| Supernatural Fiction posted December 14, 2010 | Chapters: |
-1- 2... 
|
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Talking to the undead has its consequences.
A chapter in the book The Glass Cat Eye
The Midnight Seance
by amahra
| Background This is a draft of the short fantasy thriller novel. The final manuscript has gone through numerous editing including professional editing. Some scenes have been added to and some dialogue replaced. |
Midnight: Seance'
Holding hands at the round table as Iris Keller responded to the voice of her dead lover made Steven Crane feel incredibly stupid. He was an Atheist and believed that any claim on the supernatural had just as much value as a bucket of warm piss. He had agreed to sit in on the seance' just to humor his childhood friend, Esther West, a preacher's daughter whom he felt had been dooped right along with thousands of other ghost-believing idiots. Not that he thought that of Esther, he loved her too much.
Outside, the lightning flashed and the thunder growled, like a ferocious bear in combat. The September wind shooked the house, like it wanted in, as the rain beat hard against the windows. Large barks snapped like twigs and disappeared in the distants.
Inside, the room grew dark and eerie. A special candle was placed in the middle of the table to formed a hedge of protection around them. The flame appeared to dance above the wicker. Madame Reece's black irises rolled to the back of her head and remained there. Blood trickled down from one ear as she foamed at the mouth, like a rabid dog.
Creaking noises rose throughout the house, and thumping sounds moved along the walls. The other five guests gripped each other's hand as a mist crept over the table, and a ghostly face of a man formed out of the air. Steven felt Esther's hand when it trembled. She squeezed his until the blood slipped to his finger tips and made his tips thump with every beat of his heart. A muffled sound of a crying child loomed above the mist. A guest swore it was the voice of her little girl who'd drowned years ago. Another guest acknowledged a seventh person seated with them at the table; they all gasped when she fanished as quickly as she had appeared.
Steven’s eyes scanned for hidden mikes, strings on flying objects, or black clothed figures lurking in the background. But technology had become too sophisticated for an amateur psychic buster like him, he reasoned.
Esther seemed frightened but eager for the experience. Her request was next. Her deceased granny had moved up in the spirit line, or so she was told. Steven's eyes ping pong back and forth between her and the psychic. Esther no sooner took a hard swallow, when Reece screamed in multiple voices and collapsed. He wanted to stand and applaud the performance, but knew he'd be slaughtered by disapproving eyes. The lights flashed on, nearly blinding the guests. An assistant begged everyone's forgiveness. She announced that the session had ended, as another assistant escorted a weak Madame Reece from the room.
The Séance left Steven quite amused; he wanted to hang back and ask them how she had done the multiple voices, the facial aging and especially the blood coming from her ear. He couldn't believe this happened right in front of him. There seemed nothing but blank walls in the room and no table cloth on the wooden table; nothing seemed hidden. She was good; there was no doubt about that, he thought. Now what to do about Esther? The glow on her face told him everything; he definitely had his work cut out for him. On the parking lot, she turned to him.
"So, what did you think?"
He said, "It's fake. You knew I'd say it."
"Yes--I knew, "but you can't prove it."
"It was over too soon. We had stuff worked out."
"You mean all those lies you wanted me to feed her--to trip her up."
"Hell yeah, I wanted to trip her phony ass up. That was the plan. But I'll get my chance at the next session," he said.
"There'll be no next session for you," she said. "I've had it with your damn skepticism. Just stay away from me."
"Oh now you're being childish."
"Childish?" Well, maybe I am. Children are more likely to be open-minded to the unknown, aren't they? And aren't we encourage to be as little children when we read the scriptures?"
"And what about what the scriptures say about psychics? You can't just pick and choose what you want to believe."
"Like you don't?"
"What?"
"If my father knew you questioned most of what he teaches, you wouldn't be allowed to step foot in our home and you know it."
"I've never questioned his integrity. I just think he's bamboozled like the rest of religious society."
"My father? Bamboozled?"
"I can't help it if I don't buy your father's philosophy on hell fire and demons."
"Can't you just once support me without an opinion?"
"No. I won't stand by and watch you give hundreds of dollars to some crook who claims to conjure up your dead grandma. I'm sorry--but that's just plain stupid."
"Now, I'm stupid?"
"I...I didn't say..."
"Fine!"
