Chapter Six
“It is done,” Gol announced to his brethren.
“Good. And the seed?” Lah asked.
“Finished.”
“You saw it then?” Tos asked.
“No. I did not dare open up the woman and take a chance on air getting to the seed. I left it in her dead body. It will appear to be a dead fetus inside a dead mother-to-be to any humans coming upon it.”
“How did you kill her?” Ish wanted to know.
“Sleeping pills. I mixed them in some rum and made her drink it after I explained it would help our baby inside her.” Gol explained to the Alliance.
“She fell for that?” Saph laughed with a guttural sound that was more growling wolf than person.
“I explained the process of the power of the seed that made her assault her son. She wanted the explanation so badly that everything else I told her was believed just as easily.”
“Humans are such weaklings,” Tos laughed.
“In more ways than one,” Saph added.
“What about Joe?” Ish inquired.
“Broke his neck and left him lying inside his apartment door.”
“Too bad. I kind of liked Joe.” Ish lamented.
“We all did, brother.” Gol reminded them. “But he had become a liability when it became necessary to stop the pregnancy of his mother. We could not have him holding that murder over our heads. Sooner or later he would have learned the ways of the planes and figured out how to use that information to his advantage.”
“True.” Ish responded.
They all nodded their heads.
“So, we're back on track.” Gol announced.
“Yes. Back on track.” Tos agreed.
They all nodded their shaggy heads and murmured their agreement. Back on track.
Barbara Self had endured many changes in life recently. First, her mother had passed away unexpectedly and then her father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and needed to be moved to a place where he could get round the clock care. Drastic changes to her life and further stress between her and her siblings. Not that there had been any real love or connection between them in the past, but the loss of their mother, the glue of the family, sent them all scurrying in even more distant directions, physically and emotionally. Barbara herself had probably moved physically the furthest away and she had always been the youngest and the outsider.
Her dad was not the dad of the other children. It had always been a bone of contention between them. Now that he was sick and mother was gone, there was nothing left to hold her to her brother and sister. They were like strangers who happened to have grown up in the same house.
She reflected upon the turns her life had taken as she lay folded up in the dark of her bedroom. Since the pain had started on the weekend, it had not let up. The doctor had said she was pregnant. She still could not believe that. She was too careful. And a six month old fetus being discovered overnight like that made the whole circumstance harder to get a grip on. How could she have been pregnant all this time and not known it. She was always so aware of her body. She exercised every day. She preened and examined herself constantly, monitoring for any excess weight or blemishes. Two showers a day. Not that showers stopped pregnancy, but being naked in front of a mirror so many times in one day, she could not understand how she had missed the obvious growth taking place inside her.
Unbelievable. That was the word that kept coming to her mind. Unbelievable. She could not believe that at twenty six she was without a mother or a father and now laboring under a pregnancy with the child of an unknown father inside her.
The twinges of pain pulsed through her like the child was stretching inside her and pushing her insides out. She had no idea if that was normal or not. She only knew it hurt. Hurt like hell. She let a moan escape her lips. She was alone. She was not seeking sympathy. Well, maybe she was. She had prayed several times already and asked God to take away this terrible nightmare. How could she be pregnant? She was too young. She was not ready to have children yet. She was not even married. Not that a woman had to be married to have children, but she had always assumed it would be that way for her.
Rolling over she caught a flash of movement in the shadows of her doorway. Refocusing her eyes she tilted her head and looked deeper into the shadows. She couldn't be sure. Was someone there? The sun had set hours ago. She had not bothered to turn on any lights. She didn't need to see. She could feel the pain just fine without the lights on. The lights would not alleviate the pain.
Was someone there? She stared hard into the darkness beyond the doorway. Maybe she had imagined the movement. Dust particles swirling in the light. What light. The shadows, then. How could she see shadows moving in the darkness?
“Is someone there?” she whispered into the darkness. “Please. I am in too much pain for games. If there is someone there, please help me.”
She whined her plea into the darkness before her and saw no more movement. Her heart was racing at the prospect of someone being there. But her mind was crying out for God to send someone to help her. Anyone. Even a serial killer, she half joked to herself. Anything to get past this pain. Anything to make it go away. It was excruciating at times.
Sweating profusely from the exertion of controlling her desire to scream with the pain, Barbara rolled onto her back and sighed heavily into the air flinging her arms and legs wide in a gesture of submissive release.
