on, “It appears that not only can Samuel turn into anything that he sees and imagines, but he can also make the actual person or object appear.”
Ariel wanted to take her new toy for a test drive, “I want to meet Beyonce!”
Samuel didn’t even think for a moment before changing into pop star Beyonce and then splitting off into himself and the actual Beyonce.
A stunned Beyonce looked around the room and said, “Oh, hello.”
The group said “Hello” in unison and in an upbeat tone.
“Can you sign this for me?” Ariel said as she looked behind her and Maggie handed her a piece of paper.
“You’re a lot smaller in person than you appear on television,” an honest Kayla stated.
Beyonce nodded her head, “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
Kayla was not one to dwell in the negative, though “But you are so beautiful.”
“Thanks!” the smiling star replied.
Just before it was about to start getting weird, Hartwell asked, “Dear, can you tell me where you were before you were here?”
“Oh, I was about to do a sound check at The Palace in Detroit, Michigan.”
Hartwell then looked at Samuel and said internally, “Bring her back there and then pick up some Michigan stuff for me at the campus bookstore in Ann Arbor. The $50 bill that Hartwell propped up in his hand was gone along with Samuel and Beyonce, who were standing just off stage within seconds.
“Wow! That was fun!” Beyonce exclaimed. “Can I call you next time…” she started saying before Samuel disappeared and then was back in the main room of the house with assorted maize and blue items for Hartwell.
“Go blue!” Samuel said even though he had no idea what it meant at first.
“Go blue!” Hartwell replied as he put on a navy blue “M” hat and waved a ‘number one’ finger.
Daniel had seen enough, “This boy needs a little more history and facts to be more effective,” as he placed his right index finger on Samuel’s skull and downloaded a global library of information to his grandson.
“Wow! That was a rush!” Samuel yelled.
Daniel knew what was coming next, “Before we have a parade of stars and dignitaries through this house, let’s sit down and eat and possibly discuss how not to abuse this gift.”
As everyone agreed and moved to their place at the table, Hartwell pulled Samuel aside and said, “You have to learn how to best use your gifts, Samuel. We will all love you even if you don’t make Albert Einstein appear.”
All Samuel heard was Albert Einstein and he was now able to access a full profile of the 20th century genius through the upload from Daniel. He morphed into Einstein and then split into himself and the deceased genius. Samuel guided Albert to an open seat at the end of the table where Hartwell was sitting, and the calm man with the bushy gray hair and mustache said in his thick German accent, “It’s been so long since I have had good Chinese food.”
He then turned to Hartwell and said, “Hello, Thomas. Long time, no see.”
Hartwell looked around the table and smiled, “It’s good to see you again, Al. Wait ‘till you taste the egg rolls. They are to die for.”
Einstein smiled, “They better be. I’m already dead.”
SIX
Breakfast was eaten and everyone in the House of Hartwell was busy and attacking the day. Everyone, of course, except Hartwell himself. He had been putting the pieces of the past two days together and came to the following conclusion about a person he hadn’t seen in years.
“I didn’t know that you were her daughter,” he said internally.
Linda Vinson was walking through Beach Haven Drugs with her daughter and mother and was surprised to hear another voice other than her own in her ear. She had received flashes of voices in the past and quickly wrote off the statement and continued browsing through the plethora of shampoos. Linda wasn’t as clairvoyant as her daughter but she was usually a conduit of information when the action really picked up.
Hartwell was never one to be patient, especially when he was feeling the weight of the world starting to engage his broad shoulders. He wanted answers and he knew where to go to get them.
“This isn’t a flash or a blip, Linda. I really didn’t know that you were Brenda’s daughter?”
Linda recognized Hartwell’s significant voice the first time he tried to contact her, but she knew that contact with the vampire would be both inevitable and potentially destructive when she realized where her daughter was headed a few days earlier.
“Mr. Hartwell?” she said softly out loud and then realized that all she had to do was think of what she wanted to say and her message would be conveyed.