She whirled around on her three inch heels and headed for her car. He reached for her.
"Don't be like that. We've known each other forever: kindergarten, children's church. Damn it, Esther!"
Esther eluded his grasp. She slammed the door in his face and drove off. Steven was visibly shaken. He hated that this mess had come between them. But how, he thought, could he prove that this Madame Reece was a phony? He got into his car, fastened his seat belt and started the engine. He knew if he were to put even a dent into this psychic scam, he had to do some digging into Reece's past, and maybe some snooping around her place too. As he left the parking lot, he seemed rather pleased with himself for what he'd planned. He drove off with his mouth drawn in a devilish smile.
**************
3:00 AM: the next Morning
Madame Reece Weatherbee, or Reecie as she was called by those closest to her, lifted her head from her pillow and felt a slight pulling at her scalp. She examined the pillow and saw her dark strands pasted in dried blood. She touched her neck and felt the roughness of the tiny red crumbs that sprinkled down onto her shoulder. Madame performed as a psychic most of her thirty-nine years. She never married, had no children and lived on her own since age seventeen.
Reece walked to the bathroom to get a better look at herself. Her eyes looked like the "Before" Clear Eyes eye drop commercial. Her hair was matted. And her left ear still oozed blood. A sharp pain rippled through her right arm when she reached for the shower knob. She flopped down on the toilet seat and tried to gather herself. A rap on the bedroom door startled her.
"Yes," she called out in a weak voice.
A plump woman, in her forties, walked into the bathroom where Reece sat. She gently scolded Reece for not calling for help. The staff, which consisted of: housekeepers, cook, chauffer, nurse, and personal assistances, loved Reece and catered to her every whelm. They seldom let her do anything for herself.
The woman took cotton balls and Q-tips--dipped them in a solution and cleaned away the dried blood. She massaged her right arm. Afterwards, she washed her hair and drew a bath.
Madame sat drying her hair with a towel, while the woman changed the bedding. Reece was exhausted; " the spirits had been extremely demanding and unpredictable," she told a staff member after being carried off. Her bleeding ear, a preexisting condition made worst when using her gift, proved too painful to continue the session. Groggy from the pain medication, Reece slipped between the fresh covers and fell asleep, as the plump woman sat a far off in a large arm chair, monitoring her every breath.
**************
Private Study
Dr. Connelly, or Doc, as he was endearingly called, squeezed the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb for the seventh time after pulling off his glasses. He rubbed his tired blue eyes, yawned and took a sip of his sixth cup of black coffee. His wife was used to this by now. His three kids, Palmer, JT, and Brittany had gotten used to it years ago just before going off to college, then finding their own place in the world.
Joyce, his wife of thirty-eight years, always kept a snack by his nightstand. She kept a light on in the hall so he wouldn't have to stumble up to bed groggy from work as he most times did. On his desk were a wave of notes and papers, and a spread of books: Communication with the Other Side by Sir George Lyttelton, Beware the Lies of Satan by Dr. Frederick K. Price, The Study of Demonology, by various authors, Why the Ouija Board is not a Kid's Game, by none other than Dr. Richard D. Connelly, himself and piles of other references.
Dr. Connelly earned a PhD in Theology with a passion for research on world religion. He was an academic expert, author of nine books and a valuable contributor of information about religious topics, including the occult; before retiring, he had been in great demand lecturing at top universities all over the world. But when he got stuck just wanting to lecture on the occult, he received scrutiny from his colleagues and admirers. They accused him of being too self-absorbed with this satanic thing; and he was soon removed from their list of lecturers. His phone stop ringing and his touring dried up.
Fortunately, he had come from a financially secure family; and he had invested his own money well. This allowed him the finance and the freedom to continue to research and write books on his new subject. But it wasn't his fascination with the occult that influenced him and set him on this course; it was an earlier encounter that rocked his intellectual genius and changed his life's purpose forever.
It was 1993, in a small town in Ohio, a place barely on the map. He was lecturing at a small Bible College. In the middle of his lecture, he noticed a young female, not seated with the others, but standing afar off in a dark corner of the tiny auditorium. Her disheveled appearance, dark scrawny face, and deep disturbing eyes, set her apart from the rest of the crowd. Her wool scarf was wrapped several times, which seemed much too tightly, around her tiny neck. She looked about seventeen. She wore a dark wool cap pulled down over long, stringy, dirty, blonde hair; the long sleeve pink sweater she wore was pulled over her hands–covering her finger-tips.