“Take me. I'm yours. Just don't let me suffer any more, you bastard.” She shouted her challenge to the pain into the dark of her room.
“Just take me!” She screamed, lifting her head up and casting the words into the air with all the energy and violent thought she could muster under the circumstances.
“Bastard,” She murmured half under her breath as she laid back down. She meant the man who had done this to her.
Tos and Lah watched Barbara Self from the shadows. They blended well with the darkness and even more so because they did not allow themselves to fully materialize in her apartment. The see through quality of their manifestation in the darkness added to their camouflage ability from the deep shadows beyond her door.
They listened to her yells and frustrations having known they would come. Human women were weak for the most part. Damned pretty and engagingly sexy but still weak. They were good hosts for their children though. History had proven that.
“She is experiencing great distress from the pregnancy,” Lah spoke with his mind to his brother, Tos.
“Yes. Does that distress you, brother?” Tos was trying to discern how attached his brother was getting to the host of his seed.
“In some ways, I guess it does.” Lah admitted. “If we had female compatibles, such pain and suffering by human females would be unnecessary.”
“We are the five of the alliance, brother. We are all there is.”
“True,” Lah answered. “But the human child born from these inseminations will give us host bodies to move into and then we will be able to procreate normally with women again.”
“That will be a good day, won't it, brother?” Tos smiled even though his grin could not be seen in the darkness where they stood looking at Barbara Self a few feet away.
“It will indeed be a good day for us.” Lah motioned his brother to move away from the doorway, taking one last look at the host of his seed languishing noisily on the bed.
“Except for Gol.”
“Yes, he will have to wait until we can achieve a new energy level to create a seed for himself.”
“We have to wait until our seeds have been born and grown and then inhabited for that.” Tos reminded his brother.
“That's a long time, isn't it?” Lah looked at his brother as they stood in the darkness of Barbara's living room.
“Too long, I think.” Tos admitted.
“I agree.”
Lah spoke what all four of the brothers were thinking when Gol had said he would take care of the woman and the errant seed. Gol was the eldest. That made him the leader
by birth. They would submit to Gol on everything. That was the right of his birth. He was the leader. But he and Tos had been dispatched by the others to assess whether all was as Gol had described.
They had already been to Joe's apartment. He was dead just like Gol had described to them. The stop at Barbara's apartment had been a desire of Lah which Tos did not mind catering to. If his own host female had been as close, he would have liked to stop and view her also. But time demanded they get on with their mission. Next stop, Alicia Cranston, Joe's mother.
John Corwin walked out onto the deck of their camper. Their camper. He was growing used to the sound of that. Not his and hers but theirs. Kathy and his. She and I.
He liked being a couple. The longest relationship he had ever had before meeting Kathy had been a month long love affair in high school with a cheerleader who was only interested in parties and looking good. It had been a very shallow time in his life filled with wasted conversations about nothing subjects that affected no one. With Kathy, life not only made sense but it had purpose. Not just the obvious pleasing and protection and love he had in his mind for his wife, but more. Somehow, Kathy had brought him a desire to live life to its fullest. Before, his idea of a full life was creating the stereotypical success story around himself so he could imagine he had done what he was supposed to do. Kathy had changed all that. Now, he needed to find bigger and better ways to be alive. Not thrill seeking, life seeking.
Every day was an adventure to be lived. Having Kathy by his side all summer long had made him aware that they both were living, breathing, thinking, reasoning creatures who could add to this world, take from it and even just hang out if they wanted. Balance. That was what every deal was about. Both parties getting something they need and sharing the process for achieving it. Balance. And part of the balance was adding to life as well as enjoying what it had to offer. Deals were about building what the two parties involved wanted. The deal with him and Kathy was about building a life together. Together. He loved that word.
Kathy had come up with her idea to hunt down criminals who had escaped prosecution because the evidence was not found to convict them. An oversight she felt sure could be rectified with a little help from their friends in the Mist. With Kathy's background in police work and their membership in the Mist, Kathy felt sure they could solve the unsolved cases and propel the work of prosecutors to an admirable goal of giving the victims closure. Because of her own abduction as a little girl, she felt that they should start with crimes against children, which were all too common everywhere.
John handed his wife her cup of coffee. Two creams, three sugars. She reached up and took it with a smile and a squint against the sun in her eyes. John made sure she had a good hold on it before he let go. Then he took his own seat only inches away. He sat down with a slow sigh of comfort. Not fatigue or frustration. Just a calm, even understanding of a good life. Breathing out the joy he had been breathing in.