“Mr. Hartwell?” she thought.
“Yes, it’s me child.”
Claire Vinson walked by her mother and a flash of brilliant light blinded her for a moment before she saw her mother and a familiar face on one side in her vision, and her grandmother and another man on the other side. The glared at each other until the tension built to a crescendo, at which point the four people ran at each other and her vision concluded with a cloud of dust that she tried to thin out by sweeping her right hand back and forth.
Linda saw the action and stepped out of her internal conversation with Hartwell to ask her daughter, “Mosquitoes?”
The vision was gone and Claire could now see clearly, “Yeah, something like that.”
Claire was about to walk straight over to her grandmother and tell what she had just seen, but decided better of it when she saw Brenda Vinson talking to the man she was standing next to in the vision. She felt as if there was a lot more information she needed to collect before approaching either her mom or her grandma’.
“So, I assume that you made them all feel comfortable and that those idiots are as enamored with you as ever?” Gabriel Billingsley half-asked Brenda Vinson as he pretended to look at diabetes monitors near the pharmacy area.
It had been many years since Brenda used her powers of mystical persuasion to control Hartwell, Thaddeus and Garrison, but seemed to be happy with the results, “You know Gabe, it’s like riding a bike.”
He carefully placed the rectangular box in his hand back on the shelf and then starting walking away, “I will be in touch soon to unveil the next stage of our plan.”
He looked at her in the eyes and nodded, and she returned the gesture with a nod in return. However, once he was out of sight her first thought was, “Our plan? Our plan? I wish I had never met this man!”
It was 1892 and the black plague was at least 10 years off in the blossoming city of San Francisco, California. Gabriel Billingsley and his wife Margaret were happily living the American dream, or at least that’s the way it appeared from the outside looking in.
She became pregnant at about the same time that Gabriel’s gold business was about to go bust, following years of tremendous prosperity. He happened to go broke the exact same day as his wife suffered a miscarriage, although it wasn’t difficult to see that the cosmic stress produced by his failed business was what had led to the termination of the three-month pregnancy.
As Gabriel bled money from his business like a vampire biting into its prey, he ran across a woman that had a certain something that he couldn’t put his finger on. The term ‘witch’ is one that is not comfortably either spoken or heard in any society, let alone a society on the verge of modernization.
Brenda Vinson was in her early 20s and in her infancy as far as her development as a witch. She discovered her powers one day as the blustery and cold north wind battered the San Francisco Coast in the middle of winter. Desperate for heat, she envisioned a warm fire on her way home from school. It was unfortunate at the time that she was looking at a newly-built church, because it then burnt to the ground within a few hours.
She didn’t believe that the church was on fire at first, thinking that the developing blaze was merely an optical illusion, a
figment of her active imagination. But then the heat from the church made her feel warm all the way home, even when she had turned the corner and was out of range. So, the early days were quite experimental in nature and Brenda was starting to get the hang of her witchy powers by the time her paths crossed with Gabriel Billingsley. However, while she had become more adept at harnessing her powers she still was unfamiliar with the ramifications of such actions due to her relative inexperience in the field.
“You appear lost, my friend,” Brenda said with a certain familiarity to perfect stranger.
Gabriel was losing faith at about the same speed he was losing money, so he replied “I thought I knew where I was going in life, but now I’m not so sure.”
They walked into the shadows of a nearby alley, as she had full confidence in her abilities to get her out of trouble if it came knocking.
He picked up his head and said, “Well, at least I have a baby to look forward to.”
She extended her left arm and instinctively grabbed his forearm to provide comfort, but then she flashed on a not-so-wonderful outcome for the Billingsley family. Brenda unhooked her arm and stepped back, as the look of sadness permeated her face and body posture.
“What is wrong?” Gabriel asked.
“I see nothing but trouble ahead in your immediate future,” Brenda replied.
Gabriel was steadfast in his conviction as he almost gave the appearance of being prepared for such a moment.
“Then maybe this world is not for me,” he