With her arms folded across her chest, she held each shoulder with the opposite sweater-covered hand as she rocked back and forth. She kept her head bowed, but looked up at him. Her eyes were chilling, with hardly any white showing. He tried not to notice her, but it was as if something wanted him to; something seemed to be pulling his glare towards her; and no matter where he looked out over the crowd, his eyes seemed to find hers. Suddenly their glares locked, and a cold wind swept over the stage and chilled him until he nearly gasped. He lost focus on his lecturing for a short moment but then resumed.
Fortunately, he thought to himself, nobody noticed. But when he looked at her again, she had a sinister smile on her face. What she did next sent every nerve in his body a sharp jolt...first he saw her, then the wall through her, then just the wall. He played it off by reaching for a drink of water and clearing his throat; and without looking at the reaction of the audience, he continued to lecture.
After the lecture, Dr. Connelly, still shaken, was acting noticeably strange. His colleague and friend, who had invited him to lecture, confronted him, asked him what was wrong. And when Connelly told him, he was surprised that his colleague's facial expression never changed. And what he told Dr Connelly in response nearly turned his Irish pale face green.
"This had been a very quiet ordinary town for the past sixty years," he began his story, "until five years ago when a group of Spiritualists descended on our town. Right away, the town's people began spotting this girl, that wasn’t a girl, but a demon who occupied the dead girl’s body. And nobody knew who the girl was, because she wasn't from around here. The demon killed the psychics who had summoned it here. It seems, they realized their mistake and tried to send it back against its will, and it killed them one-by-one. The bodies were so torn apart, we couldn't tell who was who, or what part of what body parts went where; we just shoveled the remains in one big meat and bone pile, placed it in a casket and gave them a proper burial. Don't know who their families were."
Doc's heart, which was thudding, left his mouth.
"How do you deal with it?"
"We tried for years to get mediums to come here and get rid of this thing," he said, "but if they came, they either wound up scared out of their wits, run off or worst. And then some we contacted who knew what they'd be dealing with just wouldn't come. They all said the same thing...that this was a really dangerous and powerful demon. One top Spiritualist, who felt sorry for us, did send us some instructions, but… nobody will touch em".
"So you just live with it?"
"Well," he said with a sigh, "those of us who live here just know how to keep out of its way. We leave it, alone and it leaves us, alone. The only problem is from people who come here from out of town. We warn them and they ignore us; or they laugh at us. So we lock our doors and wait for the screams to go away, then go about our business. What can I say?" he ended with a shrug of his shoulders.
"Well this is the 'damnedest' thing I've ever encountered," Dr. Connelly told him. But he did promise his friend and colleague that he wouldn't rest until he researched and studied everything that he could about this phenomenon. And when he had, he'd be back.
That was over twelve years ago. And Dr. Connelly still struggled to make good on that promise. He was busy preparing to meet with mediums to educate them on the dangers of what they were doing. He wasn't interested in shutting down psychic businesses that were scamming people out of their money; No. He left that to law enforcement. He was only interested in the mediums who actually contacted the demonic world.
He had been studying this evil for years now. He had become expert at understanding their strength and weakness. The psychics were tapping into an unknown that was about to turn the world to chaos of apocalyptic proportions. He had to warn them that one of them could just be one séance away from unleashing this unholy terror.
He had sent out letters to various psychics, explaining that he wasn't their enemy and that they should get a better understanding of each other's position; but many feared it was just a trick to put them in the hot seat, and so he got nearly no response; only a few were gracious enough to respond. Doc had one such letter before him; it read:
Dear Dr. Richard D. Connelly: As Doc read on, he was very pleased. It ended:
Sincerely,
Madame Reece Weatherbee .......
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Mid-day three weeks after séance-Living Room
Steven shifted himself a few times in the large beige chair, but never got comfortable. He finally leaned forward, sitting wide legged and placing an elbow on each knee, folded his hands in front of him. The thick blue carpet half swallowed his feet as his eyes darted back and forth taking in the well kept beauty of Reece Weatherbee's childhood home.