“Figure out how to start, yet?”
John asked his question in a quiet tone that said he didn't want to interrupt her thoughts but he would like to know any plans she was considering if she cared to share. She caught his meaning, as she always did. It amazed her how easily she understood him.
All her life, Kathy had been the last child out. Her experience as a kidnap victim had made her something of an oddity in the small town. No one was mean to her. No one said anything rude. No one went out of their way to make her feel left out. It was just that no one had anything to do with her at all. She had always felt alone and never believed she could figure out what people were thinking because she was never around them long enough to learn anything about them.
Then John had walked into her life. She loved her memory of that day. A handsome, young man standing at her counter in the police station wanting to say something and making excuses to not say it out loud and then leaving her with the impression that she should come see him to get the rest of the story. She had no reason to believe John was that complicated and manipulative to draw her out like that, so she had reasoned out that she had been attracted to him and made up the facts that made it necessary to check him out further. It made her smile to believe her own mind was devious enough to trick her into following her potential future husband even if she could not find a devious bone in his body.
And the minute she had seen him in his own environment, at his campground, she had fallen in love with him. Not romantically. Not even physically. There had been something else. There still was. When she was around him, life seemed to clarify. The fuzzy edges of her existence suddenly seemed to clear up and make sense. Every time he spoke she could hear the universe responding. She was part of the universe and she could not help responding to his every thought and action. In him she had found a reason for waking up. It was not about living life. With John, her life had become about being alive. He made her feel as though she had been dead all those years she had waited for him to arrive. Then he had come. He had barely gotten out of the police station that incredible day, when she felt her life ebbing away behind him, like all that she had grown to become was going to follow him emotionally or spiritually or something, even if her physical body didn't.
John had really been her completion. She had known that the first time they had hugged. It was more than a spark or a connection. It was like she had found a part of herself she hadn't even known was missing. Then, when he came after her when she was kidnapped by the spirit of her dead father, she knew that the rest of her life would be spent loving the man who had risked everything he was to be with her. As much as she knew she loved him, she was just as sure of his love for her. Sometimes his love felt even stronger and she would renew her own efforts to broadcast hers in a stronger fashion. Not a competition, but a desire to be so close that they were equals in all things. Love to love. Not head to head.
“I don't know how to start without someone asking us to help them. It would look suspicious to the police. But, why would anyone ask us unless they had reason to believe we might know something they need to know? And how would they know that?” Kathy reasoned.
“It's a quandary,” John admitted. He had been watching her reason this out for three cups of coffee now. It was something she had to work out for herself. He was just along for the ride. This was her venture. Her idea. He knew he needed to let her run with it. He had put a new pot on to brew.
“If we advertise for clients, it will seem like we want to be paid to help,” she said.
“And it will also require that we explain to people how we can help when no one else can.” John spoke softly, not wanting to intrude on her reasoning. This was her project. He would never intrude or try to wrestle it away from her.
“I figured that out,” she admitted. “We can explain to people that we can follow leads that the police would overlook, because of their manpower and time restraints. We can also tell them that we will even follow the foolish, out of the ordinary leads that the police would dismiss. Then find a way to make whatever truth we really do find fit with the leads we have. No one needs to know how we really arrive at the truth.”
John just nodded and sat silent. The air was still warm even though the Summer heat was gone. He enjoyed the heat of the bright light upon his face. It had been such a busy season at the campground, they had not had a lot of free time to enjoy the place they had built together.
“If we can make up the way we arrive at the truth, can we not make up the way we get called in to work on the case to begin with?” John asked.
“You mean like tell the police we have been asked by the parents to look into it and tell the parents we are looking into it for the police?” Kathy asked.
John nodded and squinted against the sunlight to see her answer.
“Too obvious for either of them to check us out. Then we would have some hard explaining to do. Besides, both parties may still be in contact in some way. We need a way to be there without being a threat to the police and their investigation yet still offer
some hope to the parents as we dig around in the story that has caused them such pain.”
“What about a story?” John asked.
“Their story,” Kathy misunderstood his question. “The story of the crime against their children.” She explained herself better.
“No, I mean, what about saying we are there because we are writing a story or have read their story or heard it or something and want to know more about it? Then we discover something that opens up a whole new avenue of evidence for the parents and the police.” John tried to make his explanation short but he did not really understand investigations other than what he saw on television.
Kathy considered his idea for a moment and nodded her head.
