide, but you haven't seen the things I have," I said deciding to look at the ceiling again.

  She left. I played the game of trying to decide how old she was. At least ten years older than me, but she was in incredible shape and that twisted things. Much better shape than I was in now. Her face was unlined and that made me think younger, but the way she carried herself, talked to people all pointed to older. She could be twenty years older than me. I really didn't know her that well at all, knew little to nothing of her past.

  I stared at the ceiling. My chair had a good recline feature, and thinking of it now, Adelaide chose it for me. Apparently she knows me better than I know her.

  This wasn't the Mash, of course it wasn't, this was murder. The Mash, if you must know, is what I do most days. Nix that, what I do most days is very little. I like to stare. At things, in things, out of things, it's not much of a hobby, but a man has to have something.

  When I'm not staring at things I'm investigating the paranormal. Well, I say 'paranormal' and hell, I say investigating, but as ghosts and the like don't actually exist I don't have to do much investigating. You might be surprised though at how little time I have for my hobby; spirituality and a belief in the occult has risen steadily in the last howevermanyyears despite the progress of science and technology. So I charge people to tell them that their ghost is a banging water pipe or tricks of light and/or sound.

  You know of infrasound? It's sound below 20Hz, which is the limit of our hearing. Basically noises below this can cause feelings of fear and dread and some can cause hallucinations. A lot of the time my job is finding out what in the building is causing those sounds.

  But then there's the other work I do, the real work. The whole paranormal stuff is just a front, a way to pay the bills. This was definitely the other stuff if it was anything at all. I really hoped it would be nothing; that I could show that it wasn't Voodoo so the police wouldn't bark up the wrong tree and then go home. Maybe stare at something for a while. But I had a feeling in my heart that told me different.

  ?

  I'd managed to get an appointment with the detective leading the case, a Detective Garrett, and she hadn't sounded too enthused at meeting with me. It's tough to get taken seriously when you're a ghost hunter and I can appreciate that. No wonder Adelaide was so grumpy, what would her friends think of her job? Or future boyfriends?

  "I don't have time for this," Detective Garret told me.

  "It is prime staring time," I nodded and she gave me a quizzical glare as we entered a little office.

  "What?"

  I sat down without being asked.

  "I just need to see the body," I said as I had on the phone.

  "So you said. Not happening."

  "It's not Voodoo," I said.

  "That's not what I'm told."

  "It kinda looks like Voodoo," I replied.

  "I already know that," she frumped.

  "But it isn't."

  "Oh no?"

  "Nope."

  She sighed and stared at the corner where the ceiling met the walls.

  "I have work to do," she said.

  "As do I."

  "Do you?" she looked at me.

&nb
sp; "Well, outside of this, no. Not really."

  "Then I'm the only one here having their time wasted."

  "I'm here to save you wasted time. That and to help the Voodoo community," I said.

  "Because this isn't Voodoo despite our experts saying that it is."

  "Did they?"

  "I just said they did."

  She had a point there.

  "They said it was definitely Voodoo, did they?"

  She thought about it briefly.

  "Not definitely, no."

  "Here's my issue, the issue of my client. Why would they do it? Why would you do a Voodoo sacrifice and make it so public? There's nothing in Voodoo that says a sacrifice should be public; as long as it's done, it's done. There are plenty of places to do it and never get caught."

  She thought about it and I liked her for it. Thinking is becoming overrated in society and that's a problem.

  "Criminals aren't smart," she said finally.

  "This isn't a criminal activity to them, it's part of their religion."

  "Why would anyone else do it? Why make it public and try and frame someone else? Like you say, there're plenty of places to do it secretly."

  "I'd need to look at the body, the crime scene photos, the crime scene if I could, to answer that question."

  She laughed.

  "You really think I'm going to let you go to the crime scene?"

  "No," I shrugged. I was used to this.

  She looked around the room again. There was still nothing to see so I guessed she was weighing it up. In these instances it's wise to keep your mouth shut. Says a lot about me. I had a quick stare out the window.

  "I'm not trying to jump in on your investigation, my client just wants something to say to the media when the inevitable happens."

  "Oh yeah?" she turned on me. "And what is that?"

  I stood up, this was a standing moment. I paced for effect and to not look like I was challenging her.

  "Two things bug me. One is that the media already has this and has so much detail," she grimaced about that. "The second thing is a minor detail in the form of a Star of David."

  "What of it?"

  "It's got nothing to do with Voodoo. People connect Voodoo with Satanism and so don't think about it."

  "So it's done by amateurs, but it still begs the question why."

  I didn't answer, but thought about it again. It was really the sole reason that this wasn't the Mash, wasn't just something linked to the occult. There were plenty of murders that got linked to Satanism and other such things, and no doubt Satan got a kick out of them, but they weren't for or by him. The idea that Satan wants Human sacrifices is a myth, that's not what he's interested in, that's lowbrow for him.