Katherine Weatherbee-Dawson, Reece's mom, who was widowed for the second time, tried to make small talk loud enough for him to hear her from the kitchen, which was only a few feet away, separated by a narrow hallway. It wasn't hard to hear her over the constant clinking of the dishware, as she prepared the two cups of spice tea. Mrs. Dawson had been reluctant to talk with a stranger about her daughter. But something in the way she wasn't too eager to stop the conversation either, prompted him to push for a face-to-face meeting.
Katherine kept in close contact with her daughter. They were relatively close as long as they didn't discuss the forbidden; they referred to it as, "the gift." Reece had been a normal child. Being the only child, she was a bit spoiled, but a very charitable and loving kid. She and her father were very close until he died of a heart attack when Reece was twelve. She took it hard, but managed it as well as a kid her age could. Then at fifteen, Reece became rebellious.
As a high school teacher and having to deal with thirty kids at one time, Katherine was quite prepared for a headstrong daughter. But nothing prepared her for the summer of 88. Katherine had allowed Reece to spend a weekend with this strange looking new kid who seemed to have a fascination with the color black, and whose parents seemed always out of town. Some kid brought a Ouija Board to the party and Katherine believes that's when she lost her daughter. Reece was convinced that she had always had this gift. She said the night of the party had nothing to do with it. Katherine disagreed.
A few weeks after the party, strange happenings occurred in this tight-knit Cleveland community: animals were found mutilated; family members disappeared without a trace; and a young girl was murdered. She was found nude, nailed to a tree up-side-down; she had been split down the middle, and her throat had been cut. During these happenings, Reece became distant and began acting strange. The fights between her and Katherine escalated. Finally, Reece ran away from home. They didn't speak for years until Katherine, wanting to make peace with her only child, called her and promised never to mention the matter again.
After his second cup of tea, and listening to the stories, Steven pretended to care about the time; he quickly looked at his watch, thanked Mrs. Dawson for her time and asked if they could talk again. Katherine agreed and walked him to the door. Of course he didn't believe one word of the story and had no intentions of contacting her again since nothing she had said helped to prove her daughter a phony. But he didn't believe she was, in any way, covering for her daughter. She really believed those things happened. He figured she was just one more person caught up in this phony world of the supernatural. So he set his sights towards plan "B" and left......
Holding hands at the round table as Iris Keller responded to the voice of her dead lover made Steven Crane feel incredibly stupid. He was an Atheist and believed that any claim on the supernatural had just as much value as a bucket of warm piss. He had agreed to sit in on the seance' just to humor his childhood friend, Esther West, a preacher's daughter whom he felt had been dooped right along with thousands of other ghost-believing idiots. Not that he thought that of Esther, he loved her too much.
Outside, the lightning flashed and the thunder growled, like a ferocious bear in combat. The September wind shooked the house, like it wanted in, as the rain beat hard against the windows. Large barks snapped like twigs and disappeared in the distants.
Inside, the room grew dark and eerie. A special candle was placed in the middle of the table to formed a hedge of protection around them. The flame appeared to dance above the wicker. Madame Reece's black irises rolled to the back of her head and remained there. Blood trickled down from one ear as she foamed at the mouth, like a rabid dog.
Creaking noises rose throughout the house, and thumping sounds moved along the walls. The other five guests gripped each other's hand as a mist crept over the table, and a ghostly face of a man formed out of the air. Steven felt Esther's hand when it trembled. She squeezed his until the blood slipped to his finger tips and made his tips thump with every beat of his heart. A muffled sound of a crying child loomed above the mist. A guest swore it was the voice of her little girl who'd drowned years ago. Another guest acknowledged a seventh person seated with them at the table; they all gasped when she fanished as quickly as she had appeared.
Steven’s eyes scanned for hidden mikes, strings on flying objects, or black clothed figures lurking in the background. But technology had become too sophisticated for an amateur psychic buster like him, he reasoned.
Esther seemed frightened but eager for the experience. Her request was next. Her deceased granny had moved up in the spirit line, or so she was told. Steven's eyes ping pong back and forth between her and the psychic. Esther no sooner took a hard swallow, when Reece screamed in multiple voices and collapsed. He wanted to stand and applaud the performance, but knew he'd be slaughtered by disapproving eyes. The lights flashed on, nearly blinding the guests. An assistant begged everyone's forgiveness. She announced that the session had ended, as another assistant escorted a weak Madame Reece from the room.