“We could construct a reason for being there around the story of the crime itself.” Kathy spoke into the atmosphere to no one in particular. She was thinking out loud.
John let her think. He loved just looking at her. She was beautiful inside and out. So passionate and compassionate. She was everything that he felt he was not. Good with people. Truthful about pain and uncomfortable things. She took things head on with minimal noise instead of his own confrontational approach with all the histrionics of someone scared to let anyone else know how afraid he was of living above the noise of the crowd. She was perfection to his imperfection. Maybe not perfection in the universe. He had no idea what that looked like. But she was definitely perfection in his universe.
“How about bumping into the parents and hearing their story and offering to help them find closure?” The voice intruded on John's thoughts of Kathy.
Emil.
“Hi, Emil.” John heard Kathy say in his head. He still was not used to having his wife's voice in his head whenever the Mist entities were around.
“I'm here, too,” Marcie chimed in. “You two really have to work on your ability to sense the environment.” Marcie was always so full of wisdom they needed to advance to.
“Hello, Marcie,” Kathy advanced.
“Yes, Hi,” John added.
“Well, don't sound so glad to see me,” Marcie pretended being hurt. “I might get a big head.”
“We wouldn't want that,” John smiled to himself even as he thought it.
“Watch it, Buster,” Marcie warned her friend.
“What was that?” Kathy asked Emil.
“What if you went to where the parents were and bumped into them and learned of their story and asked if you could help?”
Kathy thought about it a while.
“Still would require us explaining why we were there, but...” She was lost in her own thoughts.
“What if...” A long pause accented her thoughts and how she was arranging them.
John tried to imagine what Emil and Marcie were doing while they waited for Kathy to get her thought out. He knew he was just sitting. He wondered what the two from the Mist did.
“We're just waiting here with you,” Marcie whispered in an overly dramatic fashion in his head so only he could hear her. John smiled.
“What if...” Kathy said again. “What if I explain about my own abduction as a little girl and that it has made me curious about other cases, like I'm still looking for my own abductor? No one knows that I know who it was. That would give us a reason to be there and a plausible explanation for why we end up discovering whatever new evidence we do.”
John nodded his head.
“Makes sense to me. What about the police?” he asked.
“Steps on no one's toes.” Kathy explained. “We are not pushing the parents and opening up old wounds except to ask them to help me seek out my own abductor, who may or may not be connected with the perpetrator against their child. I'm just looking for links. No known connection. Just a victim looking for answers.”
“And her trusty husband along to see that she stays out of trouble, too.” Marcie added.
“Of course,” Kathy agreed. “The police could not object to us looking into something because we were hoping it might lead to my getting answers.”
“Even if they did, the worst they can do is talk about us. What police department wants to be known as the department that ignored a victim's request for answers?” John added.
“Precisely,” Kathy smiled. That problem was solved.
“So, how do we decide which cases to take on and which one is first?” Emil asked.
“Not sure,” Kathy thought about it. “Have to do some research, I guess.”
“What about finding my killer?” Emil asked.
“Yours?” John asked. “I thought you died in an accident.”
“I did. Car accident. A drunk driver hit me while I was training on my bicycle. He stopped, saw what he had done and then drove off quickly.”
“So, no one ever caught him.” Kathy asked.
“I was the only witness and I was dead. I couldn't tell them what I knew.” Emil answered.
“Well, is it going to be too trying to open up that wound?” John asked. “You've only been dead a short time.”
“Long enough to get over the change in my life. But my parents are another matter. They have no closure. Just a random accident kills their only boy. I would like to see them get the answers they deserve.”
“That's a good point.” Kathy was thinking again. “Maybe we could check the Mist for unsolved cases in there and help those of the Mist find closure in their lives and for their families.”
“Great idea,” Marcie agreed. “There are many in here who are the victims of unsolved crimes. That is one of the areas we cover in the human plane. Those who are being tragically killed.”
“Fantastic.” Kathy smiled. “Not that there are so many,” she amended. “But that we have a ready clientele close by.”
“But they are from everywhere,” Marcie warned.
“That's okay,” John spoke. “They still deserve answers and justice.” He spoke for Kathy, too.
“We'll start tomorrow.” Kathy nodded her head in finality. It was done. Decisions were made. Now they just had it to do. Purpose. That's what they had. A reason to exist that added to the universe around them. Purpose. Solving the unsolved. Giving answers to those left with nothing but big questions. Closure.