The Séance left Steven quite amused; he wanted to hang back and ask them how she had done the multiple voices, the facial aging and especially the blood coming from her ear. He couldn't believe this happened right in front of him. There seemed nothing but blank walls in the room and no table cloth on the wooden table; nothing seemed hidden. She was good; there was no doubt about that, he thought. Now what to do about Esther? The glow on her face told him everything; he definitely had his work cut out for him. On the parking lot, she turned to him.
"So, what did you think?"
He said, "It's fake. You knew I'd say it."
"Yes--I knew, "but you can't prove it."
"It was over too soon. We had stuff worked out."
"You mean all those lies you wanted me to feed her--to trip her up."
"Hell yeah, I wanted to trip her phony ass up. That was the plan. But I'll get my chance at the next session," he said.
"There'll be no next session for you," she said. "I've had it with your damn skepticism. Just stay away from me."
"Oh now you're being childish."
"Childish?" Well, maybe I am. Children are more likely to be open-minded to the unknown, aren't they? And aren't we encourage to be as little children when we read the scriptures?"
"And what about what the scriptures say about psychics? You can't just pick and choose what you want to believe."
"Like you don't?"
"What?"
"If my father knew you questioned most of what he teaches, you wouldn't be allowed to step foot in our home and you know it."
"I've never questioned his integrity. I just think he's bamboozled like the rest of religious society."
"My father? Bamboozled?"
"I can't help it if I don't buy your father's philosophy on hell fire and demons."
"Can't you just once support me without an opinion?"
"No. I won't stand by and watch you give hundreds of dollars to some crook who claims to conjure up your dead grandma. I'm sorry--but that's just plain stupid."
"Now, I'm stupid?"
"I...I didn't say..."
"Fine!"
She whirled around on her three inch heels and headed for her car. He reached for her.
"Don't be like that. We've known each other forever: kindergarten, children's church. Damn it, Esther!"
Esther eluded his grasp. She slammed the door in his face and drove off. Steven was visibly shaken. He hated that this mess had come between them. But how, he thought, could he prove that this Madame Reece was a phony? He got into his car, fastened his seat belt and started the engine. He knew if he were to put even a dent into this psychic scam, he had to do some digging into Reece's past, and maybe some snooping around her place too. As he left the parking lot, he seemed rather pleased with himself for what he'd planned. He drove off with his mouth drawn in a devilish smile.
**************
3:00 AM: the next Morning
Madame Reece Weatherbee, or Reecie as she was called by those closest to her, lifted her head from her pillow and felt a slight pulling at her scalp. She examined the pillow and saw her dark strands pasted in dried blood. She touched her neck and felt the roughness of the tiny red crumbs that sprinkled down onto her shoulder. Madame performed as a psychic most of her thirty-nine years. She never married, had no children and lived on her own since age seventeen.
Reece walked to the bathroom to get a better look at herself. Her eyes looked like the "Before" Clear Eyes eye drop commercial. Her hair was matted. And her left ear still oozed blood. A sharp pain rippled through her right arm when she reached for the shower knob. She flopped down on the toilet seat and tried to gather herself. A rap on the bedroom door startled her.
"Yes," she called out in a weak voice.
A plump woman, in her forties, walked into the bathroom where Reece sat. She gently scolded Reece for not calling for help. The staff, which consisted of: housekeepers, cook, chauffer, nurse, and personal assistances, loved Reece and catered to her every whelm. They seldom let her do anything for herself.
The woman took cotton balls and Q-tips--dipped them in a solution and cleaned away the dried blood. She massaged her right arm. Afterwards, she washed her hair and drew a bath.
Madame sat drying her hair with a towel, while the woman changed the bedding. Reece was exhausted; " the spirits had been extremely demanding and unpredictable," she told a staff member after being carried off. Her bleeding ear, a preexisting condition made worst when using her gift, proved too painful to continue the session. Groggy from the pain medication, Reece slipped between the fresh covers and fell asleep, as the plump woman sat a far off in a large arm chair, monitoring her every breath.
**************
Private Study
Dr. Connelly, or Doc, as he was endearingly called, squeezed the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb for the seventh time after pulling off his glasses. He rubbed his tired blue eyes, yawned and took a sip of his sixth cup of black coffee. His wife was used to this by now. His three kids, Palmer, JT, and Brittany had gotten used to it years ago just before going off to college, then finding their own place in the world.
Joyce, his wife of thirty-eight years, always kept a snack by his nightstand. She kept a light on in the hall so he wouldn't have to stumble up to bed groggy from work as he most times did. On his desk were a wave of notes and papers, and a spread of books: Communication with the Other Side by Sir George Lyttelton, Beware the Lies of Satan by Dr. Frederick K. Price, The Study of Demonology, by various authors, Why the Ouija Board is not a Kid's Game, by none other than Dr. Richard D. Connelly, himself and piles of other references.
Dr. Connelly earned a PhD in Theology with a passion for research on world religion. He was an academic expert, author of nine books and a valuable contributor of information about religious topics, including the occult; before retiring, he had been in great demand lecturing at top universities all over the world. But when he got stuck just wanting to lecture on the occult, he received scrutiny from his colleagues and admirers. They accused him of being too self-absorbed with this satanic thing; and he was soon removed from their list of lecturers. His phone stop ringing and his touring dried up.
Fortunately, he had come from a financially secure family; and he had invested his own money well. This allowed him the finance and the freedom to continue to research and write books on his new subject. But it wasn't his fascination with the occult that influenced him and set him on this course; it was an earlier encounter that rocked his intellectual genius and changed his life's purpose forever.
It was 1993, in a small town in Ohio, a place barely on the map. He was lecturing at a small Bible College. In the middle of his lecture, he noticed a young female, not seated with the others, but standing afar off in a dark corner of the tiny auditorium. Her disheveled appearance, dark scrawny face, and deep disturbing eyes, set her apart from the rest of the crowd. Her wool scarf was wrapped several times, which seemed much too tightly, around her tiny neck. She looked about seventeen. She wore a dark wool cap pulled down over long, stringy, dirty, blonde hair; the long sleeve pink sweater she wore was pulled over her hands–covering her finger-tips.
With her arms folded across her chest, she held each shoulder with the opposite sweater-covered hand as she rocked back and forth. She kept her head bowed, but looked up at him. Her eyes were chilling, with hardly any white showing. He tried not to notice her, but it was as if something wanted him to; something seemed to be pulling his glare towards her; and no matter where he looked out over the crowd, his eyes seemed to find hers. Suddenly their glares locked, and a cold wind swept over the stage and chilled him until he nearly gasped. He lost focus on his lecturing for a short moment but then resumed.
Fortunately, he thought to himself, nobody noticed. But when he looked at her again, she had a sinister smile on her face. What she did next sent every nerve in his body a sharp jolt...first he saw her, then the wall through her, then just the wall. He played it off by reaching for a drink of water and clearing his throat; and without looking at the reaction of the audience, he continued to lecture.
After the lecture, Dr. Connelly, still shaken, was acting noticeably strange. His colleague and friend, who had invited him to lecture, confronted him, asked him what was wrong. And when Connelly told him, he was surprised that his colleague's facial expression never changed. And what he told Dr Connelly in response nearly turned his Irish pale face green.
"This had been a very quiet ordinary town for the past sixty years," he began his story, "until five years ago when a group of Spiritualists descended on our town. Right away, the town's people began spotting this girl, that wasn’t a girl, but a demon who occupied the dead girl’s body. And nobody knew who the girl was, because she wasn't from around here. The demon killed the psychics who had summoned it here. It seems, they realized their mistake and tried to send it back against its will, and it killed them one-by-one. The bodies were so torn apart, we couldn't tell who was who, or what part of what body parts went where; we just shoveled the remains in one big meat and bone pile, placed it in a casket and gave them a proper burial. Don't know who their families were."
Doc's heart, which was thudding, left his mouth.
"How do you deal with it?"
"We tried for years to get mediums to come here and get rid of this thing," he said, "but if they came, they either wound up scared out of their wits, run off or worst. And then some we contacted who knew what they'd be dealing with just wouldn't come. They all said the same thing...that this was a really dangerous and powerful demon. One top Spiritualist, who felt sorry for us, did send us some instructions, but… nobody will touch em".
"So you just live with it?"
"Well," he said with a sigh, "those of us who live here just know how to keep out of its way. We leave it, alone and it leaves us, alone. The only problem is from people who come here from out of town. We warn them and they ignore us; or they laugh at us. So we lock our doors and wait for the screams to go away, then go about our business. What can I say?" he ended with a shrug of his shoulders.
"Well this is the 'damnedest' thing I've ever encountered," Dr. Connelly told him. But he did promise his friend and colleague that he wouldn't rest until he researched and studied everything that he could about this phenomenon. And when he had, he'd be back.
That was over twelve years ago. And Dr. Connelly still struggled to make good on that promise. He was busy preparing to meet with mediums to educate them on the dangers of what they were doing. He wasn't interested in shutting down psychic businesses that were scamming people out of their money; No. He left that to law enforcement. He was only interested in the mediums who actually contacted the demonic world.
He had been studying this evil for years now. He had become expert at understanding their strength and weakness. The psychics were tapping into an unknown that was about to turn the world to chaos of apocalyptic proportions. He had to warn them that one of them could just be one séance away from unleashing this unholy terror.
He had sent out letters to various psychics, explaining that he wasn't their enemy and that they should get a better understanding of each other's position; but many feared it was just a trick to put them in the hot seat, and so he got nearly no response; only a few were gracious enough to respond. Doc had one such letter before him; it read:
Dear Dr. Richard D. Connelly: As Doc read on, he was very pleased. It ended:
Sincerely,
Madame Reece Weatherbee .......
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Mid-day three weeks after séance-Living Room
Steven shifted himself a few times in the large beige chair, but never got comfortable. He finally leaned forward, sitting wide legged and placing an elbow on each knee, folded his hands in front of him. The thick blue carpet half swallowed his feet as his eyes darted back and forth taking in the well kept beauty of Reece Weatherbee's childhood home.
Katherine Weatherbee-Dawson, Reece's mom, who was widowed for the second time, tried to make small talk loud enough for him to hear her from the kitchen, which was only a few feet away, separated by a narrow hallway. It wasn't hard to hear her over the constant clinking of the dishware, as she prepared the two cups of spice tea. Mrs. Dawson had been reluctant to talk with a stranger about her daughter. But something in the way she wasn't too eager to stop the conversation either, prompted him to push for a face-to-face meeting.
Katherine kept in close contact with her daughter. They were relatively close as long as they didn't discuss the forbidden; they referred to it as, "the gift." Reece had been a normal child. Being the only child, she was a bit spoiled, but a very charitable and loving kid. She and her father were very close until he died of a heart attack when Reece was twelve. She took it hard, but managed it as well as a kid her age could. Then at fifteen, Reece became rebellious.
As a high school teacher and having to deal with thirty kids at one time, Katherine was quite prepared for a headstrong daughter. But nothing prepared her for the summer of 88. Katherine had allowed Reece to spend a weekend with this strange looking new kid who seemed to have a fascination with the color black, and whose parents seemed always out of town. Some kid brought a Ouija Board to the party and Katherine believes that's when she lost her daughter. Reece was convinced that she had always had this gift. She said the night of the party had nothing to do with it. Katherine disagreed.
A few weeks after the party, strange happenings occurred in this tight-knit Cleveland community: animals were found mutilated; family members disappeared without a trace; and a young girl was murdered. She was found nude, nailed to a tree up-side-down; she had been split down the middle, and her throat had been cut. During these happenings, Reece became distant and began acting strange. The fights between her and Katherine escalated. Finally, Reece ran away from home. They didn't speak for years until Katherine, wanting to make peace with her only child, called her and promised never to mention the matter again.
After his second cup of tea, and listening to the stories, Steven pretended to care about the time; he quickly looked at his watch, thanked Mrs. Dawson for her time and asked if they could talk again. Katherine agreed and walked him to the door. Of course he didn't believe one word of the story and had no intentions of contacting her again since nothing she had said helped to prove her daughter a phony. But he didn't believe she was, in any way, covering for her daughter. She really believed those things happened. He figured she was just one more person caught up in this phony world of the supernatural. So he set his sights towards plan "B" and left......
 Recognized |
Unlike "Third-person limited" which the narrator only conveys the thoughts of the protagonist, this Novelette is written in the "Third-person subjective" which means the narrator (me) conveys the thoughts of one or more characters. I would like to thank Khristysdesigns for Lady of the Crystal Ball," it truly enhances the title of my work.
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